Project Moat

Inspiration

The inspiration is best described in the words of Adewale Adeyosoye, the leader of the team: "The inspiration for project Moat came from understanding the potential of blockchain technology and the tremendous impact it will have upon the world in my lifetime. I was first introduced to blockchain technology in 2021 and within a week I realised that I was living in an era where the greatest technology for financial empowerment was rapidly being developed. I knew I had to somehow be part of its advancement and progression."

What it does

Project moat is a decentralised crowd-funding platform that allows businesses to raise funds through crowd-funding. Contributors would be rewarded with a NFT of different perks based on how much the contributor contributed during the campaign period or funding round once the target amount is met.

Contributors would be able to contribute through fiat (banking system) and through cryptocurrency during the funding round. The NFT perks given as the reward to the contributors will guarantee the contributor a special discount and vip access with the business. The contributor would also have the option of selling the NFT perk on the secondary market to recover his/her investment anytime. The new buyer has to continuously patronise the business to claim the discounts and VIP access attached to the NFT perks. This way, the business customer-base keeps growing, the business itself keeps growing and the values of the NFT perks also increase in the secondary market.

However, if the target amount is not met during the funding round and the campaign fails all the contributors or funders will be able to claim their refund or it may be sent to their wallets.

How we built it

Basically we created two smart contracts; FundABusiness and NFTPerks smart contracts. The FundABusiness contract manages the crowd-funding and also has the minter-role to mint NFT to funders once the funding round has been declared successful.

After the funders have received their NFT perks, they can go to the View Your NFT page of the UI and generate a token (a set of random string), with which they can go to the respective business and use the token generated to claim discount or VIP access. Funders can also sell the NFT in the secondary market like Opensea at any time should the funder wishes to recover his investment at any time .

The NFTPerks have royalty functionalities implemented on them. Therefore the businesses and Project Moat get these royalties when NFTs are sold in the secondary market.

After a fraction of the fundraised is deducted as fee from project moat, the remaining amount will be released to the business based on the milestone defined in the contract and agreed with the business. Since it is on-chain, the transactions are publicly verifiable.

Finally, should the funding round fail to meet the target amount the campaign is declared unsuccessful and funders can come and claim their refund or it can be sent back to their wallets.

Challenges we ran into

It was initially built to accept only stable coins then USDC lost its peg briefly. That reminded us of the risk of keeping a stable coin for long on the contract. We had to explore other options. After considering other options, we decided to accept only ETH or native coins of the host blockchain. We used Chain Link DataFeed to fetch the real time price of ETH and calculate the equivalent amount of every contribution.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have a full-stack decentralised product that offers the following benefits;

Unlike the traditional crowd-funding space, the businesses do not have to promise unrealistic return on investment to the contributors. The contributors are not shareholders in the business. This gives sufficient time to the startup (business) to grow and expand carefully.
The contributors also become customers to the business as they can only use their NFT perks to claim discounts and VIP access with the business.
Anytime these NFT perks are sold in the secondary markets, the business gets royalties and gains a new customer. Royalties from the secondary markets give the business additional cash flow.
Contributors are able to see how and when funds-raised are released to the business according to the milestones defined in the contract as the approval and release of funds will be done on chain. This guarantees transparency.
Since fiat contributions will be accepted, many more new users will be brought to the web3 space.

What we learned

We learned that raising capital for startup business is one of their biggest challenges. They are forced to even promise unrealistic return on investment within a short period of time to their funders just to raise capital. With this solution, we believe startups will be able to raise funds from their customers and even expand carefully at the right pace. This project has opened a new utility for the NFT space. Also, it will bring decentralisation and transparency to the crowd-funding space.

What's next for Project Moat

The team plans to raise funds, go mainstream, bring businesses on board and attract funders through marketing and awareness. In addition, the team plans to develop the NFT marketplace as a secondary market for the NFTs and hopes to eventually become a DAO. As a DAO, the project will be community-owned and the team can continue to effectively screen every business that comes to raise funds on the platform.