ProofVault

ProofVault: Where Evidence Meets Action.

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🕯️ ProofVault: When the Truth Fades

Inspiration

On October 20, 2020, the world watched in horror as peaceful protesters gathered at Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, Nigeria, calling for an end to police brutality under the #EndSARS movement.

Then, the lights went out. CCTV feeds went dark. The military opened fire.

One voice stayed live: DJ Switch, trembling as she streamed bodies bleeding into the asphalt. Her voice shook. She begged for peace. For someone, anyone, to see.

And then… the livestream was cut.

The government denied everything. No one died, they claimed. The footage was fake.

That night, the truth barely survived. What if no one had hit “record”? What if that story had vanished forever?

That question haunts us.

It haunts Sudan, where videos of massacres never upload. It haunts Kenya, where resistance footage is wiped by shutdowns. It haunts every country where truth is killed first, then denied.

So we stopped asking "What if?" And started building "What now?"

What It Does

ProofVault is an AI-powered, blockchain-secured platform that helps civilians, journalists, and human rights defenders capture, verify, and preserve critical digital evidence even offline, in hostile or low-connectivity environments.

Key Capabilities:

  • Voice-Assisted Reporting (via ElevenLabs and Whisper)
  • Offline-First Syncing (auto uploads once reconnected)
  • Blockchain Logging (Algorand and SHA-256 hashing)
  • Decentralized Storage (IPFS via Pinata)
  • AI Analysis (GPT-4 for summaries, credibility scoring, and deepfake detection)
  • Multi-Role Access (citizens, responders, and verification experts)
  • Live Dashboards (response time, incident heatmaps, and audit trails)

How We Built It

We used Bolt.new to build and deploy a responsive Progressive Web App, integrating:

  • ElevenLabs and Whisper for multilingual voice capture
  • Algorand to timestamp content immutably on-chain
  • Web3.Storage and later Pinata for decentralized file storage
  • GPT-4 to analyze, summarize, and verify media
  • Netlify for global deployment
  • Custom offline logic for secure local data caching and retry syncing

Challenges We Ran Into

  • Sensity API Access They required a verified work email, which meant I had to get a domain name just to apply. That delayed integration by days. So had to move forward with Assembly AI, Hive AI and Huggingface AI

  • Netlify Deployment Panic My app didn’t reflect on my custom domain on time. I panicked, trying to troubleshoot everything right before submission, and may have broken a few things in the process.

  • Supabase Migrations Supabase really frustrated me. Migrations failed, tables didn’t generate as expected, and I spent far too long debugging issues that should’ve been straightforward.

  • Twilio Delays Twilio required a live, deployed app before unlocking API access, but my app needed the API to be complete. It was a frustrating loop that slowed things down significantly. Had to drop them too

  • Payment Barriers As a Nigerian in Nigeria, my local card didn’t work with Google Cloud. I had to call a friend in the UK and use their card just to gain access to basic cloud services.

  • Storage Burnout Web3Storage and Stracha consumed my free credits almost instantly. After 24 hours of upload failures and retries, I had to switch entirely to Pinata to keep things working.

Let me stop here before I start crying 😫

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

  • Built a fully offline-capable reporting platform
  • Combined blockchain, AI, and decentralized storage for tamper-proof truth
  • Created a system designed for real-world danger, not just digital convenience
  • Protected dignity and voice for those silenced by force or fear

What We Learned

  • Truth needs infrastructure
  • Design must work in chaos
  • Technology should serve ethics
  • We're not building apps. We're building shields

Most of all:

Truth is a human right. And it deserves tools as powerful as the forces trying to erase it.

What's Next for ProofVault

  • Local AI inference for offline disinformation detection
  • Identity protection and anonymous verification toggles
  • Language expansion (Arabic, Farsi, Hausa, Burmese)
  • Native Android and iOS apps
  • Partnerships with NGOs and rights organizations
  • Satellite uplink compatibility for blackout zones

In Memory of the Lost Voices

We dedicate ProofVault to those who raised their phones when it was dangerous to speak, and to those whose final moments became hashtags.

May their truth never be erased. May their courage never be forgotten. May our tools honor their voices and protect the next.

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