PeerFund

Pay back money
Contribute money to the Pool
Landing page
Signing into PeerFund with edu email
Borrower Dashboard
Lender Dashboard

Inspiration

College students often struggle to access fair credit — traditional banks deny small loans and payday lenders trap people in predatory cycles. Meanwhile, plenty of students have savings sitting idle, earning near zero interest. We asked ourselves:

What if we let students support each other directly — safely, transparently, and with real financial upside?

PeerFund enables a win-win system where students can fund each other using a secure blockchain, eliminating middlemen and complexity.

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What It Does

PeerFund is a peer-to-peer lending platform built on the XRP Ledger that:

✅ Allows students to lend money and earn interest ✅ Enables borrowers to request loans with predictable repayment schedules ✅ Uses XRPL blockchain transactions for transparency + trust ✅ Automates matching between lenders and borrowers ✅ Tracks user credit reputation over time

Every payment — funding, disbursement, repayment, and payout — is recorded on-chain with structured memos for auditability.

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How It’s Built

Frontend • Next.js 14 + React + MUI for a clean, animated UI • React Query for realtime data and mutation flows

Backend • Next.js API Routes (serverless) • Firebase Auth + Firestore for user and loan data

Blockchain • XRPL.js with on-chain payments for: • Funding commitments (user-signed) • Loan disbursements (server-signed) • Loan repayments (user-signed) • Lender payouts (server-signed) • Secure collector wallet for automated settlement • Memos used to synchronize blockchain + database state

We also created a detailed matching system architecture for future automation: • Automated loan funding (matcher cron) • Expired reservation cleanup • Payout distribution to lenders • Default detection and risk scoring

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Challenges We Ran Into

• Crafting a complete blockchain flow without smart contracts
• Making on-chain/off-chain states idempotent and reconcilable
• Wallet integration UX (reducing friction for new crypto users)
• Designing a fair matching engine with all-or-nothing funding
• Coordinating funding → disbursement → repayment → payout without race conditions
• Finishing a complex financial system under hackathon time pressure ⏳

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Accomplishments That We’re Proud Of

• We built a real lending marketplace, not just a prototype UI
• Every financial event flows through the XRP Ledger
• Fully functional lender and borrower dashboards
• Secure wallet-linked authentication
• Dynamic interest rates with clean visual design
• Production-grade specs for matching + distribution pipelines
• A polished user experience in just 36 hours

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What We Learned

• How to combine server-signed + user-signed XRPL transactions
• Designing reversible financial systems is non-trivial
• Hustling UX polish while building blockchain infra is… ambitious 😅
• The power of structured memos for traceable financial history
• The importance of idempotency when listening to blockchain events
• How to design an economic system that is fair and automated

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What’s Next for PeerFund

🔜 Deploy smart matching scheduler to automate loan funding 🔜 Smart distribution system for lender payouts 🔜 Live wallet connection (Xaman + Crossmark integrations) 🔜 Offer identity-based credit scoring 🔜 Expand to more schools and verified student networks 🔜 Mobile-first app + QR-powered deep linking 🔜 Eventually support mainnet deployment with real liquidity pools

Our long-term vision: A trustless micro-finance network where students fund their future — together.

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