Santaspot

Inspiration

Every holiday season, we witness incredible generosity — yet many giving platforms are complex or opaque. We wanted to bring together three principles: low barrier to entry, referral-driven community growth, and fully transparent AI-driven winner selection. That’s how Santa’s Pot was born: a $1 micro-give platform where everyone contributes, everyone shares, and one lucky person wins — while the act of giving remains the hero.

What we built

• A web app where users donate as little as $1 to join the pot
  
• Referral system: users share their link, earn “influence”, boosting their odds of winning
  
• Click/referral tracking dashboard with live stats
  
• Random winner selection on Xmas Day (or New Year’s Day) via our AI fairness engine
  
• Clear audit trail: all referral, click and donation data logged — winner selection algorithm open-source
  
• Future roadmap: accept crypto donations, publish winner verification, issue limited-edition “Santa’s Pot” NFTs to top referrers

Challenges & Learnings

• Designing a referral model that is fair and doesn’t favour “big networks” only — we balanced “influence” vs “donation size” vs “engagement”
  
• Building a randomization engine that is auditable: we explored existing libraries (e.g., fairlearn) and ultimately built a custom solution, then released for public review
  
• Regulatory/compliance questions: since we are effectively running a giveaway/donation pot, we had to ensure we weren’t running an illegal lottery. We created terms & conditions, geo-filtering, and legal disclosures.
  
• UX/Trust: it’s hard to get users to donate when the winner is one person. We built transparency dashboards and planned for winner public-announcement and audit post-event.

Next Steps

• Launch global campaign for Holiday 2025: target 10 k users, $50k total pot
  
• Launch crypto donation option: allow Bitcoin/ETH so international donors can join
  
• Mint limited “Top Referrer” NFTs after winner announcement
  
• Build mobile app for easier sharing and referrals
  

Built With

• ai
• copilot
• geni
• github
• google
• vercel
• vite