ScrollStake

Landing Photo
Set the stakes
Build the room
Study wrapped

💡 Inspiration

Have you ever told your friends you're going to be "so locked in" today, only to end up spending the next three hours mindlessly doomscrolling? We definitely have.

We realized that willpower alone isn't always enough, so we wanted to create a way to hold ourselves accountable by putting our money where our mouth is. We built ScrollStake, a gamified, productivity platform powered by the Solana blockchain where you and your friends collectively stake real funds to ensure you stay focused.

⚙️ What it does

ScrollToll turns productivity into a high-stakes group challenge.

The Setup: Users create or join a "lock-in" room powered by a Solana smart contract. As a group, friends agree on the stake (buy-in), the penalty amount for slipping up, any grace periods, and a custom blocklist of sites/apps that count as doomscrolling (e.g., TikTok, Twitter, Instagram).
The Detection: Once the session begins, ScrollToll monitors your focus using a dual-approach: screen sharing and camera tracking.
The Penalty: The moment our system detects you doomscrolling, the penalty is deducted from your stake. To add insult to injury, the app uses the ElevenLabs API to loudly and publicly shame you to the rest of the room.
The Aftermath: When the session ends, users are greeted with a "Spotify Wrapped"-style session review, comparing your focus stats, penalty losses, and overall lock-in score against your friends.

🛠️ How we built it

We combined real-time web technologies with decentralized blockchain architecture:

Frontend & UI: We built the client using React/Next.js, focusing on a clean, gamified dashboard leveraging Tiger Data where users can view their stakes, session timers, and post-session "Wrapped" statistics.
Solana: The core staking and penalty logic is handled via Solana smart contracts (written in Rust/Anchor). This ensures that the locked-in funds are held securely in escrow and automatically deducted based on session rules. Payments are also on Solana for instant settlement times + negligible transaction fees compared to the delays within the traditional banking system (could have ACH settlement delays (3–5 business days) and per-transaction interchange fees ($0.30 + 2.9%)). Everything is done onchain for transparent accountability.
Activity Detection: To monitor the user, we captured the browser's ScreenShare and Webcam feeds. We utilized computer vision (OpenCV/Python) and URL/DOM tracking to determine if a user navigated to a blocked site or exhibited the physical behavior of mindless scrolling.
Audio Shame: We integrated the ElevenLabs API to generate high-quality, dynamic voice alerts that trigger instantly upon detection, broadcasting the user's slip-up to the active room via WebSockets.

🚧 Challenges we ran into

This was our first time working with blockchain technology and the Solana ecosystem. Initially, we struggled to implement the routing logic with simulated wallets. About three-quarters of the way through the hackathon, we realized the monetary deductions were only updating visually on our frontend, but the actual on-chain wallets weren't being touched!

We luckily were able to fix this by integrating Phantom Wallet. Phantom provided real-time transaction signing and seamless state management directly in the browser. Because it securely injects a Solana provider into the web app, we were able to bridge our frontend directly to our deployed smart contract. This allowed us to execute the actual token deductions on-chain, ensuring the financial penalties were 100% real and automated rather than just a frontend illusion.

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

Deploying to the Blockchain: We successfully wrote, tested, and deployed our very first smart contract to the Solana network!
Seamless Hardware/Software Integration: We're incredibly proud of successfully linking real-time camera and screen-share data with backend logic to accurately trigger API calls.
The "Wrapped" Experience: Taking raw session data and turning it into a highly visual, shareable, and competitive post-session review.

🧠 What we learned

Building ScrollStake was a massive learning curve. It was super cool to learn the fundamentals of blockchain, how decentralized platforms operate, and how to securely manage user funds via wallets. We also learned that Solana has fantastic resources for developers—including great templates and active communities—which we’d love to utilize more in the future. On the web side, we learned how to efficiently handle media streams and integrate third-party AI APIs like ElevenLabs under strict time constraints.

🚀 What's next for ScrollStake

Exam Season Beta: We’d love to test this out with our friends to truly lock in for the upcoming exam season!
Mobile Support: Since the worst doomscrolling happens on our phones, we want to build a mobile client to track screen time natively.
Dynamic AI Personalities: Expanding the ElevenLabs integration so users can choose who yells at them when they lose focus (e.g., a disappointed parent, a strict coach, etc.).