Stakeable

Inspiration

Every day countless sums of value sit idle in our closets, our sheds, our garages, and other places of storage. The ability to lend and borrow items is typically reserved to just friends and family (the “trust” problem). Even lending and borrowing between friends becomes problematic when people forget to return items or damage them during use.

What it does

Stakeable empowers an individual to offer a public good to another person whilst providing them the security of decentralized escrow. No need for a middle-man. A decentralized sharing economy.

In addition to offering a public good free of charge, Stakeable creates an opportunity for the lender to list a term agreement and price per day with the borrower if they so choose.

How we built it

We built Stakeable using a combination of Squarelink for ease of use and a Solidity smart contract deployed to a Skale side chain for speed using Ethereum's network.

Our belief is that with Stakeable many people around the world will be more apt to lend their personal property to others if they know the borrower is putting a satisfactory amount of money (DAI) into escrow to cover the potential loss of the item. If the borrower returns the item within the requisite amount of time, the borrower will simply withdraw their staked funds from the smart contract (less any daily fee set by the lender, if applicable). If the term expires before the borrower returns the item to the lender, the smart contract will permit the lender to withdraw the escrow funds from it.

Stakeable services two types of users: Lenders & Borrows. Lenders register their item via the Stakeable Smart Contract. Potential borrowers can view the market of items and/or search for items. If a borrower finds an item they are looking for with escrow staking terms that they deem acceptable, they can reach out to the lender to set up the exchange.

Challenges we ran into

Some of the challenges we into was having an automated way of facilitating the exchange of contact information (email address) between prospective lender-borrow parties, and fast-decentralized data storage of item pictures uploaded by users. We solved this problem by integrating the non-custodial Squarelink wallet and Layer 2 solution Skale. We believe that having a lightweight and intuitive wallet design, coupled with account recovery features that simultaneously allow for access to the email address of the account holder, provides an excellent support to help increase usability. We also deployed onto the Skale sidechain to significantly increase transaction speeds and provide decentralized data storage, further keeping the end-user's experience in mind.

What's next for Stakeable

By empowering people to create their own lending and borrowing agreements, we believe markets will eventually form as a consequence. If two different lenders are offering the same item for a different price per day and/or a different escrow deposit, potential borrowers will be compelled to weigh all variables when determining whom to borrow the item from.

Competitive markets for lending and borrowing could potentially create an oracle-like system for different items. Over time, Stakeable could provide insights into the value of depreciating assets (ie. cost to replace, ability to replace, breakability, etc.)

We believe Stakeable provides a solution to a core problem that humanity faces, and unlocks the potential for an entirely new paradigm in the nascent Sharing Economy.

Built With

• css3
• ethereum
• ethers.js
• ganache
• html5
• javascript
• remix
• skale
• solidity
• squarelink