TransparenSee

Inspiration

Our team saw a trust crisis in the digital world due to a lack of transparency in transactions and partnerships on the inter-organization scale. We realized that this lack of transparency hampers the ability for organizations, whether DAOs, Non-Profits, or Businesses, to build trust with their stakeholders and thus generates friction in collaboration and transacting with one another. With this in mind, we decided to create a solution that would fill this gap and foster trust, security, and collaboration - and thus, TransparenSee was born.

What it does

TransparenSee empowers partnerships by introducing a new level of transparency and security to transactions and collaboration/data sharing. It secures and shares your sensitive data, like ISO Certifications and Business Plans, without compromising on privacy by allowing you to set different visibility settings (Private, Transparent, Public) with other organizations you wish to partner with. The platform leverages the Jackal Protocol to securely store and share verifiable or sensitive data such as ISO Certifications, Business Plans, and Financial Statistics. Moreover, a concrete use case of TransparenSee is to enhance intra-DAO operations by making relevant data visible between all conceivable sub-teams of that DAO organization, ensuring accountability and ease of secured sharing.

How we built it

Our Full Stack Engineer, Mehdi, bridged all components of our project. Julien ensured secure smart contract implementation. Vishal connected our system with other technologies for app integration. Marc handled the product and front end, crafting a user-friendly experience. The project itself was built using a 'stack' of Solidity (Ethereum Blockchain for Backend), React (frontend), and API calls to the Jackal Protocol in Go.

Challenges we ran into

Our project was an ambitious undertaking, with each of our team members facing distinct challenges. For instance, the complex smart contracts had to be made foolproof against potential security threats, which demanded deep attention to detail. Seamless integration of various components of the system, such as the cutting-edge and thus new Jackal Protocol was also challenging due to our project's complex architecture and the Protocol's API which is in the making.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully integrating the Jackal Protocol with our system to provide a secure and customizable data-sharing platform is a significant achievement that we're proud of. Developing a user-friendly interface while maintaining the product's functionality and security is another accomplishment that brings us pride. A concrete achievement was enhancing intra-DAO operations by providing a platform for accountable and secured data sharing, giving DAOs a medium through which they can operate.

What we learned

This project has reinforced our understanding of the nuanced trade-off between transparency and privacy in the digital world and how to navigate it effectively for diverse user needs. Similarly, as it was our first time developing a non-ERC Smart Contract, we quickly understood the trade-off between its complexity and the features needed to implement such an application, that without even stating the obvious trade-off with security.

What's Next for TransparenSee?

The trust crisis in the digital world isn't going away anytime soon, and our project was a hefty yet rewarding undertaking. After this hackathon, our team could look to take the project beyond a Proof Of Concept, forward to pushing TransparenSee to production, enhancing our platform, and adapting it to better suit the needs of a diverse set of organizations and organization types. We're excited about the potential of our technology being applied to new sectors, including rumors of a university-led initiative, the CanadaDAO.