XCRO

A black market auction site that allows for items to be sold and bought anonymously using a crypto exchange and an escrow system. To gain access you must request an invite link through telegram.

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Inspiration

We were inspired by the "Louvre Heist" theme, and we were wondering if after a heist, to make it perfect, how would the thieves manage to successfully sell the stolen goods, and then we came across this idea.

What it does

It's a black market auction site, so you can, through your invite link, as a seller, create auctions anonymously and receive payments from buyers through crypto. And for buyers, you can browse auction listings and buy them using crypto, assured that your payment will be safe due to a hardware wallet crypto system.

How we built it

We used react for the front end, node.js for the back end, an arduino system for the escrow system and hardware wallet, and a telegram bot also coded in javascript and deployed via render with a database in neon.

Challenges we ran into

The telegram bot not deploying, the front end not working, the back end not working, the invite links not working, the hardware component not working, the payment system not working, the api calls for the telegram bot not working, trouble merging and then code breaking, etc.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We got a working cohesive front end and back end system that's very smooth, we got a working deployed telegram bot to create invite links for anonymity, we got crypto payments stored on local hardware wallets via an escrow system, and we managed to pull all this off together under heavy time pressure. The project was very intimidating but by splitting it up among the 4 of us we managed to get a lot of progress done as a team.

What we learned

We learned how annoying and buggy software can be, how problematic deployment and apis are, how environment variables can make or break code, how the front end and back end need to be connected well, how if a certain part of the project isn't working well, either we need to restructure it or just scrap it, and how to work together well as a team on a big project together.

What's next for XCRO

We plan to not really touch our project again because of legal issues, however we might take what we've learned from it and apply it to future projects or even showcase it on our resume as a decentralized auction platform.

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