Description as a Tweet:

A blockchain social network that pays you for posting valuable content while offering audience more power over what content they see

Inspiration:

Today, virtually everyone is active on social media. According to GlobalWebIndex, using social media to stay up-to-date with news and current events is the top reason for logging in globally, at 36%.

There were sharp increases in usage after social distancing measures were put into place, and the audience continues to grow during this pandemic. As data production from popular social media platforms skyrocketed, so did the instances of data breaches like the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook incident. Over 4.5 billion data records worldwide were compromised in 945 separate attacks in the first half of 2018 alone. Of these attacks, just six social media breaches compromised over 56% of the 4.5 billion data records.

Against this backdrop, I considered the benefit of blockchain for its immutability of a “distributed ledger” shared on multiple computers. It provides integrity and transparency and can allow upvoters to track their upvotes through their cryptocurrency tips on the blockchain and know without any doubt that their upvote was counted as intended.

As such, I created a blockchain social media platform to provide better security.

What it does:

A Token Story leverages blockchain technology to provide a secure social media platform that:
- Allows people to tip content creators in cryptocurrency like Ethers for posting valuable content
- Shows most valuable posts, as deemed by others in the community, at the top of the news feed
- Enables content providers and platform owners to monetize their social media content
- Gives audience more power to affect the social media content they consume

How we built it:

* [ReactJS] - front end
* [Bootstrap] - template framework for applying CSS layout
* [web3.js] - allows web app to interact with blockchain app
* [Solidity] - for implementing smart contracts
* [Ganache] - personal Ethereum blockchain
* [MetaMask] - crypto wallet and gateway to blockchain chrome extension

Tests were performed with Mocha test framework and Chai Assertion Library.

Technologies we used:

  • Javascript
  • React
  • Misc

Challenges we ran into:

Wrapping my head around concepts like smart contracts was difficult, since this is the first time I was working with blockchain technology and frameworks and performing extensive testing (because I can't change anything once it's been posted on the blockchain).

Accomplishments we're proud of:

Overcoming the fear of getting started with blockchain due to the huge learning curve! I also have a whole suite of tests I had to perform.

What we've learned:

I learned about the benefits of blockchain and the various tools and technologies involved. I also learned about state and props in React for passing information between files.

What's next:

To ensure new news can rise to the top, I'd reset the newsfeed either daily or weekly. This platform can be used for voting - making democratic decisions in a community.

Built with:

VSCode

Prizes we're going for:

  • Best Security Hack
  • Best Finance Hack
  • Best Documentation
  • Best Venture Pitch
  • Best Web Hack

Team Members

Anita Yip

Table Number

Table TBD