Pear Exchange

Links:

• https://github.com/DanG2020/Pear-Exchange 

• https://github.com/khang-874/smart-contract 

• https://devpost.com/derekgou19 

• https://youtu.be/Xuzbw-WgBho

Inspiration

In recent months, we've gotten a front row seat to the potential harm that can be caused by monopolies and oligopolies. One massive tech market dominated by just a few juggernauts is the AI market. Our goal with Pear Exchange was to create a decentralized market for AI models trained by everyday innovators.

What it Does

Pear Exchange is an all-in-one digital marketplace, where you can post your own ML models and be paid for their use. Once can also purchase a wide variety of AI tokens using our proprietary currency, Juice Pear. 

Users can also purchase stakes in other ML model builders on our platform. This would provide crucial funding for the top creators on our platform, while allowing everyday people to enjoy the financial benefits of the booming AI market. Users would be paid dividends based on the revenue of the individuals or organizations which they invest in.

How We Built It

We built the blockchain backbone and the cryptocurrency for our project using NEAR Protocol, which helped us improve the efficiency and security of our platform. We first designed our frontend on Figma, before building it using HTML, CSS, Javascript, Typescript, React, and Chart.JS. We took advantage of the abundance of Financial Information available on the internet to inform the financial aspects of our project.

Challenges We Ran Into

This hackathon was the first such experience for the majority of our team. Most of us met each other for the first time this Friday. We didn't have any issues coming up with ideas, but we struggled to settle on one specific idea. Yet, we persevered like true veterans, and we are very proud that we were able to create such a phenomenal project in these conditions, while working with unfamiliar technologies.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

We made a great-looking frontend with React, even though it was one of the first web-dev experiences for much of our team.

We came up with an excellent idea with real-world impacts.

We learned to use new technologies, like NEAR and ChartJS, and worked through all issues that came up.

We worked great as a team, even though it was the first hackathon experience, and the first time working with each other, for many of us.

What We Learned

• React, ChartJS, Near, TypeScript, and a whole lot of cool stuff about blockchain. Specifically,  NEAR protocol :) 
• Good team synergy makes all the difference, find a idea that all of you are passionate about and run with it.  
• Be critical of your own ideas. If is sloppy you can code a whole project and realize that there was a hole you never saw. We utilized this angle heavily and spent a large portion of our time working with our ideas. 
• You can do a lot more than you think if you put your mind to it. (4 hours of sleep throughout the whole event) Coming into this weekend we never would have guessed how much we could really achieve with a team full of inexperienced member, but we ended up going above and beyond expectations.   

What's Next?

We wanted a feature for users to be able to pay Juicy Pears to use our platform to create or personalize AI models. However, we realized quickly that this idea wasn't feasible for the scope of the hackathon. This could be something we look into implementing in the future.