When more than 83% of the world's companies are using cloud services to build their technology businesses, concentration, monopoly, and autocracy have emerged in the fields of cloud storage and cloud computing. DFINITY innovatively proposed the concept of "public computer", taking solid steps towards the goal of achieving user data sovereignty, and is committed to creating a decentralized, efficient, convenient and friendly technology ecosystem.
In order to help more developers realize new project development in the IC ecosystem, the "Blockchain Quick Start to Development Practice - Towards the IC Ecosystem, a Compulsory Course for Developers to Build Web3 Applications" training camp co-organized by TinTinLand and Blockchain Academy has attracted the attention and participation of nearly 4,000 course students at home and abroad since its opening. 425 students have actually participated in learning and practice. The course focuses on the basics of blockchain technology, Motoko, Azle (TypeScript) and smart contract development, and carries out development learning that combines theory with practice. It helps technical novices with "0-1 year blockchain development experience" to transform from newcomers to IC development masters and improve their technical competitiveness.
Not only are the courses full of content that attract developers to explore the IC ecosystem, but in the process of learning in the training camp, there is also the ICP Star 2 Star hackathon hosted by Blockchain Academy, co-created by ICP.Hub Hong Kong and TinTinLand. It started on December 3, 2023, and the final Demo Day project demonstration was held on December 30, 2023! Nearly 200 developers signed up, 28 projects entered the finals, of which 16 projects came from the ICP training camp hosted by TinTinLand. The top three projects of this hackathon were also submitted by students from the ICP training camp hosted by TinTinLand.
Today, let us once again get close to the winning teams of the ICP Star 2 Star Hackathon, Proton, Dawnlight, and dare.to, to explore the high-energy technical secrets of the winning development teams, and provide new creative inspiration for more developers who want to enter the IC ecosystem and explore it in depth!
♂️ Interviews with award-winning projects
Proton
As the Web3 social track becomes increasingly heated, we are still determined to choose decentralized social networking for project innovation and exploration, hoping that users can freely communicate and interact on the chain while mastering content and data sovereignty. ——Proton Team
"Cloud Terminal" social positioning, replicating the Web2 experience
In order to give users an "independent space" social application experience, Proton closely combines the technical features of ICP to design and develop a new DApp. On the Proton platform, each user has an independent "cloud server" for data storage and privacy protection. When talking about the original intention of project development, the Proton team said: "We chose the social track because social applications can best reflect the differentiated highlights of ICP and other mainstream public chains compared to other tracks. Proton can achieve intelligent hosting with the help of decentralized cloud services. Users can efficiently enter the application environment by interacting with their own Canisters, and subsequent pushes are slowly and automatically completed by the Canisters in collaboration."
In addition, Proton's technical application is 100% full-stack on-chain, and the entire DApp is fully deployed on the chain, which is a clear technical difference from other social protocols on the chain. This complete on-chain technical logic is also Proton's hope to restore the user's Web2 social application experience to the maximum extent, while achieving the goal of lightweight and efficient application. "I hope this APP can give users a similar feeling to Twitter, without feeling that it is very difficult to get started." With the goal of helping users easily enter the Web3 social world, Proton is on the road to upgrading and rebuilding the project.
Using the Actor Model Architecture to Modularize Data Sovereignty
As a DApp based on the Actor model, Proton has built a peer-to-peer decentralized push-fetch architecture. "The Actor model is inherently designed for high concurrency, and achieves parallel and distributed computing through message passing and asynchronous processing. Each user obtains information by accessing his or her own cloud terminal, which does not put pressure on the overall operation of the DApp and can easily cope with scenarios such as inscriptions. Since each user can directly obtain cloud terminal information, the response speed in the project is almost the same as Web2, and the experience is very smooth," said the Proton team when introducing the Actor model architecture concept.
According to the team, Proton is essentially a public posting space designed for anyone who wants to post content on a decentralized network. There is no concept of "borders" on Proton, and users can freely post and access all kinds of content on social media. It goes beyond the interaction design of any single program and can represent all decentralized Internet platforms. "Users can choose to post in Proton's public space instead of on platforms such as X, Reddit or Quora, because we focus on user content production and user sovereignty, rather than the monopoly control of more third-party intermediary platforms."
Integrate four interactive modules to efficiently match public domain information
Overall, Proton's peer-to-peer decentralized push-fetch architecture is divided into four modules: User, Feed, Post, and Fetch:
User: User area, responsible for recording user information and relationships. This area records the user's personal information and follow-up relationships;
Post: Public area, storing all publicly published posts. Root Post can create many Buckets to store posts.
Feed: Information flow, storing the user's personal information flow. Root Feed creates a feed for each user.
Fetch: A transit station responsible for pushing a user's latest information stream and recording posts, comments or likes that are not captured by the user's feed;
In addition to the technical ingenuity of the model concept, Proton has also achieved further optimization in functional integration. In order to expand the social public area and interactive functions, Proton created a Feed for information storage, query, likes, and posting; in order to fit the service concept of the cloud terminal, the Feed was developed and designed, allowing users to interact with their own Canister to achieve autonomous control of independent space.
In fact, the interaction between users and Canister is very simple. They just send their own Canister to the Canister in the public database, and then the message flow is transferred to the Canister of the user's followers for subsequent collaboration, and then distributed to the Canister of the user's followers, realizing the private domain conversion and efficient matching of public domain traffic.
Build a public database and develop large-scale social DApp
Facing the future development of Web3 social applications, the Proton team is working hard to achieve the advanced goal of "user cloud terminal" by building a public database. By adding wallets, scheduled posting, collections and other functions to Feed Canister, the purpose of strong social interaction and fast indexing is achieved. "All users' publicly posted posts are stored in the Proton public database. As a public database, it stores various data and is open to everyone. Anyone can freely obtain information data, eliminating the data island phenomenon of Web2 APP," the Proton team said.
In the future development process, Proton will also take the development of a complete large-scale social DApp and the integration of Dawnlight as important goals, and strive to promote Proton's technical architecture based on the Actor model to the developer community to inspire more developers' inspirational thinking. Talking about the views on the IC ecosystem, the Proton team believes that ICP is a decentralized cloud service designed at the bottom layer. The bottom layer of decentralization means that the deployed website services and smart contracts will not be forcibly shut down by others. The upper layer deployment application can be completely controlled by the user to store private data. You can also choose to control the service through DAO and transform it into a completely decentralized DApp to achieve the goal of community autonomy. The team hopes that more developers can enter the IC ecosystem and capture development opportunities. Let’s build!
️ Proton details:
https://neutronstardao.github.io/constellationzh.github.io/9.Dapp
Dawnlight
Dawnlight is a decentralized application (DApp) designed to incentivize creators, also led by ICP training camp assistant He Yuanxun. Creators can publish their works on the platform and earn income through the sale of their works. This incentive model provides a new way for the creator economy, making their works investable assets.
Don’t be afraid to come up with and try out new ideas, innovation is the most important part of a hackathon. - Dawnlight Team
Born for the creator economy, breaking the dilemma of low income for creators
Dawnlight was originally designed by the same developer team as the Proton project, and was inspired by the exploration and demand for the Proton social platform. In order to find a better solution to the low income of creators, Dawnlight added an incentive model to the basic social functions to turn content into investable assets, aiming to solve the fundraising difficulties faced by creators, and issue assets with one click, making it part of the creator economy.
Dawnlight provides creators with the opportunity to publish their works and earn income through sharing the profits. As the popularity and purchase volume of the works increase, the price of each work will also increase. Adhering to the expectation that "gold will always shine", the project promotes people to spontaneously make early contributions to valuable posts by tokenizing posts and giving funders expected returns. On the other hand, through on-chain issuance, the process of asset issuance and returns is placed on smart contracts, making it open and transparent, and achieving a higher degree of decentralization.
Deeply integrate IC ecology to achieve convenient application experience
In the IC (Internet Computer) ecosystem, Dawnlight uses Canister, which has 500 GB of storage space, to store user-published works using its stable memory, and deploys the front-end and back-end on IC. This move simplifies the development and deployment process, greatly facilitates Dawnlight's Demo phase, and enables the entire set of deployment and testing processes to be completed in one step.
As a new generation of creator content asset issuance and trading protocol, Dawnlight uses Bonding Curve to provide an incentive model for users' works. In addition, Dawnlight is not just a protocol, it will also be integrated as a module in the social DApp Proton to provide users with a more convenient user experience.
For users, Dawnlight sorts content by the latest release date. In order to achieve a fairer display, there is not much optimization between creators and value discoverers. When Proton integrates Dawnlight, users can discover valuable content by transaction volume ranking and latest release ranking.
From courses to hackathons, actively improving practical skills
In the ICP training camp course taught by teacher Paul, the team began to conceive what kind of Web3 creative project to build. After obtaining the opportunity to participate in the hackathon, the development team actively used the rich resources and tools provided by the training camp to conceive and implement the project in the preparation process. They also encountered difficulties such as time constraints and technical difficulties, and finally successfully overcame various challenges through teamwork and mentors’ answering questions.
In particular, the team members further strengthened their development skills and knowledge by participating in various workshops held in the training camp. They learned new tools, technologies or methods from the instructors, and had the opportunity to exchange experiences and share ideas with other participants, and even find potential partners, which increased the possibility of success in the hackathon journey. The team members also said, "Teacher Paul was very patient in answering questions. His guidance helped us overcome many technical difficulties and benefited us a lot in the development process."
Plan for future development and start again with innovation
After winning the second prize in the ICP Star 2 Star hackathon, Dawnlight is deploying the next specific development plan. In the future, Dawnlight will be developed together with Proton, integrated into Proton as a module to provide economic incentives, and as an open source tool to provide creators with economic incentives for more SocialFi projects.
Looking back on the entire hackathon experience, the Dawnlight team admitted that they learned a lot - not only improved their technical level, but also learned how to work as a team and manage projects more effectively. "In this process, we went from the initial project concept to the final implementation and presentation, and the tacit understanding and cooperation ability of the entire team was greatly improved," said a team member.
For developers who will be attending ICP camps and hackathons in the future, Dawnlight recommends:
1. Focus on teamwork and communication, give full play to the advantages of each member, and unite to create better projects.
2. Maintain curiosity and enthusiasm for learning. Technology is developing rapidly, and only by continuous learning can you stay competitive.
3. Don’t be afraid to come up with and try new ideas. Innovation is the most important part of a hackathon.
In addition, the team recommends the "Internet Computer Hitchhiker's Guide" which is very helpful for ICP beginners. Interested developers are welcome to read it: https://neutronstardao.github.io/constellationzh.github.io/
Dawnlight GitHub homepage: GitHub - xiaoyuanxun/Dawnlight
I hope everyone will continue to grow in the ICP ecosystem, be brave to explore, and create more valuable projects. I believe that every participation experience will be a valuable opportunity for learning and growth. Come on! ——Dawnlight
dare.to
dare.to is a self-challenge platform where users can create challenges and receive project token rewards upon completion. If not completed within the set time, the user's staked tokens will be donated to charities or DAOs.
The project name comes from the English word “dare”, “dare”. Do it, and challenge yourself. —— dare.to team
️ Together with charity, an incentive platform that turns goals into reality
In the fast-paced modern life, we often set many goals in the New Year or a specific period, but only a few of them can be completed in the end. The original intention of dare.to was to help users overcome this problem, by setting goals and reward mechanisms to inspire people's motivation and drive everyone to achieve their goals. Whether it is fitness, learning or other personal growth goals, dare.to provides users with an innovative way to track and achieve these goals.
Set a goal on dare.to:
https://ivvrr-viaaa-aaaal-adhzq-cai.icp0.io/
️ Break the traditional incentive mechanism and achieve more efficient goal achievement
Traditional incentive mechanisms lack mandatory nature, and many people set goals but find it difficult to stick to them. Dare.to targets users with insufficient self-control and uses Web3 technology to force lock-up through smart contracts until the user completes the goal before returning and rewarding the tokens. If the user fails to complete the challenge, the locked tokens will be used for donations, and can even be donated multiple times to charities. This mechanism not only helps users achieve their goals, but also promotes the development of public welfare.
️Introducing Internet Identity technology to achieve a seamless experience
In the IC (Internet Computer) ecosystem, dare.to uses a number of key technologies, including Juno.build for data storage, Internet Identity for user authentication, Asset Canister for front-end web page deployment, and Smart Contract Canister for Motoko smart contract deployment. Through these technologies, dare.to enables users to quickly create accounts and verify smart contracts, and its on-chain authentication and decentralized token issuance mechanism ensure the transparency and security of the system. Users do not need to understand the complex public-private key mechanism through the Internet Identity platform.
In addition, dare.to plans to add Ledger Canister in the next version to handle token issuance. Each user has his own Canister to record challenge situations, ensuring privacy and reducing dependence. At present, dare.to mainly provides personal challenges, but in the next version of Ailurus Protocol, multiple challenge forms will be introduced, including group challenges and long-term goal check-in mechanisms. After completing the challenge, users can get meme-type tokens as rewards, which encourages more people to participate and complete the challenge.
️ From inspiration to practice, the growth path in hackathon
When the dare.to team participated in the ICP hackathon, they were only interested in learning and did not intend to submit a project. However, with the encouragement of the organizer, the team came up with the dare.to project. Although the team did not have enough knowledge of ICP Ledger, they successfully implemented the core functions of the project by partially using ERC-20 tokens and smart contract wallets generated by Internet Identity - generating hash values through the public key + passcode mode, and then using ERC-4337 (Account Abstraction) to generate smart contract accounts for each user to receive token rewards. Throughout the development process, the team overcame various technical difficulties and continued to improve their skills and knowledge under the patient guidance of teacher Paul.
️ Launch Ailurus Protocol to create a dedicated Canister
The dare.to team is preparing for future development and plans to launch Ailurus Protocol as the central group hub. Each user will have his or her own Canister to record challenges and can connect to Ailurus Hub and third-party organizations to enhance the challenge experience. The team hopes to provide template development middleware (Middleware) through Ailurus Protocol so that more platforms can enjoy token rewards and additional incentives. In the dare.to version, the team has not yet cooperated directly with any charity, but obtained charity information and token donation addresses through a platform that can use token donations (The Giving Block).
Do you dare? Just do it, participate more, try more, practice will only make you progress.
—— dare.to
dare.to introduction video:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sM7_cDe1NTtW8aNwPnpZSLVvZmhZBRDi/view
