ETHDenver Hackathon Recap: Hack-a-Team and ComposeDB
At Franklin, we have data storage needs that go beyond what is sensible and cost effective to hold in our smart contracts. When we started development last spring, we decided to use a traditional centralized cloud storage solution. As we have progressed through our early product iterations, we have been searching for alternatives to web2 tools to be able to further decentralize our product stack. We took ETHDenver as an opportunity to research tools that would enable us to achieve this.
Ceramic’s hackathon bounties at ETHDenver gave us the perfect opportunity to dive in and learn more about ComposeDB. We built an app called Hack-a-Team which makes it easy for hackers to find teammates to work with on a hackathon team using Tinder-like “hot-or-not” functionality. Rather than looks, we based matching off of skills. Here is how it works:
- Users can sign up as either a Captain or a Hacker. Hackers list their skills on their profile to be able to match into a team and indicate what kind of hacker they are (developer, designer or product).
- Our smart contracts defined the logic for team composition and selection, constraining each team to have 2 developers, 1 designer and 1 product person.
- Captains then can see all the Hackers looking for a team and swipe through until they find their perfect team to go build something cool
We spun up a local node for the Ceramic network, connecting to it from our frontend via their JS client for ComposeDB. The value of the tech really shined! For the first time we were able to manage data in IPFS using the intuitive and familiar schemas and queries of GraphQL.
Our hackathon experience with ComposeDB gave us better insight into what the future web3 stack might look like. While many projects can get by with storing all their data at the smart contract layer, others with a large scope or complex datasets need more efficient options. ComposeDB is a promising step forward in enabling the development of full-bodied web dApps that can have their full stack decentralized, not just the smart contract layer.
We look forward to experimenting further with ComposeDB and the Ceramic team!
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