Meet the Proffer Hackathon Winners, applying blockchain for societal good
6 teams win $17K in prizes + lots of honorable mentions
1,900+ students and young professionals from 28 countries signed up to participate in-person and remotely in Proffer’s inaugural hackathon, vying for $17,000+ in prizes for blockchain-based applications for societal good.
In the end, 93 participants from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, IITs, and top engineering institutions around the world submitted projects, tackling problems in government and enterprise infrastructure, automotive / agricultural / pharmaceutical supply chains, insurance, micro-finance, peer-to-peer lending, AI data privacy, energy markets, e-voting on elections and government programs, crowd-funding public goods, crowd-sourced information exchange, and more.
After a week of deliberation by a panel of judges from Coinbase, IBM, Microsoft, Harvard, BoostVC, and Government of India, the results are out. Below, we have shared videos and code links for winning projects as well as a number of honorable mentions.
A huge thank you to all who participated. As you know, the objective of this hackathon was to look beyond “currency” use cases to see how blockchain technology can make a difference to governments, economies, businesses, and individuals, and we the Proffer team were blown away by the use cases you envisioned and created during this 3-day event.
We are grateful for the support of our partners — NITI Aayog (Government of India), Microsoft, IBM, Accel Partners, Amazon AWS, Coinbase/Toshi, Uber, Zebpay, the Entrepreneurship Cell at IIT Delhi, and the many individuals who volunteered their time before, during, and after the event to ensure its success.
A note about Prizes and listing order
Prizes below are NOT listed in order from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and should not be construed as such. Given the unique structure of this hackathon where we allowed for 3 separate streams (Ethereum dApps and contracts, Hyperledger dApps and contracts, Toshi dApps), there is no overall Grand Prize.
We start with Ethereum smart contract submissions (sorted by monetary value of the prize), then list Toshi submissions (judged separately by the Coinbase team), then Hyperledger submissions (judged separately by the IBM team), then Government of India picks focusing on “IndiaChain” use cases, and end with Honorable Mentions.
Amazon Prize ($5000 in AWS Credits)
chAIn: Decentralized AI with Homomorphic Encryption to guarantee data privacy
Team: Anush Ravi (Oxford) and Nikhila Ravi (Cambridge)
Code: https://github.com/Riksi/chAIn
Description: Allows Machine Learning models to be trained on patient healthcare data, customers’ bank statements, etc. without “seeing” the data. Uses a special form of encryption known as “Homomorphic Encryption” to encrypt models such that clients and patients can train those models with their data offline, and then submit encrypted gradients back to the model owner without needing to send any of their data. Model owners can measure the improvement that each encrypted gradient creates on the encrypted model, and reward clients for their contribution to the improvement of the model accordingly using smart contract logic (ETH, for now; possibly tokens in the future if this project is protocolized).
In our demo, we applied this encryption technique, information flow, and crypto incentive mechanisms to a peer to peer lending and credit assessment use case, training a shared model to predict default-risk for borrowers on offline financial data across a network of data owners, rewarding each data owner for their piece of the overall model improvement.
Microsoft Prize ($4000 USD)
Betoken: Decentralized Hedge Fund for Social Impact Investing
Team: Zebang Liu and Owen Shen (University of California, San Diego)
Code: https://github.com/Betoken/betoken
Description: Traditional hedge funds have high barriers to entry for the masses / casual retail investors. Additionally, their centralized structure means that one has to trust the fund to allocate resources. There is currently no easy, trustless way for everyday people to financially coordinate and invest, nor to reward successful investors.
Betoken is a fully decentralized ERC20 token hedge fund anyone can join which uses its own internal prediction market to make investment decisions. Over time, as participants make profitable investments, they gain Control Tokens, which give them greater decision-making control over where the funds should be directed, as well as a greater percentage of the returns. Our incentive system rewards accurate forecasters, making it a win-win for the entire group fund, and providing additional reason for others to join (so they can have their funds managed by competent investors). Betoken has significant applications in social impact investing because it puts choice of where to put the funds (e.g. charities, non-profits, or social enterprises) in the hands of an open, accessible, and self-managed community.
Accel Prize ($3000 USD, tie, 2 teams)
Open Complaint Network: Crowdsourcing issues and rewards ($1.5K USD Prize)
Team: Abhishek Upperwal (Indian Institute of Science) and Titiksha Vashist (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Code: https://github.com/upperwal/OpenComplainNetwork
Longer Explainer Video (11 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw6KoLND9tc
Description: Decentralized system for lodging complaints, both civil and criminal, onto a network that uses blockchain to provide transparency, accountability, and prevent tampering, while also engaging citizens and police personnel on national scale.
Zero-Interest Loans for Rural Microfinance ($1.5K USD Prize)
Team: Arjun Bahuguna, Souradeep Das, Krishna Jangid from SRM University
Code: https://github.com/jangidkrishna/0xSHG
Description: Microfinance institutions are essential to economic sustenance of rural finance and small businesses. Initiatives like Self Help Groups (SHGs) have been transformational to changing lives of rural populations (primarily women) due to the fact that pooling money creates mutual accountability & peer pressure which reduces the risk of non-repayment of loans. Problems in rural communities are both financial (interests, maintenance of accounts) and organizational (central authority => corruption). Blockchains are a unique solution which address both issues by organising not just financial capital but also social capital.
We’ve created an Aadhar-linked capital-pooling network. Through this network, MAXIMUM POSSIBLE microloan requests are fully funded with 0% interest (least request satisfied first) and the reserve wealth is re-distributed into the system. People can exit the network by requesting their deposited money, which they’ll receive once the loans given are repayed back. This systems allows workers to not only fund each other, but also get microloans for seed-funding their own businesses.
Coinbase/Toshi Prize ($5000 ETH, tie, 2 teams)
SureFly: Last-minute Crowdfunded Insurance for Flight Delays ($2.5K ETH Prize)
Team: Siddharth Barpanda (BITS Pilani), Saransh Garg (IIT Bombay), Nabeel Kausari (Bangalore)
Code: https://github.com/sidb03/surefly
Description: We propose a smart-contract based, peer-to-peer insurance product for last-minute flight-delay situations in which a passenger can purchase an insurance plan crowd-funded from a set of peers. Insurance Premium is calculated as a function of the probability that a passenger will miss a flight which is in turn a function of flight time, insurance seeker’s distance from the airport, traffic on the roads, length of airport lines, etc.
Our submission includes a front-end dApp built on Toshi as well as a smart contract written for Ethereum that manages the insurance pool and moves money around between insurers and the insured.
MyH2OBot for “Habit Economics” ($2.5K ETH Prize)
Team: Niraj Swami (U. Chicago)
Code: https://github.com/fivesquared/H2O
Description: We’ve created a Toshi app, called My H2O (@MyH2OBot) that has an innovative take on ‘habit economics’. MyH2OBot holds a stake of your money ($5, in ETH) when you’re aspiring to start a new healthy habit (like drinking more water). You send pictures of your activity (more sensors in the future) to the bot, which then analyzes them using some AI to calculate rewards that you earn back from your stake! The rewards are smarter and personalized to your context — the quicker you post ‘good habits’, the faster you earn your stake back. With My H2O, we’re bringing a financial-angle on the blockchain to make habits more fun and motivating to start & keep. And, of course, imagine what happens when we open up our ecosystem to other reward gives like family members, medical providers and insurance groups!
IBM Prizes (non-monetary)
Hyperledger Grand Prize: SWASHchain, a battery SWApping and SHaring infrastructure verified on the blockchain
Team: Dinesh Kumaran Nagarajan, Manoranjith A Ponraj, Dhruv Bhandula (engineers @ Bosch)
Code: https://github.com/mano-ranjith/swash
Description: The SWASH system tracks ownership and transfer of batteries on a transparent, tamper-proof ledger, charging the user for acquisition (deposit) and consumption (fee). Stats about battery consumption are written to the blockchain directly by Battery Management Systems running on each node / Battery Service Station where users transact.
Hyperledger Internship Invite: HealChain (patient health info on a permissioned blockchain)
Team: PaimPozhil B, KarthiKeyan P, Ilampirai B, Suresh VR
Code: https://github.com/paimpozhil/healchain
Video 1 (Hyperledger): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xENyytp5f_E
Video 2 (Toshi app): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbvhf_IsR8c
Live Demo of dApp: http://172.96.13.85/ (use MetaMask/toshi)
Description: We store a person’s public health information & private medical history on a Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. We allow hospitals/labs to issue blood donor rebates as ERC20 based HEAL Tokens, and to accept HEAL tokens as mode of payment.
Government of India Prizes for potential impact to the Indian economy — invite to pitch idea at GES2017
During this hackathon, NITI Aayog (Government of India), Proffer, and other parties jointly envisioned what a new digital infrastructure for India could look like and where blockchain might make a difference:
Thus was born the vision for “IndiaChain,” and this category of prizes recognizes two teams that NITI Aayog, the government’s thinktank, believes could significantly reduce inefficiency from their respective markets and be important use cases for IndiaChain.
1. SWASHchain
(already described above)
2. AgroChain: Tracking Farm Products from Farmer to Consumer
Team: Nikhil V Chandran, Adarsh S, and Anoop VS (from IIITM-K)
Code: https://github.com/nikhilvc1990/AgroChain
Description: AgroChain is a blockchain-based transparent marketplace where the farmers and consumers can implement a co-operative farming method. Here, the farmers can list the potential crops and the expected yield on his farm on the distributed public ledger. The consumers can view the details and check for the farmer credibility based on the previous cultivation and supply. This creates a transparent and tamper-proof digital market platform for farm products. Thus an agreement can be formed between farmer and consumer, such that the consumer can fund individual crops or a field and can acquire or the yield from the farm or the profit percentage of its market value. There will be a rating mechanism to build the credibility of farmer and consumer based on the previous experiences in the agromarket.
Eventually, farmers on the marketplace can raise funds for cultivation while securing customers (the investors). Simultaneously, customers can ensure quality products at lesser price with an early investment on the crops. Both the customers and farmers could yield profit and build an environment for future cooperation.
Honorable Mentions
1. Supply Chain Verification for Car Manufacturing
Team: Richa Singh, Chinmaya Sharma, Anurag Srivastava (IIT Kharagpur)
Code: https://github.com/anurag42/supply_chain_demo/tree/master
Description: We are using Blockchain to bring transparency, automation and convergence of information to the complex Car Manufacturing value chain.
We have visualised a future where all the stakeholders are on the same Blockchain platform and hence sharing, vetting and approval of documents (like RFQ, quotations, invoices, RC Book, insurance agreement) are instantaneous, less laborious and less manual. Our solution is built on the Ethereum Blockchain employing IPFS for file transfer. Value is created by reduction in time and labor in checking documents like quotations and invoices, reducing the need to vet important information for insurer and RTO like transfer of ownership from dealer to buyer. Also, each party has a separate log-in whereby they get access to data pertinent only to them. Further value can be unlocked in real deployment by modelling out the entire engagement of the car-owner with insurance company for the used-cars dealer to discover value correctly.
2. CrowdBank: Peer to Peer Lending
Team: Anshul Shah, Nikhil Sheoran, Suraj Gupta (IIT Roorke)
Code: https://github.com/anshulshah96/CrowdBank
Description: Our system leverages digital ownership management and proposes a system of Peer to Peer loan backed by digital Mortgages. CrowdBank — built on Ethereum is a web platform that connects lenders to borrowers. A person in need of money can create a loan request setting one of his assets as mortgage. The lenders can see the existing loan requests, verify the mortgage and based on his own risk assessment, propose the amount and a rate of interest. The borrower can choose from among the various proposals received and select a subset of them suiting his needs. On completion of the money requirement, the borrower can chose to repay the loan and clear his mortgage.
3. EasyVote: Casting votes with cryptographic “Blind Signatures” for anonymity
Team: Sandeep Subramanian and Vijayalakshmi Vedantham (IIT Bombay)
Code: https://github.com/Vijayalakshmi-125/EasyVote
Description: Voting using blockchain, since old voting systems are not secure or trustworthy or efficient. We created an ethereum-based voting solution that is used to create multiple choice polls and to cast votes. Also designed a Python based tool to show a proof-of-concept of blind signatures.
4. B-KYC: Architecture for e-KYC with on-chain storage of access permissions and off-chain storage of user data
Team: Naresh Chowdary, Pranjal Baweja, Aditya Kadmawala
Video: https://vimeo.com/242649041
Code: https://github.com/knc331/Proffer2k17
5. E-Voting for Low-Income / Corrupt Countries
Team: Natalie Gil, Manuel Hohagen Serpa, Juan José Miranda del Solar (from MIT)
Voting Results Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cklLLWs8Afc
Code: https://github.com/magiadigital/hackathon-mit
Live Demo: http://190.81.160.152:4201/ and http://190.81.160.152:4201/result
Description: According to OECD corruption is widespread and part of the culture in most developing countries and the cost of implementing reforms is high. Our solution starts to tackle the issue from top to bottom, focusing into the government election process, and an alternative to providing a scalable, extensible way — technically and functionally to provide transparency at a lower cost. It leverages Chaincode to develop smart contracts over Hyperledger Fabric. It can provide an alternative (in technology and more efficient processes) to over a hundred developing nations (with over 5 billion inhabitants) that attended the International Anti-Corruption Conference and have intentions to fight this issue.
6. [Award for Best Design] Bloodline: Bringing Transparency to Blood Donations
Team: Mayur Relekar, Aravindh, and Elaine Martis
Code: https://github.com/mayur-git/bloodline
7. [Award for Best Video] FancyThat: Toshi bot for Ether-based flight/travel purchases with loyalty points on the blockchain
Team: Aditya Khandelwal (Stanford University)
Code: https://github.com/akhand42/Fancy-That
