Button Up: Quadratic Funding & Voting Game
A fun, gamified app that transforms voting and funding more engaging and impactful by using quadratic mechanisms with IoT potential and blockchain technology.
Demo
About
Why are you participating for Based SEA? As someone from Malaysia, I'm deeply connected to the Southeast Asian region and its emerging tech landscape. I'm motivated to participate in Based SEA because I see immense potential for blockchain innovation here, especially in solving local challenges like transparency in fundraising and investment. By showcasing this project, I aim to bring forward solutions that address trust issues and simplify the investment process for both startups and individuals in Southeast Asia, a region where trust and efficiency are key to growth. Additional Features During the Buildathon, I focused on optimizing the user interface and integrating the quadratic voting and funding mechanisms into the frontend. I also enhanced the voting logic to ensure fair allocation of funds and made improvements to the user experience to make the fundraising process more engaging.
How it's made
What challenges are you focusing on? The main challenges my project aims to address are the complexities in raising funds for startups and public goods, particularly due to skepticism from potential investors caused by online fraud. Additionally, centralized fundraising processes struggle to effectively identify and represent the preferences of individuals who stand to benefit from public goods. Finally, traditional fundraising methods are often viewed as tedious, which reduces participation. How does your submission address this challenge? My project transforms the fundraising process into a fun, interactive experience by incorporating IoT (with potential hardware in the future) and blockchain technology. Using quadratic funding and voting, we can ensure that the allocation of resources is fair and represents the will of the majority, even allowing smaller donations to have significant impacts. The gamified approach enhances the emotional connection between the donors and the fundraising cause, making them more willing to participate. The current version uses a frontend button (which can evolve into physical IoT hardware), ensuring accessibility while still delivering an exciting, hands-on experience. Challenges we ran into One of the technical challenges I faced was not having access to physical IoT hardware to implement the "big button" concept. To overcome this, I developed the project using a virtual frontend button that simulates the functionality, ensuring the same experience without the physical component. I plan to integrate hardware in the future, should the resources become available. On the blockchain side, implementing quadratic funding and ensuring the smooth distribution of resources to projects posed its own hurdles, but with research and refinement, I was able to make it work effectively.