## Inspiration

As STEM students, many of us have completed online certification courses on various websites such as Udemy, Codeacademy, Educative, etc. Many classes on these sites provide the user with a unique certificate of completion after passing their course. We wanted to take the authentication of these digital certificates to the next level.

## What it does

Our application functions as a site similar to the ones mentioned earlier; providing users with a plethora of certified online courses, but what sets us apart is our creative use of web3, allowing users to access their certificates directly from the blockchain, guaranteeing their authenticity to the utmost degree.

## How we built it

For our frontend, we created out design in Figma and coded it using the Vue framework. Our backend was done in Python via the Flask framework. The database we used to store users and courses as SQLite. The certificate generation was accomplished in Python via the PILLOW library. To convert images in NFTs, we used Verbwire for their easy to use minting procedure.

## Challenges we ran into

We ran into quite a few challenges throughout our project. The first of which was the fact that none of us had any meaningful web3 experience . Luckily for us, Verbwire had a quite straightforward minting process and even generated some of the code for us.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

Although our end result is not everything we dreamt of 24 hours ago, we are quite proud of what we were able to accomplish. We created quite an appealing website for our application. We creating a python script that generates custom certificates. We created a powerful backend capable of storing data for our users and courses.

## What we learned

For many of us, this was a new and unique collaborative experience in software development. We learned quite a bit on task distribution and optimization as well as key takeaways for creating code that is not only maintainable, but also transferable to other developers during the development process. More technically, we learned how to create simple databases via SQLite, we learned how to automate image generation via Python, and learned the steps of making a unique and appealing front-end design, starting from the prototype all the way to the final product.

## What's next for DiGiDegree

Moving forward, we would like to migrate our database to Postgres to handle higher traffic. We would also like to implement a Redis cache to improve hit-ratio and speed up search times. We also like to populate out website with more courses and improve our backend security by abstracting away SQL Queries to protect us further from SQL injection attacks.
## Inspiration

Our main inspiration behind this product was to reduce the amount of time it takes for international wire transfer from one bank to another. Since we're all international students, we've experiences the frustration of slow and costly tuition payments of international wire transfers, often risking late penalties due to 1-5 day processing times. We did some research and identified that a lot of intermediary banks are involved in this process and we thought about how we could get them out of the picture. BlockWire was born from our vision to use blockchain technology to create direct connections between foreign banks, eliminating intermediaries. Our goal is to significantly reduce both time and cost for international transfers, making cross-border financial transactions faster, cheaper, and more accessible for students and beyond. This real-world problem inspired us to combine blockchain with other cutting-edge technologies to revolutionize international banking operations.

## What it does

BlockWire reduces the time required for international wire transfers from 1-5 business days to a few minutes. It uses blockchain technology alongside an AI model for fraud detection checks which eliminate the intermediary banks that are currently involved in the process and make the process incredibly fast.

## How we built it

The main technology which was used was blockchain which essentially decentralizes the data and makes it more secure to the point where it's almost impossible to access that data unless you have the required key. This reduces money laundering and fraud by a huge percentage. We used an AI model to for fraud detection by banks which was made faster by using Cerebras.ai. Apart from that, we used React for the frontend, Python and Flask for the backend, and MongoDB as our database. One of the sponsors' products, PropelAuth was also integrated for user authentication.

## Challenges we ran into

All of us were working on separate parts of the project and integrating them was the toughest task. There were a lot of issues that arrived while doing that. The blockchain technology was also pretty new to us and we had no prior experience with it, so a lot of our time went it learning about it and brainstorming on what we wanted to build. There were some struggles with the capital one api as well but we were able to tackle them with relative ease as compared to the others. Even though the struggles were there, we still found a way through them and came about learning so much new stuff.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

Implementing the blockchain was our biggest achievement since that domain was new for all of us. Using Cerebras.ai's quick inference capabilites to make the fraud detection checks stronger was another one of the big things. Finally, integrating everything together was the hardest part, but we fought through it together and were able to finally come out on top.

## What we learned

We were able to learn about so many new technologies in which we had no prior experience such as blockchain and AI models. We got an understanding as to why blockchain is such a strong tool which is currently being used in the tech industry and why it's so powerful. We learnt about various other products like PropelAuth and Tune.AI while learning a lot about the financial sector and how technology can be used to help companies grow. All of us specialized in certain fields but we ended up learning way more and expanding our knowledge.

## What's next for BlockWire

BlockWire's future lies in expanding its blockchain-based payment solutions to address various global financial challenges. We plan to enter the remittance market, offering migrant workers a faster, more cost-effective way to send money home.
Education will remain a key focus, as we aim to partner with more universities globally to simplify fee payments for international students. To support this growth, we'll prioritize working closely with financial regulators to ensure compliance and potentially shape policies around blockchain-based international transfers.
We also plan on selling this product to apartment complexes in the country so that the time taken for rent payment and processing can also be reduced.
Lastly, we see potential in integrating our technology with e-commerce platforms, facilitating instant international payments for buyers and sellers in the growing global online marketplace. Through these strategic expansions, BlockWire aims to revolutionize international financial transactions across multiple sectors, making them more accessible, efficient, and cost-effective.
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# Why we did

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Ever since the creation of online video sharing, high bandwidth usages have always been a major issue. We wanted to develop a service that allowed for low data usage video sharing, because even now some areas in the world have limited bandwidth making it very difficult to do video calls. This would even have an effect on when we would try and call our families overseas. Video adds a layer of depth that in unattainable by voice calling only.

# How we did

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ASKEY was developed to be a solution to all of these issues. By converting the video to an Ascii string before transmission and then displaying the video through Ascii, we end up sending a significantly smaller amount of data. However, we managed to maintain a reasonable amount of video quality despite going through this process.

# What we did

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In the end, we built a functional web application that allows you to chat and facetime people with audio at ultra-low bandwidth requirement (Whooping ~250KB/s **RAW** uncompressed). As a comparison, a 480p **RAW** video requires 44 times the bandwidth at 11MB/s! Imagine what we could achieve in the future if we work on actual compression!

We hope using this new technology we can break the locks that divide the world, one asKEY at a time.

Our url is **very-low.tech** (Pun intended)