The problem aetherWorks solves

aetherWorks solves the problem of curation and interactivity in web3 arts scene. It's a turing complete set of open source, easy to self-deploy tools using the power of emulation to create an interactive layer for any digital experience. The main pressure points on curation is that not every work might be acquired in a curated space, and this may lead to an overall lower morale. Our way solves this by turning the curated experience into the art itself, and editioning it, creating an equal field for artists of all mediums.

aetherWorks is free to enjoy. The deployments are public and therefore the dApp doesn't require to be bought to be used, however buyers of curated experiences can be rewarded any way the creators want.

Challenges we ran into

Here are the main technical challenges we faced during the development process, and the solutions we found.
Hosting a Web App on IPFS: The upstream of our fork, infinite-mac by Mihai Parparita, is a complex application with real-time user interaction, optimized to run with Cloudflare workers. In this context, we had concerns about whether it would be possible to run it on a serverless and decentralized service like Fleek. After many unsuccessful deploys, our solutions were modifying the directory logic so that the service workers are compatible with IPFS URLs, configurating the HTTP headers to prevent any issues related to security policies, and ensuring that the project is fully functional without requiring any external services, i.e. completely self-contained.
Optimizing Emulation: Earlier deploys showed high latency, with a total duration of 1-2 minutes for the app to load and become use-ready. Two solutions came up. First, we eliminated any unnecessary extensions and startup items from our Macintosh boot disk. Then, to demand extra performance, we enabled JIT compiling for the emulator Basilisk II with 64MBs of cache size. These optimizations altogether allowed us to decrease the total loading time to below 20 seconds.
Integrating OnchainKit: Following our initial idea, we implemented a Smart Wallet module to generate CSS gradients, randomized using the connected wallet address and the current Unix time as seeds. However, the Address component was hard-coded to render a shortened version of the address, and a global CSS rule was interfering with the way our emulator screen is displayed. That’s why, in the end, we have resolved the issues by making small modifications in the source code of the OnchainKit dependency, and adding them to our deployable project bundle with patch-package.