Our motivation to participate in the LatAm region stems from the immense potential for blockchain solutions to empower communities with limited access to centralized systems of trust. Latin America faces significant challenges related to identity fraud, exclusion from traditional banking, and lack of access to secure digital identities. We believe that decentralized identity systems like BaseID can have a profound impact in enabling financial inclusion, trust, and privacy for individuals across the region.

Our submission, BaseID, provides a decentralized way for users to create, own, and verify digital identities using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Base blockchain. By allowing users to mint identity NFTs that represent their digital identity and credentials, our project bypasses the need for centralized authorities, giving individuals full control over their data. This can potentially improve access to digital and financial services for people in underserved communities in Latin America.

By leveraging blockchain's security and transparency, BaseID offers a trustless, immutable way to authenticate identities. This project could enable new use cases, including secure access to financial services, education certificates, and other identity-reliant services, all without relying on third-party intermediaries.

Our submission, BaseID, provides a decentralized way for users to create, own, and verify digital identities using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Base blockchain. By allowing users to mint identity NFTs that represent their digital identity and credentials, our project bypasses the need for centralized authorities, giving individuals full control over their data. This can potentially improve access to digital and financial services for people in underserved communities in Latin America.

One of the main technical challenges we encountered was working with Ethereum-compatible blockchain systems, such as Base, which introduced complexities with gas optimization and scalability. Deploying the NFT smart contracts required careful attention to gas fees and ensuring that the NFT metadata is stored efficiently using IPFS for decentralized storage. We also ran into UX challenges in making the wallet connection seamless for users unfamiliar with blockchain technology. To overcome this, we integrated MetaMask and provided clear guidance within the application for users to interact with the dApp.