Why are you participating for Based Africa?

Our motivation stems from a deep connection to the needs and challenges faced by communities in Nigeria, where access to essential services and financial inclusion can be limited by infrastructure issues and regulatory restrictions. Growing up and working in this region, I’ve seen firsthand the potential of blockchain to provide solutions, especially in areas like utility payments and financial transactions. My goal is to bridge the gap between technology and everyday needs, enabling people to benefit from the advantages of the onchain economy without facing the typical barriers of ISP bans, VPN issues, or lack of access to traditional banking. By building dApps tailored to these challenges, I aim to empower the region with tools that make blockchain useful, accessible, and integrated into daily life.

What challenges are you focusing on?

With the help of Base, we’re addressing key challenges in our community by building utility-driven dApps that bring real-world use cases to the onchain economy. We’re focusing on enabling seamless transactions for essential services like airtime, data, and utility bill payments, which are crucial in regions like Nigeria. Additionally, we’re overcoming barriers such as ISP bans and VPN restrictions that often block access to smart wallets, by implementing smart accounts for gasless, smooth transactions, ensuring blockchain technology is accessible and useful for everyday needs.

How does your submission address this challenge?

Our project is a Telegram bot built on the Base network that enables users to easily purchase airtime, data, electricity, and pay other utility bills directly from the app. It also allows users to send tokens using Base names or Telegram usernames, simplifying the process of crypto transfers.

What sets this project apart is the implementation of smart accounts that handle gas payments, enabling gasless transactions and overcoming challenges posed by ISP bans and VPN restrictions, particularly in Nigeria.

The potential impact is significant: by integrating essential services with blockchain technology, we’re making crypto useful for everyday tasks, helping drive adoption in regions where traditional financial infrastructure is limited. This project brings real-world crypto use cases to underserved markets, empowering people to seamlessly access and benefit from the onchain economy.

Challenges we ran into

Implementation of Paymaster in Smart Accounts

One of the significant challenges we faced during the development of our Telegram bot was implementing the Paymaster functionality, which was initially designed solely for smart wallets. The Paymaster feature is crucial because it allows users to conduct transactions without having to worry about gas fees, thereby enhancing user experience and accessibility.

Initial Challenges
• Limited Scope: The Paymaster functionality was tailored for smart wallets, which meant that it couldn’t be directly applied to the smart accounts we envisioned.
• Complexity of Implementation: Understanding how to abstract the functionality of smart wallets into a format that could work for smart accounts required extensive research and testing. We needed to ensure that the user experience remained seamless while effectively managing gas payments.

Approach to Overcoming Challenges
• In-Depth Study: We spent considerable time studying the architecture and workings of the Paymaster system associated with smart wallets. This involved dissecting how gas payments were managed and exploring the underlying mechanisms that enabled gasless transactions.
• Designing an Abstract Form: After gaining insights from our research, we designed an abstract form of smart accounts that mimicked the functionality of smart wallets. This involved:
• Creating a Lightweight Version: We aimed to streamline the functionality to fit within the constraints of the Telegram bot environment while retaining the core features of gasless transactions.
• Ensuring Compatibility: We ensured that our implementation could interact seamlessly with existing smart contract infrastructure, allowing users to leverage Paymaster services without needing a traditional smart wallet.

Outcome
• Enhanced User Experience: By successfully implementing this abstract form of smart accounts with Paymaster functionality, we were able to provide users with a gasless experience, regardless o