Why are you participating for Based Africa?

The buildathon provides a platform and support for us to build our idea. Our goal is to help Africans especially teenagers take a big step into the future with Web3. Blocdemia makes it easy and fun for anyone, even beginners, to learn about the onchain economy and how it works. We believe Africa has so much untapped potential when it comes to blockchain, and with Blocdemia, we want to give young Africans an access to the knowledge and we hope to create more opportunities for individuals and communities across the continent and beyond.

What challenges are you focusing on?

The challenges we are focusing on revolve around the lack of onchain education, the complexity of current learning platforms, and the absence of a supportive community for growth.

1. Lack of Onchain Education: Many individuals, especially in Africa, have limited access to proper education about blockchain technology and its potential. This lack of knowledge creates a barrier to entry, preventing people from fully utilizing the opportunities within the Web3 space.
2. Complex Learning Platforms: Existing platforms for learning blockchain and Web3 skills can be difficult to navigate, especially for beginners. The steep learning curve discourages many potential learners from engaging with the content.
3. Lack of Community for Growth: For learners to truly thrive in the Web3 space, they need a strong, supportive community where they can share ideas, collaborate, and grow together. Many current platforms lack this crucial element, leaving learners isolated.
4. Lack of Onchain Certification: Many existing educational platforms do not offer verifiable, blockchain-based certification for the skills learned. As a result, learners often struggle to prove their expertise in a secure and transparent manner.

How does your submission address this challenge?

Our submission tackles key challenges faced by individuals entering the on-chain space, starting with the lack of accessible education. We offer a structured platform with courses on foundational topics such as blockchain basics, Web3 wallets, smart contracts, decentralized finance, e.t.c. By guiding learners through these essential Web3 skills, we help them build a solid understanding of blockchain technology, ensuring they are well-prepared to engage in the ecosystem.

To address the complexity of traditional learning platforms, we’ve designed a gamified and interactive experience that simplifies Web3 concepts. This approach not only makes learning enjoyable but also enhances knowledge retention through active participation. By presenting complex ideas in user-friendly formats, we create an accessible environment for both beginners and experienced users.

In addition, we focus on fostering a community for growth. Our platform offers a collaborative space where learners can connect, share insights, and grow together. This community-driven approach encourages long-term engagement and development, ensuring that learners are supported by a vibrant network as they continue their journey in the Web3 space.

To solve the lack of verifiable certification, we provide blockchain-based certificates for each completed course. These certificates are securely stored on-chain, offering tamper-proof proof of skills and achievements. Learners can easily share their credentials, gaining recognition and a competitive edge in the evolving digital landscape.

Challenges we ran into

1. We had problem with getting videos related to the course. We were faced with either embedding YouTube videos from creators or leaving the video section blank.
   We solved it by brainstorming and coming to a conclusion to create our videos. The good thing is the videos are tied particularly to the course and were broken down into lessons so the users don't get bored while watching the videos.

2. We had challenges providing the onChainkit to our newly created NextJs app. The onChainkit components for creating and connecting wallet wasn't returning the right bar code to scan, hence it was received as invalid while connecting with my wallet on my smartphone device.
   We were able to resolve this problem by reviewing the Onchain-app-template code and speaking to some base builders. Apparently we missed some essential config in the Provider setup but eventually figured it out.

3. We created a smart contract to allow users and learners to mint an NFT certificate upon completing a course. The contract was created using solidity and it was deployed on Base sepolia Testnet.
   However, we were faced with the challenge of calling the contract from our frontend application. It appears that the function and hooks we were trying to use from Wagmi and Viem were either depreciated or missing in the library. We could dig further because we were already approaching hours to the deadline and it was taking much time already. So we disabled the feature to return to it again as we continue building.