Why are you participating for Based Africa?

I live in Lagos. This particular hackathon is about looking for a solution to a local problem, with the long term in mind.

What challenges are you focusing on?

University textbooks have become increasingly expensive, burdening students. Since the 1990s, Nigerian lecturers have addressed this by selling 'hand-outs' or their own books. However, these materials often become redundant once students progress to the next level or graduate, which is a huge waste considering the expenses that most Nigerian students have to face.

How does your submission address this challenge?

Booksology offers a groundbreaking solution. As an on-chain bookshop and e-book reader application, Booksology enables students to purchase texts while ensuring lecturers receive fair compensation. Students can resell their texts once they've completed the course. This resale model allows students to recoup part of their initial investment, providing a cost-effective solution. Meanwhile, lecturers receive ongoing royalties, ensuring continued compensation for their work.
In a nutshell
Booksology's platform:

• Reduces textbook expenses for students
• Provides lecturers with fair, ongoing compensation
• Fosters a sustainable textbook ecosystem

Challenges I ran into

Initially I wanted to use Scaffold Eth, with an Onchainkit extension,because I was hacking solo as the devs I normally work with were busy with school work and other things, but I found out there was a Viem version conflict preventing me from deploying the app to Vercel, so I switched to a normal next.js app.
Still battling with the blockchain features, the Coinbase wallet and smart wallet are more optimized for working with Base mainnet and not Base Sepolia, so I had issues getting to use Sepolia, despite the fact that my contract was deployed on Sepolia
Also had an issue with IPFS so I resorted to using https to store my NFT metadata. I couldn't finish work on the Sell book functionality for this proof of concept, and other UX functionalities that will enhance the app, but I'm confident that once other team members are involved this would become easier.