Challenges We Ran Into & How We Overcame Them
1️⃣ Smart Contract Storage Limitations
One major challenge was storing large documents on the blockchain, as Ethereum and similar networks have high storage costs and limitations.
✅ Solution: We integrated decentralized storage solutions like IPFS to store documents off-chain while keeping their hashes on-chain for integrity verification.

2️⃣ Gas Fees & Transaction Optimization
Deploying smart contracts and storing document hashes resulted in high gas fees, making the system costly for users.
✅ Solution: We optimized our Solidity smart contracts, reducing redundant computations and leveraging Layer 2 scaling solutions to minimize costs.

3️⃣ Access Control & Encryption
Ensuring only authorized users could access documents while maintaining decentralization was challenging.
✅ Solution: We implemented public-private key encryption and designed a blockchain-based access control system where only the document owner can grant/revoke permissions.

4️⃣ Integrating Web3 Authentication
Seamlessly connecting wallets for authentication and document access was initially unstable due to inconsistent Web3 provider support.
✅ Solution: We tested multiple Web3 libraries like ethers.js and Web3.js, ensuring compatibility across different browsers and wallet providers.

5️⃣ Frontend & Backend Synchronization
Keeping the React.js frontend in sync with blockchain transactions was tricky, as transaction confirmations took time.
✅ Solution: We used event listeners and polling mechanisms to dynamically update the UI when transactions were confirmed.

💡 Final Thoughts
Despite these hurdles, our problem-solving mindset, research, and iterative debugging helped us create a secure, scalable, and user-friendly decentralized document vault