Why are you participating for Based Africa?

I'm participating in Based Africa because I believe in the transformative power of blockchain technology to address unique challenges faced by African economies. Africa has a rapidly growing tech-savvy population and a vibrant NFT creation community, but often lacks the financial infrastructure to fully capitalize on these digital assets. By participating in Based Africa, I aim to contribute to building that crucial bridge between NFTs and financial empowerment.

What challenges are you focusing on?

Our project, Distant Finance, focuses on two primary challenges:

1. Limited Liquidity for NFT Holders: Many talented artists and collectors own valuable NFTs but struggle to access immediate liquidity without selling their prized assets.
   2.Lack of Diversified DeFi Opportunities: There's a growing appetite for DeFi in Africa, but the options for diversified, collateralized lending are limited, especially those that leverage the booming NFT market.

How does your submission address this challenge?

Distant Finance addresses these challenges by creating a P2P lending market that allows NFT holders to use their digital assets as collateral for loans, while providing a new investment avenue for ETH holders. Here's how it works:

1. Unlocking NFT Value: African NFT creators and holders can now access immediate liquidity by using their NFTs as collateral, without having to sell their assets. This maintains their long-term investment while addressing short-term financial needs.
2. Customizable Terms: Our platform allows borrowers to propose their own interest rates, giving them more control and flexibility, which is crucial in diverse economic conditions across different African countries.
3. New DeFi Opportunities: For lenders, Distant Finance opens up a new category of collateralized loans, allowing them to diversify their DeFi portfolios and potentially earn attractive returns.
4. Boosting the NFT Ecosystem: By providing more utility for NFTs, we're incentivizing the creation and trading of NFTs, which can significantly boost the African digital art scene and related technologies.
5. Financial Inclusion: Our platform can serve as an entry point to DeFi for many Africans, potentially leading to greater financial inclusion and literacy in blockchain-based finance.

By bridging NFTs and DeFi in this way, Distant Finance is not just solving immediate financial challenges, but also laying groundwork for a more robust and inclusive digital economy in Africa.

Challenges we ran into

1.NFT Standard Compatibility:
Our main challenge was ensuring support for a wide variety of NFTs, including both ERC721 and other non-standard tokens. Each collection potentially had unique interfaces and characteristics.
Solution: We overcame this by deploying multiple custom contracts. We adopted a gradual approach, supporting new collections only after thorough testing and verification of all available interfaces for interaction.

2. Smart Contract Security:
   Given that we're dealing with high-value assets and financial transactions, ensuring the security of our smart contracts was paramount.
   Solution: We implemented rigorous testing protocols and conducted multiple rounds of code reviews. We also plan to undergo a professional audit before full-scale deployment.
3. User Experience Design:
   Creating an intuitive interface for a complex DeFi product that deals with NFTs was challenging, especially considering the diverse user base in Africa.
   Solution: We focused on simplifying the user journey, providing clear instructions at each step, and incorporating familiar design patterns from popular DeFi and NFT platforms.

Additional Features

1. Rebuilt UI from scratch with latest technologies, such as wagmi, walletconnect, next js app router
2. Better contract indexing with the graph protocol which provides easy to use metrics and transaction details
3. Added admin functions in the hardhat script folder, so admin can always update contract conviniently
4. Updated UI with better error, loading stating and success state handling, catch all errors which usually cause breaking of the app
5. Faster application, No more delays in loading data onchain