The problem Impactus solves

In today's world, we face a multitude of social and environmental challenges, from poverty and inequality to climate change and environmental degradation. The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a roadmap to address these challenges, but progress has been slow and uneven. Traditional methods of funding and supporting these goals have proven insufficient, and public engagement in these issues remains low.

Impactus aims to solve these problems by leveraging the power of blockchain technology. It creates a decentralized platform where users can fund projects that contribute to the SDGs. This not only provides a new source of funding for these crucial projects, but also democratizes the process, allowing anyone, anywhere, to contribute to global development goals.

A key innovation of Impactus is the successful extension and implementation of the ERC-1155 standard, which is used for fractional NFTs. This allows us to fractionalize the 17 SDGs into 17 unique NFTs, each of which can be broken down into smaller pieces. This provides a novel way to represent and track contributions to each SDG, and opens up new possibilities for engagement and investment.

Moreover, Impactus addresses the lack of transparency and accountability often associated with charitable donations. With blockchain, every transaction is recorded and visible, ensuring that funds are being used as intended.

Impactus also solves the problem of donor engagement. Traditional donations provide little in return for the donor, beyond the knowledge of having done good. Impactus changes this by providing donors with an NFT that represents the SDG goal their donation supports. This not only serves as a tangible symbol of their contribution, but also has the potential to become a valuable asset in its own right, providing an additional incentive for donation.

Finally, Impactus provides a solution to the problem of project validation.

Challenges we ran into

While building Impactus, we encountered several challenges that tested our problem-solving skills and resilience:

1. Deployment Issues with Remix: Initially, we attempted to deploy our contracts using Remix, but we ran into issues related to the complexity of our contracts and the limitations of Remix. We overcame this hurdle by switching to Hardhat, a development environment for compiling, deploying, testing, and debugging Ethereum software. This allowed us to manage and deploy our contracts more effectively, especially when dealing with proxy contracts.

2. Transaction Processing Issues: We faced some challenges in processing transactions, particularly in terms of gas optimization and transaction speed. We resolved these issues through careful debugging and optimization of our smart contracts, as well as seeking advice from experienced developers in the Ethereum community.

3. Framework Integration Problems: Integrating various frameworks and libraries into our project was a complex task. We sought mentorship from experts who guided us through the process, helping us understand how to effectively integrate and utilize these tools in our project.

4. Chain Speed Issues: We experienced some issues with the speed of transactions on the Ethereum network. We addressed this by changing our RPC, which improved the speed and efficiency of our transactions.

5. Safe Wallet Integration Issues: We initially planned to integrate the Gnosis Safe wallet into our platform. However, we faced challenges in this integration due to compatibility issues. We decided to switch to a different wallet solution that better suited our needs and was easier to integrate into our platform.

These challenges were valuable learning experiences that helped us improve our skills and understanding of blockchain development. They also reinforced the importance of resilience, problem-solving, and continuous learning in the face of obstacles.