Why are you participating for Based Africa?

I am participating in Based Africa because I am passionate about harnessing the potential of blockchain technology to drive real change across the continent. Africa faces unique challenges, such as limited financial inclusion, lack of transparency, and restricted access to global opportunities. I believe blockchain can provide innovative solutions to these issues by creating decentralized systems that empower individuals and communities. The buildathon provides the opportunity to not only showcase these solutions but also contribute to a growing movement that is shaping Africa's digital future.

My motivation comes from being a Pan Africanist in the aspect of technology, particularly my experience witnessing the challenges many people face in accessing opportunities due to infrastructural and economic limitations.

What challenges are you focusing on?

I am primarily focusing on challenges related to financial inclusion, trust, and access to opportunities in underdeveloped or underserved communities. Many people in Africa face barriers when it comes to participating in global financial systems, often due to limited access to traditional banking, high transaction costs, or a lack of transparency in financial processes. Additionally, the region's limited infrastructure restricts individuals from accessing new technologies and opportunities, especially those that can drive economic growth and innovation.

By utilizing Base, I am focusing on:

1. Improving financial accessibility by building decentralized applications that reduce transaction costs and increase access to financial tools for individuals who are excluded from traditional banking systems.

2. Increasing trust through transparent systems powered by blockchain, ensuring that transactions, records, and data are immutable and secure, which is particularly valuable in communities where trust in centralized systems is low.

3. Empowering youth and communities by giving them the tools to participate in and benefit from the global Web3 economy, including learning how to build, create, and innovate onchain.

Base's secure and scalable infrastructure helps tackle these challenges by providing a framework that is easy to build on and deploy solutions that can directly impact local communities.

How does your submission address this challenge?

My submission focuses on creating a decentralized platform that addresses the challenges of financial inclusion, trust, and access to opportunities by offering a seamless, transparent, and secure system for users to engage in prediction markets and wagers. Using Base's scalable infrastructure, the platform allows participants to create or join peer-to-peer wagers or prediction markets in a trustless environment where funds are held in escrow until results are verified. The system is built on smart contracts, ensuring that all transactions and outcomes are fair, transparent, and secure.

The project is a blockchain-based Prediction market platform that provides two core features:

1. Wager System (P2P): Users can challenge one another to a wager on various outcomes, with an escrow system holding funds securely and releasing them based on predetermined results.

2. Market System (Prediction Markets): The platform creates open markets for events like elections, sports matches, and other public events where multiple participants can place bets on the outcome, allowing for wider participation and larger-scale challenges.

The potential impact of this project is significant:

1. Financial Inclusion: The platform enables decentralized wager and prediction markets, providing low-cost financial transactions free from traditional banking limitations.

2. Trust and Transparency: Smart contracts ensure transparent processes and secure fund management, fostering trust in communities with limited confidence in centralized systems.

3. Economic Opportunities: Users can create and join various markets, unlocking new income streams and financial growth opportunities.

4. Community Engagement: The platform bridges local and global participation, fostering innovation and collaboration, especially among Africa’s youth in the Web3 space.

Challenges we ran into

1. Integrations with paymaster and onchain kit
2. Getting base sepolia eth for development
3. Smart Contract Complexity: One of the primary technical challenges was designing the smart contracts to handle both WAGER (peer-to-peer betting) and MARKET (prediction market) systems. Ensuring that the contracts could securely freeze funds, manage disputes, and automatically release funds based on predefined conditions required significant attention to detail. Still working this out.
4. Dispute Resolution Mechanism: Handling disputes in a decentralized manner was another challenge. We had to design a system where, in cases of disagreement, both parties could submit proof and evidence. However, in situations where the smart contract could not conclusively resolve the dispute, a support analyst would intervene to review the evidence. If the dispute couldn't be resolved, we programmed the contract to refund 50% of the funds to all parties, ensuring fairness.
5. A non-technical hurdle: Was ensuring that the platform would be user-friendly and accessible, especially for individuals in regions with limited technical expertise or blockchain knowledge. We also built the interface to give a gamified experience.
6. Network Scalability: Since the platform will likely experience a high volume of users during peak events (such as large prediction markets), network congestion and latency became a concern. We are currently stresstesting the patform, likewise optimizing the smart contract.
7. Time Constraint.

Additional Features

Before the Buildathon, Kombat was only in the ideation phase, with a Product Requirements Document (PRD) drafted.
During the Buildathon, I added several key functional features, which includes:

1. Product design using figma: Completed the product design using Figma, creating a user-friendly and easy-to-navigate interface.
2. Product development: Began the actual development of the platform, bringing the concept to life.
3. Product testing: Conducted extensive testing to ensure all features function as expected and provide a seamless user experience
   These additions were made during the Buildathon to bring Kombat closer to a fully functional decentralized prediction market platform.