The problem LinkFi solves

💡 The Problem It Solves

Let’s face it — online shopping is great until something goes wrong.
I once bought something that arrived completely messed up. Naturally, I wanted a refund. But instead of a quick fix, it turned into a long and frustrating back-and-forth with the seller. It felt like I had to fight just to get what was fair.

That’s when I asked myself:
What if we let AI handle disputes?

That idea became LinkFi — a smarter way to do e-commerce.

At its core, LinkFi solves three major problems:

1. 🧠 AI-Powered Refunds
   Meet ReLink — an AI agent that evaluates refund requests based on uploaded images, videos, or metadata. No more waiting days or arguing with customer service. Just upload, and let the AI decide fairly.

2. 🔒 Escrow Smart Contracts
   Using blockchain, we hold funds in escrow until the buyer confirms successful delivery. This protects both parties — no trust needed.

3. 🌐 Seamless Crypto Payments
   With link-generated payments, sellers can create one-click payment links that work across chains (thanks to Chainlink CCIP). These links are easy to share and integrate into any website or social platform.

In short, LinkFi makes online commerce:

• Safer with trustless escrow
• Smarter with AI handling refunds
• Simpler with embeddable crypto payment links

It started with a frustrating experience. Now it's a vision for the future of e-commerce — powered by AI, secured by blockchain, and ready for the next generation of sellers and buyers. 🚀

Challenges we ran into

🧩 Challenges I Ran Into

Building LinkFi was an exciting journey, but it came with its fair share of challenges:

1. ⏳ First Time Using Chainlink CCIP
   This was our first experience with Chainlink CCIP, and we were honestly surprised by how long it took to run one transaction. Even though Chainlink offers a local development simulator, things soemtime still behaved differently on testnets — and we ran into unexpected errors. Hopefully, future versions will improve performance and developer experience.

2. 🧠 Confusion Between Eliza OS v1 and v2
   We used Eliza OS for our AI agent, but we ran into confusion between v1 and v2. It was hard to find updated tutorials for v2, so we eventually decided to go with v1 — and it worked! But definitely a learning curve there.

3. 🔌 Plugin Version Compatibility
   Some Eliza OS plugins have already migrated to v2, while others are still on v1. This made it tricky to integrate certain features, as not everything was compatible out of the box.

4. 📚 Finals Week Meets Hackathon Week
   On top of everything, we joined this hackathon during our university finals — so time management was a huge challenge. And since we’re both based in Taiwan, it was also tough to catch live YouTube sessions due to the time zone difference. But we made it work!

Overall, it was an awesome experience joining the Chromion Hackathon and building with cutting-edge tools like Chainlink CCIP and Eliza OS. We learned a lot and had a great time!