As a participant in the Based Africa Builderthon, the primary goal is to contribute towards innovative solutions that can drive impact and development across Africa through blockchain technology. The continent faces unique challenges, from financial inclusion to intellectual property protection, that can be tackled with blockchain solutions. Participating allows us to build tools that empower local communities and businesses to thrive.

In this project for the Based Africa Builderthon, the focus is on solving key challenges related to intellectual property (IP) protection and digital rights management through blockchain technology. Here are the core challenges we're addressing:

1. Lack of IP Protection for Creators
   Many creators in Africa and globally struggle with protecting their intellectual property, whether it's art, music, patents, or other forms of creative work. Traditional IP systems are often bureaucratic, expensive, and not accessible to everyone. This leaves many creators vulnerable to exploitation or theft of their ideas.

2. Ownership Transparency
   There is often ambiguity around who owns certain intellectual property and the terms associated with its use. Current systems lack transparency, which leads to disputes and inefficiencies in the creative and business sectors.

3. Fair Compensation for Creators
   Creators often don't receive fair compensation for the usage or resale of their work. Middlemen or inefficient licensing models result in creators earning only a fraction of what they deserve. Blockchain-based royalty mechanisms can ensure automatic and transparent payments.

4. Monetization Challenges
   For creators and businesses, finding efficient ways to monetize their IP can be difficult. Licensing, selling, or distributing creative work is often hindered by geographic, economic, or technical barriers, especially in emerging markets like Africa.

5. Governance in Creative Spaces
   There’s often a lack of decentralized governance and decision-making in how intellectual property is managed, licensed, and distributed. Creators and stakeholders need a say in how their work is utilized, but traditional platforms offer little control.

By building a decentralized IP marketplace using blockchain, we aim to solve these problems by giving creators full ownership, transparency, and control over their IP, as well as secure, efficient ways to monetize their work globally.

Our submission addresses the challenge by creating a decentralized IP marketplace that enables creators to securely register, manage, and monetize their intellectual property on the blockchain.

Key Features and Impact:
Blockchain-Based IP Registration: Creators mint NFTs to represent their IP, ensuring immutable proof of ownership and secure records on the blockchain.

Royalty and Licensing Automation: Smart contracts automate royalty payments and licensing, ensuring transparent compensation for creators without intermediaries.

Decentralized Marketplace: A global platform where creators can list, sell, or license their IP directly, offering a new revenue stream and exposure.

Governance (Future): Introduce governance tokens to allow community-led decision-making for platform improvements.

Potential Impact:
Our platform will empower African creators by making IP protection and monetization transparent, accessible, and global, driving economic growth and fostering innovation across the continent.

Smart Contract Implementation:
Implementing a secure, upgradeable smart contract posed a challenge, especially ensuring compatibility with the latest OpenZeppelin libraries. We faced issues related to deployment and functionality testing but resolved them through continuous debugging and optimization using tools like Remix and Hardhat.

Feature Prioritization:
Deciding which features to include in the MVP was difficult. We had to balance between an ambitious roadmap and ensuring a functional, minimal product. We overcame this by focusing on the core functionality: IP registration, token minting, and basic royalty management, postponing governance and licensing features for later phases.

Collaborative Workflow:
Coordinating tasks within the team, especially with remote collaboration, posed some non-technical challenges. We overcame this by leveraging tools like GitHub for version control and Slack for real-time communication, ensuring clear roles and timely progress.