I am participating in BASED SEA because as a crypto native, I have been living in Japan for 20 years and would like to share the knowledge and fun of web3 and NFTs with the local culture in rural Japan.

My entry for the BASED SEA buildathon focuses on onboarding locals in my community, which is quite rural in Kagoshima City, Japan. Surprisingly, the average Japanese citizen is resistant to new technology if it is not already widely adopted or endorsed by mass media, often giving up at the first point of friction. I learned about this challenge firsthand while attempting to onboard locals to AR during an art event I organized with the local government last summer. Downloading a free app, creating a new account, or even logging in with existing accounts proved to be a non-starter.

Onboarding 'normies' has always been challenging. They prefer simplicity, and until very recently, web3 has not offered that. EOA wallets with seed phrases and passwords, security concerns, funding wallets through exchanges (with identity verification/privacy issues), and negative media coverage have all contributed to irrational fears and resistance surrounding crypto.

Given Japan's unique and influential collecting culture, as well as its reputation for first-class technological products and innovations, it is ironic that Web3 has not been widely implemented. While it exists, the adoption rate is nowhere near that of the West.

This app implements; smart wallets, signless transactions, and account abstraction (pre-funded gas) on the base blockchain and the goal is to mint an open edition NFT of ‘GLOBESKI’ a pixel art animation and the *PIXEL WORLD mascot.

This solution allows users to collect NFTs without consciously recognizing it and to use wallets without being aware of the underlying technology. We should provide a free, easy, and frictionless transaction experience that mirrors their online shopping habits or entertainment purchases—similar to free trial periods that allow users to explore web services and digital products without risk or commitment. Using base is the obvious choice as it is among the quickest and most cost effective L2's on ethereum, which is the most robust chain of them all.

We will expand their knowledge and understanding of NFTs, and web3 in general by walking people through these processes, in person, in their own language. Implementation and experience is the key to that understanding. This onboarding exercise will plant the seed and give them a freemium experience much like their existing web2 apps and related transactions.

We held onboarding events on October 11th and 12th at MUKIMU Workshop in Kagoshima City, Japan, allowing kids and parents to ‘experience NFTs’ for the first time. We also included a free coloring worksheet for the little kids who participated (drive link below). The GLOBESKI Open Edition will be made available to the general internet public on October 18.

PIXEL WORLD is a spin-off of 'LITTLE WORLD' which are a series of funky + fun characters that serve as brand ambassadors for MUKIMU Workshop and appear on workbooks, in educational videos, trading cards and stationary goods as well as NFT collections. Long term vision for LITTLE WORLD and PIXEL WORLD will take the characters into mobile gaming and application based learning. Additionally we are dropping 'PIXEL WORLD' on 11/11/2024, which is a generative pixel art PFP collection.

Since this was my first time coding, everything was a challenge. My first challenge was cloning a Git Hub repo in VS code and installing the Thirdweb CLI and SDK. I was able to get a simple version of the app up and running within a few days however, the biggest snag was to get the account abstraction/gasless transactions dialed in (which was the main ingredient to this concept). It took an entire week of troubleshooting. However, the fix was very simple; it was a single line of code.