The problem Proof of Interaction solves

There are currently real world assets, asset tokenizations and projects featuring phygital goods for tangible products. However, there is no standardized and extensible way to record and track real world events and interactions that happened in real life. Even so, RWA applications are mostly currently done using Web2 methods and you cannot guarantee the authenticity of such interactions such as the transfer of ownership, item claiming, etc.

Although POAPs exist, many real-world interactions e.g. physical attendance cannot be automated on chain because they are not verifiable. It lacks a transparent, verifiable, and trustless digital representation. It also does not support arbitary data and hence not extensible. This gap often results in inefficiencies, potential fraud, and limited automation possibilities. Without an extensible standard protocol to capture and encode these interactions on the blockchain, we miss out on harnessing the full potential of decentralized systems and smart contract automations for real-world events.

The Solution

In addressing the issue, we created a specification where it's ensures verifiable ownership of the interaction, uniqueness, correctness as well as having it human readable so it can easily be adopted by anyone, anywhere, around the world. This means it should support backwards and forwards compabilities too! The goal is to achieve Transparency, Integrity, Trustlessness and Scalability. This is what we call, Proof of Interaction.

How it works is fairly simple, it creates a standardized way for everyone around the world to build on, and works to prove interactions at a specific location, time or event using an arbitrary interface such as NFC tags. Coupled with Account Abstraction, this creates a very seamless user onboarding experience and is highly extensible! It is also gas free, which means now we can onboard every single Web2 users to have their interactions tracked in a more transparent and verifiable manner.

Challenges we ran into

1. There were a few issues deploying this solution on Mantle & Taiko. The deployments would sometimes fail or take forever to run but that was solved by changing versions, modifying gas limits, etc.
2. We also had a few issues getting AA up and running due to the lack of infrastructure support on those chains. However, we managed to deploy the necessary contracts to prove the functionality of the Proof of Interaction standard. Furthermore, because it is extensible, you can technically use any wallet and even opt out from AA entirely!
3. Implementation challenges, but that was mostly because we tried to build & deploy an entire working application from the smart contract, backend, and even frontend! But it was all worth it because we actually did it!
4. NFC tags. The tags we chose had a unique encryption method that took a lot of time for us to research through datasheets. None of our team had hardware experience, but we pulled it off again!