The problem Sei Shield solves

Game theory meets escrow, turning the prisoner's dilemma into scam protection.

Challenges we ran into

In the journey of creating Sei Shield, our primary objective was to develop an escrow smart contract that would leverage game theory insights to reduce scams. The foundation of our project was to use the prisoner's dilemma from game theory and apply it to video game transactions, ensuring that both parties act in their best interest, thereby minimizing the potential for scams.

Our choice of using Rust and CosmWasm for the smart contract development presented its own set of challenges. CosmWasm offers a powerful framework for building smart contracts on the Cosmos SDK, but its documentation and examples, especially when combined with Rust, were not exhaustive in addressing our specific needs.

One of the most significant technical hurdles we encountered was the ambiguity surrounding the storage of funds within the contract. Traditional escrow systems hold funds securely until the terms of the agreement are met, and we needed our smart contract to emulate this functionality. However, it wasn't immediately clear from the available resources whether and how we could securely store money within the CosmWasm contract.

After extensive research, brainstorming, and testing, we devised a solution. Instead of trying to store funds within the contract in a traditional sense, we developed a mechanism to pass in funds when executing on the contract. This approach allowed us to maintain the escrow functionality, ensuring that funds are held securely and are only released when the conditions of the transaction are met.

In conclusion, the development of Sei Shield's escrow smart contract was a journey filled with technical challenges. The combination of Rust and CosmWasm, while powerful, required us to think outside the box and innovate to achieve our desired functionality. Through perseverance and a deep dive into the intricacies of smart contract development, we were able to overcome these challenges and deploy our Sei smart escorw contract to stop scams in video games.