The problem ValuesDAO solves

At its core, ValuesDAO is about building trust-based, value-aligned communities that go beyond surface-level interactions. Modern social networks prioritize engagement over authenticity, leading to echo chambers, fleeting interactions, and a lack of meaningful connection. ValuesDAO challenges this paradigm by focusing on core human values as the foundation of identity and community-building.

We aim to empower individuals and communities to express their values, align with like-minded members, and preserve their culture for future generations. Communities, both online and offline, are defined by their shared values, culture, and lore—the essence of what binds members together. However, in today’s social platforms, this culture is fleeting, lost in the endless scroll of posts, and controlled by centralized platforms that fail to capture or preserve the deeper meaning of these interactions.

At ValuesDAO, we solve this by:

Preserving Culture On-Chain: Using AI and blockchain, we curate and store value-aligned posts from community members as immutable on-chain artifacts. This creates a permanent "Story Book" for each community that showcases its evolving lore, values, and beliefs.
Tokenizing Community Culture: By introducing culture coins, communities can incentivize members to post value-aligned content. Users can earn tokens through active participation, while others can vote on content, ensuring the community collectively decides what aligns with its culture. Once a culture coin reaches a market cap of 69,420, it becomes tradable, making the community's culture economically valuable.
Enabling Social Consensus: AI initially identifies value-aligned content from platforms like Telegram and X (Twitter). The final say, however, rests with the community, who votes on whether the content truly reflects their values. This blend of AI efficiency and human governance ensures authenticity and alignment.

Challenges we ran into

AI Content Filtering Accuracy:
Initially, our AI struggled to accurately identify posts aligned with community values. To overcome this, we fine-tuned our model with example posts and incorporated human-in-the-loop validation. By having the community vote on AI-flagged content, we improved accuracy over time while ensuring cultural alignment.

On-Chain Cost Management:
Storing data on-chain can be expensive. To address this, we used Base Sepolia for its scalability and low costs. Additionally, we optimized what data is stored on-chain, only committing essential artifacts while offloading heavy content via IPFS.

Token Economics Design:
Designing the incentives for posting, voting, and earning tokens was a complex challenge. We iterated several economic models to ensure fair distribution while maintaining alignment with community goals. The introduction of a market cap threshold (69,420) for tradability struck the perfect balance between fun and functionality.

Data Integration:
Fetching on-chain data to the DApp using GraphQL posed some initial hurdles, particularly with syncing updates. We optimized queries and caching mechanisms to ensure real-time data updates on the platform.

Additional Features

During the hackathon, we added several key functionalities to enhance the project:
Voting Mechanism: Implemented a voting system where community members can validate AI-flagged content, adding a layer of social consensus.
On-Chain Storage: Integrated Base Sepolia for storing upvoted posts on-chain, ensuring the preservation of community lore.
Culture Coin Integration: Added tokenomics where users earn tokens for aligned posts and votes, linking culture preservation with economic incentives. Users can a token based on their community on Base with a certain well throughout distribution strategy (4.5% for the community, 4.5% for the rewards, 1% for the ValuesDAO platform out of a total 100bn tokens). The user can buy or earn tokens. To earn tokens, the user can participate in voting or post culturally aligned content on social media (X and telegram), which is analyzed by AI for sanity checks and then the post goes into curate tab for 24 hours for the community members to decide and accordingly the post goes on Base chain. All the smart contracts required were written from scratch using solidity and foundry.
For simplistic and frictionless flow, we have used Privy's embedded wallet that would automatically create a wallet for user and provide a straightforward UX for the user.
GraphQL Data Fetching: Ensured seamless integration of on-chain token data into the DApp for a real-time user experience.