Xtudy

Xtudy ("study") connects tutors and students through a video chatting platform. The use of cryptocurrency allows for real time payments directly to tutors, improving online education.

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Inspiration

  • Andre and Nathan attended UBRI Connect this October, where they heard from an executive at Coil.
  • Coil builds web enabled platforms for monetization within browsers.
  • We built off of this model, emphasizing the creation of a "stream" of money.
  • Tutors and tutees are a perfect model because some online education programs can lack interaction.

What it does

  • It allows tutors to host educational sessions over video chat.
  • Tutees can join the session and contribute a stream of payments directly to the tutors wallet of choice.
  • This allows for personal and real time interaction between students and educators.

How we built it

  • React front end provides responsive and dynamic user interactions.
  • NodeJS and express webserver allows for the use of the Xpring SDK.
  • Hosted on Google Cloud Platform
  • Cryptocurrency transferred on the XRP Ledger
  • Video Chat built on Jitsi

Challenges we ran into

  • Ripple wallets must be initialized with 20 XRP.
  • Xpring is very new and has limited functionality and documentation.
  • Jitsi was mainly designed to be embedded in static webpages.
  • We did not have widespread experience in creating large react web apps
  • This is a very new model for web monetization and it was challenging to produce a finished product.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

  • Payments flow in real time.
  • Temporary wallet architecture allows for ease of use.
  • Livestreams are embedded within HTML.
  • Wallets can refund unused funds.

What we learned

  • The Xpring platform was released a month ago, and it was interesting to learn about how the SDK worked.
  • None of us had built a web-app backend in NodeJS.
  • We gained insight into brand new technologies that will affect how the internet functions.
  • We learned basic React design, including how to build an effective single page application.

What's next for Xtudy

  • Incorporate tutor ratings for a self-regulating economy.
  • Implement access control to allow for one-on-one and private group sessions.
  • Adding a cut of monetization for the server host.

Categories We Will Be Competing For

  • Best Overall
  • Best Web Hack
  • Best Education Hack
  • Best Use of Google Cloud
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