Zero Internet

data marketplace
AI agent creation
AI agent templates
Decrypting and Consuming data
Publishing new data
NFT Address

Inspiration

There's a significant digital divide in my country and many other regions that ranks low in terms of stable and widespread internet access. This lack of connectivity leaves millions unable to leverage emerging technologies, further exacerbating socio-economic disparities. With many individuals also being unbanked, the potential benefits of AI and blockchain technology remain out of reach. Zero Internet aims to bridge this gap by enabling offline access to AI capabilities and data profitability, ensuring that powerful tools are available to everyone, regardless of internet connectivity.

What it does

Zero Internet allows users to interact with AI agents and blockchain offline. The core is a data marketplace where users can publish or purchase datasets.
AI agents consume these specialized datasets to increase their knowledge base.
On-chain, the smart contract controls metadata and keys for the vectors stored off-chain in a custom decentralized database,
Most importantly, Chainlink Functions and Chainlink Automation are used to track and manage offline sessions/conversations with an AI agent.

By enabling AI agents to respond to user queries sent via SMS, Zero Internet is breaking down connectivity barriers and making advanced AI tools accessible to millions of underserved individuals.

How we built it

Tool	Description
Lit Protocol	Each content piece indexed on Zero is associated with an NFT contract deployed by the creator and is listed for a price in ETH, allowing only NFT holders to decrypt and access the data. The LIT Protocol handles encryption and signing.
IPNS	IPNS is used to upsert additional vectors into the AI-agents knowledge base as it grows (buys more NFT 🤭). Additionally, we store sessions of conversations into IPNS pointers which are created by API requests sent from on-chain via Chainlink Functions.
Twilio	Users interact with AI agents via SMS, with Twilio forwarding these queries to our backend via a webhook.
Chainlink Automation	Automation is used to watch upkeeps if there's a need to create a new session of conversation.
Chainlink Functions	Functions are used to make requests onto Lighthouse.storage API to create a new session represented by an IPNS(InterPlanetary Naming System) pointer.
The Graph	Indexes events emitted when a new NFT contract is deployed from the factory, enabling efficient querying and populating of Zero Data Marketplace.

Smart Contracts

Contract	Description
Session.sol	Manages sessions using `Chainlink automation` and `Chainlink functions` to track offline conversations between the AI agent and a phone number.
AgentFactory.sol	Deploys a new AI agent by cloning the `AgentTemplate.sol`.
AgentTemplate.sol	The base contract for creating AI agents.
NFTFactory.sol	Deploys new NFTs used to token-gate datasets. AI agents can consume these datasets after minting/paying for the NFTs.
PayableNFT.sol	NFT Contract representing a published data. It is used as an access condition while encrypting documents with Lit Protocol. So users can get access to an AI by paying and minting an NFT from the contract.

Challenges we ran into

Most SMS providers (our implementation inclusive) have restrictions in sending SMS to some regions. An alternative setup was to use a local SMS provider in the regions to re-route the messages. Nonetheless, we can also read simulated responses from the Console for demonstration purposes.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The payment router idea is something we think other marketplaces can leverage Chainlink to achieve. We also created a decentralized vector database within the timeframe by embedding and upserting vectors into IPNS pointers