Decentralized AI & DePIN for Anti-Poaching Protection - W3Node Hackathon 2026

RhinoShield is a DePIN node simulator with Lilypad AI integration for real-time threat detection (e.g., gunshots) in wildlife reserves.

• backend/: FastAPI application, AI simulator, and node background tasks.
• frontend/: React/Next.js dashboard (to be implemented).
• contracts/: Smart contracts for decentralized verification.

• Python 3.11 or higher
• pip (Python package installer)

cd /Users/user/Downloads/Rhinoshield

It is highly recommended to use a virtual environment to manage dependencies:

# Create the virtual environment
python3 -m venv venv

# Activate the virtual environment
# On macOS/Linux:
source venv/bin/activate
# On Windows:
# venv\Scripts\activate

pip install -r backend/requirements.txt

You can run the backend in two ways:

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:.
python3 backend/main.py

uvicorn backend.main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000 --reload

Once the backend is started, you can verify it using the following links:

• Health Check: http://localhost:8000/health
• Interactive API Docs (Swagger): http://localhost:8000/docs
• Threat Stats: http://localhost:8000/threats/stats

• Node Simulator: Simulates 5 ranger sensor nodes in South Africa.
• AI Integration: Mock Lilypad AI analysis of audio events (20% gunshot detection rate).
• Historical Data: Automatically generates 500 historical threat records on startup for dashboard visualization.
• Real-time Events: Generates a new random event every 10 seconds. (Initial commit: RhinoShield DePIN for W3Node Hackathon 2026)