Chalcedony: A Hackathon Success Story

Meet Chalcedony, a cutting-edge tool designed to make token transfers to individuals without crypto wallets as seamless as possible. It's not just us tooting our own horn here, but Chalcedony proudly clinched the 3rd spot in the main category and the runner-up position in the ZKSync category. Quite the achievement for a hackathon hustle! Great job Neti ?? team ????????

The Problem Chalcedony solves?

Blockchain adoption and understanding the benefits of "crypto tokens" is akin to teaching a toddler to walk—progressive but slow. The maze of wallet setups, with their baffling standards and solutions, adds layers of complexity. Chalcedony cuts through this by enabling swift, secure, and cost-effective token transfers to the wallet-less wonders of the world. The automatic transaction execution and ZKSync protocol utilization ensure a snug fit in the ecosystem and adherence to industry standards. Here is a story ...

How It Works

Let's simplify with a scenario: Alice wants to create a voucher.

• Alice crafts a Smart Account using an email and password combo. Under the hood, it’s powered by Account Abstraction (a contract-managed account, not wallet-bound).
• A VC (Verifiable Credential) is generated alongside, granting rights to use this Smart Account.
• Alice funds a specialized Paymaster — a digital financier that can foot the bill for transactions.
• She generates a VC that empowers the Paymaster to cover transaction costs.
• Alice transfers tokens to the Smart Account.
• The Smart Account's VC merges with the Paymaster's into a Magic Link.
• This Magic Link morphs into a Voucher, now ready for anyone to transact through the Smart Account, with the Paymaster picking up the tab.

Scope of Application (A.K.A. Who Needs This?)

Imagine airdrops without the drop of sweat, gift cards in blockchain, that actually feel like gifts, and hassle-free payments/transfers.

Anyone unfamiliar with Web3, wallets, and crypto who expects token transfers will be grateful for the functionality Chalcedony offers. It's a no-brainer boon for them. For such people, Chalcedony is a first step into the Web3 world... and (what's most important) they don't even experience any complexity of this (new for them) space.?

Projects, founders, communities, voucher emitters... everyone from Web3 and blockchain space who wants to say "thank you" to the members and supporters ... even if supporters don't really know what Web3 means ??.

If you start here, I’m sure you will quickly figure out lots of other use cases for Chalcedony ??

Lessons Learned

First of all (at least in our case ??) - hackathons are not just about the money (though, who would complain?). A hackathon may look like an incomprehensible move for a company that has already defined a business model and customers.?

So, what is it about??

• We had an opportunity to build cross-team cooperation and learn from each other.
• The hackathon had a fantastic effect on integration between the participants, who usually work in different teams.
• It was an excellent opportunity to free our creativity. A few weeks to discover and implement something valuable … it’s crazy and, at the same time, a mind-refreshing event.?
• The hackathon was definitely an engaging event. It's a perfect idea to jump off for a bit from your regular/daily work and jump into a hackathon project, pushing their involvement to a different level.?
• Involvement, which revealed itself during the hackathon, stayed with us and is spreading to other engineers. Initially, we felt we had to make a little push to gather the team for the hackathon. Our other team members ask us, “When is the next one?”?

What’s most important is that even if the hackathon has ended, most of those positive vibes are still with us. Our engineers are not only proud of the achievement but also more creative, engaged, and simply content of the work.?

Was it worth it?

No doubts. Definitely YES!