PlayPal

Sauce Labs Raffle Screenshot

Inspiration

We took inspiration from the recent studies on the "loneliness pandemic", as well as the book Bowling Alone, which discusses disengagement from society through the lens of recreation. The issue we identified, and set out to solve, is the coordination problem resulting from a lack of ability to communicate with other interested parties.

What it does

PlayPal is modeled after the Match Group family of dating apps, wherein you swipe on potential partners. In this case, PlayPal matches you with other sporting enthusiasts who share your interests and skill level, in your area.

How we built it

We created the front-end using React, Next.js, and Tailwind to take advantage of industry standards and ensure a good look and feel. For the back end, we used Go for the server and a custom in-memory database to handle scaling issues (since our target market is working people, who all begin their free time at roughly the same point in the day). To communicate between the two sides, we created a REST API to handle requests.

Challenges we ran into

A major stumbling block we encountered during the implementation phase was a set of unprintable characters within our testing and demo data, resulting in a significant amount of time being spent reviewing sound algorithms before breaking out a hex editor to scrutinize the data and find the issue.

What we learned

Always verify the integrity of your testing data.

What's next for PlayPal

With inspiration from our sponsors at Starknet, we are planning to expand PlayPal's functionality to tackle the second major issue of coordinating meetups: people flaking. To this end, we plan to implement a smart contract on a successful match (i.e., one that results in a planned meetup) such that if one party does not show up when they should, they lose a deposit and take a hit to their profile rating.