Alignmint: donation tracking

illia quote
problem/solution
monetization
moving forward

Track submission

We would like to be considered for the following tracks:

Sustainability – blockchain solutions for green tech and environment
Creators – utility on top of NFTs
Web2 to Web3 – bootstrapping “traditional” apps and tools on blockchain
Future of finance – DeFi apps and features

Inspiration

We came together because we care about people and the planet: animals, conservation, and humanitarian aid.

What it does

Alignmint is a dynamic NFT project that ensures sustainability and charity data is updated while providing a new source of fundraising.

An organization or animal facility creates an NFT with a photo and data that shares the logistics of those efforts, along with any benefits for the donation
A user goes to the Alignmint marketplace and purchases an NFT
The funds go to an Alignmint wallet. Once the organization proves purchases with a receipt, funds will be disbursed to them.
Organization updates the metadata and NFT image to show progress, impact, and transparency
User sees the updated NFT in our app

How we built it

React frontend
Pagoda JS SDK
Proxy contract using Near CLI
Mintbase for creating stores and minting NFTs

Challenges we ran into

Mintbase only has 2 options for minting: manual approval if others mint in your store or pre-minting everything. This created friction in either case so we had to rethink the implementation and use Mintbase as the minter rather than creating our own as planned.
In order to do dynamic NFTs with changing metadata and images, Mintbase recommended a proxy contract. It wasn't possible to write a thorough one (in Javascript) so we did a simple proxy that allowed one data field update.
The Arweave Forever Media link reroutes when you click on it so it was difficult to pull media programmatically since the real link wasn't returned from Mintbase

Accomplishments that we're proud of

creating the capability of dynamically updating NFTs on Near
showcasing the potential of donation transparency
using Mintbase SDK to learn how to create stores
using Pagoda JS SDK to create a proxy contract for updating NFTs

What we learned

dynamic NFT functionality don't exist on Near and it's really hard

Monetization

similar to other minting systems, alignmint receives a percentage of sales for all minted projects on the platform:
5-10% platform minting fee for all collections
royalties on all collections dependent on ongoing funding
partnerships with international charities
data collected will be sold to traditional purchasers to quantify and model social impact results

What's next for Alignmint

We're looking to develop partnerships with charitable organizations so they can leverage our platform to raise funds. For the Crypto Wildlife Collective, we're working with an artist on 3D models of animals to offer unique NFT artwork. The goal is to deliver a production ready app within 1 month. In progress UI screens can be found here: https://bit.ly/3RJB52f.