DeBet

Inspiration

Being brought up in a society stricken with political issues and controversy means that debate is a fundamental part of our lives. We originally planned to build a website to facilitate online debate and allow for a friendly discussion. Still, we needed a way to incentivize users and fit the theme of gamification. We immediately proposed a virtual currency, and DeBet was born.

What it does

DeBet is a betting platform where you can host, participate in, or watch live debates online. Users register for a debate and are randomly given a side to defend. As the debate's start time approaches, bets are placed by other users regarding the match's outcome. Bets are placed using an e-currency called “tokens.” Users can buy tokens with money to join and bet on debates. To judge objectively, a ChatGPT API is used to pick the winner. While earning money by predicting the match's outcome correctly is a possibility, losing money by betting incorrectly is also plausible.

How we built it

We built this using the flask framework to host the front and back end of the website. We used the ChatGPT API for the judging of the debates. For the UI and looks of the website, we used a bootstrap template and adjusted it accordingly. Debate sessions are driven through the Flask-SocketIO module. Lastly, the SQL-Alchemy database saves user information and information about the debate.

Challenges we ran into

We encountered many challenges and errors since we worked online rather than in-person and were somewhat unorganized. We all worked on different parts of the project on different devices, so when we integrated the different pieces of code with each other, many errors popped up, and we spent more time trying to fix them.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of our biggest accomplishments in this project is that we created a functional website that nurtures debate through friendly competition. Moreover, creating a digital currency to facilitate these debate matches was one of our more ingenious ideas. Lastly, the UI and “gamified” appearance we created were well-done given our lack of expertise in that area.

What we learned

Throughout this project, challenges were eminent, and despite our already existing knowledge of modules like Flask, SQLalchemy, and Flask-Socket-IO, we were forced to learn new concepts to finish this project. For instance, we learned immensely from the HTTP protocols and Error codes we encountered. In fact, the majority of our learning experience came from debugging our faulty code. Moreover, how we gamified the User experience required learning how to emulate apps such as Reddit and Duolingo, which utilize a virtual currency to foster competition. Using “tokens” as an incentive for debate betting, we could effectively gamify our website.

What's next for DeBet

The next step for advancing our website would be to incorporate speech-to-text software. Debates are obviously more emphatic and eloquent when done with speech, and many of our users may find it tedious to type out their arguments. Using the speech-recognition module in python, we would allow users to use their voice to build an argument.

Built With

• boostrap5
• chatgpt
• css
• discord
• flask
• flask-bootstrap
• flask-socketio
• github
• html
• javascript
• jquery
• json
• python
• sqlalchemy