Finity

Welcome page

Inspiration

Financial literacy is often taught through imaginary scenarios that students don’t emotionally connect to. Because students aren’t earning or losing anything together, the lessons fade quickly. We wanted to create a system where students earn value through real classroom work and see how group behavior reshapes an economy in real time.

What it does

Finity turns a classroom into a shared, live economy that runs alongside everyday schoolwork. Teachers create classroom missions (helping peers, completing optional work, class tasks). These missions act as collectible opportunities students sign up for to earn tokens. When many students try to collect the same mission, its payout drops. When fewer students want it, the payout rises. Students then spend, save, or grow their earned tokens in a limited classroom marketplace where demand can cause prices to inflate.

How we built it

We built a web app using Next.js (App Router) with separate teacher and student dashboards. Teachers define missions, approve completions, manage rewards, and trigger economic events through routed pages and API routes. Students choose missions, track fluctuating mission payouts, earn tokens, and watch market prices change in real time. The UI is built with React, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS, with Recharts powering growth and comparison visuals. A simple in-memory data store runs the economy with no database or personal data, and an optional Gemini API provides kid-friendly explanations of financial concepts.

Challenges we ran into

Designing reverse pricing for missions, where popularity lowers value, was challenging because it intentionally flips traditional reward systems. We designed Finity around a form of reverse economics, where everyone starts equal and success comes from maintaining stability, not maximizing wealth. We overcame this by using clear visual feedback, live price updates, simple language, and optional AI explanations so students could immediately see why values changed and adjust their behavior without needing complex instruction.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud to have created an economy where students see value change in real time based on collective behavior. When many students select the same mission, its payout drops on the marketplace leaderboard. When rewards become popular, prices rise in the shop. With live dashboards, growth projections, and token balances, students clearly see supply, demand, and tradeoffs in both earning and spending.

What we learned

Students don’t need complex simulations to understand economics. They rather need systems where their choices visibly change outcomes. When mission payouts dropped because too many students signed up, students immediately recognized oversupply. When reward prices rose, they connected it to demand without being told. We learned that when earning, saving, and spending all respond to student behavior, financial concepts stick naturally.

What's next for Finity

Next, we plan to test Finity in classrooms, add class-wide voting events, improve accessibility, and expand economic simulations so teachers can tailor the system to different age groups and learning goals.