Instant Tutors

The fastest way to get unstuck.

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Inspiration

In a world where Google provides answers to most of your queries, it's easy to get stuck when it doesn't. One day, despite searching through mountains of stack overflow posts, I couldn't figure out how to make my python dependencies install in the correct python version's directory. I eventually got so fed up I rm ed python, not realizing that this would not delete the intended target ― 3.x ― and instead erase 2.7, which was a dependency for my Gnome desktop. The internet failed me, I failed my computer, but it all could have been prevented if I had an Instant Tutor.

What it does

Instant Tutor is a decentralized rapid-fire video chat marketplace which lets you post the questions that the internet can't provide answers for and get answers in real-time by real humans.

How I built it

I built this poorly, using truffle and basic internet tech. I say poorly, because I didn't realize in advance that using truffle would force me to create a SPA without routing. I have only one file each for my js, html, and css. To navigate I'm toggling between "display:none" and "display:block" high up in the dom tree. Also I'm pretty sure web3 filter streams are prone to memory leaks.

Challenges I ran into

I wish I had prepared more boilerplate. I didn't have enough time to finish the actual video chat part of this video chat app and I don't think I'll be able to in the next forty seven minutes. Also it was my first time building for the Ethereum Virtual Machine, so despite reading the entire Solidity documentation, I still felt at times like a 17th century surgeon operating on a hapless patient: "Take the leg! Bring out the leeches! Let's give him a lobotomy!" In short, I had to do a lot of trial and error and a decent amount of triage.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I created a smart contract from another smart contract. I also met a lot of great people on the blocktrain. Choo Choo!

What I learned

Despite my suffering, I think this was an overall positive experience. The initial idea was the provide a live Q&A marketplace for the scholarly, but as I was building it and talking with members of the community I realized that this same model could be applied to getting medical and legal advice. The power of decentralized apps became immediately apparent: composability. It's not just that the same model could be applied to medical and legal advice, the same contracts could actually be reused as well. And beyond code reuse, when you take a traditional application and decentralize its core dataset, it becomes much easier for an ecosystem of competing and complimentary applications to be built on that dataset. Building DAPPs is betting on ecosystems.

What's next for Instant Tutors

Instant Tutors is going to the MOON. We're doing a crowdsale next week for our DAO which will vote on whether it provides ROI through an arbitrary and alterable fraction of our future transaction costs, or through a not-yet-legal proxy equity coin. In the distributed VR classrooms of the future, Instant Tutors is going to remove barriers to knowledge and strive to increase the global intelligence.

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