Terra Taskers

Inspiration

People around the world, now more than ever, understand the devastating threats posed by climate change, particularly with historically damaging wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. However, the issue for most citizens is finding impactful changes they can make in their daily lives. In addition, even when they are aware of specific practices, intrinsic motivation may not be enough to drive them to continue those actions. With this in mind, we wanted a tool that provides users with tasks that help them go green and includes extrinsic methods of motivation. In creating this, we combined these goals it with another timely topic: the blockchain. The blockchain receives a multitude of negative press believing that it is harmful to the environment, and we thought this project is the perfect opportunity to change those beliefs. We are using the blockchain to directly power environmentally friendly activity and have a positive impact, providing an example for how this technology of the future can be used to protect that future itself.

What It Does

Each week, Terra Taskers provides users with a list of specific tasks to help them go green. Completing these tasks and providing a photograph for evidence rewards users with a payment through Circle, as well as a post to our global feed. Through our payment reward system, users are supplemented for the additional costs that sometimes come with the implementation of environmentally friendly practices and are thus encouraged rather than discouraged to focus on improving the environment. The feed also ensures that our users are motivated by the successes of other users as they can see posts of other users making similar changes because nobody is truly alone in this battle against climate change. Overall, this adds two methods of extrinsic motivation to ensure that no matter your values, you’ll be able to remain committed to saving the planet, one task at a time.

How We Built It

For the frontend, we used HTML tags and CSS styling. We linked all the HTML sections to a shared Stylesheet to improve the readability of the code. Additionally, we used Javascript for the task submission form and the login form. We ensured that our progressive web app promotes accessibility. For instance, all provided images have alternative text so that all content is also available for users with visual impairments that rely on assistive technologies. We used colours and visuals that would evoke a sense of responsibility to protect our planet while also remaining accessible for all users. For the backend of our site, we used the Flask framework along with Python to handle required web app operations. To store the data, we used a serverless platform called deta.space as they offer both file storage as well as a no-sql database in their free tier. In order to provide our users with rewards, we used Circle to interact with multiple blockchains, and it allowed us to payout FLOW tokens to users when completing rewards. We chose to use the FLOW token as it provides near-zero latency when users wish to cash out their funds.

Challenges We Ran Into

One of the major challenges we experienced throughout the process of creating this project is how to ensure that our users are truly completing their tasks rather than taking advantage of our compensation. In the end, we came up with a multifaceted solution to this issue. First, users must submit an image that acts as evidence if they wish to claim the compensation associated with that task. This means that they must put in the required effort to take an image and upload it to our site which means they must be committed. In addition, we will be able to see if that image meets the requirements of the task and the introduction of the feed means that there are added levels of accountability because the public will be able to see that you did not actually complete the task. We hope that this added level of peer pressure will ensure that users do not submit images that are not actually of them completing the task.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

One of the most complex aspects of our project was the implementation of the feed section of the site. We originally had some issues with being able to upload and store the images from the checklist submissions. Once we found solutions to this using Deta, we then had to figure out how we would make this social media-esque feature. We built the shell of how the feed would work with the model of their submission image with a caption including their username and the goal they had completed. We also wanted to display exactly how much money our product had paid out to users for completing goals to give users a feeling of accomplishment and the feedback that others are involved. Through this format, we pulled information from the Deta database that provided this information for each post which created this feature that was important to our product. While we were originally overwhelmed with how to make this happen, by breaking it down into achievable sections, we were able to complete something that we had been worried about.

What We Learned

Going into this hackathon, we were all relatively inexperienced with Web3 so we had some doubts about whether whatever product we built could live up to our standards. However, we were pleasantly surprised by how simple Circle was to implement. Its documentation was clear, and we found that it and its testnet had all capabilities that we thought of needing throughout this hackathon. We also were able to incorporate Flow which was entirely new to us, but we found that it was simple to use. In the end, the area that we were most concerned about became the least of our worries. Now that we’ve had firsthand experience using Web3 technologies, we have learned how beneficial they can be to our projects in the future. After this hackathon, we are incredibly more comfortable using these tools and would not hesitate to do so.

What's Next For Terra Taskers

Our next priority for additional functionality for Terra Taskers is implementing an AI that provide alternative text for these images to improve the accessibility of our feed to those using screen readers. This AI would also then manage content moderation for the feed which is currently controlled by the development team. AI is another topic that has received negative press, but we know that its implementation in this project would also help to turn that around as it would be benefitting the planet. Another way we would like to use AI would be to use an API to generate new tasks for the weekly lists. This could help improve the depth of our task database and improve the chances that a user finds a practice that they genuinely enjoy. This could also allow us to tailor the tasks to the region that our users are from because cultural differences could affect their ability to complete tasks that we may come up with as North Americans. Not only would this benefit the users from that region, but everyone could learn about those methods through the feed and learn more about other areas around the world! Finally, we would love to create partnerships with companies and organizations that are environmentally friendly or create environmentally friendly products. This would allow us to add an additional funding source in exchange for exposure and tasks related to the products or services of these partners. An example could be purchasing a beyond meat product made by a certain partner or donating money to an organization working to combat climate change.