The goal of Charla is to take what Twitter started, and leverage the power of blockchain to ensure that everyone has a voice and cannot be silenced. Charla is a proof-of-concept intended to show how a social media platform can exist on the CoinEx Smart Chain. The end result is social media where users truly own their thoughts, opinions, and ideas - all with the benefit of avoiding bots, bad actors, and censorship.
It is currently deployed to the Testnet.
This initial proof-of-concept allows a user to connect to the dApp with a MetaMask wallet. For demo purposes, it's important that the user's MetaMask be configured to work with the CSC Testnet.
To interact with Charla, you must have a wallet funded with tCET. These tokens provide the fuel to this SocialFi experience.
Once connected, the user can write a "Cha" which can be thought of as similar to a Tweet, but living on the blockchain. Each interaction requires the user to pay a small fee to verify authenticity and contribute to the network. The user can also delete his or her Cha in exchange for paying a small fee as well. This demo allows anyone to write a Cha that will then be displayed on the homepage feed.
Charla appears similar to Twitter, but with key differences:
- You own your thoughts and ideas. Every Cha that you write is your possession that lives forever on the blockchain.
- Because each Cha requires a small fee to post, this removes the incentive for bots and spam account to exist.
- The service cannot be shutdown by a central authority; it is essentially a decentralized improvement upon Twitter.
Charla's frontend is built using React. I also used Hardhat to test, compile and deploy the smart contract necessary to run Charla.
The most challenging part of this was coming up with a solid idea that I believed in, and what I would think that the judges would appreciate and believe in as well. I spent careful consideration on formulating an idea that I believe will have major impact and contribute to the network. It was also my first time writing a litepaper, so that took some serious time and dedication as well.
I feel that I have accomplished developing an app that builds upon traditional social networking features (such as posting a "tweet" or status update), and offers a way for a user to actually "own" their content. Charla is different than Twitter in that the end user owns their content and ideas and cannot be shut down by a central authority.
I learned a lot about the benefits of using CoinEx Smart Chain - which includes faster and cheaper transactions. I really liked that I could use my experience working with Ethereum tools and Solidity and easily put it to work while building on CSC.
I'd like to expand on this proof-of-concept and make all the features you see listed on the left sidebar work, such as user messaging, profiles, lists, etc. There's still much to be done, but I felt that the work here demonstrated the core feature which is providing a way to create posts and interact with the smart contract that powers the dApp.
The "charla server" folder holds files necessary to deploy the smart contract.
The "charla client" folder is a React frontend that can be used to interact with the smart contract.