Freeport
Ushering in a new form of art and asset ownership with Decentralized Finance and NFTs
Problem
Accessing ownership of fine arts isn’t that accessible to many people. Freeport aims to democratize art ownership and enable users to use their shares as liquidity for DeFi uses. Opening up ownership to more people and using blockchains for user security and autonomy.
Architecture
Given the project's aim of giving art/asset ownership the SEC and regulations played a huge role in how the app could function along with the partners needed to meet compliance. The frontend focus was on creating a personal and engaging experience for the user enabling them to view their assets and have DeFi utility to take out liquidity or view them in a fun 3D manner. On the backend was a Node.js api handling authentication of users with SIWE (Sign in with Ethereum) and connecting with external providers to place buy/sell orders on assets.
Development
When joining this project it was at an early stage with only a blog page built. 1st focus was building authentication which being a web3 app we used email login & SIWE to enable users to use their email without a password alongside crypto wallet. The focus then shifted towards notifications, a profile page and the art gallery which were E2E features starting from the database schema using Prisma and GraphQL. In addition I created smart contracts to enable the liquidity pool feature offered by the app, that enabled user to access asset liquidity for DeFi protocols.
Learnings
Being a contract role I was able to learn a ton in a short period of time. First developing and deploying contracts to a testnet was great experience in Solidity development and gave me confidence to continue building contracts. Also working on a very early project allowed me to gain the vantage point of how development is at that stage. Having full autonomy for certain functionality showed where I can improve as a developer and iterate faster.