iNSiGHT

At a glance

iNSiGHT is a civic-transparency decentralised app (dApp) that won a hackathon at CAPE Fest. It puts public donations and government transactions on a blockchain, so the record can be inspected rather than taken on trust. In May 2023, its SolidStart, web3.js and MetaMask frontend went from new repository to last push in about eight hours.

The problem

Public money is hard to follow. Donations flow into funds, spending flows out, and the public sees only what someone chooses to publish.

The app, titled “iNSiGHT, for people”, describes itself as a blockchain-based system for government transactions, aimed at eradicating corruption. Its answer is a record that is public by design, with the amounts kept on-chain rather than in a private database.

On-chain design

Two contracts sit behind the interface. The frontend reaches them through their ABIs, donation.json and transaction.json.

Contract	What the frontend uses	Purpose
Donations	donate(), withdraw(), totalDonations(), government()	Collects public donations and keeps a running total
Government transactions	Read by the government transactions page	A ledger of government transactions

donate() is payable, so the money travels with the call itself. totalDonations() returns the running total, and government() returns the address of the government account that owns the contract. withdraw() takes the collected funds out.

The point is where the number comes from. The total on the page is read from the contract, not from a database that the organisers control.

The wallet flow

1. The app connects to MetaMask through window.ethereum, requesting accounts with eth_requestAccounts.
2. The donor enters an amount, and web3.js converts it to wei with toWei.
3. donate() goes out as a payable transaction, which MetaMask asks the donor to confirm.
4. The donations page polls totalDonations() every second, so the total updates without a reload.

Eight hours, start to finish

The repository was created at 21:58 UTC on 4 May 2023, which was 03:28 on 5 May in India. The last push came at 06:19 UTC, or 11:49 IST, about eight hours later. iNSiGHT went on to win a hackathon at CAPE Fest.

Trade-offs under time pressure

• Polling over events. Polling totalDonations() every second needs no event plumbing, at the cost of one call per second for every open page.
• A stack already in use. SolidStart, TypeScript and Tailwind CSS were also the stack of my final-year project, which was in progress in the same weeks. In a time box, familiar tools are a feature.
• Two flows and nothing more. The app has donations and government transactions, plus a home page and an about page.
• Documentation last. The README is still the SolidStart template.

What I would build next

• Events instead of polling. The contract would emit an event per donation and the page would subscribe, so the total moves with new blocks rather than a timer.
• Clear wallet states. No wallet installed, wrong network and rejected transaction would each get their own message.
• A public demo on a named test network. The README would name the network and the contract address, so anyone could check the totals on a block explorer.

In the same weeks I was working on my final-year project, Blockchain-as-a-Service, a platform for deploying and calling smart contracts from a web form. More projects are on the work page.