What it is

Panthera, named after Middlebury’s panther mascot, is a rewards system that allows Middlebury College students to earn cryptocurrency rewards when they shop at on-campus retail locations. These rewards can then be redeemed for goods or services at various retailers on campus. Even more excitingly, students can send the rewards to each other’s wallets.

How it works

To explain the two use cases I mentioned above, we will walk through two scenarios involving Middlebury students Jim and Kim.

Scenario A: Jim goes shopping

It’s the weekend again, and Jim realizes he is out of snacks and toiletries. He decides to buy these at the college’s store. After his purchase, the cashier records his wallet details by scanning a QR code on his phone. He earns 3 Granola (GRN) for his purchases. Granola is the name of Panthera’s cryptocurrency. The next day, Jim is doing laundry before heading to the library. He redeems 2 GRN from his new balance on Panthera to receive free laundry services and 1 GRN to buy a cup of coffee at the cafe.

Scenario B: Kim needs help moving

Kim is a college student with a lot of items in her college dorm room. She usually receives help from her parents on move-in days. On move-out day, however, she tends to make several trips to her car to get all her belongings. On this particular move-out day, she would much rather get help. Unfortunately, all her friends are away running errands. She posts an announcement on the student page asking if anyone can help her move, offering Granola and gets a volunteer. After the volunteer helps her with moving, she scans his wallet details and transfers 2 GRN to him for the help. The volunteer can then choose to redeem their rewards or send them to another person.

Though these examples feature only students, it should be noted that anyone affiliated with the college campus can register for the service and earn rewards. This includes members of faculty and staff who also shop at on-campus retail locations, need help with a service, or might want to sell or buy something for Granola rather than fiat currency.

Technology Stack

My project partner Michael Gallagher and I built this system using Solidity to write the smart contract along with React and TypeScript for the front-end. We used Web3.js as the framework for having the front-end interact with the smart contract.

Granola is an ERC-20 token built from Ethereum.

Why we built this

We built this system to help Middlebury College retail, especially dining services, to get more consistent sales volumes. We noticed that Middlebury students would spend a lot on purchases at the beginning of the semester, during exam weeks, and at the end of the semester. That meant that for the weeks in between, retailers could not accurately predict their sales volumes which sometimes led to waste or unmet sales goals. By developing this system, we help improve customer loyalty with the hope that the rewards will have more customers buying items at the participating on-campus outlets.

For the customer, cryptocurrency rewards mean that students have more redeemable options. Instead of having one rewards system for each retailer and having students register for each, a decentralized rewards system enables students to earn rewards from more than one retailer and redeem them anywhere they would like as long as the retailer is a participating outlet. That means students can access different rewards for their purchases ranging from free coffee at a bagel shop to services such as discounted printing and laundry.

Signing Up

Currently, students can sign up by downloading a MetaMask wallet on their device (MetaMask is available on iOS, Android, or PC) and registering for an account. From there, they would be able to receive Granola upon registration at an on-campus retail location and continue to use the service.

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