Coinspire

Two of my close friends and I decided to do a hackathon one weekend. We signed up for TOHacks 2022 (https://www.tohacks.ca/) and spent the next 24 hours together building a web-based application.

We built Coinspire, a collaborative place where users from around the world can contribute pixel by pixel to collaboratively create a graphical image!

On the coinspire website, users can place one pixel on a large 1000 by 1000 grid once every second. Their pixel is then stored on a database and all current users can see that pixel update on their screen. This creates an environment that encourages art collaboration, as no user can create any large picture on their own, they are forced to work together.

I did most of the backend development; I programmed a Node.js webserver, setup and integrated a Cockroachdb SQL database, connected a domain name, configured server-client communication using socket.io web sockets, and hosted the site on google cloud platform. There was also a lot of effort spent pre-panning, testing, and conferencing with my teammates.

I had no idea what I was doing, and I am still surprised we were able to achieve so much in only 24 hours. We did not end up winning the hackathon, but I am proud of the end product.

Hackathon submission page with more information: https://devpost.com/software/idk-untpk6 Youtube site demo with in-depth explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-A8n-JeBM4 Github repository with all the code: https://github.com/LilyxMeng/coinspire