Digital Time Capsule

This project was created as part of the gitcoin contest https://gitcoin.co/issue/Ideamarket/gitcoin-bounties/17/100025067

About

The Digital Time Capsule allows you to create messages that remain locked until a predefined time.

The messages will be encrypted and stored in IPFS, then the corresponding path and encryption keys will be stored in an Ethereum smart contract which keeps track of all time capsules and decides when they can be unlocked. Nothing is really secret in Ethereum but at least this allows for the messages to be unreadable for the IPFS nodes

Demo

Smart contract is deployed to Ropsten testnetwork at this address: 0xf29DB9Ba8867dAe93d02D46df63e8404D161FE8b

Working demo fully hosted in IPFS: https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmZFGrrdJ53k9kSZGwFjqhsJY4z2XgmgPyYbgTQAwYkVDP

Video demo (also hosted in IPFS): https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmeZpSTCbJe1qEB8NRAoFWs7X1NP2bvHvU66ndQ53FTEo4

Run locally

First install everything

npm install

You will need 3 parallel terminals:

Terminal 1: Server to host static pages

The site doesn't have any server-side code, however Metamask will require it to be hosted somewhere in order to inject the required javascript. So run the following command:

npm run server

Pages will be accesible at http://localhost:8080/

Terminal 2: Hardhat Network

Now it's time to run the Hardhat Network to test locally before going to a testnet/mainet

npx hardhat node

The terminal will display some accounts which you can use to import them to Metamask for testing

Terminal 3: Deploy contract

Now that the network is running, you need to deploy the contract to the running Hardhat Network node

npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.ts --network localhost

Troubleshoot

• If you execute some transactions in Metamask and then restart the Hardhat Network, you may get some errors trying to process subsequent transactions. This is because Hardhat Network will expect some fresh data but Metamask will continue where it left with the previous instance of the network. This can be solved in two ways:
  • Use a different account that haven't been used before
  • Reinstall metamask. Don't forget to backup your seed phrase or you will lose your mainet accounts!