LunarPay – Hackathon Winners

Aarya and Raghav from Grade 12 and Pranav from Grade 10 recently participated in a month-long hackathon. The Polygon BUIDLIT Hackathon, was India's largest Web 3.0 hackathon with a total prize pool of 100,000 USD. During a month the team built ‘LunarPay’, a fully-fledged cryptocurrency payment gateway. The team placed second overall and won the prize for best integration with ‘Moralis’. In total, they received 12,000 USD from the hackathon. We contacted the team to find out more about their invention and product.  

We believe we are on the right track and fulfilling an unmet need – Pranav, Grade 10 

Aarya first learnt about the hackathon on the same day of the registration deadline. Not knowing anything about blockchains yet impatient to learn more, he reached out to tech savvy Raghav and Pranav to form a team. “Even though we did not expect to win, it was a golden opportunity to show our prowess in the field of tech to the world”, says Aarya, who along with his team looked at the opportunity to improve the most fundamental aspect of cryptocurrency payments – the payment processors themselves. “The scarce amount of existing payment processors lacked a good user interface, making cryptocurrencies intimidating to use and inhibiting adoption from the masses”, explains Aarya, and the team decided to make the acceptance of cryptocurrency payments easy to use and adopt through LunarPay. 

The hackathon started on November 20 and the team spent the first 12 days learning, reading articles and watching videos about the web3 space. “In the start of the hackathon, we did not even understand what Polygon was, and therefore, these 12 days were essential”, explains Raghav, whose team started the project, but ended up scrapping their progress after two days. To get organised, the team made a to-do-list, marking tasks needed to be done and started working. “Each of us spent around 12-14 hours every day programming on different aspects of the product”, says Raghav who would get on call every day to discuss the features and the architecture of the system. After a week of intense programming, the team had a product that was ready to be submitted.  

Being completely new to blockchain concepts meant a great challenge to the team. “Development was quite far-fetched, we did not even understand basic blockchain terminology like ‘smart contracts’, ‘L2 solutions’, etc.”, says Raghav about the team’s endeavour to develop LunarPay. But the team was motivated and passionate. “I think our passion for development, attention for detail and our perfectionist personality was what set us apart”, says Raghav. Unsure about their project, the team added crucial aspects for the software. “From the very beginning we treated this as a complete product and not just a hackathon project. Hence, we decided to build a complete set of features including thorough documentation, an API, a react library etc.”, says Pranav, who believes that this helped his team stand out and come out on top. 

It is hard to imagine a world without traditional payment systems, but thanks to the internet and the rise of cryptocurrencies, people may explore what is possible. Pranav explains: “LunarPay is the next evolution in cryptocurrency payments, bridging the gap between blockchain-based cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies, enabling businesses to offer their customers convenience and security when making payments.” While being highschoolers the team is not able to dedicate all time to further developing their project. But they are developing the code for a ‘Decentralised Autonomous Organisation’, which enables a wider community to contribute. Raghav explains their plan: “Currently, we’re developing a few core security features so that this product is ready for launch and mass adoption. Along with this, we are marketing the product actively on twitter and are collaborating with experts in the web3 field to make this a product that has a positive social impact.” 

To find out more about the competition, visit Polygon Hackathon's website. To learn more about the product that Aarya, Raghav and Pavan have developed, visit the LunarPay page.