Aderlo NFT - blockchain in the online marketplace

The Problem

Ecat, a leading company in the polish ecommerce industry decided to launch their own marketplace - Aderlo. Given that they are a very open-minded and modern company they use blockchain solutions all over their business. For example a large part of their funding came from an ICO (Initial Coin Offering). After having launched Aderlo, Ecat found out that many users would love to see cryptocurrencies and NFTs in the marketplace. After brainstorming they came up with a great use case for blockchain in their marketplace. 

NFTs - which in core are digital proof of ownership, can serve as a great way to verify users and authenticity of the item.

Tech used

Core of the app was written in React Native - this way we ensured it would run smoothly both on iOS and Android. Blockchain back-end was handled by Ethers.js, while the non-blockchain backend uses No-SQL database for data storage and serverless technologies such as Firebase functions.

Beginning of the process

Ecat found us through word of mouth and mutual network. They invited us to their awesome brainstorming sessions during which we discussed everything needed in order to launch the project. Both of our teams came up with the whole user experience of minting an NFT from a physical object. Another part of the project was creating Aderlo Cashback Coin - which we think of as a financial marvel. More about that down the line.

Aderlo Cashback Coin

Aderlo Cashback Coin is a revolutionary product that combines regular cashbacks with blockchain technologies. ACC is a token which users who connected their wallets get for buying products on Aderlo. It is important to note that ACC is different from traditional cashback coins due to the fact that it is listed on DEXes, and can be bought and sold. Many people who use cashback tokens find themselves in a situation where they need to buy a product they don’t want in order to redeem their cashback. With ACC users can buy the difference in-app or on DEXes. On the other hand if they don’t want to use their coins they can sell them. The price of the coin is reliant not only on the traditional supply-demand mechanism but also on the discounts if offers. We were responsible for the tokenomics and programming of ACC.

Design

As many other applications Aderlo NFT app consists of three main screens. Going from the left users can: interact with their NFTs, mint new NFTs and use their ACC tokens. We designed the app in a way which made it consistent with the Aderlo design language. The design was created in a strict collaboration with the in-house UX/UI team at Ecat. That meant blue and orange as the most prevailing colors.

Front-end development

While coding the front-end of the application was fairly simple, the biggest problem we encountered was giving users the ability to photo their item after receiving an individualized link. We had to implement a connection with the phone camera into the app. During testing we found out that users who had the front-facing camera as the one working on default found themselves quite uncomfortable, that's why we implemented the ‘switch camera’ button as fast as possible.

Back-end dev 

Early on we understood that if ACC and Aderlo NFT app were to be successful, we would need to optimize the costs of using them as efficiently as possible. That’s why we decided to handle some of the users' actions off-blockchain.

The main challenge during the project was creating the whole user experience which consisted of: choosing to mint an NFT, sending a link enabling the user to do so, handling user input (barcode scanning, shooting a photo) and saving it into the Aderlo database. During the process we have to authenticate users and make sure they do not submit harmful, NSFW content. We achieved this by using various AI solutions provided by Google, Amazon Web Services combined with our own experimental technologies.

What we delivered

Parlour Development delivered the whole Aderlo NFT application, coding and designing it from scratch. Of course, we put the app on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. We were also responsible for designing, coding and testing the Aderlo Cashback Coin Token (ACC). Last part of the project was creating a landing page for people who wanted to buy ACC outside of the Aderlo NFT app.

Conclusion

Aderlo Cashback Coin raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from its presale pool. It has proved to be a very successful product for Ecat. Aderlo has seen a significant boost in sales since enabling users to track ownership of products via NFT technology. Right now, Ecat is looking for ways to make their marketplace even more cutting-edge.