3box Chats on Foam Food Map

Decentralized chat threads on Foam map for NYC restaurants. Click on a restaurant location and see what people have said using 3box.js message threads and food data from Foam.

Pre-alpha version - please report bugs and make feature requests.

Motivation

Foam provides decentralized spatial data for points on earth. Using Foam's smart contracts and exposed APIs we can already begin to construct decentralized versions of services like Yelp. 3box.js is a good match as it lets us easily build profiles for ethereum users and store information without centralized servers.

Next Steps

This application is intended to be used as a demo. It shows that with minimal development work we can already create decentralized threads that can be used to review restaurants around New York. More features are required to make an application like this scalable and secure:

• Better reputation systems : need a way to prevent spam and identify which users are reporting true information
• Moderation system : need a way to consume posted data and filter based on what users find most valuable
• UX : obviously one thread per restaurant would get pretty crowded pretty quick. We need better UX on the message threads to display recent information, most valuable comments, and profile information
• Performance : need load performance improvements for websocket fetches and live chat feeds

Known Bugs and Requests

Better aync thread fetching. Memory usage is high - could improve connections to 3box and 3box.js Space storage. Better clicking on restaurant names.

Available Scripts

Users must have Metamask to use.

In the project directory, run:

npm install then npm start to run the app in the development mode.

Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in the browser.

Tools

Foam api - https://f-o-a-m.github.io/foam.developer/examples/foam_map_api.html
3box.js - https://github.com/3box/3box-js\

License

MIT License