## Inspiration

Covid-19 is always in front of our faces. Social distancing, store closures, mask requirements, and so much more have changed the way we go about our lives. Yet we barely comprehend the true scope of what is happening around us. To many, it may appear to just be an abstract and arbitrary set of rules we follow because someone said so.

This mindset isn't something restricted to the crazies which reject compliance. We may believe or assume that what we are doing is necessary, but it doesn't mean that we understand why it is the case. It is a seed of doubt that's been festering in the mind of many.

*Is {some policy} actually going to do anything?*

*How big of a problem is this?*

*Isn't this possibly excessive?*

**To resolve this doubt, we must reconcile the abstraction with reality. We have to explain and quantify the situation.**

And that is what we will do.

---

## What it does

Covi's main goal is to educate people regarding covid-19 via the quantification and explanation of the problem at hand. This is accomplished via a variety of bot commands.

* Quantification
	+ Worldwide and national covid statistics
		- Take a look at the cases, deaths, administered tests, and more in any region in the world.
	+ Worldwide and national covid news
		- Take a look at the trending covid related news in a region or in the world
* Explanation
	+ Competitive covid trivia game
		- Compete with other users to answer as many covid related problems as possible without messing up.
		- A high score system to see where you stack up
		- Explanations for each question to further your understanding
	+ Covid tips and tricks
		- A guide to improve your safety and minimize the risk of infection

---

## How we built it

Our bot was build in python using the Discord.py library to interface with discord.
The bot is hosted on a Google Cloud VM.

We call upon other APIs to provide Covid information.

* Serpapi was used to scrape google news for our news articles
* Disease.sh - COVID-19: Worldometers and COVID-19: Vaccine were used for global and local covid statistics

Our tips and quiz problem set were written by ourselves using reputable sources for research, including the WHO and the CDC.

---

## Challenges we ran into

We had some issues finding the right APIs for our application.

* Finding a covid api with up to date information and of sufficient detail was quite difficult. Parsing the data was a whole other story.
* Finding an API for getting news required quite a detour. We expected to just find an API which does exactly that, but we ended up having to turn to the news section of google search. It may appear somewhat obvious looking back, but making that connection just didn't occur to us easily.

Another issue we had was with correctly formatting the data for posts. We had to take a long look at the discord documentation to figure everything out.

---

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our project is quite polished. We filled in many edge cases that could've been skipped in a minimum viable product.

* The highscore system works in all edge cases, like there being no scores yet
* Error messages for any invalid entries a user posts, as well as examples for correct entries
* A user won't have any duplicate questions when playing the game

---

## What we learned

We learned how to work with APIs, parse them, and route that data into an application.
We also learned to make a Discord bot

---

## What's next for Covi - Covid themed discord bot

* More bug fixes
* More features
	+ Configurable question sets
* Enable users to add their own custom commands
## Inspiration

We thought doing a COVID-related web app was both relevant and important.

## What it does

It allows users to view local COVIDpandemic data.

## How I built it

Using Flask, Python, HTML, CSS, the Google Places API, and data from the New York Times

## Challenges I ran into

Processing the data was a little tricky because of some inconsistencies.

## Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Building the back end by hand

## What I learned

JavaScript! I'd pretty much never used it before.

## What's next for Covistics

Our Google Cloud deployment is slow and unable to update our graphs (it worked locally, but when fully deployed kind of broke down), so doing something about that would be a first priority. Also, expanding outside of the US, and adding more specific data (like geo-locating active cases or number of tests).
## Inspiration

The anonymity of cryptocurrencies is a blessing and a curse. One of Bitcoin's major shortcomings is its usefulness in criminal activity. Money laundering, drug sales, and other illegal activities use Bitcoin to evade law enforcement. This makes it hard for legitimate people and businesses to avoid dealing with criminals and their dirty (aka tainted) currency.

## What it does

BitTrace analyzes a Bitcoin address's involvement in potentially illegitimate transactions. The concept of marking an entity as 'tainted' has existed for a long time in many cryptocurrencies, but there is no easy way to track the flow of tainted money. When given a Bitcoin address, BitTrace painstakingly scans its transaction history, looking for dealings with tainted addresses. It then scores the target address based on its previous dealings. This allows the community to quickly build a crowdsourced map of bad actors.

## How I built it

We built our app in Expo and React Native. It connects to a backend written in NodeJS and Express, which calculates the taint level of a given address. It does this using BlockTrail and BlockCypher. We also maintain a separate MongoDB database of taint values in MLab (hosted in Google Cloud Platform), which allows us to record more detailed data on each address. Our server itself is run on Azure, which we chose for its speed, reliability, and ease of use.

## Challenges I ran into

We were very inexperienced with React Native and even more inexperienced with Expo. We had no idea how to accomplish simple effects like gradient buttons. Luckily, with the help of Expo's excellent documentation, we were able to overcome most issues.

## Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We have a very clean UI. We're proud of the cross-platform compatibility, speed, and reliability we were able to achieve with Expo/React Native. Our algorithm, which is highly optimized for a large network of transactions, is stable and fast.

## What I learned

We learned a huge amount about using React Native and Expo. We also learned much about analyzing transaction records on the blockchain.

## What's next for BitTrace

We want to add support for more currencies, like Ether and LiteCoin. We also want to show a more detailed analysis of an address's transactions (we already generate this data, but do not show it in the app).