direct ads

This dapp allows publishers and advertisers to transact directly, without a middleman (e.g. Google AdSense).

• Publishers add their unique inventory (e.g. a pre-roll ad space in a video) by minting an NFT.
• Advertisers make bids on the inventory they are interested in.
• Publishers accept offers, display ads, and get paid directly by advertisers.
• The whole process is managed by a few smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.

Video: https://ipfs.infura.io/ipfs/QmfHQiYUMmXSevfJYgkcD4riGPZQKyrWdftEt1aSNRxZNa

Demo: https://direct-ads.pages.dev/

FAQ

• Q: Why use NFTs?

  A: Publishers often monetize their content (inventory) with ads. Since the content is unique and belongs to someone, NFTs can be used to represent it. For example, a blog, a news website, or a video channel can be represented with an NFT, and the ownership can be verified.

• Q: How would you deal with unscrupulous advertisers who don't pay?

  A: A publisher can receive bids from several advertisers, and some of the bids might be bogus, which means that the publisher needs to be careful and select ads that maximize the profit. We can think of each advertiser as a Bernoulli bandit, i.e. it generates ad revenue with some probability. There is a simple and efficient algorithm to solve this problem - Thompson sampling. Please see https://web.stanford.edu/~bvr/pubs/TS_Tutorial.pdf

Bounties

• Chainlink

  Our dapp uses Chainlink to verify domain name ownership. An owner needs to add a TXT verification record, which the contract checks using Chainlink Any API. The relevant lines are highlighted here: https://github.com/direct-ads/direct-ads/blob/main/contracts/DirectAds.sol#L83-L128

  

• Polygon

  Our dapp is based on NFTs and deployed on Polygon Testnet. https://mumbai.polygonscan.com/address/0x8e89837992D8a8bfBB2545059A64Eb557951c657

• Consensys Devtools

  We've written Scribble properties for the OpenZeppelin ERC777 contract. Please see https://github.com/soylent/openzeppelin-contracts/commit/2490c2a336db29a0d12bd62493031139e2ce1226

• Apeworx

  We used Ape to build and test the smart contracts for our dapp.

  https://github.com/direct-ads/direct-ads/blob/main/ape-config.yaml

• Tally Wallet

  We've integrated Tally Wallet into our app using the Blocknative Onboard library.

  

Our tech stack

apeworx	Contract development framework
bnc-onboard	Wallet selection
bootstrap 5	CSS framework
chainlink	Domain name ownership verification
ethers.js	Library for interacting with the Ethereum Blockchain
maticvigil	API gateway for the matic network
openzepellin	Reusable solidity contracts
polygon	EVM enabled sidechain
solidity	Our contracts are written in solidity
stimulus	Frontend JS framework
tally wallet	Our dapp supports tally wallet via bnc-onboard

Development

1. Install foreman

   gem install foreman

2. Install apeworx

   pip install eth-ape

3. Install dependencies

   npm install

4. Start webpack dev server and hardhat node

   npm start

5. Run tests

   ape test

6. Deploy the contracts

   ape run deploy --network hardhat

7. Open http://localhost:8080