The Problem It Solves

Decentralized communities face major issues when funding public goods:

• Whale Dominance
  Token-based voting lets large holders control outcomes, drowning out small but genuine contributors.

• No Privacy
  Votes and funding actions are publicly visible on-chain, exposing voter behavior and discouraging honest participation.

• Sybil Attacks
  Anyone can create multiple wallets to gain unfair influence, breaking the idea of democratic decision-making.

• Poor Funding Signals
  Communities lack a reliable way to identify projects with real grassroots support instead of concentrated backing.

ZeroTrace solves this by combining:

• Quadratic Funding: So many small contributions outweigh a few large ones.
• Zero-Knowledge Proofs: To enable anonymous but verifiable voting.
• Sybil Resistance: To enforce one-person-one-vote without revealing identity.

Result:

• Fair influence for every participant
• Fully private and unlinkable votes
• Funding goes to projects with real community support

Challenges We Ran Into

• Privacy vs Verifiability
  Making votes anonymous while still preventing double voting required careful nullifier and ZK-proof handling.

• Sybil Resistance Without Identity Leakage
  Ensuring one-human-one-vote without storing or exposing any Aadhaar or personal data on-chain.

• Quadratic Voting Complexity
  Quadratic cost calculations are non-linear and gas-sensitive, requiring optimized smart contract and off-chain design.

• Preventing Spam Projects
  Permissionless submissions needed stake-based rules, cooldowns, and caps without discouraging real builders.

• User Experience with ZK Tech
  Hiding complex cryptography behind a simple “connect → vote” flow was a major UX challenge.

• Minimizing Centralization
  Admin controls were necessary, but they had to be transparent, limited, and auditable on-chain.

In short:
The hardest part wasn’t any single feature—it was making cryptography, economics, and usability work together in a system that is private, fair, and practical.