Depto

A decentralized patent provisioning DAO for secure and transparent verification and storage of patent applications.

Introduction

Depto is a platform that replaces traditional patent verification and storage procedures with a decentralized, community-driven approach. It uses blockchain technology to ensure the security and transparency of patent applications and their verification process. The platform consists of three smart contracts: the Depto contract, the Governor Contract, and the TimeLock contract.

Features

• Patent applications are verified by DAO members and minted as NFTs to the applicants.
• DAO members are incentivized for verification and validation of patent applications.
• Anyone can raise false claims or inspection of patent proposals in the platform.
• Secure communication among DAO members using Huddle video conferencing SDK.
• Push notifications for updates on patent applications and verification process.
• Decentralized governance logic and proposals handled by the Governor Contract.
• Automated minting of ERC721 NFTs for verified patents.
• Deployed using Spheron on the mainnet.

Usage

1. Patent applicants apply for a patent through the platform.
2. A DAO member verifies the authenticity of the application and creates a patent document.
3. The DAO member creates a proposal with the patent document's raw CID.
4. The verified patent is voted on and validated by other DAO members.
5. The validated patent is stored as a storage deal by a Storage Provider (SP).
6. The SP claims his rewards and the patent NFT is minted to the patent applicant.

There are 3 smart contracts which are all bootstrapped by Openzeppelin. We used the Openzeppelin governance for the Governance and TimeLock contracts. Depto contract uses the Openzeppelin ERC721 token standard. We changed the internal architecture from token based voting to access based voting. The DAO members can only vote and add members into the DAO who have permissions to propose or vote in any proposal. We added a few custom functions removing the Openzeppelin GovernorVotes which calculate token ownership during the start of the proposal. We used the ZondaxAPI contracts for fetching the Deal Provider and Commitment data so that the SP can claim rewards from the bounty once he stores the deal successfully. Once the deal is stored the ERC721 NFT is automatically minted to the patent applicant and will be notified directly through Push Protocol notifications. When a patent applies for a new patent/false patent claim, the DAO will be notified in their Push notifications. The DAO members can use the Huddle integration to call for a quick meeting anytime.

The frontend is built using NextJS+TailwindCSS. We used ethers.js library to interact with the smart contracts. The DAO members can communicate with themselves anytime in a secure way using the Huddle video conferencing SDK. The platform is deployed using Spheron.

We are really happy with what we built and we are looking forward to make it as a production application once the mainnet is launched.