Carelotto

CareLotto is a participatory art vending machine that turns every artwork purchase into an onchain lottery entry and a transparent act of redistribution. A user buys a small artwork from the machine, and that purchase automatically triggers a split: part supports the artist/project, part goes to a selected community organization, and part enters an individual prize pool that one participant can win.

CareLotto will be built as both a physical/social artwork and is now a functional blockchain prototype. The experience combines a public-facing vending machine interface, wallet or email-based onboarding, transparent payment splitting, lottery entry generation, and a receipt that shows exactly where the money went. Instead of asking users to understand crypto first, CareLotto uses a familiar interaction — buying art from a vending machine — to introduce onchain transparency, public goods funding, and community-based redistribution.

The project reframes lottery mechanics as a system of care. Traditional gambling extracts value from participants; CareLotto redirects that same emotional logic of chance, anticipation, and reward into a visible support system for artists, communities, and individuals. Each purchase becomes more than a transaction: it becomes an artwork, a lottery ticket, a donation, and a public record of redistribution.

Technically, CareLotto can use smart contracts to automate the fund split, NFTs or digital receipts to verify each artwork purchase, wallet or email login for accessible onboarding, and a public dashboard to track total plays, community contributions, prize pool growth, and winners. The goal is to create a playful, intuitive prototype that shows how blockchain can make everyday acts of care transparent, participatory, and measurable.

CareLotto was built as a working prototype for a participatory art vending machine that connects a familiar physical interaction — buying a small artwork — to an onchain system of verified participation, lottery entries, transparent fund-splitting, and community redistribution.

The frontend was built as a web app that simulates the CareLotto vending machine experience. A user enters the interface, chooses to “play,” buys or claims a small artwork, and receives a visible receipt showing how their contribution is distributed. The goal was to make the experience feel playful and intuitive, so people can participate without needing to understand crypto first.

Privy is used as the onboarding layer for CareLotto. Because CareLotto is meant to function as a public artwork, not just a Web3 dapp, accessibility is central to the experience. Privy allows users to sign in with simple email-based or embedded wallet access, making it possible for non-crypto-native participants to interact with the project without needing to set up a wallet manually before they begin. The user should feel like they are interacting with an art vending machine first, and only later realize that the transaction is connected to transparent onchain infrastructure.

World ID is used as a proof-of-human layer for the lottery system. Because CareLotto includes a chance-based individual prize pool, it is important to prevent bots, duplicate entries, or Sybil attacks from taking over the lottery. World ID allows participants to prove they are unique humans without requiring them to reveal unnecessary personal information. This helps make the lottery feel fair, human-centered, and trustworthy.

Chainlink is used to support the randomness and automation needed for the lottery component. The lottery prize pool depends on a fair winner-selection process, so Chainlink VRF can provide verifiable randomness when selecting a winner. This is important because the project is not only about creating a prize, but about making the mechanics of chance transparent and trustworthy. Chainlink Automation could also be used to trigger recurring draws, update prize pools, or manage scheduled winner selection without relying on manual intervention.

The onchain layer handles the core CareLotto logic: each artwork purchase creates a lottery entry and triggers a transparent split of funds. The split is designed to divide money between project sustainability, a selected community organization, and an individual prize pool. This turns a simple purchase into a visible redistribution mechanism. Instead of asking users to donate separately, CareLotto embeds care directly into the act of buying art.

We also explored ENS as an identity layer to make participants, artists, and community organizations easier to recognize through human-readable names instead of long wallet addresses. This supports the larger goal of making care networks visible and legible. Rather than displaying only anonymous blockchain data, CareLotto can show recognizable recipients, organizations, and flows of value.

In CareLotto, the artwork is the receipt. Each artwork purchased from the vending machine becomes the user’s proof of lottery entry, proof of participation, and proof of an act of care. The user is able to choose the artwork they receive and also choose where part of their money is redistributed, making each transaction personal, transparent, and participatory. The artwork becomes both a collectible object and a record of redistribution, showing that the user helped support the project, a community organization, and the shared prize pool.

What makes CareLotto notable is the way it uses an art vending machine as the public interface for a larger redistribution system. Instead of presenting the project as a standard donation platform, raffle app, or lottery dapp, CareLotto turns the entire interaction into a playful and accessible artwork. The machine becomes a public-facing entry point into Privy-powered onboarding, smart contracts, World ID human verification, Chainlink-powered randomness, transparent payment splitting, and social impact infrastructure.

In short, CareLotto pieces together a vending-machine-style web interface, Privy onboarding, World ID proof-of-human verification, Chainlink randomness, smart contracts for fund-splitting and lottery entries, and identity/receipt layers to create a prototype where buying art becomes an onchain act of care.