Trickle

Trickle is a next-generation Web3 investment assistant purpose-built to onboard the next wave of retail users into decentralized finance. Positioned at the intersection of TradFi and DeFi, Trickle automates micro-investments by turning everyday online activity into blockchain-native financial engagement. Through seamless UX, real-time intelligence, and smart contract automation, Trickle lowers the barrier to crypto exposure while offering deep, actionable insights.

Key Features

1. Chrome Extension (Real-Time Transaction Capture) Detects e-commerce purchases and other user activity in real time, surfacing micro-investment opportunities through a frictionless overlay interface.

2. AI-Powered Chat Interface Delivers contextual insights on wallet activity, portfolio shifts, and market trends—personalized and conversational—built on LLM streaming with custom component rendering.

3. Smart Contract Automation (via MultiBaas API) Executes secure, on-chain micro-investments based on user behavior, abstracting complexity and optimizing swap efficiency using the 1inch protocol.

4. Real-time Socket Infrastructure Keeps all components (extension, frontend, backend) in sync, ensuring low-latency investment notifications and event streaming across the stack.

5. TRKL Token Native governance and rewards token, integrated with an NFT incentive layer to encourage long-term platform engagement and loyalty.

Why It Matters Trickle transforms passive users into active participants in Web3 by embedding investment moments directly into daily behavior. Our architecture allows for scalability across multiple chains, integration with major wallets and exchanges, and monetization via both protocol fees and token economics. The AI layer further unlocks user education and retention, making Trickle a uniquely sticky product in a crowded space.

We built Trickle by tightly integrating modern Web3 and AI infrastructure. The frontend uses Next.js 13+ with the App Router and TailwindCSS for a fast, responsive UI, while a Chrome extension captures real-time e-commerce transactions via content scripts. These events are piped through a custom Socket.io service to maintain live communication with our frontend and smart contracts on Saga, built using Solidity and Hardhat.

One particularly hacky but powerful implementation: we stream messages from our LLM via Vercel's AI SDK and annotate each chunk with metadata. Since we expect consistent data formats, we use those annotations to dynamically map the incoming stream to custom React components in real-time. This allows us to render AI insights with rich, structured interactivity—without having to wait for the full message or pre-define the component logic.

We also integrated 1inch for efficient token swaps, World ID for Sybil-resistant auth, and MultiBaas to simplify smart contract interactions. Each of these tools reduced dev complexity while boosting performance and security.