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FLAMEAL is a distributed application making use of blockchain technology (DApp) meant to be used by the entities in food redistribution to provide easy and thrustless transactions of charitable goods while providing transparency to the wide public.
The number of people suffering from food poverty has constantly been growing. Much of the growth has been attributed to the socio-economical impact of COVID-19. However, research suggests the pandemic moved the problem to an aggravated state since numbers started to rise in 2015. On the other hand, there is little to no transparency when it comes to reporting emerging cases of food insecurity, and there is no visibility of the data used to generate the reports published by charitable organisations. It is also notable that there is a substantial discrepancy between independent reports and governmental or private reports. The project aims to address the problem using a trustless and transparent decentralised system built using blockchain. While also aiming to contribute to Goal 2: Zero Hunger proposed in the Sustainable Development Goals suggested by United Nations and potentially reduce food waste production.
This research initially analyses secondary data of food bank operations in a chase to identify potential existing problems in the current approach. The analysis will also help tailor the implementation to the requirements identified. The implementation involves developing a hybrid DApp using the MERN Stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node) to develop a user interface and a REST API and, at the same time, using Truffle Suite and the Solidity programming language to develop a smart contract to set the underlying logic of the application. In addition, the implementation will also feature the implementation of a Web3 login API for the easy and secure identification and registration of potential users.
The research highlights the issues identified in foodbanks operations and proves consistency with the existing literature. The paper concludes that a decentralised system that uses blockchain technology and food circularity theory can strongly support food redistribution to reduce food poverty.
Considering the research gaps when it comes to the implementation of decentralised systems to help overcome food poverty. This project assesses, evaluates and, most importantly, proves that such systems can indeed help solve one of the most concerning global problems. Furthermore, the outcome of the implementation is a fully working pre-alpha version of a hybrid DApp, which is not to be identified anywhere else in this form. In addition, the development of a Web3 authentication protocol that can be embedded in existing applications has the potential to support the growth of the DApp industry by providing a reliable and easy to integrate user authentication solution.
As far as the end-user is concerned there is not much difference between traditional web applications. The front end is built using the ReactJS framework, one of the most popular frameworks used in the industry. While arguably the backend does not exist in the way we used to describe it, because the front end only interacts with the blockchain contract and network which can be the main network or private network. In contrast, a traditional app interacts with one or multiple web servers which hold the frontend, backend and database.
FLAMEAL is conceptualised to take the best from both worlds, the transferred data is stored on the blockchain while additional user information is stored in a traditional database. This concept is also known as hybrid DApp. But although the app uses elements of traditional web apps which can make the app vulnerable or centralised, it works independently of the centralised database. The database is only meant to hold information about users by linking the wallet address with the name of the organisations and to provide foodbank edit functionality.
