Hello Product Hunt! Last March during my final semester of college, I started my first online HTML course, today I'm unveiling my first large project! Let me tell you a little about how I got here. 2 years ago, as a requirement for my ESET (Electronic Systems Engineering Technology) degree from Texas A&M, I took a course called "Product Development" but really it should have been titled something like "Entrepreneurship for Engineers". The entire course was very much focused more on building a startup than building a product, but I'm thankful for that because it got me hooked on the idea of building a startup. I joined an org at school, Engineering Inc. , which helped engineering students with startup ideas. I went in with a business idea based on one of my passions, soccer coaching, and with the help of the advisors, learned about the Lean Startup methodology and started to build my business plan. Over the course of my senior year I researched, interviewed customers, iterated on my product and built pitches. When I finally thought that I had something worth building, I came to a realization that put a giant hole in my master plan to become an entrepreneur. I didn't know how to build a product. So I spent some time reflecting and realized that I didn't yet possess the skill set to build a business. My degree focused on hardware and firmware, I didn't know anything about building a web app. Over spring break I started teaching myself web development. As I neared graduation I decided to pursue gaining some experience in industry before I returned to my goal of being an entrepreneur. After a few months of online courses, I got bored of the monotony and set off on doing what I wanted to do in the first place, build something on my own. I'm a big fan of the idea of decentralizing the internet but the crypto community is somewhat ... immature. I was super amazed when I discovered IPFS and Protocol Labs, to me these are the kind of technologies that will bring about a freer and more open internet, sure crypto will be a part of it, but not all of it. The biggest reason I want to see a decentralized internet is to increase the access and flow to communication. That's what I tried to achieve with AgoraChat. AgoraChat is very much an MVP. From the code to the execution, it is certainly the work of a novice. But it does work, and that's what I wanted to achieve. Anyone can use it, anyone can view it and copy the source, and it can't be taken down. That's one of the beautiful things about the IPFS network and why I chose to use it both as the base for the project and the hosting. I learned so much during this project, not just about web development but also about how to teach myself from online resources, how to solve problems and how to through and get it done when you're stuck. If you've read this far, I thank you. I hope to chat with you sometime, any feedback is appreciated. -Patrick

AgoraChat

Decentralized chat rooms built on IPFS

Decentralized chat rooms built on IPFS