BirdQuest

I've been birdwatching for over a decade. These are some of its shortcomings:

1. No social layer: birdwatching is solitary, no one shares trips like Strava/Flighty
2. No incentives: nothing pushing me to stay consistent like Duolingo streaks or GitHub commits
3. Boring tools: existing apps focus on data entry > fun experiences, no reason to log observations

Most casual birders never log their sightings because there's no reward or motivation to do so.

How do we incentivize more people to contribute to birding data?

That's where BirdQuest comes in:

1. Social

   • Share Cards — share your birding trip stats, just like Strava/Flighty
   • Community map — see where other birders have been and tap any trip to view their sightings

2. Incentives + Gamification

   • Onchain rewards — earn BIRD tokens every trip, weighted by distance, time, and species rarity
   • Weekly quests — compete on a live leaderboard for a HBAR prize pool, paid out automatically onchain
   • NFT badges — mint badges like First Trip and Rare Bird directly to your wallet
   • Tip users — tip other birders for great finds!

3. Direct Contribution to iNaturalist

   • AI bird identification — point your camera at a bird, get an instant ID powered by Claude vision
   • iNaturalist sync — publish sightings to the largest citizen science database in one tap
     • https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_id=birdquest&verifiable=any

Unlike other apps that force you to start from scratch, BirdQuest lets you contribute directly to the world's largest biodiversity dataset with over 4 million contributors.

Mobile: React Native via Expo
Backend: Next.js API routes deployed on Vercel
Database: Supabase (complex retrieval of trip history, leaderboards, quest management)
AI: Claude API for bird identification
iNaturalist API: directly publishing observations to iNaturalist

BirdQuest uses both Hedera and Dynamic comprehensively:

Hedera

1. HCS (Hedera Consensus Service) — every trip is submitted as an immutable, timestamped message to a public topic. This creates a tamper-proof audit trail of all birdwatching activity independent of our database.
   • https://hashscan.io/testnet/topic/0.0.8504662
2. HTS fungible tokens (BIRD) — a custom token minted to users at the end of each trip. Scoring factors in distance, time, and species rarity. The operator treasury mints and transfers tokens server-side with sub-cent fees.
   • https://hashscan.io/testnet/token/0.0.8504663
3. HTS NFTs (BQBADGE) — achievement badges minted as non-fungible tokens and transferred to users' wallets. Each badge carries on-chain metadata (name, image) verified via the Mirror Node API to prevent duplicates.
   • https://hashscan.io/testnet/token/0.0.8506713
4. Scheduled Transactions — weekly quest payouts use ScheduleCreateTransaction with waitForExpiry to create a publicly auditable, time-locked HBAR distribution to the top 3 finishers. The schedule ID is stored and linked to Hashscan so anyone can verify the payout.
5. Mirror Node API — used for fetching user’s NFT badges + BIRD token balance.

The operator account handles all token transfers server-side, so users never pay gas.

Operator account:

• 0.0.8474143
• 0x072ab32855835d3d4a837f92a26275f3ee8cb84d

Dynamic

• Embedded wallet creation via username + email
  • Username useful for social aspect
• Custom chain: Hedera Testnet (EVM)
• Various hooks
  • state, address, wallet/login modal
• Transactions
  • Tipping and receiving tokens