Below is a compilation of innovative project ideas curated by the Waku community. These ideas cover a wide range of use cases and applications, showcasing the versatility and potential of the Waku protocol for decentralized, privacy preserving communication and beyond.
Note : Numerous traditional chat applications have already harnessed Waku's capabilities. To truly innovate and avoid re-inventing the wheel, we encourage hackers to explore untapped possibilities and unique projects that integrate Waku in other novel ways apart from chat.
Polling/Voting
Enable polling or voting off-chain, vote results could be aggregated and submitted on-chain in one transaction.
Marketplace (buy/sell goods or NFTs, ride-share, llm, etc)
Send offer and negotiate off-chain. Highest bids sent over Waku could be binding and submitted to the contract by the seller. This could include using Waku to enable LLM marketplace where several providers compete to be the one to generate a user's request.
Collaborative Editing
Use Waku for live collaborative editing of documents, saved versions of documents can then be stored on decentralized storage.
Multiplayer Games
Waku can be used to communicate game moves off-chain, the final state (e.g., winner) can then be submitted on-chain for a reward (e.g., NFT mint or winner takes stake).
IoT Systems
Enable devices to communicate or report small data payloads in a decentralized manner. This can be an interesting way for a government agency or health organization to collect data from the population to study, in a privacy preserving manner. For example, indoor air quality sensors could be distributed to residents across a city. The authentication for data push could be done using zk tech: zk credentials of a given device is added to a zk group for a postcode, when pushing data to Waku, zk proof is used so that agency can auth the data and assign it to the right area/postcode but individual indentification or IP harvesting cannot be done. This can also become an open data initiative: anyone can collect the data from the Waku network for study (DeSci).
Decentralized Wallet Address Ownership Verification
Use Waku to enable communication between dApps and wallets, such as signature or zero-knowledge proof exchange to prove identity.
Notifications Centre
Use an SDK (probably go-waku?) to build a general Notification protocol over Waku and a mobile app allowing you to replace centralized Push Notifications provided by Apple/Google.
API Generator
Build a tool to generate a Waku protocol (and code) from a provided OpenAPI specification.
Leader Election Protocol
Leader election can be viewed as a soft consensus mechanism. Implement something like [RAFT](https://raft.github.io/) as a library on top of Waku (using any SDK), so that users can easily plug it into their applications.
Reputation Systems
Using Waku to create reputation systems that can provide a reputation score for a particular identity (wallets, smart contracts etc.,)
Censorship-Resistant Reviews Plugin
An embeddable plugin which can be used for collecting and displaying censorship-resistant reviews
Privacy-Preserving Location Tracker
A location tracker that does not expose user's location and enables them to share it with each other provided that they are shared access
Medical Systems for Remote Diagnosis
Tracking medical data from sensors and IoT devices and sending them to a doctor for remote diagnosis
Decentralized Smart Grid System
Decentralized smart grid system optimizes energy distribution and consumption by leveraging Waku to efficiently manage energy resources across a network of users and devices
Decentralized Autonomous Vehicle Coordination
Decentralized Autonomous Vehicle Coordination powered by Waku enables self-driving vehicles to securely communicate and coordinate their actions, enhancing traffic efficiency and safety within a decentralized network
Crowd-Sourced Weather Data Network
A Crowd-Sourced Weather Data Network utilizes Waku to collect and share real-time weather information from diverse sources, creating a comprehensive and accurate weather data resource for enhanced forecasts and monitoring while maintaining decentralization and privacy.
P2P Chess
A simple 2 player game where users can stake crypto and winner gets the stake
P2P TicTacToe
A simple 2 player game where users can stake crypto and play to win
Privacy-Focused Fitness Tracker
A fitness tracker which stores your health metrics and allows you to securely share it with your friends
Decentralized and Privacy-Focused Hiring Platform (Web3 version of BambooHR)
A bias-less HR platform that does not discriminate applicants based on diversifying factors
DAO/Governance Tooling
Using Waku to create, vote or approve proposals passed in a governance system
Satellite Communication Systems
Using Waku to harness satellite based communication systems that do not rely on a centralised provider
Decentralized Web Walkie-Talkie
Real-time audio communication channels built on Waku
Crypto ATMs
Decentralised ATM cards that can be used to withdraw / approve transactions at POCs
Smart Access Cards
NFC cards that can be used for various use cases like unlocking devices, signing transactions or interacting with real life elements
Secure DeFi
When a user wants to perform a transaction, ensure the transaction is made to the correct counter-party address within the correct chain.
News over Waku
Platform where people can publish news which can be voted and commented.
Budget approval app
Allow a community to approve and decide the best way to handle the common funds, and make the transactions transparent to the community.
Privacy preserving AI assistant
A privacy preserving AI assistant that does not reveal the identity of the user who sends prompts to the AI model.
Federated Learning Platform
A federated learning platform leveraging Waku for communication among edge devices. Waku ensures privacy by enabling encrypted communication channels, allowing devices to collaborate on model training tasks without sharing raw data.
Supply Chain Transparency Solution
A supply chain transparency solution incorporating Waku for secure communication and data sharing among stakeholders. Waku enables encrypted communication channels, allowing participants to exchange information about product origins, manufacturing processes, and logistics while maintaining data privacy and integrity.
Decentralised brainstorming tool
An anonymous tool for collaborative brainstorming where users can describe their ideas without having to worry about them being judged when they share ideas.
Privacy preserving confessions board
An anonymous and gamified tool for sharing confessions to other users.
Privacy preserving governance platform
A governance platform where votes are not linked to Wallets. ZK can be used to find if a wallet has the voting power but the user's vote is not transparent to other users.
Privacy preserving APIs and Data sources
REST APIs can log IP addresses of the data source and the receiver. Building a decentralized layer for enabling privacy preserving APIs alongside rate-limiting with RLN can be quite impactful
Decentralised and censorship resistant GitHub
The codebases on GitHub are vulnerable to censorship as they are stored and retrieved from a centralized source. A git client built on top of Waku is definitely an amazing idea.
2FA with Waku
Build a decentralized 2FA using Waku and RLN membership sets. RLN can be used to determine membership of a user to a 2FA group and waku can be used to communicate 2FA codes generated. Need to give more thought as to who will generate 2FAs and how can they be secure i.e the generator should not be aware of the user of the generated code.
Do you wish to see your idea listed above? Refer to our contribution guide