📰 PolkaNews — A Credibility-First News Platform

PolkaNews is a decentralized news platform where reporters are rewarded for publishing truthful content. It uses an AI-based oracle to verify the authenticity of news submissions and mints on-chain rewards (TruthTokens) for verified content.

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🌐 Why Polkadot AssetHub?

We chose Polkadot's AssetHub for its:

• EVM compatibility: Seamless deployment of Solidity contracts using PolkaVM.
• Low gas fees: Cost-effective transaction execution for a high-frequency app like news publishing.
• Interoperability: Opens up future integration with other parachains and data layers.
• Native asset support: Makes reward distribution and fee mechanics more efficient via native token standards.

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🛠️ Features of AssetHub that Enable PolkaNews

• ✅ Smart contract support via PolkaVM
• ✅ Native assets creation and transfer
• ✅ Custom fee structures for fine-grained control
• ✅ Support for event-based off-chain triggers
• ✅ Bridges and XCMP-ready for future composability

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🔗 Project Links

• 🧠 Frontend GitHub: PolkaNews Frontend
• 🔐 Smart Contract GitHub: PolkaNews Contracts
• 🧪 Deployed Contract Addresses (AssetHub Testnet):
  • TruthToken: 0x4437F9F98613A0269d7b37D35a37025D8e240881
  • SubscriptionManager: 0x0aAFC279D67297BeF1cB717d51342EdBDA266798
  • PolkaNews: 0x74863B9AAECCB34238FA5f607B03242ddc62e1aF

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💻 How to Run Locally

🧱 Prerequisites

• Node.js + npm
• Hardhat
• Git
• A local HTTP RPC URL or Polkadot AssetHub testnet endpoint

📦 Installation

git clone https://github.com/Raaghav-m/PolkaNews
cd PolkaNews
Frontend
bash
cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

Backend (New Terminal)

cd server
npm install
node script.js

🔐 Environment Variables Make sure to create a .env file in both the frontend/ and server/ directories.

frontend/.env

NEXT_PUBLIC_TRUTH_TOKEN_ADDRESS=0x4437F9F98613A0269d7b37D35a37025D8e240881
NEXT_PUBLIC_POLKANEWS_ADDRESS=0x74863B9AAECCB34238FA5f607B03242ddc62e1aF
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUBSCRIPTION_ADDRESS=0x0aAFC279D67297BeF1cB717d51342EdBDA266798
NEXT_PUBLIC_PINATA_API_KEY=<pinata_api_key>
NEXT_PUBLIC_PINATA_SECRET=<pinata_api_secret>

server/.env

ORACLE_PRIVATE_KEY=<oracle_private_key>
OPENAI_API_KEY=<openai_api_key>
PINATA_API_KEY=<pinata_api_key>
PINATA_SECRET_KEY=<pinata_api_secret>
RPC_URL=https://testnet-passet-hub-eth-rpc.polkadot.io
POLKANEWS_ADDRESS=0x815F645cc9090CB289AA6653a02Dc0Bcac10a13E

🚀 Future Improvements (Phase 2)

-🧠 Integrate ZK-based proofs for oracle validation

-🗳 Implement community-based upvote/downvote system

-🛰 Enable news cross-posting across parachains using XCMP

-📲 Add reporter and user reputation scores on-chain

🙌 Credits

-💻 Developed by Raaghav Manivel

-🧠 AI Oracle powered by OpenAI's GPT-4

-⚙️ Built during the Polkadot AssetHub Hackathon

-📷 UI/UX inspired by decentralized publishing tools