Unveiling Satosh-E: Fusing AI Imagery with Lightning Network Micro-payments at MIT Bitcoin Hackathon 2023 🚀

Enrique Gamboa
4 min readOct 5, 2023

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MIT BITCOIN HACKATON — banner

Introduction

In this post, I want to share my experience at the MIT Bitcoin Hackathon: 10 Years of Building Blocks held between April 21–23, 2023, it was a remarkable journey into the realms of blockchain and artificial intelligence for me and my team. With a diverse pool of talent and a shared enthusiasm for decentralized solutions, we embarked on an adventure to meld the beauty of AI-generated images with the efficiency of Lightning Network micro-payments. The outcome? Meet Satosh-E, our brainchild destined to bridge the gap between AI and blockchain, one Satoshi at a time. 🎨⚡

Satosh-E- App logo

The Genesis of Satosh-E

In a world accustomed to OpenAI’s DALL-E 2, the idea of purchasing image credits in bulk felt somewhat limiting. The inception of Satosh-E was driven by a vision to decentralize this process, and thus, we envisioned a platform where each image generated by AI could be individually paid for, using micro-payments over the Lightning Network. The idea was simple yet profound: a web application where users submit a prompt, receive an AI-generated image, and pay for it on a per-image basis. 🖼️💡

Video submission of Satosh-E

How Satosh-E Works

Satosh-E, at its core, is a conduit between a user’s prompt and an AI-driven image generation engine. When a user submits a prompt, the app checks the node’s wallet balance, and if the funds suffice, an AI-produced image is generated. This simple yet effective process makes AI imagery accessible and transactionally straightforward. 🔄🎁

Architecture of Satosh-E

Building Satosh-E: A Blend of Tech Stack

The technical journey was as exciting as it was challenging. We employed Flask for the web app framework, which interacts seamlessly with OpenAI’s API for image generation and an LNBits wallet running on an LND node on Voltage Cloud for Lightning Network payments. Our UI was spruced up with Bootstrap while Heroku provided the deployment grounds for Satosh-E. 🛠️💻

Initial Architecture of Satosh-E

Challenges and Learnings

Each hurdle we faced was a lesson in disguise. Our initial intent to implement a community pot and tipping feature was ambitious, but time constraints nudged us to prioritize the core functionalities first. The integration of various components tested our collaborative mettle, yet the diversified skill set within our team proved to be our greatest asset. 🚧🤝

Team developing Satosh-E at MIT

The Road Ahead for Satosh-E

Satosh-E is more than just a hackathon project; it’s a glimpse into the boundless possibilities where AI and blockchain coalesce. Our roadmap is adorned with plans to integrate additional features, support separate wallets for each user, and expand the platform’s functionality to elevate the user experience. 🗺️🌟

Concluding Thoughts

The MIT Bitcoin Hackathon 2023 was more than just a competitive platform; it was a confluence of ideas, a testbed for innovation, and a community of like-minded individuals striving to push the boundaries of what’s possible at the intersection of blockchain and AI. 🎓🌐

MIT, Stata Center — Where the Hackaton happened

Acknowledgments

A big shoutout to the organizers and sponsors of the MIT Bitcoin Hackathon 2023, the creators and maintainers of Dalle2 and Lightning Network libraries, and of course, my incredible team whose tireless efforts and innovative spirit were the driving force behind Satosh-E. 🙏💖

Bitcoin logo, at MIT Stata Center

Additional Resources

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Enrique Gamboa

If art is a human abstraction, Artificial Intelligence is the abstraction of humanity 🦾