UCANs Demos - 22nd May 2025 - Sharebox, SecretShare - PLDG 3

[Dhruv-Varshney-developer]

UCANs Demos - 22nd May 2025 - Sharebox, SecretShare - PLDG 3

Contributors

ShareBox:

• @Dhruv-Varshney-developer
• @AkashJana18

SecretShare:

• @Nkovaturient
• @gulshanpr

Accomplished Tasks

• Worked on a set of ideas to work throughout the cohort for demos that can be built to showcase the capabilities of UCANs
• Completed initial setup work on both Sharebox and SecretShare
• Created work plan and detailed tasks for both demos, split the work in teams of 2 and assigned the tasks.
• Completed upload feature for Sharebox

Update

• Currently working on SecretShare and Sharebox in subteams of 2, aiming to complete them as quickly as possible
• Frontend development was completed quickly for both projects
• Storacha integration required significant time to understand and integrate properly. The main issues were following wrong approaches to complete the task. The primary root cause was a lack of examples. Therefore, the demos we are creating will be extremely helpful for developers building on Storacha.
• UCAN delegation issue:
  • Got stuck on a simple issue where I didn't realize the output from w3 delegation create was truncated in terminal
  • When creating UCAN delegations using w3 delegation create <did_from_ucan-key_command_above> --base64, the terminal output is sometimes truncated, which can cause developers to paste incomplete PROOF in the environment variables.
  • A workaround that worked well: Adding the output to a proof.txt file using w3 delegation create <did_from_ucan-key_command_above> --base64 >> proof.txt . Adding this in official docs could be helpful for other devs as well who may run into issues due to truncated output in terminal.
  • Potential solutions to improve developer experience around creating UCAN delegations:
    • Offer a shorter, URL-safe token or JWT wrapper: Instead of delivering a huge Base64 string, issue a short-lived JWT or compact, URL-safe encoding that the backend can expand back into a full Base64 Proof
    • Provide a CLI command: Ship a command that runs w3 delegation … --base64, stores the proof in a local config file (e.g. ~/.storacha/proof.json), and sets STORACHA_PROOF automatically.
  • All three patterns avoid having developers manually copy-paste giant Base64 blobs, making onboarding smoother and less error-prone.
• Properly parsing uploaded files in the app and sending data to Storacha was challenging, but issues were more related to the Formidable library and app's backend rather than with Storacha integration
• Overall work progress went great

Demo

Screen.Recording.2025-05-22.at.2.43.37.PM.mov

Questions

• Would like a review on the demo ideas and feedback on whether any demo ideas should be prioritised over others?

Next Tasks

Sharebox:

• Implement ShareFile Feature
• Build Access and revoke file feature
• Create docs and readme for beginners and newcomers
• Produce demo video explaining the project and Storacha integration

SecretShare:

• Integrate Storacha SDK for secure upload and retrieval of secrets
• Implement UCAN issuance & validation with expiry and usage scope
• Build secret owner dashboard to track UCANs and secret accesses
• Revamp README.md for SecretShare – well-documented & developer-friendly

Relevant Links:

• SecretShare: https://github.com/Nkovaturient/SecretShare
• ShareBox: https://github.com/Dhruv-Varshney-developer/ShareBox-Storacha
• Ideas for demos: https://wiry-faucet-9b2.notion.site/Ideas-for-demos-1f2256eba17880a99ebad68e691c7919?pvs=74

[Nkovaturient]

@Dhruv-Varshney-developer appreciate your efforts, you hv covered everything so far, we will give our input and update once we achieve something substantial.
Thankyou! ✨

[jamiechicago312]

Will review your demo today thank you!