At Arbitrum Roll’up Hack 25, SRMAP Team Soul Society—Rohan Mohanta and Jayesh Krishna, BTech CSE 2nd year students —set out to solve a fundamental challenge in the blockchain ecosystem: making blockchain technology accessible to newcomers. By combining the growing familiarity of conversational AI with the power of blockchain automation, the team built BlockOps, an AI-powered platform that simplifies Blockchain Operations and DeFi workflows. Their innovative and practical approach earned them 2nd place at the hackathon.

To give deeper insight into their solution, development process, and future roadmap, they’ve answered few questions about their hackathon experience.

What do you think was the key factor behind your winning solution?

The key factor behind our winning solution was our focus on solving a real-world problem faced by newcomers in the blockchain space. Blockchain systems can be complex and intimidating for first-time users. Since AI has become a part of everyday life and people are already comfortable interacting with chat-based systems, we designed BlockOps to work in the same way. Users can simply chat with our AI, and it handles the underlying blockchain and DeFi operations for them. This approach significantly reduces complexity and lowers the barrier to entry for users across the ecosystem.

What was the biggest challenge you faced during the hackathon, and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge we faced was setting up the project using Stylus, a relatively new technology with limited and evolving documentation. This made the installation and configuration process difficult and time-consuming. We tried multiple approaches to solve the issue, including using AI tools, thoroughly reading the codebase, and experimenting with different setups. Ultimately, with the help and guidance of the Arbitrum team, we were able to overcome these challenges and successfully move forward with development.

How do you plan to take your project forward after the hackathon?

Blockchain is a vast ecosystem with multiple chains, each having its own protocols and standards. Moving forward, we aim to integrate support for multiple blockchains and protocols into BlockOps, making it a comprehensive automation platform. Our long-term vision is to evolve BlockOps into a fully usable product that enables people around the world to manage blockchain and DeFi operations easily, efficiently, and securely.