With transaction metadata, Cardano can be utilized as a network to store small proofs of events or documents. This utility has been used in the past to implement product anti-counterfeit solutions as well as traceability solutions. Smart contracts are not necessary to take advantage of this functionality.

This challenge is for you if you have problems that involve:

• Demonstrate to external parties that a specific document has not been tampered with.
• Demonstrate to external parties that a specific event took place.
• Demonstrate to external parties that a document existed at a specific date/time.
• Demonstrate any or all of the above without revealing the document or the event's data (because of privacy concerns).

IOHK is pleased to announce that we will support and provide expert advice to the proposal winners. The same team that created the New Balance and Beefchain solutions will be offering these services to the proposal winners for 6 months after the winners are announced:

• 1 hr a week of expert advice from IOHK's solutions architects and technical consultants.
• Email address for offline queries.
• Architectural/design/technical reviews.

How success looks like

Prototypes are built that utilize metadata to solve real life problems. The prototypes are presented to the Catalyst community in any of the town halls.

Key metrics to measure

At the end of this challenge, we will be asking ourselves:

• Potential amount of users that can be brought onto Cardano.
• Community feedback (positive/negative) about the prototypes after presentation.
• Followup Catalyst proposals.

Guiding questions

• What is the target audience?
• Who are the potential users of the platform?
• What is the problem that metadata is solving?
• Why does the target audience care about the solution? Why would they install/use the solution?
• Does the solution need hardware components?
• What would retain the user on the solution? That is, after installation, why would you keep using it? What value does it bring to the user (continuously)?

Potential directions

• Traceability
• Product Authentication
• Auditable decentralized document workflows (i.e. HelloSign solutions or similar).