For the community, by the community: Optimizing the ROI of Catalyst through listening to builders, expert analysis and assessment of Cardano’s Community Grants Fund. Brought to you by Catalyst and Intersect MBO Architects.

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

Additional applicants

Johnny Nguyen

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

No dependencies

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

Project will be fully open source

[METADATA] Category of proposal

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Getting the next 1B users on Cardano is a heavy lift that requires coordination between thousands of individuals and dozens of entities. It necessitates a focus on providing utility for end-users. This cannot be achieved without having a shared strategic understanding of what are the current strengths & weaknesses of the systems we have in place to nurture builders. 

This understanding needs to be grounded in objective observations, accessible to all of Cardano’s stakeholders, and most importantly, actionable. Cardano is made up of many stakeholders, constituencies, and end-user communities with each addressing a specific subset of challenges in broader use and adoption. While each of these stakeholder groups has many interdependencies, there has been little prior effort to show how they relate to one another.

Alarmingly, there is no public place where one can learn what is the experience of end-users, developers, entrepreneurs, and grassroots institutions. We are flying blind, with severe information asymmetry between actors, and a lack of accountability that leads to wasted efforts and missed opportunities. Let’s unblock what is preventing us from coordinating our actions.

We are starting off by making visible the de-facto systems and strategies in place, as well as how current policies and systems are affecting builders and end-users. We think that providing this shared view is the healthy baseline from which we can develop a strategy that is truly decentralized and effective.

In order to improve Catalyst, we must understand the space that Catalyst is best suited to occupy and the capabilities that Catalyst is best suited to deliver within the broader ecosystem context. This requires zooming out and developing a holistic and properly nuanced understanding of the many institutions and stakeholders that currently exist within the broader ecosystem and carving out space for these institutions and their constituencies to optimally coexist.

We will provide three main deliverables:

• A main report that includes the assessment details and recommendations to address issues and opportunities identified.
• A series of workshops with stakeholders aiming to turn the report conclusions into actions.
• A follow-up report tracking what actions are taking place.

The main report will include the following elements:

Ecosystem Architecture Framework:

• Segments of the Ecosystem Architecture Framework
• Development OF Cardano (Underlying Technology Stack)
• Building ON Cardano (DApp developer experience)
• Governance of Ecosystem
• Governance of Cardano 
• Operating Cardano 

We will use the ecosystem architecture framework to focus on the roles that Catalyst is best suited for and the capabilities that Catalyst delivers, primarily “Building on Cardano” and “Governance of Ecosystem”.

Additionally, we will break out the capabilities under “Development of Cardano” and show how these capabilities can be delivered by the Intersect MBO and can be broken out from Catalyst and then we will deep dive into key stakeholders and entities related to Catalyst’s mechanisms, how do they coordinate and the effectiveness of those mechanisms.

Value proposition: What are the top reasons for a builder to use Catalyst? What are the biggest detractors? 

Competitive analysis: How does Catalyst compare to similar innovation programs in competing blockchains?

Ecosystem state and readiness: How many developers and businesses are building on top of Cardano? Do we have all components needed for a thriving ecosystem? What exists and what is missing?

Builder Interviews: Based upon the work that Johnny has done to bootstrap the MBO, he has developed an intimate knowledge of the builders and projects that exist within the ecosystem. Starting with an enumerated list of organizations and firms, Johnny and Dor will systematically engage with and interview these firms with standard questionnaires and long-form dialogue to bring their diversity of thought and perspective into the public light. The baseline list of organizations and projects includes (but is not limited to):

Builders of Cardano: MLabs, dcSpark, Obsidian Systems, TWEAG/Modus Create, Palo IT, Galois, Bloxico, Well-Typed, DQuadrant, Byron Networks, Well-Typed

Key Projects in Cardano: TxPipe, Aiken, Demeter.run, Blockfrost, Lucid, Plu-TS, Plutarch/Plutnomicom, Opshin, PyCardano

Explorers and Chain Analytics/Insights: CardanoScan, Pool.pm, ADATools, TapTools, Cardano Blockchain Insights, CEXplorer

Cardano Grassroots Community Institutions: CatalystSwarm, GimbaLabs, WADA, LATAM Community, Japan Community 

Among the questions that will be explored will be: What is the actual experience of Dapp developers, Ecosystem developers (building tools and services for other devs), entrepreneurs, investors, and grassroots institutions? What are the key delights and pain points they are experiencing in their journey to bring utility to Cardano?

Builder journey: What are the resources builders go through to develop on top of Cardano? Which parts of it need to be improved?

Follow-up workshops will include members of the community, builders, IOHK, Emurgo, CF, and other MBOs.

Incentives: How is funding allocated to different Catalyst categories? How effective are the incentives allocated to support functions (Assessors, mentors, service providers)?

Treasury transfers, and grants decision-making: Who decides, how do they decide and how do these processes measure up to best practices for decision-making?

Strategy: Is there an explicit strategy being followed? What is it? Are stakeholders aware of it? What is it based on?

After the report is disseminated, workshops with relevant stakeholders will take place. The goal of the workshops is to ensure the report is being processed and discussed publicly, and that participating actors get an opportunity to discuss and incorporate its conclusions into their activities.

Lastly, the team will follow up one month after the workshops and will track which actions are taken to address issues identified in the report. 

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

This challenge is all about introducing systems improvements. By taking a deep dive into the builder’s needs, experience, and journey, we make sure that systemic efforts are targeted toward where they would be the most effective. In other words, it’s easy to come up with hundreds of points to improve Catalyst, but without listening to what are the burning needs of builders and what are key challenges they face (E.g. Fundraising, using existing tooling to ship, etc) we are flying blind. Resources are constrained, and we can and should be disciplined to allocate our resources towards improvements that drive the highest impact. Having a shared compass, legitimized by being based on objective observations and established expertise, would guide future efforts and establish accountability among the stakeholders that work on improving Catalyst’s ROI.

This project will amplify the voices of many organizations and builders so that each voice can be heard clearly as one voice in a choir of many.

Another outcome is that it will help all interested members of Cardano’s community to better understand Catalyst’s mechanisms, contribute to immediate improvements, and gain greater clarity on Cardano’s broader ecosystem governance.

Additionally, even if the outcomes of this proposal will lead to just a 10% improvement in how treasury funds are governed we are looking at a minimum of 20M ada per year of value generated as an outcome. Potentially, the value will be a level of magnitude more as the token price is heavily influenced by builders' activity, which this proposal seeks to put in the center of our ecosystem.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

Success will be measured in 3 ways:

1. Delivery of proposal scope: Report and workshops.
2. A feedback survey will be shared with participants about the value they have received from the report and workshops. Participants will be builders, representatives of founding entities, and community champions.
3. One month after the delivery of the proposal we will track and publish whether there was a follow-through to address issues uncovered in the assessment.

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

The main report will be formatted as a PDF and will be disseminated through the Cardano Forum, relevant TG channels, and Catalyst Townhall (or after townhall).

Workshops will be recorded, and published on Youtube, and links to them shared through community channels.

A report of follow-up will be disseminated through community channels.

We expect that outcomes from this work will impact challenge definitions in Catalyst, provide a great framework for proposers to work with, and will inform the emerging Voltaire roadmap and implementation.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Dor Garbash has worked as Head of Governance in IOHK and Head of Ecosystem in Mina’s blockchain. He initiated and led the Creation and growth of Catalyst as well as the early formation of Cardano’s governance and Drep structure. In Mina, he has led the creation of Onchain governance and their Radical Innovation Fund zkIgnite. Dor also led the development of the first decentralized proposal system in Ethereum as part of his role as a product manager in DAOstack.

Johnny Nguyen was a Director at IOHK and initially responsible for the Decentralized Consortium Fund and then subsequently the Cardano Member-Based Organization. Johnny laid much of the groundwork that resulted in what is now known as the Intersect MBO. Johnny has a career in enterprise technology that spans nearly three decades with emphasis on software engineering, application development, and enterprise architecture. In addition to his role and contributions at IOG, Johnny has always been a voice in Cardano Community and is an advisor to several ecosystem projects including Charli3 and Indigo Protocol. Johnny is an advocate for Open Source Software and Open Collaboration and has moderated panels on Open Source Development in Cardano at the Cardano Summit.

Additional links:

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

1. Provide the Cardano community and stakeholders with a shared understanding of the current state of builder experience, journey, and the systems that support them.
2. Provide the Cardano community and stakeholders with a set of recommendations.
3. Provide a forum for Stakeholders and the community to process and discuss the report.
4. Establish accountability through tracking actions to address the identified issues.

We will validate by approach by asking for feedback from participants.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Milestone 1 Research - 1 month - 69,714 ada

• Framing Catalyst in Context of Broader Ecosystem Architecture Framework
• Conduct Builder interviews
• Gather publicly available data
• Review documents
• Send information inquiries to various stakeholders

Success criteria: Deliverables delivered

Milestone 2 Analysis - 4 weeks - 69,714 ada

• Map Catalyst Capabilities onto Ecosystem Architecture Framework
• Summarize insights from Builder interviews
• Analyze publicly gathered data
• Summarize information gathered from documents and inquiries
• Provide recommendations

Success criteria: Deliverables delivered 

Milestone 3 Report publishing - 2 weeks - 34,857 ada + 5000 ada for design.

• Granular Analysis of Catalyst Capabilities and Mechanisms
• Organizing all information in PDF
• Disseminating PDF
• Sending out invites to public workshops

Success criteria: Deliverables delivered

Milestone 4 Workshops - 2 weeks - 34,857 ada

• Organizing 2 workshops
• Gathering feedback on report and workshops
• Disseminating workshop recordings

Success criteria: Deliverables delivered

Milestone 5 Project closeout - 1 month - 34,857 ada

• Tracking follow-up from participants
• Publishing feedback on reports and workshop
• Announcing next steps.

Success criteria: Deliverables delivered + Received positive feedback on report and workshops + Community informed about follow-up from participants.

Project management approach:

We intend to keep it simple and divide tasks between the both of us, tracking progress over a Kanban board.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

Milestone title: Research

Deliverables: Interview with different participant groups, Gather publicly available data, Review documents, Send information inquiries to various stakeholders

Outputs: Gather the experiences of key participant groups, estimate the ecosystem's current size, and collect existing governance models, incentives, and decision processes.

Documentation: Raw interview transcriptions, data, and documents.

Milestone title: Analysis

Deliverables: Summarize insights from interviews, analyze publicly gathered data, summarize information gathered from documents and inquiries, and provide recommendations.

Outputs: All data is processed into our assessment framework in a succinct format. Review of outcomes and writing of recommendations.

Documentation: Report formatted in a Google doc and a bunch of governance and ecosystem models visualizations.

Milestone title: Report publishing

Deliverables: Organizing all information in PDF, disseminating PDF, and sending out invites to public workshops.

Outputs: The community can read the report in a friendly format.

Documentation: A PDF, a slide deck summarizing key findings for each section.

Milestone title: Workshops

Deliverables: Organizing 2 workshops, gathering feedback on the report and workshop, and disseminating workshop recordings.

Outputs: The report is being discussed, and conclusions and next steps get decided on.

Documentation: Recording and meeting summary.

Milestone title: Closeout

Deliverables: Tracking follow-up from workshop participants, publishing feedback on report and workshop, announcing next steps.

Outputs: We learn and assess the success and impact of our work. Participants are held accountable and the community is informed of unaddressed issues to focus on.

Documentation: Closeout report, action tracking document.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Radical Ecosystems (Dor) - 122,000 ada

Johnny Nguyen - 122,000 ada

Graphic design services - 5000 ada

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

• Assuming that the overall benefit from a better strategy will lead to at least a 10% increase in the outcomes from funds spent through Catalyst and Governance processes, the expected ROI from this project will be about 85X ([249,000 ada cost]/[20,000,000 ada in value-add]) for the first year alone. 
• Similar work conducted by a top-tier consulting firm would cost ~$500K. We will provide similar outcomes of higher quality for about 20% of that cost.
• As two seasoned blockchain executives, costs here are marginal compared to our “market rate”, which is north of $1M/Y combined.
• Token price is heavily dependent on builder activity and effectiveness. This proposal sets a foundation that would help drive Catalyst into a leader in the industry.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.