Catalyst Completed Project NFTs

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

Additional applicants

Darlington Kofa

[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.”

This project is designed to use the NMKR Dev API, as described in the Campaign brief. As such, there is an inherent dependency in the NMKR platform. Our past experience with NMKR gives us no reason to anticipate any issue with using it for this project.

In the case of a catastrophic turn on events where NMKR is not available, we would deliver on this proposal using a different platform.

[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.

Whether your experience is as a a funded proposer who has completed a project, or simply as a Catalyst Community member, there is little doubt:

Completed Projects do not get a lot of attention.

• As a proposer, you might be lucky enough to get an email from your challenge team confirming completion. Otherwise, you just take it as a good sign when the final payment shows up in your wallet! There is no fanfare. If you want to share your accomplishment with your followers and the wider Cardano community, it is entirely up to you to generate that messaging and content.
• As a community member, you may see certain few completed projects featured on Town Halls; otherwise it's up to you if you want to track down project results on a Google Spreadsheet (or mutable centralized sources like projectcatalyst.io or on the Lido Nation Catalyst Explorer!)

Our solution will offer completed projects the opportunity to mint a "Project Completion'' NFT to celebrate and commemorate their achievement.

The NFTs will bring together custom metadata and design elements that uniquely reflect the completed project, along with a standard "Achievement badge" design that will be immediately recognizable when it is shared and displayed.

Who it benefits:

• This solution benefits Project Teams by providing them easily shareable proofs of achievement.
• This solution gives the community a recognizable symbol to identify productive Catalyst contributors.
• Other community builders can learn from our open-source code & implementation to use NMKR for their own projects!
• Completed projects can be queried directly from the blockchain under a single policy ID

What we already have:

Lido Nation's Catalyst Explorer already allows Catalyst participants to register on the site, verify their identity through ideascale, and manage elements of their profile. Lido Nation also already supports the functionality for users to connect their wallet and mint NFTs for different programs. The Catalyst Explorer also maintains up-to-date data about current and past Catalyst proposals, including project completion status.

This solution builds on this existing architecture and data to offer users the ability to mint a "Project Completion" NFT for every completed project that they participated on as a proposer (or registered co-proposer).

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

This Campaign's definition of success is incredibly straightforward and concise: it calls for more NFT tools implementing the NMKR Dev API. The defined metrics for success are as follows:

1. Tools/Projects successfully released: Check!
2. Time from funding to market: As described in the previous section, lots of the heavy lifting for this project is already in place on the Lido Nation website, including login, Catalyst User identity verification, wallet integration, and updated Catalyst Data.
3. Amount of users for these projects/tools: This project has the potential to attract and sustain a large and growing pool of users. This project will fund the first 1000 completed projects to mint their Project Completion NFTs for FREE. (Currently there are only about 500 completed projects).

Beyond the first 1000, the Project Completion NFTs will continue to be available for a suggested donation amount to cover maintenance costs. The Catalyst Explorer tool where this will be housed sees hundreds of unique site visitors per day when Catalyst Funds are active, meaning that in addition to any other marketing we may do, we have a built-in audience of many site users. For those users who are also funded proposers, we anticipate that a free NFT to mark their achievement will be "easy to sell".

Impact

Enabling and Incentivizing more community engagement with completed projects:

With easy access to a Catalyst Completed Project NFT, we believe we can enable and incentive more of the behaviors and outcomes that we would like to see around project completion:

1) Project Teams will have a celebratory ritual to mark project completion

2) Unique and recognizable NFT images provide a project team with "Ready Made" marketing collateral to share with their audience.

3) Community members can get to know and recognize the achievements of the people and groups who are achieving great things through Project Catalyst. (Proposers who mint completion badges can have them displayed on their Catalyst Explorer profile if they choose)

4) More community members and prospers find their way to the Catalyst Explorer tool, which enables easier access and research-minded inquiries into the Catalyst ecosystem.

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

In every blockchain ecosystem that supports NFTs, we have seen that people flock around collections that signal some sense of community, belonging, or success. With NFTs as a symbol of some identity, no matter how silly, people rally around a common purpose. Project Catalyst has not, to date, leveraged this powerful human element of blockchain. Furthermore, the lack of recognition and fanfare for completed projects is a problem that we can help solve. Project Catalyst does not exist to fund projects – it exists to fund the OUTCOMES of completed projects! Today, those outcomes are like a tree that falls in the woods when no one is there to listen.

A Project Completion NFT can become, like other NFTs, a symbol of being in the cool kid club! It can encourage project teams to make some noise in public by sharing their NFT and inviting others to check out their project outcomes. It can provide the public a token to look for when they seek out cool projects to follow, or mentors for their own Catalyst bid.

Measuring objective impact will be an easy matter of tracking numbers of Project Completion NFTs in the Lido Nation Catalyst Explorer.

Tracking how people use them in the wild will be something that is felt rather than measured. The minting page will make the suggestion that minters should use their NFT as an easy way to share and broadcast their accomplishment and invite the community to check out their outcome. We will also provide a Twitter Hashtag on the minting page that users can deploy when they share their Project Completion NFTs, which will provide one way to see them in the wild, for those that choose to use it.

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

This is a relatively simple project that will be built in three phases:

Phase 1: NFT design: the completed design will combine common thematic elements that will make recognizable badges, along with custom generated elements that are based on the project itself: The design will be shared in the first milestone project report.

Phase 2: building the NFT minting platform and page with integration to the NMKR API.The minting platform will become available to users at the second project milestone report.

Phase 3: Finalizing the open-source code to share publicly. The code will be publicly available on GitLab at the final milestone/project completion report. We anticipate that other projects will find it useful when building their own NFT solutions in collaboration with NMKR.

We will mint and share our own Project Completion NFTs to get the party started!

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

The Lido Nation team has delivered 8 Project Catalyst projects, and is fully invested and involved in the community, at both virtual and in-person events.

Both project leads are Cardano Ambassadors.

Darlington is a full-stack Software and DevOps Engineer with experience running his own company.

Stephanie was trained as a studio artist, and works as a software consultant.

Most parts of this project are areas where we have already demonstrated excellence and success: Darlington has led the software development side of our website, lidonation.com, the Catalyst Explorer, and all of our projects, and he leads our team of developer apprentices at the Ngong Road Blockchain Lab in Kenya. Stephanie is the artist behind the “Day at the Lake” NFT series, where pond microorganisms meet fascinating facts and freeform poetry, as well as the achievement badge NFTs for our Swahili Learn to Earn project.

We use salesforce.com CRM platform as our project tracking and reporting tool. Those who have followed our project reporting from earlier projects may have seen our reporting outputs from this system. The project plan will be inputted into Salesforce as a full set of User Stories and Requirements. These records can be assigned to the members of the project team, given due dates, and marked as Complete when they are done. These records can be assigned to “Epics” that correspond to our documented Milestones, so that it’s easy to know what needs to happen to deliver each Milestone. Thus we always have an easy pulse check to see if we are on-track with our plan. As with previous projects, these reports will be shared with the community at Milestone checkpoints (project reports) along the way.

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

The goals for this project are entirely straightforward:

1. Provide a tool to mint Project Completion NFTs for successfully completed Project Catalyst projects using NMKR.
2. Make the code Open Source.

As a team, there is nothing here that we haven’t done before in different contexts, so we see no issues with feasibility.

[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: NFT design.

Design the achievement badge such that it is both recognizable and responsive to unique elements for each completed project.

Time Frame: 3 months.

Milestone 2: Minting page.

Build & soft launch of the NFT minting page, using NMKR API. Includes front end User Interface and back end development.

Time Frame: 2 months.

Milestone 3: Open Source.

Dev team does final cleanup and bug/fix after launch. All code is open-sourced and available on GitLab.

Time Frame: 1 month.

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

Milestone 1: NFT design.

Design the achievement badge such that it is both recognizable and responsive to unique elements for each completed project. Sample NFTs will be shared in the Milestone report, with a description of any notable design elements, and how the unique elements for each project are generated for the NFT.

Milestone 2: Minting page.

At this milestone, the NFT minting page will be live; following the milestone report, project teams will be able to visit the Catalyst Explorer, verify their user credentials through IdeaScale, and mint their Project Completion NFTs.

Milestone 3: Open Source.

At this milestone, the source code will be available on GitLab

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

ADA 12,500 NFT Design/s: This amount pays the NFT artist about $25/hour for 150 hours of work. This time includes research into various tools that will be used to integrate custom/responsive design elements, design prototyping, and working with the developer team to implement the final design elements. (We all know the artist will probably spend a lot more time than this, because - artists! That’s why they’re starving. But don’t worry, she will keep her day job) This is scoped to be more complicated (and interesting!) than a single, static “Achievement Badge.” Using a variety of digital tools, the NFTs will be designed to be both recognizable and dynamic to reflect the great variety represented in Project Catalyst.

ADA 4,100: Project Management & Reporting: This pays for an average of two hours per week at $25/hour, for the full project duration of six months for project management. Tasks include project task setup and assignments, weekly meeting with project team, tracking tasks and next steps, and organizing and presenting assets for milestone reporting.

ADA 4,100 Responsive Design tools: We are evaluating several services and tools that would allow us to generate unique design elements for each Project Completion NFT design. Most of these have a subscription or per-use cost. This budget item allows us to support the tool for the first 1000 completed projects, or for two years.

If the tool continues to be popular beyond that timeframe, we would continue to support it on a suggested-donation basis..

ADA 25,000: Developer Time: this pays for about 150 hours of developer time, shared between our senior developer (billing rate $75/hr in the United States) and our developer apprentice team at the Ngong Road Blockchain Lab in Nairobi, Kenya (billing rate $5-$10/hour depending on experience). This project would give our group of Cardano apprentices exposure and experience with NMKR API along with other elements of NFT minting front and back end development.

ADA 4,100: Marketing, Customer Support, Product Support: Lido Nation is active on Twitter, on Twitter Spaces, at Project Catalyst Town Hall meetings, and at other virtual & in-person events. We will be eager to invite people to come mint their Project Completion NFT, and hopefully to also engage in ongoing Project Catalyst research when they visit the Catalyst Explorer tool where the minting will live. There is a certain amount of ongoing customer support, because we personally verify user identities between the Catalyst Explorer and Ideascale. (This functionality already exists for proposers to be able to claim and update their profile in Catalyst Explorer. Users who have already verified will not need to do it again!) We also know that any new tool will require some amount of ongoing support, break/fix, product updates, etc. We are committed to ongoing Marketing and Support of the minting tool for 2 years after funding (and beyond, if the community uses it!)

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

As detailed in the budget breakdown, the costs represent time and cost at market rates in the USA and Kenya where our team is based.

However, we think the VALUE of this project has the potential to greatly exceed its cost!

• Provides a free or low cost marketing tool for all Project Catalyst completed projects (Free for first 1000 projects, suggested-donation cost after that).
• Increases community engagement with complete projects.
• Increases community engagement with the Catalyst Explorer to do research.

*Provides free open-source code for others to build with.

Launches a project using NMKR API.

Increases community cohesion & identity by providing an NFT achievement badge for completed projects to display proudly

[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.