Rug Restoration: Bringing Value to Rugged NFT Projects by Providing Gaming Utility to Their Communities

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Jennifer Hanson

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

jen@yolosolos.io

Additional applicants

Kimberly Marcuche, kim@yolosolos.io

Bruno Marcuche, bruno@yolosolos.io

Richard Miles, rich@yolosolos.io 

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

7

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

No

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

No

[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?

No

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

N/A- No outputs will be open source.

[METADATA] Category of proposal

Gaming

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

We have built a survival game that is live and playable at yolosolos.io. The intention has always been to integrate other projects into our game to provide gaming utility to other projects and bring communities together, and so far we have incorporated 9 other projects into our game. 

Sometimes project founders abruptly abandon their projects. It may be that this was the founder’s intention from the beginning and this happens right after they mint, or it may be that outside circumstances require them to abandon their project suddenly. This results in a rug pull, and that project is considered “rugged”. Rug pulls leave the project’s community frustrated and jaded and impacts the Cardano community as a whole. We want to provide something positive to communities negatively impacted by rug pulls.

By onboarding rugged projects into our gaming platform, we will re-engage and excite the Cardano NFT community, restoring value and participation. Once an NFT project is onboarded, this allows any holder of that project to play a survival game with game mechanics that include:

• Health and XP management
• Resource gathering, crafting, and cooking
• Risk vs reward elements in predator battles
• Journal entries highlighting a wide variety of plants and animals
• Elements unique the onboarded NFT project, such as a special predator rooted in that project's lore

There are thousands of holders that will receive free utility, renewed value, and improve their impression of the overall Cardano community. 

We will demonstrate our impact by showing that we have onboarded two rugged projects each month.

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

This project will impact the Cardano community by adding value to projects that have been otherwise abandoned so that holders of those projects can continue to trade and spend Ada, build communities, and onboard new people into the Cardano NFT and gaming communities. We will be able to onboard tens of thousands of NFTs from 12 different projects and provide utility, community, and fun.

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

We will be able to measure the success of our project by showing that 12 rugged NFT projects that the Cardano community cares about have been onboarded onto our gaming platform and any of the holders of those projects will have access to this new utility. This will provide utility and community to tens of thousands of NFTs and their holders.

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

The Yolo Solos team has been providing consistent updates and hosting community events for over a year. We will include updates and outputs of this proposal in our four main communication channels:

1. Development updates made every Wednesday via our "Tech Trek" (development notes)
2. Twitter and Discord announcements
3. Updates to the blog on our website, yolosolos.io.
4. Updates during our Twitter spaces

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

We have been developing our survival game, Yolo Solos, with the purpose of bringing projects and communities together since January 2022. We launched a prototype of our story engine in August 2022 and have released updates every Tuesday ever since. We launched a choose your own adventure style version of the game in December of 2022 rooted in the story engine we had build that added the element of player agency by allowing players to direct their character's daily actions. We added several features including predator battles, map animation, and inventories. We launched a massive update in June 2023 that added a new map, recipes and cooking, crafting and equipping, a complete UI overhaul, and much more. It’s playable at yolosolos.io and has an extensive roadmap we’ve been delivering on consistently for the past year.

The team members have backgrounds in business, software development, and product and budget management; we are well-equipped to manage budgets for technical projects and communicate product expectations and updates to the community.

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

We will add value to the existing Cardano NFT ecosystem that will promote trading, expansion, and onboarding of new people from other blockchains. Bringing value to rugged projects and welcoming new communities that have many holders will do just that, and will help the Cardano NFT space be a more positive, influential, and investable space.

[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.

Process:

1. 1st-15th of month: Anyone in the Cardano community can nominate a rugged project they would like to be onboarded onto our Yolo Solos gaming platform through our Discord channel that we will set up
2. 16th-30th of month: Yolo Solos holders will do on-chain voting to determine which two NFT projects will be onboarded
3. 1-30th of next month (for each of the two projects): 
4. Import NFT images
5. Import metadata
6. Create customizable game elements
7. Unique predator
8. Game lore
9. Artwork
10. Marketing & Promotional Campaign
11. Twitter spaces & Discord announcements
12. Blog entries
13. Giveaways

Each project will take 60 days from initially being nominated, to being voted and approved, to launching on our platform. The first month will be spent determining the first two projects to onboard, and then the next month we will set them up while going through the nomination and voting process for the next two projects. This process will continue for two projects per month until 12 rugged projects have been onboarded at the end of 7 months.

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

When we launch the rugged projects, holders of those NFTs will simply have to connect their wallets on our website and will be able to join the game with their NFT characters.

See brief video at https://www.yolosolos.com/getstarted to see how quick and simple it is!

We will document this by adding the projects as new partners on our website, making announcements on Discord and Twitter, and posting the news in our blog on our website, yolosolos.io.

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

The funds for this project will be allocated in the following way:

Waived Partnership Fees (20%) - 7800 ADA: We will waive all onboarding fees for rugged projects.

Artwork (16%) - 6000 ADA: This includes creating sprite images and predator images for every onboarded project.

Project management of on-chain voting (16%) - 6000 ADA: This includes setting up on-chain voting for each project and managing the voting process.

Development time for onboarding (40%) - 15000 ADA: This includes downloading NFT images, processing metadata, adding sprites and predators, and purchasing NFTs for testing.

Marketing & Advertising (8%) - 3000 ADA: This includes time raising awareness of these services to the community, soliciting and organizing community requests and communication, and giveaways.

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

All of the work that will be done for this project will be paid out in Ada through the work of our internal team, and through contract workers we hire within the Cardano community and ecosystem.

Our costs are all very conservative rates for each category. We are able to achieve this by producing most of the work from the team internally, and through contract workers in the Cardano community that give us favorable rates.

[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.

I Accept