“Catalyst Reward DAO”: A collaborative platform for expert community members

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

June Akra

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

devecochallenge@gmail.com

Additional applicants

Thomas Wedler (Challenge Team F10: Developer Ecosystem, The Evolution)

Seira Yun (Socious.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?

Yes

[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

Dev Ecosystem Collaboration

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG Goals

9 - Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

10 - Reduce inequality within and among countries

SDG Subgoals

9.1 - Develop quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all

9.5 - Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of industrial sectors in all countries, in particular developing countries, including, by 2030, encouraging innovation and substantially increasing the number of research and development workers per 1 million people and public and private research and development spending

10.3 - Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome, including by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies and action in this regard

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Vision for “Catalyst Reward DAO”:

1. Permissionless Sign-up: Anyone with a wallet can join and create a profile. As credentials are verified and a track record established, the DAO will become a pool of qualified expert reviewers. The DAO will offer a more efficient, high-quality alternative to the present centralized process and earn ADA as part of the Catalyst rewards system. This is highly complimentary to the sidechain voting and Hermes Core being proposed by the Catalyst team and agnostic to endpoints or language of implementation. (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/107555)
2. Review Process: Once the project owners submit their Proof of Achievements (PoAs), the platform can assign among available and qualified reviewers to assess the project. The expert reviewers then evaluate the evidence provided by the project owners. 
3. Consensus Mechanism: The most crucial part of the process is to establish a reputation system and assign the tasks to the most qualified members, while giving everyone a chance to do some work and gain experience.
4. Result Validation: The platform distributes tasks, collects and verifies the results. If the majority of reviewers agree that the project has reached its milestones, the smart contract can trigger fund release and unlock the next phase of the project. 
5. Milestone escrow: We will work with Socious (https://www.socious.io) to provide escrow services and fill gaps in the talent pool until the membership reaches sufficient maturity. We will collaborate with them to ensure fair and on-time expert reward distribution after each review/PoA task. The escrow service will hold the PoA rewards until release to the expert reviewer upon successful completion of a milestone evaluation. Delays in payment by IOG could be bridged with the DAO Treasury as the process gets established.

NB: The project milestones are varied within 2-12 months. Projects with bigger budgets are supposed to have more milestones compared to the smaller projects along with a higher number of expert reviewers in the panel to ensure that the decisions are independent and fair. 

The scope is initially focused on the Proof of Achievement process where in Fund-9 ADA 360 rewards were given to each milestone sign-off. As the reviewer and assessor roles mature and dReps are implemented, we will be far more ambitious and expand the role of the DAO once running smoothly to all kinds of assessment and review of text-based proposals, for example Accelerators, Community Review, dRep and Judge roles.

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

DAO Challenge Settings have been a stalwart of Catalyst and a lot of useful tooling, from simple plugins to smart contract libraries have been built. We want to put a narrowed focus on Number of Communities engaged in collaboration using Cardano DAO creation tools to help existing tech - both Cardano DAO and legacy decision making software - to bring together what already exists or is currently being finished Open Source as part of Fund-9 and the Atala PRISM Launch Ecosystem, and make as many developers on Cardano part of the DAO journey. Using Catalyst review and assessment - where everyone is a stakeholder - seems ideally placed to bring exponential growth to the use of DAO Tooling on Cardano.

Combining Atala PRISM Verified Credentials and Native CNFT-Gating will allow us to explore new ways of interacting with the Continuous Testnet and Cardano Blockchain. The proposers have recently completed Plutus Pioneers Cohort 4 and Atala PRISM Cohort 2 and will continue to follow the emerging capabilities of the Voltaire and Conway tooling that is being developed. We understand the pioneering nature of trying to “force” Catalyst into a speedy process of decentralization, but feel that these pioneering development risks are exactly what makes the Cardano spirit and frontier ideation of new governance methods.

• Decentralized governance prototype for DAOs: Multiple Expert reviewers participate in the evaluation process without being controlled by any groups in particular. Instead, smart contracts will define the conditions for reaching a milestone and handle the assignment of expert reviewers. A reputation system built around decentralized identity will complement the full use of Cardano’s already rich stack for decentralized membership organizations.

• Accurate evaluation of proposals and distribution of rewards to safeguard Treasury: Expert reviewers get the opportunity to leverage their technical expertise and get rewards for doing so. The reviewers will be assigned based on their skillset and reputation via smart contract making the process fair and fully decentralized

• Transparency and accountability: The judgment and consensus reached by the reviewers are recorded on the blockchain (or Continuous Testnet), allowing for auditability and accountability. This is in contrast to the current process where the challenge team and Catalyst team arrive at different conclusions regarding PoAs. The person in charge for PoAs are not identified but rather the decision is taken as a representative opinion of the DAO. 

• On-time PoA Payment: By collaborating with an escrow service protocol within Cardano, we add an additional layer of security and trust to the process. It ensures that the funds are protected until the milestone evaluation is completed, providing assurance to both the project owner and the reviewers that the reward process is fair and transparent.

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

After 8 months (upon project completion)

• Number of expert community members engaged in funded proposal evaluation using this Review DAO: minimum target 100 experts covering at least 250 projects (number of project is based on number of funded proposals in Fund 9 around 212 projects with the assumption of growing number of proposals between funds, also taking into account that Proof of Achievement is now mandatory for all proposals)

• Number of reviews compensated with the rewards from proof of achievement: 250 funded proposal * 3 (minimum number of PoA expert reviewers per proposal) = 750 reviews

• Number of projects receive their payment on time and not delay due to human error, labor shortage or the reviewer not understand the technicality of project: 250 (number of project is based on number of funded proposals in fund 9 around 212 projects.

• Total value of transactions through the platform (ADA360/PoA 4 PoAs (average number of PoA per proposal) 250 projects = ADA 360,000

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

Bi-weekly: The project progress will be updated bi-weekly via twitter and telegram. 

Monthly basis: We will provide a monthly report as a Gitbook update and summary for each milestone ,report on dedicated DAO Discord and our Telegram channel. 

Per Milestone: We will provide feedback to refine the process and share all findings of the project team as open source on Github, dedicated Gitbook and CardanoSpot (https://cardanospot.io)

Project completion: We will share open-sourced smart contracts on Github along with the final outcome of our platform pilot result during Townhall. 

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

Proposers are Plutus Pioneers (cohorts 3 and 4), Atala PRISM Pioneers (2nd cohort) and Marlowe Pioneers. We will collaborate with impact work network Socious for the escrow and potential gaps in the initial skill pool, and Txpipe for blockchain-related design and testing support. The team covers a broad range of skills from successful startup founders, technical and business backgrounds to community functions including Challenge Teams since Fund-7 (Boosting Cardano’s DeFi) to fund 8,9 (Developer Ecosystem) and current fund 10 (Developer Ecosystem-The Evolution). We have grown the Developer Ecosystem community on telegram channel:  https://t.me/DeveloperEcosystem (140 members as of 17 July 2023) from Fund-8 until now and would like to add value to the ecosystem by applying our experience and insights which we gained from our participation in the PoA pilot in fund 9 to improve the overall process and form the Catalyst Reward DAO community. The PoA review is the last filter before Cardano Treasury funds get released to the proposers. Hence, it is crucial that the proposals will get flagged if they have not delivered what they promise to the community. 

This Catalyst Reward DAO platform would provide a special extra filter in addition to the community reviewer especially for projects which are technical and require expertise of developer reviewers. Our team have always advocated for decentralizing Catalyst. The team have been pioneers in the pilot of PoAs review for Fund-9 and have raised numerous issues with the Catalyst system. We have published extensively about the findings of process and issues in our close-out challenge report from fund 7 to fund 9 here -->

Fund 9: https://challenge-team-work.gitbook.io/f9-developer-ecosystem/

Fund 8: https://challenge-team-work.gitbook.io/f8-developer-ecosystem/

Fund 7: https://challenge-team-work.gitbook.io/f7-boosting-cardano-defi/

We emphatically raise attention to the big budget proposals, the need for PoAs and how we could improve the PoA process. We have worked closely with the Catalyst team and appreciate their continuous support and relentless commitment to improving the process and making the “Experiment” work better for all stakeholders

Our “Developer Ecosystem: The Evolution” Telegram group has been around since Fund-8. We hope that many of the technical proposers and builders will form the backbone of the “Catalyst Reward DAO” and that their collective skillset can be harnessed to provide better assessment and validation of Catalyst proposals and proposers. 

With the growing number of proposals entered into Project Catalyst with each successive funding round, it is time that we use the tools already available on Cardano to improve the oversight and funding process. We would like to invite experts from all disciplines to contribute their specific knowledge and earn rewards that are already a part of the Catalyst process while safeguarding the Cardano treasury. By doing this as a DAO and entirely open sourced, we hope to contribute to the dialogue for more accuracy in technical proposals, fairer distributed rewards and transparent PoA revision. 

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

Our team’s goal for the project is to make the PoA revision as transparent and decentralized as possible. The Catalyst Reward DAO will utilize the current resource of experts/developers in Cardano to fill the gap in technical and complex project assessment. This Review DAO prototype will protect Cardano treasury in Fund 10 as the Proof of Achievement is the last filter before funded projects receive the milestone payment. 

Our team’s goal for the project is to make the PoA revision as transparent, decentralized, utilize the current resource of experts/developers in Cardano. This will protect treasury and differentiate between the projects that have the pure intention of building things for the ecosystem VS. the projects that submit fictitious evidences to fulfill the requirement and receiving rewards. 

To ensure that our approach/process is feasible, we will work closely with developer teams and Socious as the escrow service provider to pilot this initiative to the PoA process. Our initial target is 250 funded projects with the expert involvement transaction value of ADA 360,000. 

Key Performance Indicators to measure if the goal of this project has been reached:

• The number of projects that receive their payment on time (as opposed to delayed due to human error, labor shortage or the reviewer not understanding the technicality of project: 250 (based on number of funded proposals in Fund 9: 212 with the assumption of growing number of proposals between funds)
• The number of experts/developers compensated with the rewards from proof of achievement: 250
• The number of expert/developers joining Cardano Ecosystem and make use of this decentralized platform for milestone verification: >250
• The total value of transactions through the platform (ADA 360 per PoA, 4 PoAs (average number of PoA per proposal), 250 projects= ADA 360,000)

NB: The number of milestones for each project depends on the project duration and the complexity of the project. The number is based on our experience of working with Catalyst during the PoAs review in Fund 9. 

[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.

Phase 1: Setup for PoA revision with expert review (Milestone 1-2) 

Milestone 1: Nov 2023 (Establish Expert Pool & workshop for PoA process)

20% of total budget (ADA 58,548)

Create bare-bones version using very established out-of-the-box tools like Dework (https://dework.xyz), Discord, and trial voting solutions built in F8/F9.

Open permissionless registration, assignment of reviewer profiles and establish “Expert pool” including word-of-mouth marketing and ambassador system. Attracting an initial pool of reviewers whose expertise and interest match with the PoA review requirement in Fund10 (select around 50 highly technical or high value funded projects for initial pilot of Platform). Share experience to the “Expert panel” about the most recent PoA process (F9) and the new! PoA with community reviewers in F10 and the mission of the expert panel in this transition (F9 to F10). 

 

Milestone 2: Dec 2023- Jan 2024 (Smart contract development & Consensus Mechanism deployment Workshop)

15% of total budget (ADA 43,911)

Develop executable business logic that would match reviewers to the funded projects. Working alongside Catalyst team and Community reviewers to identify bottleneck projects and include these projects as ones in 50 projects during the pilot stage (Bottleneck projects are those whose PoA decision differ between community-verified PoAs and Catalyst team ie. not aligned (approval + rejection unanimously.) 

Running workshop for expert panels on how to utilize decentralized consensus mechanism (as a collective decision) whether each bottleneck project has reached its milestones.

Phase 2: Implementation, Refinement, and Iteration to establish system with stakeholders (Milestone 3-4)

Milestone 3: Feb 2024 – Mar 2024 (Tri-parties Assessment phase)  

15% of total budget (ADA 43,911) 

Project owners submit evidence of project progress towards their milestones. These PoAs will be evaluated by the Catalyst Team and Community Reviewers. If the approval decision differs between parties, process will be implemented to assign a pool of suitable experts to the bottleneck projects. Experts using the platform powered by consensus mechanism to determine whether the project has reached its milestones/completion.   

Expert panel feedback on their PoA assessment will be provided to funded projects. Projects have the opportunity to offer alternative solutions in case of their milestone rejection.    

  

Milestone 4: April 2024 (Feedback loop and performance measurement)

15% of total budget (ADA 43,911)

Roundtable Community reviewers, Experts, Funded proposers and Catalyst Team for their milestone rejection and check whether there is any new project development that could potentially change the original consensus and approve payment.   

Phase 3: Fair reward distribution with escrow service provider. Reflection & Community sharing (Milestone 5 – 6) 

Milestone 5: May 2024 (Reward/Token distribution to expert reviewers)

15% of total budget (ADA 43,911) 

Working with escrow service collaborator to distribute rewards/tokens to experts who participated and offered expert insight & output towards the PoAs revision process for technical, big budget complex in nature proposals. 

Note: The rewards for projects whose milestones are approved will still be handled by the Catalyst team. We are focusing our effort for this project on the reward to expert assessors who resolve the issues.  

Milestone 6: June 2024 (Platform traction and Iteration) 

20% of total budget (ADA 58,548)

Gathering feedback from funded proposers, measure total number of transaction value through the platform and the success rate of turnaround time from PoA submission until project payment. Upon successful cycle, the iteration will be rolled out to cover all projects in the same batch and fine-turned to fit the future funding rounds. 

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

Milestone 1: Nov 2023 

• Deliverables: Onboard permissionless sign-ons via out-of-the-box tools like DeWork, Discord, and existing Catalyst open source contributors (https://projectcatalyst.io/funds/9/f9-daos-less3-cardano, https://projectcatalyst.io/funds/7/f7-daos-cardano ) Published Expert guideline: mission of the Catalyst Reward DAO, PoA process and reward scheme.  
• Outputs: Minimum cohort of 100 members. Establish Review DAO mission and guideline to qualified Expert reviewer for PoAs.  
• Intended Outcome: Clear understanding of the experts on where we stand at the current PoA process and where we are heading to. Shared mission to safeguard the treasury to its best usage. Mutual understanding that only experts whose technical expertise relevant to the project will be pre-selected for PoAs. 

Milestone 2: Dec 2023-Jan 2024

• Deliverables: Define smart contract + proprietary consensus mechanism to determine if the project has reached its milestones or completion. 
• Outputs: Open-sourced smart contract (decentralized consensus for milestone verification)  
• Intended Outcome: Equip expert panel with the tools for this PoA mission.  

Milestone 3: Feb 2024-Mar 2024

• Deliverables: Define flow of funded projects and interaction between stakeholders: Catalyst team, Reviewer Panel and Funded Proposers. Implementation of smart contract-based platform for milestone verification, Integration of skillset and consensus mechanisms to determine milestone completion by domain experts. 
• Outputs: Functional smart contract-based platform, Consensus mechanism integrated into the platform. Expert feedback and PoAs delivered to funded projects. 
• Intended Outcome: Transparent and unbiased evaluation of project milestones, rejected projects can propose alternative solution (integration of Continuous Testnet as the Catalyst process is decentralized and Voltaire changes implemented for Fund-11). 

Milestone 4: April 2024 

• Deliverables: Mechanism for discussing and reassessing milestone rejections, considering new project development that could impact original consensus. 
• Outputs: Procedure for incorporating new project developments into the assessment process, Roundtable discussion for reviewing and reevaluating rejected milestones. 
• Intended outcomes: Enable open and constructive discussions on rejected milestones to ensure fairness and accuracy. 

Milestone 5: May 2024

• Deliverable: Collaborate with an escrow service collaborator to handle the distribution of rewards/tokens to Expert Reviewers
• Outputs: Streamlined process for distributing rewards/tokens to Expert Reviewers.  
• Intended Outcome: Recognition and fair compensation to expert assessors who provide technical expertise insight during the PoA revision phase. Motivating, Incentivization and retention of Expert reviewers for future iteration of PoA process. Ensure quality of PoA submission for the technical, big-budget and complex proposal through the involvement of Expert Reviewers. 

Milestone 6: June 2024

• Deliverable: Gauge the total transaction value through the platform. Gather & Evaluate feedback from funded proposers in terms of transparency and waiting time from PoA submission until receiving the payment.  
• Outputs: Realization what works and what is not for PoA revision using the Expert Panel.  
• Intended Outcome: Obtain the prototype of using Expert Platform for more transparent PoA revision and apply knowledge and findings to other areas of Catalyst which need the intelligence of the expert pool.  

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

A. Smart contract development for assignment and validation of roles (open-sourced): ADA 216.67 per hour 60 hours per month 2 months = ADA 26,000

B. Smart contract Audit and Testing by TxPipe (budget includes bug bounty and surplus) = ADA 59,000

C. Consensus mechanism deployment: ADA 216.67 per hour 60 hours per month 3 months = ADA 39,000

D. Expert reward pool: (ADA 360 /PoA 4 PoAs (average number of PoA per proposal) 50 pilot projects=ADA 72,000

E. Escrow service fee (Impact projects) based on the fee structure https://socious.io/fees 

Socious fee for matching developers & escrow service = (A+D)*0.13=(26,000 + 72,000)*0.13 = ADA 12,740

F. Project Management: ADA 200 per hour 40 hours per month 7 months = ADA 56,000

G. Community Engagement & Documentation: ADA 100 per hour 40 hours per month 7 months = ADA 28,000

Total cost for this project is ADA 292,740

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

This project brings several value proposition to Cardano ecosystem based on these deliverables

1. Trust and Transparency: For each PoA review (approval/rejection), personal opinion/biases could get in the way. By introducing a decentralized platform (expert panel) for milestone verification on top of community verified PoAs, the PoA process would be more trustworthy for the funded proposers and Cardano community. Human error in the decision making process will be minimized. 
2. Efficiency and Automation: As the number of funded projects is increasing as the fund progresses, it would not be sustainable to keep manually reviewing PoAs. Using a DAO will not just make the process more inclusive and cover a much wider talent pool, it can also allocate micro jobs to share reviews across many talented members while expediting the process to handle a large volume of projects and reduce human error and skill shortage. As a result, faster evaluation times, faster payment for project owners to move along their milestones. The learning curve of building this platform will also hopefully contribute to the stack available for DAOs building on Cardano and provide a low-risk testing ground for ADA escrow and credential-based release of funds.
3. Quality assessment: The involvement of expert panel reviewers ensures that projects are evaluated by those who possess the necessary technical knowledge. This provides assurance to the community that milestones are met with expertise and the highest quality delivery will be paid first.
4. Risk mitigation: Rewards for PoAs (expert reward pool) are securely held in escrow until milestones are successfully verified reducing the risk of delay or non-payment after PoAs are performed.
5. Incentivization and collaboration: The decentralized governance aspect of the Catalyst Reward DAO allows reviewers to join in and contribute to the Cardano ecosystem. Expert panel will receive rewards for using their expertise to protect the treasury. This would encourage collaborative effort and engagement among community members. 

[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