A dApp Platform like Maestro is a vehicle for innovation and ecosystem growth. Developers should feel empowered and be sponsored to integrate the latest tools to unleash their imagination.
Grants to sponsor and mentor developers and projects leveraging the Maestro platform to bring exciting new products to Cardano, encourage community collaboration and foster ecosystem growth.
This is the total amount allocated to Build on Maestro - Grants to sponsor projects building exciting products on Maestro’s dApp platform.
none
No dependencies
Sponsored projects will be strongly encouraged to take an open source approach to what they build. Depending on applications, some not fully open source projects may be approved.
The ‘Build on Maestro’ grants program will foster a better experience for developers and project owners by incentivizing them to use a suite of tools that yield an enhanced performance and user experience for their end-users.
The support and mentorship by the Maestro team will establish long-term relationships and partnerships between projects, sharing know-how and fast-tracking applicants use cases to market.
The accrued experience of building the awarded applicant’s projects will be shared with the broader community and feed back to both advise other projects and help Maestro improve where improval opportunities are identified.
The current proposal falls under the challenge setting directive of “Incentivization structures”, “Collaboration structures” and also can also be seen as relating strongly to “Hackathons”, “Deployment, testing, and monitoring frameworks” and “API's and Oracles”.
Better than a Hackathon, we propose to support the creation of projects that would achieve a longer time frame in generating value and utility for the ecosystem.
The success of this proposal will be measurable by the technical/UX quality and utility of the projects selected to receive grants. Maestro will ensure the development approach is documented, share these materials, and query the users community directly about user acceptance and overall feedback.
Projects will commit as much of their code as possible to github and write a project close-out report that we will publish and include in the proposal's close-out report. Projects are encouraged to document their learnings along the development stage.
Maestro is an established member of the ecosystem having delivered a suite of diverse solutions to projects on Cardano. Our team has a diverse skill set that may contribute and collaborate to the applicants success on different levels (technical, product, community).
When evaluating applicants’ proposals, Maestro will make an effort to assess and guarantee each applicant’s capability and their proposal’s feasibility.
The ‘Build on Maestro’ grants program would have three main stages and activities:
Stage 1: Promotion and Community submission of project proposals
Stage 2: Projects are evaluated and 3 projects are selected to receive sponsorship from Maestro
Stage 3: Maestro & sponsored projects work together to deliver on objectives
Stage 4: Close-out and knowledge sharing
Stage 1: An array of diverse project proposals aiming to satisfy new use cases on Cardano
Stage 3: Launch 3 running solutions for use of the Cardano community
Stage 4: Documentation sharing insight about the Development experience on Cardano using Maestro plus any other tools (SDKs, Libraries and similar) that the project used.
Grants for awarded applicants
$15 000* x 3 projects = $45 000
*This value may be rebalanced between awarded proposals based on their complexity and weight in the overall grants program.
Maestro advisory and support
$50/hr x 1hr/week/project x 30 weeks x 3 projects = $4 500
Maestro promotion, proposal assessments, debriefs
$50/hr x 40hrs = $2 000
TOTAL ($) = $51 500
TOTAL ($0.3/ADA) = 171 666 ADA
The ‘Grants for awarded applicants’ portion of this proposal will be entirely employed to sponsor and support the winning projects. This incentivization will stimulate creativity and entrepreneurship in the community and potentially enable the realization of valuable projects that will benefit the Cardano ecosystem with their full value once live. Three new solutions with superior User Experience and robustness will be added to the Cardano Ecosystem.
Furthermore, the value of this proposal is one of fomenting collaboration between projects, promoting exploration and knowledge sharing on different architectures and technologies.
The services budget is according to or below standard rates for these professional services in Europe or the USA.
Stakeholders:
Marvin Bertin - Maestro Co-Founder & CEO - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marvinbertin
Marvin co-founded Maestro a Cardano infrastructure provider and dApp development platform. He also co-founded Genius Yield an advanced order-book DEX on Cardano. Marvin's background is in Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. Before getting into blockchain, he spent years working in a biotech developing an early cancer detection blood tests using next-generation DNA sequencing. Later he worked as a senior crypto consultant, developing DeFi products for clients on the Ethereum and Cosmo blockchains.
Varderes Barsegyan - Engineering Manager, Software Architect and Go Developer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/barsegyanvarderes
Maestro CTO, Genius Yield TPM;
Varderes Barsegyan is an engineer with a diverse background in physics, computer science, aerospace engineering, bioinformatics, and blockchain technology. As the Co-founder and CTO of Maestro, a leading provider of blockchain infrastructure for Cardano, he is trailblazing the way for the financial operating system of the world.
Jamie Harper - Senior Rust Engineer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-h-8bb539114/
Maestro engineer, Cardano open source contributor;
James is a Rust developer with unique experience in the Cardano ecosystem. Over a period of three years, he has been involved in auditing the Cardano ledger and related codebases, earning recognition as a contributor in the Cardano Babbage era ledger specification.
His in-depth understanding of Cardano's internals acquired through auditing led James to begin developing his own software within the ecosystem, and is a top contributor for some of TxPipe's open source software projects, Scrolls and Pallas. He has also shared valuable insights through write-ups, warning of common developer pitfalls within the Cardano ecosystem, contributing to improved security practices.
James later joined Maestro, where he plays a key role in designing, developing, and optimizing their developer platform and indexer, working with the rest of the team to ensure they meet the evolving needs of developers within the Cardano ecosystem.
Jeev B. - Senior DevOps Engineer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeevb
Maestro engineer, Union.AI staff engineer;
Jeev Balakrishnan is an accomplished staff software engineer with a proven track record of success. With his expertise and strong technical skills, he has played a crucial role in leading mission-critical projects at Union.AI, Freenome, and Maestro. Jeev's ability to deliver exceptional solutions, coupled with his innovative mindset, has made him a valuable contributor to the Cardano ecosystem.
Pedro Lucas - Technical Business Analyst - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedrohlucas
Maestro Developer Experience, BizDez;
Pedro Lucas has over 20y experience in IT. Working as a Technical Business Analyst in Business Process Management and Decision support DataViz solutions in Finance and Banking. He has been in Crypto for 3y and 100% dedicated to Cardano communities and techology for almost 2y. Pedro has helped in Gimbalabs, amongst other communities, created and ran 'Cardano for non-techs' workshop sessions, and now collaborates with Maestro focusing on Developer Experience and Business Development.