Automating royalty payments to student athletes with NFT's.

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Calum Russell

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

calum.russell1@outlook.com

Additional applicants

None

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

6

[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?

Yes

[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.” .

Saturn NFT - Their CIP-68 is essential for our dynamic NFT's.

NCAA (and all other governing bodies is the USA for college sports on state and regional levels) - The opportunity for our solution arose upon a change in legislation. Although it is highly unlikely that there shall be a revision, we are dependent on legislators permitting student athlete's earn from their name, image and likeness.

[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.”

All of the Web3 technology we are using is already opensource, but as a private company we cannot make the same guarantee for all our future output.

[METADATA] Category of Proposal

NFTs

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Situation: The recent legislation passed by the NCAA in 2021 allowing student athletes to monetize their name, image, and likeness triggered a massive influx of investment directed towards student athletes. There is an estimated 182 million NCAA college sports fans who regularly follow a team(s).

Problem: The wealth entering the space has concentrated around major schools, major sports, and high profile individuals with the vast majority of student athletes left competing for opportunities with higher work requirements and lower compensation.

Solution: NFT sports trading cards - trading cards require a high volume of athletes, benefiting from diversity, thereby lowering the barrier to entry. There is also preexisting demand in a huge market that is accepting of multiple producers and new brands.

Blockchain enables revenue to be shared with the athletes at the point of sale and on secondary sales, along with dynamic designs that allow athlete-artist collaborations, and gamification using real world sports data, athletes gain autonomy over their income earning potential.

Reasoning: We set ourselves the mission of creating a solution that is widely accessible and gives every athlete an equal opportunity. Our goal isn't to make any individual rich, it is to provide every student athlete a means of generating a supplementary, passive income. Enough money to make student life easier in the face of high tuition fees and help justify the opportunity cost of pursing a career in sport. On top of that, it is not enough to provide a solution if that solution has a single point of failure - the business. Outside of producing the cards, all the business does is marketing. However, the student athletes are the best situated

Impact: We shall be able to see the impact of our solution with the growth of our network of athletes. There is over 190,000 division 1 NCAA student athletes with an average undergraduate enrollment of 11,783. We are starting with 30 athletes and plan to grow exponentially by optimizing the catalysts for network affect. With the annual influx of freshmen, there shall be a steady feed of athletes that will be able to benefit from the opportunity that we offer.

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

What we are proposing has a very realistic potential to bring in millions of new users to the Cardano ecosystem.

For those who are not familiar with NCAA sports - here is a different perspective. Student athletes are of the demographic that is the most active on social media and in the digital economy. Student athletes have a naturally higher social notoriety due to their sporting prowess and cultural environment, making them social influencers by default. This social status is reflected in their follower count, with the highest profile athletes having an audience in the millions. Engagement rate measures the number of likes, comments, shares that a student-athlete’s or influencer's posts receive, relative to the number of followers they have.

Here are some general benchmarks for professional social media influencers on Instagram:

• An engagement rate below 1% is typically considered below average
• An engagement rate between 1-3% is generally considered average
• An engagement rate above 3% is considered better than average

The average engagement for college student-athletes is about 5.5%, with many upwards of 50%. This high engagement rate is an indication of a strong relationship between the student-athlete and their followers.

We are essentially giving these athletes an easily sold and affordable product that exists on the Cardano blockchain to sell to their fanbase/followers, and consequently for them to trade among themselves - with the knowledge that the proceeds support the athletes and grow the network so that student athletes can benefit for generations to come.

Apart from the network/user growth that we would bring to Cardano, we also offer a bridge for aspiring and established artists in the NFT digital art scene and gain exposure to a different market. Sports cards as a product of sport and art. We intend to emphasize the relationship between athlete and artist and the importance of the artist in that relationship by helping the athlete express their personality - something sports fans value wholeheartedly. With the dynamic designs enabled by Saturn NFT's CIP-68, we are able to collaborate with different artists allowing the owners to evolve and upgrade their cards while giving athletes a greater choice of designs to satisfy their stylistic preferences.

Although we are not intending to be vocal about blockchain in our initial marketing, our long term vision is to deploy web3 technologies to their fullest extent, including the common usage of ADA as payment on our platform and the deployment of a DAO that gives the athletes, artists, and sports fans ultimate say over the direction of the project. This will take a gradual approach as we recognize that it is a steep learning curve for many, and starting simple is often the best approach.

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

Our measure of success are predominantly based around athlete network growth. We shall of course accompany this with qualitative information collected from speaking with athletes to assess their experience, but the rate of network growth shall also indicate whether or not the athletes are satisfied with the solution due to the reliance on referrals.

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

As stated before, we are operating a revenue sharing model, whereby the student athletes earn 40% of revenue from the initial sales, 7.5% from secondary transactions, and a $100 sign-up bonus. 10% of the revenue from initial sales shall be reserved for an incentive pot to reward those who refer athletes and for athletes who generate sales via their affiliate link. We also share revenue with the artist we collaborate with and have plans to donate a portion of profits to charitable causes in the sports industry such as grass roots sports programs and athlete welfare incentives. The exact recipient of charitable donations will eventually be decided by members of a DAO.

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

In terms of accountability, we have decided not to be anonymous as it is absolutely critical that we gain the trust of the athletes we are working with as they have their potential vulnerability is high. We have been working with several student athletes (both current and former) as advisors to understand the concerns of student athletes and associated institutions, but we also implore them scrutinize our own ideas and actions to keep us honest to our cause. We must also hold ourselves accountable to our customers who will likely purchase our product with the intention of financially supporting student athletes. We can and will publish quarterly reports to provide transparency around our revenue sharing model and profit margins. In addition we shall utilize the transparency of Cardano as a public blockchain to demonstrate transaction volumes.

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

Goals (~12 month outlook)

Athlete on-boarding:

• 30 student athletes on-boarded by September 2023.
• 500 student athletes on-boarded by end of year.

Sales:

• All 600 cards sold for first cohort (200 per athlete) by end of year.
• Minimum $1000 income generated for each athlete in first cohort.
• $50000 revenue earned and reinvested into athlete sign-up bonuses.

Development:

• Automate sign-up process and card construction by summer 2024.
• First version of strategy game ready for public testing by autumn 2024.

[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: 30 athletes covering multiple schools, sports, positions, years, and genders sign-up with their bonuses paid and a card constructed. September 2023.

Method: By using NIL marketplaces and working with athlete advisors, talent agents, and collectives to source the right athletes to establish our brand and prove the concept.

Milestone 2: Receiving 1+ athlete referral from 50%+ athletes in the initial cohort. January 2024.

Method: Utilize incentive pot to pay athletes for referring additional athletes. Request feedback on the athletes experience and suggestions on how to improve it so that referrals become more natural.

Milestone 3: Experience 50%+ organic sales driven by the student athletes. May 2024.

Method: Provide athletes with strategies, content, and support as well as sufficient financial incentive to help them sell the product to their fan base. Utilize the platforms communication channels to enables athletes to engage with the fans who hold their cards to further drive demand.

Milestone 4: On-board entire teams, one athlete at a time. May 2024.

Method: Work closely with student athlete advisors, agents, collectives, and athlete clients to refer team mates. Provide additional incentives such as unique team card designs and additional NIL opportunities.

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

Milestone 1: We will have achieved what we believe will be a critical mass to trigger a network affect and spur organic growth of both the athlete network and customer base, while having the minimum amount of athletes to provide an attractive product range.

Milestone 2: We will be able to verify that athlete network growth is organic (coming predominantly from referrals).

Milestone 3: We will be able to verify that customer growth is organic (coming predominantly from referrals).

Milestone 4: We will be able to optimize the network affect with some deliberate interventions to target strategically important teams/schools/regions, in preparation for the launch of the strategy game.

Note** these milestones are base upon assumptions that, if do not pan out as expected, can be adjusted while reverting back to previous methods with a systematic review to discover the necessary adjustments.

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

The amount asked for will not cover all operational expenses. All of the 50,000 ada asked for shall strictly be used to cover the cost of minting the NFT's. The ada received shall be staked with a single stake pool operator and withdrawn in batched when required to mint the NFT's.

For this to be a feasible business, we require price stability. Therefore it is critical for us to secure enough ada at a reasonable market price to ensure that we can maintain an affordable product price for our customers. Once we have gained traction we shall be in a more secure position to focus on securing price stability.

The rest of our operational expenditure has been covered by private funding - bootstrapping to date, but currently looking for angel investment. The uncertain time frame makes this funding avenue less feasible for this particular expenditure.

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

We shall be minting 200 NFT's per athletes. We plan to on-board 500 athletes by end of year. That equates to 100,000 NFT's. The amount we are asking for will only cover a fraction of that, so I would hope that it is considered reasonable. We don't want to ask the community for too much on the basis that 1) we most urgently require a modest amount of funding to gain sufficient traction - at which point we will be able to generate revenue and raise additional capital, and 2) we have yet to earn the trust of the community so would like to demonstrate our credibility with a smaller ask at first.

What we offer in return has been mentioned previously. The realistic potential to bring millions of people into the Cardano ecosystem and significantly increase the on-chain transaction volume. What we are building is different than many other projects in the ecosystem. We are already gaining traction with athlete on-boarding and are confident that we have identified a massive gap in a massive market, external to web3. Demonstrating that blockchain has utility in mainstream markets is absolutely necessary if blockchain itself is going to be accepted by people who are not already involved in the space. If we are successful, with the help of the Cardano community, we will become one of the major projects that bring credibility to businesses building on blockchains.

[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