Coffee DAO

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Sebastian Pereira

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

sebastian@nft-dao.org

Additional applicants

Empty

[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?

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.”

The project will be fully open source

[METADATA] Category of Proposal

RealFi

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG goals:

End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

SDG subgoals:

By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

Average income of small-scale food producers, by sex and indigenous status

Universal Human Rights Index (UHRI):

#proposertoolsdg

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The solution proposed by the Coffee DAO project is the creation of an Origin Certificate. An information aggregator that uses NFT technology to gather all the previously scattered data under a single source of truth hosted on-chain. 

The Origin Certificate is designed to preserve the quality grade of a specific coffee batch. This grade is provided by professional tasters who analyze the coffee’s chemical composition and then taste it. After successive harvests, a coffee producer can show a record to future buyers, coffee enthusiasts, or even credit providers. 

Each specialty coffee comes with unique attributes particular to a region such as aroma, flavor, coffee variety, level of humidity, size of the bean, and others. All these are included in the metadata of the Origin Certificate and become a record of a coffee batch.

In the first version of the Origin Certificate we have detailed the characteristics of the coffee purchased for the upcoming pilot sale: 

Initially, the Origin Certificate will be used to commercialize the specialty coffee directly to the public during a pilot sale. The pilot would be conducted on a platform created by the Coffee DAO team, who would bring coffee from Honduras to the U.S. market. The pilot sale is the main stage of the MVP portion of the Coffee DAO project.

For the pilot sale, since it’s aimed at the general public, we would generate images for each Origin Certificate NFT. The images are each different but are generated using the same prompts. A sample of the images for the pilot sale can be found here:

https://softa.direct.quickconnect.to:5001/mo/sharing/oyn8PtXY5#/

The pilot will consist of 5,000 bags of roasted specialty coffee. The bags each would be sold along with an NFT Origin Certificate on Cardano. The NFTs from the pilot will act as discount vouchers for future sales, a token to access special features early, and other marketing promotions.

The pilot would be launched later this year.

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

The Origin Certificate is a way to tokenize specialty coffee. It is one of the categories of the challenge: "Physical products - Tokenised housing as a Cardano native asset." Additionally, it creates a source of adoption that is outside the traditional blockchain economy. As initially it's aimed at general coffee drinkers.

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

The metric for the pilot sale is clear, in that case, it would be the 5,000 coffee bags we aim to sell. Second, the impact on the coffee growers in Honduras would be the difference between the market price of coffee compared to what we'll pay them.

By using NFTs to promote the Origin Certificate and by processing payments via Cardano, we aim to save on the cost of marketing a coffee product. The gains in that aspect would go to the producer of the coffee.

In the first pilot sale, we'll work with only one producer and source all the coffee from their farm. On subsequent sales, we'll source coffee from several producers from the same region in Honduras. The aim is to grow the platform until it's sourcing coffee from different countries in Central America.

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

The core smart contract and off-chain code are ready. We have deployed it to the preproduction network for testing and all works as intended. The next stage for the pilot sale is to deploy the dApp on the main Cardano network. To do so, we'll divide the work into portions:

Update the front for the platform. At the moment we have a designer creating a new landing page for the project. Attached to the application is the Figma demo. We need to connect that new website to the backend and to the smart contract. Once that's live that's the first step towards the launch of the pilot sale.

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

We have all the necessary personnel to finish the project. We have 3 blockchain developers and all of them have previously worked on Cardano. Their work is already visible via the GitHub link, where the preproduction version of the platform can be seen.

We have a coffee exporter in Honduras that has connected with local growers. Thanks to him, we've already narrowed our selection for the pilot sale to a single producer and tested their coffee.

The team also has made a deal with an international shipping company, Northstar, who have agreed to move the coffee by sea to a port in Florida. We have a price quote for the shipment of the coffee.

All of the pieces to deliver the final product are set in place.

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

The goal of the project at this stage is to launch an MVP for the platform that consists of a pilot sale. This sale will be comprised of 5,000 specialty coffee bags from Honduras sold inside the United States.

Once the first sale is concluded, we'll launch other small sales during the years. The end goal is to have a general sale of 15,000 bags in the U.S. and the same amount in Europe in Q1 of next year. From there, the platform will expand with other services such as on-chain subscriptions for coffee, coffee auctions using Hydra, and start exporting to the Asian market.

The validation for the project is the pilot sale during the MVP. The success will be measured by how well the coffee and the NFTs are received by the general coffee-drinking public.

[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.

Launch of the website The first stage is to update the landing page with the new design. The website will be up on August 22nd.

Launch the smart contract on the main-net at the moment we have the smart contract only on the preproduction network. The launch on main-net will be September 3rd.

Process the coffee the coffee has to be taken from the farm, dried, roasted, and packaged before it's shipped. The coffee is already reserved with the producer, it'll take around 2 months to process it, we believe it'll be ready by the end of August.

Distribute the coffee in the pilot sale, we'll sell the Origin Certificate NFTs ahead of the coffee. By going with this approach we save on warehousing costs and can mail the coffee as soon as it enters the U.S. The sale of the NFTs will start in September.

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

Minting smart contract the most important piece is the minting validator deployed on the Cardano network. At the moment it's only online on the preproduction network.

Metadata design part of the Origin Certificate is the information contained in the metadata. For the pilot sale, we have already prototyped version 1 of the information. It's attached above in this submission, initially, it's a CIP-25 token, but as the platform evolves we plan to use aspects of CIP-68 and CIP-86.

Website the landing page is where the buyers will connect a Cardano wallet, select an NFT, mint the token on demand, and input their shipping information. Once the information is collected, we'll ship the coffee to their house. In the pilot, the coffee will be sold only in the continental U.S.

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

35,000 ADA is the cost to purchase coffee. (9973.4 USD)

7,100ADA to mill, dry, and wash the coffee. Plus the sanitary registration. (2000 USD)

9,500 ADA is the cost to design the coffee bag and branding guide. (2706 USD)

29,000 ADA cost for a web designer to create a new landing page that follows the branding guide and logo (8263 USD)

3,520 ADA is the cost of 5,000 empty bags for the coffee and having the design printed on them. (1000 USD)

7,050 ADA ADA to roast and bag vacuum seal the coffee. (2000 USD)

32,000 ADA is the cost to ship the coffee from Honduras to Florida. (9120 USD)

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

As the process moves forward, we can show the receipts for the coffee, packaging, and shipment manifesto to show the allocation of funds.

[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