littlefish Foundation: The social platform of positive change

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Cagkan Acarbay

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

chakhan@littlefish.foundation

Additional applicants

Cem Karaca, Emir Olgun, Donald Isufi

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

5

[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

NFTs

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The Problem

“You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” - Albert Einstein.

We live in a world of increasing complexity. As our technology evolves, the size and nature of our problems evolve with it. We face many technological, societal, and environmental problems and we need social technologies to help us tackle them effectively.

To solve any complex issue, people need to come together quickly, and effectively to take action. The ability for us to unite is the key ingredient to solving the complex issues of today. Yet there are many barriers, too much friction, and too many distractions that prevent collective action from taking place.

The Solution: a social platform with a p2p economy where individuals collaborate towards common goals, earn, and build reputation.

littlefish Foundation is the values driven social platform that connects individuals based on their knowledge, capabilities, and shared values: to work on common goals together, earn from their work, and to build reputation.

How does it work?

• Users can create, participate, and support others in Call to Actions: These are requests for help to take on specific goals.
• Users post their achievements and progress as videos, images, recordings, writing in Action NFTs: evolving NFTs beyond pfps and art with a unique social use case.
• Actions are collectible and investable. Users create and collect to showcase their reputation, support others, invest in big ideas, or change-making individuals.
• Revenues from Actions are shared by participants based on reward sharing agreements. Everyone earns their share.
• Millions of littlefish acting and transacting creates the p2p economy of Action. A one of a kind digital economy.
• these form the social platform of littlefish Foundation: where users customize their content based on their interests, connect with others, and get inspired to take action.

What is unique about it?

We are developing a one of a kind platform without equal.

No existing platforms incorporate together functionality in such a way. littlefish platform takes from:

• crowdfunding and fundraising platforms,
• like Patreon and Gofundme
• freelance and gig economy marketplaces,
• like fiverr, dework, upwork
• petition platforms like change.org,
• social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, linkedIN, Reddit, …
• and NFT marketplaces

to combine into something truly unique. It is a cross-section of different solutions, centralized and on-chain, all baked into a single platform. It brings with it a brand new NFT use that can bring Cardano to the masses through a social platform.

Action NFTs are not just ape photos. They represent a real world action that has been taken in the world. They represent ideas, beliefs, and values.

Why is this important for Cardano?

Cardano needs new use cases that don’t exist on other chains to distinguish it from the others, bring in more users, and inspire others to try new things to bring brand new innovations to the space. This is all that and more.

Users

Our target population are the users of these platforms. They are the digitally able part of the general public:

• the millions of developers, artists, researchers, content creators, influencers, …
• the millions who value their freedom and look beyond 9/5 to make a living
• and the billions of social media users who yearn for that freedom

The Solution from a Technical Standpoint

From a technical standpoint, this is a web2.5 starting point that relies heavily on traditional software technologies. It incorporates:

• a postgreSQL database to host Call to Actions, Actions, users,
• python backend with REST API,
• minting and selling Action NFTs on Cardano through a 3rd party service such as tangocrypto or NMKR.
• we might decide to do this all natively without a 3rd party, yet we are optimizing for speed so we are leaning on using a 3rd party service for now.
• React JS frontend

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

littlefish Foundation: A unique platform to drive further adoption

The challenge expressly states the importance of having interesting and useful products on Cardano. This is a product that no chain has a direct competitor to. It is a product that shares functionality with many centralized platforms, yet what it does, none of them can do. This makes our platform uniquely interesting, with many new innovations, that will drive the further adoption of Cardano.

littlefish as an alternative to centralized providers

littlefish Foundation is an alternative to fundraising, crowdfunding, and petition platforms, gig/freelance marketplaces, and most of all social media platforms.

Social media platforms fail their users because of their business model: ads. Ads result in these platforms

• maximizing users’ screen time
• incentivizing conflict and outrage
• pushing users into infinite scrolls that are effectively meaningless.

All to generate revenue.

littlefish Foundation is an alternative that puts users’ values at the forefront. Our model doesn't maximize users screen time, it optimizes their willingness to take action and to get inspired. Our model doesn't push users into infinite scrolls, it incentivizes them to take action aligned with their values.

Areas covered from the challenge

Our platform directly covers these areas outlined in the challenge

• Social media: this is a social platform that directly competes with modern social media platforms
• Marketplaces: this is a decentralized marketplace for a new types of NFT: Actions

What value will littlefish Foundation bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

We believe littlefish Foundation has the potential to be the killer app of Cardano. It is a social platform that will compete with social media giants with hundreds of millions of users. If we are successful, it will propel Cardano to the stratosphere with millions of new users coming in over the next years.

If nothing else, it will be an inspiration for other builders in how this technology can be utilized. An entirely new use for NFTs, packaged in a new form of social platform. It is bound to make someone somewhere think of the possibilities, and to build for the future.

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

Success metrics

We will measure the the success of our project by the number of users and meaningful interactions on the platform. We will specifically look at these metrics:

• number of users,
• number of active daily users,
• number of CtAs,
• value of Actions sold,
• number of Actions sold,
• revenue generated from Actions,
• number of Actions produced,
• Max # of participants in a CtA

From these, the measures most important to the Cardano ecosystem are the number of active daily users, the number and value of Action NFTs. This will determine the size of our platform, and the activity in Cardano.

How will the innovation affect Cardano’s productivity and growth, in both the short and the long term?

Long term, we believe this is the type of platform that will replace incumbent social media platforms, meaning hundreds of millions of potential users. Short term, this will be a brand new use case to inspire builders and users alike to the possibilities of Cardano and blockchain more generally, all the while delivering a truly innovative experience to the Cardano blockchain.

Revenue Projections through Market Size

Our business model is to charge a small percentage of each Action NFT sale. In this sense, we have the business model NFT marketplaces. This is also the earliest market in which we will compete directly so we can compare with past NFT marketplace trading volumes to make revenue projections.

First we need the market size. The below chart shows the Monthly NFT Trading Volume for the largest NFT marketplaces.

Based on last years data, at the bottom of the NFT winter, the top NFT marketplaces had a total volume of 500M USD per month. That's the smallest market size for our platform.

At the top they had a 6BN USD volume. We’ll assume the next bull will be significantly higher so we'll take it as 10Bn USD to reflect that.

The chart below shows our annual revenues, in these market conditions, with different market capture rates and with a competitive 2.5% fee on each Action NFT sale.

• With 1% market capture we make between 1.5M USD to 30M
• With 10% market capture we make between 15M to 300M
• With 25% market capture we make between 37.5M to 750M

And when we dominate, just like OpenSea or Blur before us, we make anywhere between a 75M to 1.5 Billion USD annually.

But that’s all based on the NFT market of today where NFT use cases like profile pictures and art drive these numbers. Imagine the willingness of users to pay for Actions instead, a truly meaningful NFT that holds value beyond a simple digital image.

What does this mean for Cardano?

This means Cardano becomes a major player in the NFT market, challenging ETH's dominance. It means hundreds of thousands of new Cardano wallets, millions of USD worth of transactions on Cardano due to littlefish Foundation.

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

Our plans to share the project’s outputs

On what timescales?

• As we are building, we will run a community beta for the littlefish community and partners
• By the end of the proposal, we will share the outputs through our social media and community to open the platform up to the public. This may be through a public beta, or a full on launch with the limited features outlined in this proposal.

How will we share?

• The first users will be our test cases to refine the product and iterate.
• Beyond these users we will devise a marketing strategy to create content on our platform and bring network effects to users. In social platforms, the value provided to the user is often a measure of the size of the network. Simply put, if you don’t have enough users, you don’t have enough content, then you don’t have anything for new users to do and they simply leave. This is called the cold start problem in startups. Our marketing strategy will focus on building small atomic networks, small networks of users that can self sustain, meaning once deployed, we can focus on building other small networks.
• For example, we would start out by establishing the atomic network in Project Catalyst community, onboarding users from Project Catalyst, then well-being enthusiasts, then climate change focused communities, and so on. Each atomic network within itself would produce enough content so that current and new users interested in such content would stick longer and contribute to the network, allowing us to focus on building more such networks to grow the platform’s user base.

Who

• littlefish Foundation community and partners,
• Project Catalyst Community,
• then up to the marketing strategy to determine atomic networks we can create one by one.

Using the results for further research and development

We see this proposal as the first step. We will quickly implement the solution, learn from it, then use that knowledge to deploy all the functionality with our own smart contracts. We will implement reward sharing, our own minting contracts, and finally a 2nd hand Action marketplace, for users to trade their Actions on our platform. All of this will be guided through the knowledge we generate in this proposal.

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

Complete success of this project: build the software, get users, and start growing the user base. The capabilities needed to deliver this complete success are:

• developing a traditional backend, with an SQL database, REST APIs,
• designing UI/UX,
• developing a modern frontend with JS frameworks,
• AGILE project management,
• digital&social media marketing,

As a team we have these matching capabilities and expertise:

• building traditional backend services with Python, postgreSQL, Rest API development,
• 20+ years of software development expertise with C++, C#, Python, PHP, JavaScript
• frontend development with React JS, HTML, css,
• 2+ years of AGILE project management expertise, with a senior project management expert of 10+ years experience,
• Extensive experience with design tools such as Adobe Suite and Figma,
• 3 devs with Plutus Pioneers Program experience and 1 graduate with experience building smart contracts

In terms of software, we lack nowhere. We have extensive capability to build a web2 platform on a Python, postgreSQL, React JS stack. We will integrate this stack with Cardano through 3rd party services, so no extensive Cardano knowledge is necessary, although we have that also to guide our next steps as we evolve beyond this proposal into the future.

We don’t have a dedicated UI/UX expert on our team, but one team member has designed and produced tens of websites and is self taught on modern UI/UX tools such as Figma. We will produce an early design ourselves based on our vision, then we will get an expert’s view to improve that design.

The final capability that needs addressing is marketing. We need a dedicated marketing expert to implement our marketing strategy and we will bring one on the team as part of this proposal. We will also need to devise a marketing strategy to solve the cold start problem (outlined in the previous section), yet that is a problem we know very well, as we have several team members with previous startup experience in startups that have solved that problem. With a dedicated marketing expert to deliver the strategy, we are in good shape to deliver complete success.

We have some other capabilities and expertise that will come in handy:

• building and managing an active web3 community,
• running weekly calls for a global audience,
• researching, testing, and writing documentation on Cardano and otherwise DAO tools, cross-chain projects, DeFi, wallets
• hosting technical workshops on topics ranging from token engineering, DAO tools, legal topics, …
• organizing and running work together sessions for the community to actively work on things together

These capabilities allow us to incorporate community into our marketing strategy, and our technical expertise on other blockchain topics will allow us to identify technical opportunities as we develop our platform.

Managing Funds

We are a previously Catalyst funded organization, and we keep all our financial records available to the public. You can verify how we've spent our previous funding to validate the trust put in us by the Cardano community to manage our funds wisely. You can find our financials on our Discord server.

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

Our main goals concern:

1. the building of our application
2. getting users onboard and start growing

Building the application

Our goal is to achieve the full feature-set laid out in this proposal:

1. Call to Actions,
2. Actions, and
3. reward sharing,
4. the social platform

To measure if we have successfully achieved this we will ask the following questions:

1. Call to Actions (CtA)
2. Can the user create CtAs with set parameters such as date and sharing settings?
3. Can the user invite others to participate in CtAs?
4. Can the user see associated Actions in a CtA?
5. Can the user browse their own CtAs?
6. Actions
7. Can the user upload their action, pre-chain, to be minted by themselves or others for free?
8. Can the user mint Action NFTs into their own wallet address?
9. Can the user browse their own Actions?
10. Reward sharing
11. Can the creator of CtAs determine how the rewards from Action sales will be shared? Can they set percentage values for participants?
12. Are the rewards from NFT mints shared between participants according to the agreement?
13. The social platform
14. Can users discover CtAs and Actions?
15. Can users browse through others’ content?

Getting users

Our goal with users is to hit 1000 daily active users in the first 3 months of launch. This will be an early indication of success. In the long term we aim to increase this to ten thousands, hundred thousands, eventually millions of daily active users. All in due time as our platform matures in the following 5 years.

[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.

Key Milestones

1. Write Product Specification version 1
2. UI/UX Design v1
3. Create the first CtA, join and participate in CtAs with off-chain Actions
4. Browsing Actions and CtAs
5. Mint Action NFTs and implement reward sharing
6. Launch the platform: onboard the first 100 users, with 25 Actions - 28/10 launch

Project Management

We will hold weekly sprints including a sprint planning session to start off the week, daily standup sessions to provide updates and clear blockers, and a review session and demo day at the end of the week to close it up. We will organize tasks and internal documentation entirely on Notion.

Milestones and Detailed Plan

Milestone 1 - Write Product Specification version 1

1. The first version of the Product Specification document that will outline the scope of the project, the detail
2. Key Activities:
3. Hold Design Sprint and additional co-work sessions to determine the features, and early work on the UI.
4. Specification of the data structures of Actions, CtAs, users, relations, reward sharing implementation, and required functionality.
5. Writing the document.
6. Projected Time: 2-4 weeks
7. Acceptance Criteria: A detailed product specification document outlining the specifics of Actions, CtAs, data structures, and required functionality.

Milestone 2 - UI/UX Design v1

1. Using Figma, create designs for each of the pages that will be developed as part of the platform.
2. Key Activities:
3. Design the UI/UX for the platform
4. Creating designs for CtA creation and participation, producing and minting Actions, and browsing the content of the platform
5. Consulting with a UI/UX expert on our designs to improve them.
6. Projected Time: 4-6 weeks
7. Acceptance Criteria: Complete designs for the platform including CtA creation&participation, producing&minting Actions, and browsing the content of the platform.

Milestone 3 - Create the first CtA, join and participate in CtAs with off-chain Actions

1. Key Activities:
2. Develop the backend capability with PostgreSQL and Python Rest API to create, and join CtAs.
3. Allow users to produce Actions, stored in the database, later to be turned into Action NFTs when users want to purchase.
4. Implement the functionality using the chosen design on the frontend.
5. Projected Time: 3-5 weeks
6. Acceptance Criteria: The design from milestone 2 is implemented on the frontend. Users can create Call to Actions and Actions as laid out in the Product Specification. Actions are off-chain at this point, only stored in the database.

Milestone 4 - Mint Action NFTs and Implement Reward Sharing

1. Key Activities:
2. Develop the ability to mint Action NFTs. Users will be able to mint to purchase Actions.
3. Develop the view Action panel for producing and viewing Actions.
4. Implement Reward Sharing as determined in the specification.
5. Projected Time: 3-5 weeks
6. Acceptance Criteria: Users can mint Actions NFTs to their wallets by purchasing them with ADA. The rewards from the minting of the Action will be shared with other users based on the reward sharing agreement.

Milestone 5 - Creation of an Integrated Social Platform

1. Key Activities:
2. Develop and integrate the browsing pages as specified in the design.
3. Allow users to navigate the platform, discover content, and engage in CtAs, and Actions.
4. Projected Time: 3-5 weeks
5. Acceptance Criteria: Pages where users can browse CtAs, and Actions made to specifications from milestone 1.

Milestone 6 - Launch the platform: onboard the first 100 users, with 25 Actions

1. Key Activities:
2. Open early access demo to users in the waitlist.
3. Promote the platform on our community and socials.
4. Get users onboarded to create CtAs, and Actions.
5. Talk with users about their experience, and iterate.
6. Projected Time: 2-4 weeks
7. Acceptance Criteria: Get 100 users on the platform with 25 Actions created.

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

Here are the outputs and intended outcomes for each of the milestones:

Milestone 1 - Write Product Specification version 1

1. Output: The first version of the Product Specification document that will outline the scope of the project.
2. Outcomes:
3. A clear understanding of the projects scope within the team,
4. An initial set of features agreed upon to build,
5. Prioritization of said features,
6. A direction for UI/UX.

Milestone 2 - UI/UX Design v1

1. Output: Figma designs for each page
2. Outcomes:
3. An agreed upon UI/UX style for the platform,
4. A clear understanding of the look and feel of the platform,
5. Frontend engineer knows exactly what they are building.

Milestone 3 - Create the first CtA, join and participate in CtAs with off-chain Actions

1. Output: Database, backend with REST API, frontend built according to specifications from milestone 1 and designs from milestone 2 to enable users to create and participate in CtAs, and produce off-chain Actions.
2. Outcomes:
3. Users can now be onboarded to beta test the platform.
4. Users can create Call to Actions, invite their friends to participate, show off their work in Actions.
5. We start to collect feedback from users.

Milestone 4 - Mint Action NFTs and Implement Reward Sharing

1. Output: Page(s) that implement users minting Action NFTs produced by themselves, or by others. Profits from the mint is shared according to a reward sharing agreement.
2. Outcomes:
3. Main functionality of the platform now implemented.
4. Users can now use the platform to set out CtAs, get other users onboard to participate, and other users to support them financially.
5. We can now find user groups that love the idea, focus on them to understand their needs and problems better, iterate the product through further feedback.

Milestone 5 - Creation of an Integrated Social Platform

1. Output: Page(s) that allow users to browse Actions and CtAs, explore the contents of the platform in a free-flowing manner.
2. Outcomes:
3. Users can now find new types of CtAs, and Actions.
4. The platform is a feature complete MVP. Users can do everything the proposal entails.

Milestone 6 - Launch the platform: onboard the first 100 users, with 25 Actions

1. Output: Platform is launched to early access users in waitlist. At least 100 total users produce at least 25 Action NFTs.
2. Outcomes:
3. We are ready to onboard more users, grow the platform, and launch our token to fund the next stage of littlefish growth.

What will we measure to track progress?

The milestone outputs are the direct measurements of the project. They are well defined checkpoints that will force us to deliver on specific commitments. As long as we deliver the milestone outputs, the project is progressing well and we are making progress.

Once milestone 2 is delivered, we will have the designs ready. We will use designs to indicate progress on the frontend. Once a design is implemented, it signals clearly there is progress on the frontend. Once everything is functional on the page, that is the second signal to indicate progress. Together, they deliver the fully build product, which is our main goal with the proposal.

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

Personnel Costs

We estimate a total of:

• 800 hrs of development
• 100 hrs of design UI/UX
• 100 hrs of marketing
• 100 hrs of administrative work

Each of these are rated at 25 USD/hr

Development: 17,500 USD

Design: 2,500 USD

Marketing: 2,500 USD

Admin: 2,500 USD

Personnel Total = 25,000 USD

Other Costs

UI/UX Expert Advisor Budget: 5,000 USD

AWS x1 year: 4,000 USD

NFT minting costs = 25,000 ADA

Other Costs Total = 9,000 USD + 25,000 ADA

ADA risk premium = 25%

• All USD costs = 34,000 USD
• ADA risk premium = 34,000 * 0.25 ****
• ADA risk premium = 8,500 USD

Total Cost

Total Cost = 34,000 USD + 8,500 USD + 25,000 ADA

Total Cost = 42,500 USD + 25,000 ADA

At proposal writing time ADA/USD rate = 0.29

Total Cost = 146,551 + 25,000 ADA

Total Cost = 171,551 ADA

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

The amount we ask for is below 50,000 USD for about half a years worth of development for a small team of 5. If you think of this as seed capital for a startup, this is a very tiny amount. This will buy us just 5 months of development time, just enough to launch and raise a next round of funding through our token.

What is the Cardano community buying for that price? A potential unicorn that may propel Cardano to hundreds of millions of users.

Startups are notoriously difficult to successfully launch and grow. Most startups fail, and there is a large chance this will fail. But if it works, its the best 50K Project Catalyst has ever spent, by a long mile, probably for a very, very long time.

Explanations for some items in the budget:

1. UI/UX Expert Advisor Budget = 5,000 USD
2. We want to consult with a very experienced senior UI/UX expert with background in developing UI/UX for social platforms. Very experienced experts in the field start at an hourly rate of 75 USD and can go north of 250 USD per hour. We believe we will need around 50 hours of input for the small project so that will cost us 5,000 USD if we take a 100 USD/hr rate.
3. NFT Minting Costs = 25,000 ADA
4. We will implement NFT mints through 3rd party services to keep development as quick as possible. To bootstrap the product we want to have the NFT mints be free to the users in the beginning. This will remove a barrier to entry and friction. This budget is for 10,000 sales.
5. There are two options we are aware of at the time of writing to implement NFT mints through APIs: tangocrypto and NMKR.
6. On Tangocrypto, NFT sales are taxed at 2.5 ADA per NFT sale. For 10,000 NFTs the total price is then 25,000 ADA.
7. On NMKR, the price is 3% of each mint, with a minimum of 2 ADA. So the price is at least 20,000 ADA, and at most, a whole lot more.
8. ADA Risk premium = 25% of USD based budget items
9. Our costs are stable in USD, they are not in ADA as the price can wildly fluctuate. We must account for this in our budget. Assuming a worst case scenario of -25% current prices, this is applied to all USD based prices. This way, even if ADA/USD goes 25% lower than the price at which we accounted for all the costs, we will still have at least the USD amount calculated in the budget. The price of ADA/USD may still go lower, but this amount will protect us well for some way.

[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