Total to date

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

Additional applicants

KoraLabs, LLC

KoraLabs, LLC is a USA-based company. All 4 partners of the company are USA-residents and are actively building The Handle Standard. Although we prefer to utilize our avatars, the team is fully doxxed and ownership of KoraLabs, LLC demonstrates this. Article of Incorporation and Operating Agreement for the Limited Liability Company are available upon request.

Website: https://koralabs.io/

Discord: https://discord.gg/sYkFgRQFwG

Twitter (Kora): https://twitter.com/labskora

Twitter (ADA Handle): https://twitter.com/adahandle

Address:

9255 Center Street S 300B

Manassas, VA 20110

The Team:

PapaGoose, CIO

Co-Founder & Senior Engineer at ADA Handle.

25+ years TradFi experience.

GitHub: https://github.com/papag00se

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PapaGooseCrypto

Email: papagoose@koralabs.io

Big Irish Lion, CTO

Co-Founder & Senior Engineer at ADA Handle.

20+ years building systems.

GitHub: https://github.com/bigirishlion

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BigIrishLion

Email: bigirishlion@koralabs.io

Conrad Cordeiro, COO

Co-Founder at ADA Handle and BLADE Pool operator

20+ years of InfoSec and Infra experience.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conraddit/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/conraddit

Email: conrad@koralabs.io

Mr. Goose, CEO

Co-Founder at ADA Handle.

CEO of KoraLabs; leading the team.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GooseOfCrypto

Email: goose@koralabs.io

Board & Legal Team

Our team is also composed of a board, that has a plethora of skills that range from the most competent developers on the Cardano ecosystem to Decentralized Identity professionals who not only understand the future of on-chain DIDs but have vast experience on building and delivering identity systems. Our legal team is also second-to-none and have been assisting us since our inception, by helping us navigate through the complex waters of building blockchain-based products during these times when laws and procedures have not yet been clearly defined for our rapidly evolving industry.

Please feel free to reach out to any of us and we will promptly respond to any and all questions.

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

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

[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.” .

We have no external dependencies. The team can and will build all of the deliverables of this proposal. We have been building The Handle Standard for over 2 years and have amassed an array of professionals who have been helping us build, while also expanding our knowledge in Smart Contracts and blockchain. Our board members are composed of seasoned blockchain professionals who have a combined experience of over 50 years building systems.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

Everything that ADA Handle builds is open source. The deliverables within this proposal will also be 100% open source. Our open-source code can all be verified within our GitHub repositories: https://github.com/koralabs/.

[METADATA] Category of Proposal

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG rating is not applicable to our team nor our proposal.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Introduction

The ADA Handle community has requested from us a custom marketplace, designed specifically for trading Handles and subHandles, to include custom and easy-to-use search filters, that fully integrates to the new Personalization and subHandle features, while also being ready to evolve along with The Handle Standard. The goal of this proposal is to build the first iteration of The Handle Marketplace.

Custom Search Filters

The purchase of Handles in the secondary market can presently be a daunting task given that existing marketplaces were not designed to allow easy searching of text-based assets. Filtering and searching Handles will be a built-in solution within the Handle Marketplace as it will allow users to find Handles based on their length; determining if they contain numbers, letters and/or special characters (._-); whether they belong to one of the community-led groups (such as the 10k Handle Club and the SubZero Club); and in the future to allow us to create custom filters to integrate to all new features, as we deploy them.

Personalization

With the launch of the Personalization standard, dApps, wallets and other projects can leverage on the information shared by Handle owners such as social-media accounts, contact information, profile pictures, background images, and a lot more. The $handle marketplace will allow us to showcase to the community how to integrate and utilize Personalization data. For example, upon connecting to the marketplace, users will be asked whether they would like to have their Profile Picture (detected from their Handle) shared with other users within the portal, while allowing them to utilize the background image associated with their profile when other visitors access their listings page. Their social-media accounts can optionally also be displayed within their profile page, so that other marketplace users can easily connect with them to simplify trades and other business opportunities. NFT Projects will be able to self-onboard their collections into ADA Handle's Personalization portal and with that have the option to, within the same marketplace, sell PFPs and Backgrounds NFTs. The custom marketplace will also bring additional revenue streams to projects who join the marketplace, as they will be able to sell NFT accessories such as baseball caps, masks, helmets, gloves, and a lot more. As other features are built for the Personalization feature, our marketplace will be the first to showcase them.

subHandles

subHandles will further expand The Handle Standard by allowing the owner of a rootHandle, such as $acme, to mint NFT-based and Virtual subHandles, such as $john@acme and $mary@acme. The Handle Marketplace will create a custom solution to permit the listing of existing minted subHandles. The marketplace will also deliver to rootHandle owners, who wish to monetize on their existing rootHandles, the option to allow the sale and live minting of subHandles. E.g., the owner of $acme could decide to use the marketplace to sell and live mint Virtual and NFT-based subHandles to the community, while choosing the cost that each subHandle would be sold for, allowing them to monetize on their memorable rootHandles.

White Label Marketplace

The development of our dedicated marketplace will pave the way for us to deliver white-label marketplaces for community members who wish to create a unique environment for the sale of their subHandles. For example, the owners of multiple memorable rootHandles could envision a portal their own dedicated for the sale of those subHandles. They could then utilize the technology that we are building to create their own marketplace. The development of our marketplace will create a path for this, since the entire code will be open source.

The Evolution of the Handle Standard

As the Handle Standard evolves, so will our needs with partner marketplaces. Presently, as we build and deliver new features, we depend on said partner marketplaces to update their code in order to accommodate the new features. For example, the Personalization feature is now live on the Preview and PreProd blockchains, and soon will be live on MainNet, but marketplaces have not yet demonstrated their integration to the new standard. Therefore, it could take weeks or months for them to fully adapt the new technology. With the inception of The Handle Marketplace, as we ship new features, we will be able to showcase much more quickly to the community, while also having the certainty that new features will always be integrated.

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

The importance of the Products & Integrations Fund 10 challenge is related to funding projects that will help with Cardano's adoption, by creating more reasons for people to interact with the blockchain. Within the types of proposals that the category recommends be included are: Social Media, Marketplaces, Wallets and Business Solutions. The Handle Marketplace checks all these boxes since 1) Handles can--and already are--being used as social-media accounts on the blockchain, 2) given that almost all wallets have already integrated to the Handle Standard, 3) multiple business solutions, that range from tax reporting to airdrops, have developed full integrations to Handles, and 4) we are specifically building a marketplace, which the challenge outlines as one of its key items.

Additionally, the Handle Standard is the leading naming solution for the Cardano blockchain but we presently do not have a marketplace that is dedicated for listing, trading, and communicating about Handles in the secondary market. There are several marketplaces on the Cardano ecosystem, many of which are excellent, but none of them offer a perfect integration to Handles since they were not designed for trading text-based assets, which limits what their platforms can offer.

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

Over 221,000 Handles have been minted since our MainNet launch in March 2022. Approximately 33,000 of these Handles are presently listed on the leading NFT marketplace of the Cardano blockchain, and many others across other platforms, including other marketplaces and lending/borrowing dApps. However, presently, it is not a straightforward task to locate, for example, a number-only Handle because existing filters on all platforms do not permit this. Thus, a potential buyer who might be looking for a Handle associated with one of the existing community groups, such as the 10k Handle Club and the Subzero Handle Club, cannot easily locate all the available Handles that match these criteria on the secondary market. This is especially true for the untrained eyes and new blockchain users. Therefore, one of the measurements of the success of this proposal will be the ability to search and filter Handles with ease, whether they contain letters, numbers and/or special characters.

Secondary-market volume will be another Key Performance Indicator (KPI) measuring the success of this proposal. Presently, the secondary market of Handles have processed, on the leading NFT marketplace, 2.92M ADA, spread over the past 22 months. The Handle Marketplace will simplify searching, finding and trading Handles. Thus, a quantifiable KPI will be the month-over-month increase of sales on the secondary market. Our goal is to increase the average monthly sale from the the current baseline of 132K ADA per month (2.92M ADA / 22 months).

One of the features that ADA Handle is presently building, Personalization, will need a platform to showcase all of its potential to other dApps and projects launching on Cardano. The Handle Marketplace is going to be developed to integrate, from day 1, all that Personalization has to offer. This will include clear documentation on how other dApps can integrate to the standard. Therefore, another KPI for this proposal will be to become the User Experience (UX) showcase for Personalization, allowing other platforms to study how data can be integrated to their systems. E.g., the usage of cross-dApp Profile Pictures, background images and color profiles that Handle owners chose. Therefore, verifying that other platforms have successfully integrated to the features that we are building within Personalization will be one of the success metrics.

Enabling owners of rootHandles to live mint subHandles for a profit will be another KPI for the success of The Handle Marketplace. The number of subHandles minted via the live-mint option from the marketplace will be another KPI for this proposal.

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

The Handle Standard presently has over 80,000 followers across all our social-media accounts, including Twitter, Discord, Telegram and founders' accounts. Our entire team is constantly communicating with our community. We are all active, answering questions and developing solutions requested by the community. This can be easily verified by monitoring our social-media accounts (listed above within this proposal) and by joining ADA Handle's Discord: https://discord.gg/sYkFgRQFwG. Our Discord includes a dedicated channel for Project Catalyst, wherein we explain all that has been built and delivered, while answering questions along the way.

We are also in constant contact with all of ADA Handle's partners, which include wallets, dApps and other plaftorms. We share with them, on a weekly basis, all that we are building, provide clear documentation on how they can utilize the new features, while answering questions and assisting with integration. An example of this cautious and constant communication was the recent launch of Personalization on PreProd, wherein we created and coordinated a launch campaign with two of the largest wallets: Eternl and Lace, coordinating with them a Public Relations and Marketing campaign. This attracted a considerable amount of attention to all projects, which generated immediate community reaction, including several review videos on YouTube and Twitter, showing to the community how Personalization works. We are going to have similar marketing strategies to communicate the launch of The Handle Marketplace.

ADA Handle's entire team is quite active on social media, constantly communicating with NFT projects, founders of other dApps, in order to remain active and relevant within the community. An example of this marketing awareness was with the onboarding of 3 of the major NFT projects: Clay Nation, GOAT Tribe and Derp Birds. We assisted them with the development of custom background images for the new Personalization feature. This approach helped us spread the word not only within our community but across theirs too, while also gaining traction with other NFT projects, as they too wanted to be part of the launch. This allowed us to create a second cohort for background images and profile pictures. A similar approach will be taken when launching this proposal, creating awareness and interest across the community.

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

The ADA Handle team bootstrapped the entire Handle protocol, by building it from ground up. We did it with community support, with assistance from our advisors, and with a full-time team, composed of 4 people: Papa Goose, Big Irish Lion, Conrad and Goose. An important note is that although we utilize our pseudonyms and avatars, we are fully doxxed, operating under Kora Labs, LLC, a USA-based company.

Therefore, we know the Handle Standard, as we have built it and all of this that we have delivered over the past 22 months, can be used to attest our commitment and capabilities to deliver. Our CIO and CTO, Papa Goose and Big Irish Lion are, respectively, Plutus and Atala PRISM pioneers. They have a combined experience of over 45 years building systems. Conrad, the COO, has over 20 years building Information Security and Infrastructure projects, for TradFi operations. Goose, our CEO, has been tirelessly leading the development of the protocol.

Papa Goose and Big Irish Lion migrated from TradFi operations to build The Handle Standard, leaving behind their stable and leading positions on Top 10 USA banks. Their knowledge and background experiences have permitted us to deliver the leading naming standard on the Cardano blockchain, with an uptime of 99.99%.

We have, thus far, had a perfect track record in delivering everything that we said that we would. Additionally, the above capabilities are our demonstration that we are the best suited team to build The Handle Marketplace, as we are the ones who deployed the protocol and will continue to develop for as long as Cardano remains an L1 blockchain. We are going to be here to continue to build and improve on the standard.

We are here for Cardano and we are going to see it happen.

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

1: Build and deliver a Handle-dedicated Marketplace.

The Handle Marketplace will be a Decentralized Application (dApp) built on the Cardano blockchain. The first and most important goal of this proposal is to deliver this code, making it accessible from https://market.handle.me, designed to allow the Cardano community to trade and expand on The Handle Standard.

2: Implement Custom Features for the Trading of Handles.

The Handle Standard will continue to forever evolve. It is an ongoing project that will continue to build and deliver new features. As these features are built and delivered, they are going to be integrated to the marketplace that this proposal was written to receive funding for. Therefore, one of the goals for this proposal is to have a dApp that we can upgrade to include new features as we build and deliver them.

3: Create Easy-to-Use Filter and Search Tools.

Another goal of The Handle Marketplace is to create a unique search and indexing mechanism for Handles, that will simplify how buyers in the secondary market locate Handles that contain letters, numbers and/or special characters. The successful deliver of this proposal will include the best possible search mechanism for Handles.

4: Personalization

With the delivery of Personalization, we need to have a location to showcase the solution to other dApps, wallets and platforms, so that they can see how to implement and adopt these new features. One of the goals of this proposal is to deliver a dApp that will utilize these new Personalization features, while also becoming a location that others can learn from.

5: Delivery of a Platform for Live Minting and Sale of subHandles.

subHandles are a unique inception of The Handle Standard. There is presently no other naming standard, on any blockchain, that allows unlimited minting of subHandles. This creates a unique challenge for us since we cannot leverage on any external knowledge. Therefore, one of the goals of this proposal will be to deliver a platform wherein new users can locate short and memorable rootHandles that they would like to purchase subHandles from.

6: White-Label Marketplace for rootHandle Owners.

rootHandle owners will have the option to utilize our marketplace, the one this proposal was crafted for, or deploy their own marketplace, based on the open-source code that we will make available. The goal of making this proposal into a white-label marketplace is to allow owners of memorable rootHandles to create their own marketplaces for the sale their rootHandles, assuming that they have a large collection, and also to create their own marketplace for the sale of memorable subHandles.

7: Open source the entire project.

Everything that ADA Handle builds is open source. This can be attested from our repositories on GitHub: https://github.com/koralabs/. This marketplace will be no exception. It will be made 100% open source. This will allow other projects to develop their own solutions utilizing the base layer that will provide them with. Thus, one of the goals of this proposal is to deliver a fully functional marketplace for text-based assets.

8: Assist Other Text-based Asset Projects.

As other text-based assets launch on the Cardano blockchain, they too will need their own custom platform to trade assets in the secondary market. One of the goals of this proposal is to deliver documentation and assistance to these other projects, so that they can launch their own marketplaces, expanding on the Handle Marketplace code.

9: Wallet Integration.

One of the key utilities that Handles provide is address resolution within wallets, simplifying how payments are sent and received on the Cardano blockchain. Several of these wallets have full integrations to other dApps. One of the goals of this proposal is to include The Handle Marketplace within all major wallets, in order to allow easy trading of Handles from within wallets, but also allowing live minting of subHandles utilizing this same platform. E.g., wallets such as Eternl, Lace, Vespr, Begin, NuFi and Typhon could utilize their preferred rootHandle to mint subHandles for their customers, as new users are onboarded onto the blockchain. For example, $lace could decide to sell $john@lace to one of their customers and this subHandle would become this user's main payment address on the blockchain, creating brand awareness and loyalty to Lace.

[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: Private TestNet

The ADA Handle team will initially build the marketplace within a closed TestNet, to allow the team to develop the solution without exposing it to the public Preview and PreProd environments. The goal of this private TestNet is to bring our team a secure environment to develop, without being constrained by the limitations imposed by the public environments, while increasing our flexibility to assess and fix issues as they happen, without risking public exposure. This private TestNet will remain our closed environment for the launch of new features associated with the marketplace. Personalization integration and subHandle minting will be made available during the private TestNet within the marketplace.

• Infrastructure purchase.
• Code development.
• Hiring of UI/UX professional.
• Internal marketplace launch.
• Integrate with wallets via the CIP-30 bridge.
• Code review and assessment.
• Ongoing development.
• subHandle minting.
• Personalization integration.
• Disaster Recovery Plan updates.

Timeline: 2-4 months

Phase 2: Preview Launch

As required by Catalyst Fund10, The Handle Marketplace will first launch within the Preview blockchain, in order to give the Cardano community access to the solution, so that we can showcase the features while also looking for vulnerabilities and potential problems that were not discovered within the Private TestNet environment. We will also bring in external help to assess the code and deployment on Preview, prior to the official audit (which will happen during phase 3).

• dApp deployment on Preview.
• Community invitation.
• Code review and improvements.
• Initial external inspection.
• Redeployment and ongoing testing.
• Community subHandle minting within the marketplace.
• Community review of Personalization integration.
• Documentation development for utilizing the marketplace.

Timeline: 1-2 months

Phase 3: PreProd Launch

After concluding the successful launch of The Handle Marketplace within the Preview environment, we will begin porting the code onto PreProd. During this phase we will have a certain degree of confidence that the code is fully operational, that all major vulnerabilities and problems have been fixed. We will utilize phase 3 to initiate the external audit of the code, in order to have an external set of eyes reviewing our code.

• Code migration from Preview.
• Implementation of PreProd marketplace.
• Community invitation to test.
• Documentation update to include changes.
• Communication with partners.
• Integration and testing with wallets.
• Community-focus groups.
• Feedback and adjustments.
• Load and queue testing.
• Security audit.

Timeline: 1-2 months

Phase 4: Marketing Efforts

The 4th phase of this proposal will be focused on bringing community awareness to ADA Handle's marketplace. We will deliver, during this phase, a full demonstration on how the marketplace works, that will include videos and documentation, designed to simplify the communication process with the ADA Handle and Cardano community. We will utilize our social-media outreach to deliver the message to as many followers as we can. We will also initiate a communications campaign with news outlets, to make crypto-media platforms aware of the new Handle Marketplace, while also bringing additional awareness to Cardano. We will initiate a paid Twitter campaign, in order to broadcast the message beyond ADA Handle's existing followers. We will host regular Q&A sessions on Twitter and Discord, while also requesting to be interviewed by news platforms. Our team members will also join, in an ad-hoc manner, existing Twitter Spaces, in order to increase the visibility of the proposal and solution.

• Demonstration videos.
• Social Media outreach.
• Communication with news outlets.
• Twitter Advertising.
• Community Q&A.
• Request for interviews.
• Ad-hoc joining of Twitter spaces.
• Roadmap with dates.
• Feedback & adjustments.

Timeline: 1 month

Phase 5: MainNet Launch

The purpose of the 5th and final phase is to port The Handle Marketplace code from the public Preview blockchain onto MainNet. This will require upgrading our MainNet infrastructure, extensively testing our Disaster Recovery Plan, and implementing load and queue testing. Once all tests are executed on MainNet infrastructure (measuring thrice and cutting once), we'll determine the launch date. Our goal is to have zero downtime on the ADA Handle platform prior to launch.

• Infrastructure purchase
• Code migration
• Disaster Recovery Plan testing.
• Load and queue testing.
• Confirmation of schedule maintenance window.
• Confirmation of schedule launch date.
• Follow-up pre-launch security audit.
• Launch.

Timeline: 1-2 months

Total Development Timeline: 6 to 11 months

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

Phase 1: Private TestNet

The private TestNet is designed to give us an internal environment to build the solution. The purpose of this initial phase is to deploy the infrastructure required to spin up the private TestNet, wherein we are going to deploy the first version of The Handle Marketplace. We are going to use the private TestNet to build and deploy the first iteration of the code, without exposing it to the Cardano community while we build it. This private TestNet will only be accessible by ADA Handle's team, advisors and contractors. We are going to run load and penetration tests against the code on this private TestNet, as a first approach to making sure that the code is secure and the infrastructure reliable for launching. Our UI/UX team will have access to this TestNet to start creating the layouts, design and usability of the platform, while presenting it to the internal team for review.

The most important outcome of this internal TestNet deployment is to give us a reliable and secure infrastructure to build the marketplace without exposing us to the public blockchains, giving us assurances that we can build privately prior to releasing the code to the community. This will likely be the phase that will last the longest since 90% of the work will be done during this phase.

Phase 2: Preview Launch

This phase of the deployment will allow the Cardano and ADA Handle community to test the first iteration of the code in the public blockchain. This will us and them to learn from the initial deployment, giving us invaluable information of what needs to be improved. This launch will also give us a public environment to test our Disaster Recovery and Scaling Plans. We will also utilize the environment for the initial audit of the code, from our external partner, who will assess and grade the security of the Smart Contract.

Our partners, wallets and other platforms will also have access to the code and infrastructure, in order to initiate their integration to the marketplace. This will give them the ability to prepare for PreProd and MainNet launch, with ample time to learn from from the new Smart Contract.

The environment will bring us feedback from the community, who will be live testing the solution with us, allowing us to learn from their interaction with the marketplace and Smart Contract. We will ingest the feedback to improve the marketplace.

Phase 3: PreProd Launch

The PreProd launch will give us a final environment, prior to MainNet launch, to test the code and infrastructure with the Cardano and ADA Handle community. The goal for this phase is to have the code ready for MainNet. During this phase we do not expect to uncover any new flaws but will keep the marketplace live for additional testing and auditing by our external partner. This phase will be focused on testing the infrastructure, making sure it is ready for MainNet launch, while performing stress tests to make sure that the infrastructure can automatically scale as required by launch.

We will focus part of our attention during the PreProd phase to improving the documentation related to the marketplace code and specifications. The documentation will be used by partners, wallets and other platforms to build on the standard.

Phase 4: Marketing Efforts

The marketing phase is designed to bring awareness to the ADA Handle Marketplace and all that we built on phases 1, 2 and 3. During this phase, we will focus our undivided attention on hosting Twitter Spaces, doing weekly AMAs, joining other Twitter Spaces, scheduling interviews with news outlets, purchasing and launching Twitter advertising. We are also going to deliver an improved documentation, which will have been initiated on phase 3. By the end of phase 4 we will have delivered the final version of our documentation. We will also deliver a multitude of educational videos that demonstrate how to utilize the new marketplace.

Phase 5: MainNet Launch

The final phase of this proposal will deliver a fully operational, secure and reliable marketplace, dedicated for $handles. This phase will accumulate all deliverables from the previous 4 phases and launch a perfect marketplace for Handles. The marketplace will include simple search and indexing tools for text-based assets, a platform for rootHandle owners to choose whether they want to allow live minting of subHandles by other community members, the price that each subHandle will be sold for, and an open-source code for the community and other interested parties to utilize as they see fit.

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

Private TestNet

• Infrastructure: 10,000 ADA
• Documentation: 5,000 ADA
• Salaries and Contractors: 25,000 ADA

Total: 40,000 ADA

Preview Launch

• Infrastructure: 25,000 ADA
• Salaries and Contractors: 25,000 ADA
• External Audit: 60,000 ADA
• Documentation: 15,000 ADA

Total: 125,000 ADA

PreProd Launch

• Infrastructure: 25,000 ADA
• Salaries and Contractors: 85,000 ADA
• External Audit: 50,000 ADA

Total: 160,000 ADA

Marketing

• Twitter Advertising: 25,000 ADA
• Salaries and Contractors: 25,000 ADA

Total: 50,000 ADA

MainNet Launch

• Infrastructure: 50,000 ADA
• Salaries and Contractors: 20,000 ADA
• Other costs: 20,000 ADA

Total: 90,000 ADA

Grand Total: 465,000 ADA

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

We believe that quantifying the budget from a Return Over Investment perspective would be the best approach to answering this question. We estimate a total cost of 465,000 ADA to build The Handle Marketplace, that will be designed to list, trade and interact with $handles, the leading naming service on the Cardano blockchain. The core of the expenditure will go towards paying the development team, marketing expenses, infrastructure costs and software audit. Our team, composed of 4 full-time USA-based engineers, is dedicated to building The Handle Standard, and we have been doing it since June 2021. 2 years of full-time dedication to Cardano and ADA Handle.

We have presently sold 221,000+ Handles, making us one of the leading projects on Cardano in terms of assets minted and sold. We believe that there is a gap in the existing NFT marketplaces that prevent text-based assets from being listed and sold appropriately. Therefore, we believe that a tangible Return Over Investment will be the improvement that we can deliver to the Cardano and ADA Handle community when interacting with the ADA Handle Standard, by simplifying the onboarding process of new users who might be looking for a memorable Handle (or subHandle) on the secondary market but presently cannot find given the existing limitations.

Additionally, a qualitative ROI can be measured by the overall sentiment improvement from the ADA Handle community, who will be able to more easily search for Handles on the secondary market, by being able to filter specific qualities for each Handle.

Another tangible ROI will be the creation of a white-label solution for the owners of memorable rootHandles who might choose to list the live minting of their subHandles, increasing the overall supply of Handles while monetizing with the process.

As the leading naming service on the Cardano blockchain, having a platform to showcase and allow other dApps and platforms to integrate with the Personalization and subHandle features will also be a quantitive ROI measurement.

We are here building for the success of Cardano as the leading Layer 1 blockchain.

[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.