Pond - Empowering students to innovate on Cardano

[GENERAL] Name and Surname of Main Applicant

Nikias Arts (narts)

[GENERAL] Email address of Main Applicant

nartsclay@gmail.com

Additional Applicants

Evan Foster (Nalu) - enrolled in American school system at Brigham Young University, located in Laie, Hawaii

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

7

[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.” .

There are two main dependencies which will contribute to the continued existence of Pond:

• operating costs to run our infrastructure
• collaboration with external technical team

The Pond platform currently runs on state-of-the-art infrastructure, which is essential to deliver the best experience when using our platform. In order to sustain this infrastructure monthly operating costs have to be made.

Development on the Pond platform is done by an external technical company, which has been responsible for both the first and second version of the Pond platform that has been delivered so far. This technical company is responsible for both the back-end and the front-end, while the overall setup and configuration is done by the Pond team.

[GENERAL] Will your project outputs 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

Education

[METADATA] SDG rating

4 - 5 - 8 - 9 - 10

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Pond has been built from the ground up by both Picka and Nalu, which are both enrolled as students in the American school system. Pond has helped them grow from students with an idea into real entrepreneurs, lessons not a single course in school can teach. Their experiences have allowed their skills in the domains of project management, stakeholder management, entrepreneurship, and many others, to flourish. It's this experience they wish to share with their peers.

By leveraging Cardano's security and scalability, Pond empowers users to unlock the full potential of their assets. Lenders earn passive income through lending, while borrowers access liquidity using their holdings as collateral. With support for NFTs, Pond bridges the gap between traditional finance and the NFT space, fostering a vibrant ecosystem of decentralized finance and digital assets.

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

As founders at Pond, we believe that we can share our experience to other students that are in similar situations as we were, evolving an idea from conceptualisation to an actual product. Also, we believe we will be able to nudge people into taking this step, serving as their mentors.

In addition we believe that if we can derisk our investments the coming months, this will allow us to continue Pond's journey.

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

At Pond we're already constantly monitoring traffic on all our touchpoints: our social media challenges, our website and our platform. We will install additional metrics to gauge how effective the sharing of our knowledge has been.

In addition we will ensure that we publicly share what the Total Value Locked on our platform is.

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

Since we already have a vibrant community and active Discord server with several thousand members, we will use this Discord server to actively communicate on the progress of our project and the next phases of our journey.

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

Over the course of the past years we've already delivered different versions of our platform. From a small try-out application with a small subset of people, to our very first dapp, and more recently the launch of our beta version.

There's always another version being worked on by our team, and this summer we're expecting the launch of our next version, with another set of features to further support our community.

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

At Pond we believe that financial services should be accessible, inclusive, and transparent for all individuals. By combining the power of Cardano's robust blockchain infrastructure and the principles of decentralized finance, we aim to disrupt the traditional lending landscape.

As our community grows, we will continue to monitor whether these goals have been reached. There are some important metrics which we apply for this, such as the TVL - which stands for Total Value Locked and is a representation of the amount currently locked at our smart contract addresses.

[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.

There are several milestones which we've set with the Pond team, graphically summarised in the image below:

In order to reach all of these milestones, the platform needs to be available and up & running. Helping alleviate some of the burden of operating costs, will help the Pond team continue to innovate and reach these milestones.

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

On our platform there are several milestones coming up:

• shorting platform - goal is to provide a third major pillar of liquidity (alongside lending and borrowing)
• Pond points - goal is to reward our most active community members
• additional inclusivity - goal is to open up lending ecosystem outside of Pond NFT holders

On our knowledge base we have several other deliverables which we envision to deliver:

• technical set-up and architecture - goal is to educate community members and to outline what technologies have been used
• a storyline outlining the different phases of Pond - goal is to share our experience and to indicate the different phases of product development we've went through
• tips and tricks on how to grow an idea into an actual product - goal is to assist other community members in growing their idea into a product

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

The funds requested in this proposal - being a total of 32,000 ADA - will be used as follows:

• 28,000 ADA to operating costs for 7 months, at 4,000 ADA per month
• 4,000 ADA to document the knowledge base on our website

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

As already mentioned above, the two most important cost factors are the technical company we've been working with in the past and the operating costs.

By eliminating one of these for the upcoming 7 months we feel positive that we can continue delivering value to the Cardano ecosystem, and continue to educate our fellow students on the journey we've been through. We firmly believe Pond can continue to be an important cornerstone of this emerging movement.

[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