Project Catapult: Where not-funded and finished proposals are not left behind - by GameChanger Finance ❤️

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Adriano Fiorenza

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Entity (Not Incorporated)

[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] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

Let's facilitate for the community to save any project, also Catalyst-curated not-funded projects, by catapulting them forward with donations and other mechanisms.

Second chances, even for this dapp.

[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.”

• Universal Dapp Connector compliant wallet
• Dandelion-Lite
• GCFS web server

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

Yes

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

The entire source code will be provided as open source, MIT License, and as open deployment if costs allow us to fully deploy on-chain using GCFS protocol.

[METADATA] Horizons

DeFi

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

Extended problem statement:

There is so much value on Catalyst, not only in the key role it plays regarding the practical DAO approach into managing Cardano treasury funds, but also into the decentralized quality curation of projects, collaborative environment, historical participation achievements, international openness to plural voices, time invested by proposers, reviewers, organizers, voters and social media community support.

Efforts, efforts, efforts.

But suddenly, voting power influence, luck, language barriers, lack or inability to offer proper time or dedication and many other factors can contribute to shape the huge proportion of also assessed, curated, fairly written, not-funded proposals. This huge database of good intentions gets frozen in time after voting ends. Some of the projects get stalled and are left behind. Others reapply virally with trial and error approaches expecting the chance to succeed, on some cases rearranging their old proposals (like this one) into new ones with more or less the same content,  "spamming" Ideascale with more and more content, consuming more and more reviewers, organizers and voters efforts as well as the time consumed by these tireless proposers fighting for their dreams. the "cutted-off hydra heads" effect, everywhere.

And yet, one could think that the community has spoken and that those words are final, but voters... heroic voters find themselves frustrated by how some wallets with huge voting power can decide compared to their humble possibilities, and they might still want to support individually these not-funded proposals in a noble attempt to make Cardano the great blockchain they dream about. Frustrated voters organize themselves, reach out, try to find alternative ways of supporting builders and proposers who are still trying to innovate and deliver. And proposals could find their second chances thanks to these community members we are all so thankful to have. Yes, writer has encounter more than one across his 3 year old experience on this ecosystem and this is where this concept gets validated.

Kind and committed community members do exist and we are here because of them.

Describe your solution to the problem:

While in a testnet phase (Proof-Of-Concept), we've already built a community-driven DApp for ADA donations and other funding mechanisms that adds value to all these epic Catalyst Funds efforts left behind after voting. In addition, it also provided a way to generate income for many other participants, not just the proposers.

This took place in 2021. the Universal Dapp Connector specification has been massively improved, former Ideascale lack of API access over-complicated the PoC and Cardano APIs has changed a lot ever since.

Project Catapult needs a second chance to get a mainnet MVP, rebuilt from ground up, and this time it will get simplified, open to support community proposals even outside Catalyst, and built leveraging on open, permissionless, on-chain file systems using GCFS protocol.

Users will be able to create, update and share their proposals stored fully on-chain by updating their own on-chain file systems or DiskNFTs, assets that serve as pointers to the actual data stored and that serve as cryptographic signature for participating on the system.

Platform will allow users to search proposals and help fund them at least by P2P donations. Donation URLs and QR codes would be offered for proposal's promotion efforts. A modular design should allow for future features and categories.

Platform mirrors will be allowed by design, contributing to ecosystem resiliency and decentralization.

In order to be concise and avoid duplicating relevant information again, this was the former 2021 Catalyst Fund 7 not-funded proposal, with more insights on the technical aspect of the initial version of the project:

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/60915

For a glimpse of how it looked like back in 2021, serving as a prototype, please watch this presentation video:

https://youtu.be/ans9s_QNuRY

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

Cardano could grow and continue it's ongoing innovation much longer this way. It may not be enough all the times for all teams and project sizes, but doors will remain open for a democratized, liquid funding possibility.

Even finished projects could have a platform where to ask for continuous funding for maintenance, service costs and much more.

Donations for community causes will find a place too.

Catalyst could get even more sustainable because it may receive less proposal re-submissions caring and optimizing more for their most precious resource: reviewer's, voter's and proposer's time.

And builders could focus more on building and less on seeking, begging, and even singing for initial or continuous funding. Let our caring community help our great builders to just go and build amazing things for all of us.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

We have a good track record on Catalyst with 10 finished projects and on the Cardano community, delivering innovative solutions and tooling since 2021.

As far as possible we will always deliver first and then look for funding for open sourcing, maintaining and growing our libraries, products and solutions.

This was the case of Project Catapult initial prototype of 2021 which was abandoned due to lack of resources and huge Cardano breaking changes such as the legacy testnet event, and we are only bringing back this project to life because people that witnessed it working back then has never stop asking us to put it back online.

[PROJECT MILESTONES] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Outputs:

• Research for minimal footprint JS/TS web framework or Vanilla JS in order to make possible a full or minimal on-chain GCFS deployment
• Optional: collaboration on GCFS and wallet-side tooling if required
• Base of the Github repository
• First platform development stage

Acceptance criteria: A brief report on the design strategy will be presented, initial code on repository is present. Optional reference to external collaborations.

Evidence of completition: brief report and collaboration references (optional) submitted on Milestones Module, code on github repository

Outputs:

• Second platform development stage
• Optional: collaboration on GCFS and wallet-side tooling if required

Acceptance criteria: collaboration references (optional) ,new code on repository is present.

Evidence of completition: collaboration references (optional) submitted on Milestones Module, code on github repository

Outputs:

• Third platform development stage
• Optional: collaboration on GCFS and wallet-side tooling if required

Acceptance criteria: collaboration references (optional), new code on repository is present.

Evidence of completition: collaboration references (optional) submitted on Milestones Module, code on github repository

Outputs:

• Full platform source code
• GCFS open deployment (optional/partial)
• Basic documentation
• MIT license
• Closeout Video
• Closeout Report

Acceptance criteria: Code and documentation is present on repository, Optional or partial open deployment is available on-chain on Testnet/Mainnet. Closeout report and video are submitted.

Evidence of completition: code, license and documentation on github repository, closeout files on Milestone Module.

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Project Leader:

Adriano Fiorenza is an Entrepreneur & Senior Full Stack Developer with 15+ years of experience software and IOT development. Founder and Developer of GameChanger Wallet, Unimatrix Sync, GCFS protocol, Universal Dapp Connector specification, delivered 10 funded Catalyst projects, participated in 1st gen Plutus Pioneer Program, Team member at ALDEA, Gimbalabs colaborator.

His Linkedin profile can be found at https://ar.linkedin.com/in/adriano-fiorenza

Collaborator/Maintainer:

Maarten Menheere is a design engineer with a masters degree Industrial design at Technical University in Delft. Founder and for 10 years owner of M2tec design and engineering. Has 15 years experience in project management and engineering of payment systems. M2tec was one of the first to deliver in Fund 5. Completing all set goals of the project within the set delivery schedule. Followed by development of the Totem v1 in Fund 7 .

His Linkedin profile can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/maartenmenheere/

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

Milestone 1: USD 13.600,00

Milestone 2: USD 13.600,00

Milestone 3: USD 13.600,00

Final Milestone: USD 6.800,00

Total: 560hs x USD 85/hr = USD 47.600,00 ~ ADA 137.175,79

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

We have already an initial experience and feedback around this concept, we have a clear path on what features to offer now and what to adjust and simplify based on user input, requests and suggestions.

Specially we have experience around the technical innovations used behind the previous PoC (DYOR and check why former dapp fostered a decentralized and innovative dapp design).

This time we will catapult all this even forward: by partially or fully store and host this dapp on-chain, even a frontend, pioneering on GCFS protocol with open source code anyone can learn from and use on other projects. (DYOR and check why GCFS matters and how it can bootstrap a new era of dapps on Cardano )

Above all reasons, this project will help community builders get second chances, and may help make Catalyst a more sustainable project. 5 months of development work that can technically contribute to even other projects, would make a good use of community funds.