appy.market Local Shopping – Crypto powered local marketplace to collectively leave fiat behind

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Jonas Soukup

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

cardano@ltd.appy.market

Additional applicants

TBD

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

12

[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.” .

Well, of course our extensive software stack utilizes 3rd party libraries (such as Grails or MongoDB), but that’s our internal software product management responsibility.

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

No

[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 is closed source. Yet we plan to be open for integrations with import/export APIs or WordPress Plugins down the line.

[METADATA] Category of Proposal

RealFi

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated small businesses worldwide, leaving them struggling to compete in the digital era. Our solution, appy.market, aims to revive local communities by empowering brick-and-mortar businesses. Through our platform, businesses can offer their products and services digitally, create events, supported by local ambassadors called Guide Admins. We prioritize user experience with curated local guides, ratings, and reviews.

What sets us apart is our integration of blockchain technology, specifically Cardano, to ensure secure and transparent financial transactions. Blockchain enables decentralized trust and eliminates central failure points. This technology offers tremendous value to local communities and fosters economic empowerment.

Crypto use cases include secure proof of product collection, while upfront payments will be held in escrow on the blockchain until the product is collected (click-and-collect), payment for local services held in escrow until after the service was performed, eventually NFT event tickets, and NFT loyalty coupon programs, and transaction fees. Our utility token coin offers a 50% reduction in transaction fees when used in these use cases.

We prioritize legal compliance and work closely with local regulations. To comply, we will launch in markets where crypto payments are allowed. After the technical implementation will be finished, we will conduct a market study, with a close look on Africa. Our Guide Admins monitor content and maintain compliance, ensuring the safety and integrity of the platform, and will be earning transaction fees on every sale or booking.

Our mission is to help local businesses thrive in the post-pandemic world, offering the best local marketplace software on the planet. By creating a symbiotic relationship between digital and local commerce, we foster economic growth and empower communities.

Furthermore, appy.market provides new income opportunities for those affected by emerging AI technologies. We envision our platform as a valuable option for individuals transitioning from digital jobs to earning money locally.

Help us making a positive impact on local communities and building a better future with appy.market on the Cardano blockchain, by voting for us. Together, we can revitalize local economies and create a post-pandemic world where small businesses thrive.

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

appy.market presents a comprehensive solution that directly addresses the objectives of Fund 10 by leveraging a map-based local shopping platform. It focuses on empowering three key personas:

A. Guide Admins:

• Create curated local shopping guides on appy.market
• Empower local retail stores and businesses to sell their products and services
• Earn a commission on every sale or booking
• Strive to positively impact the structures of their regions

B. Shop Admins:

• Join a local guide with their brick-and-mortar stores
• Increase the sales of their stores by reaching a broader audience
• Sell regional products and have paid services booked
• Offer a unique experience to the appy.market community

C. End Users:

• Digitally buy from regional shops and businesses
• Benefit from curated local guides that lead to special deals and regional products
• Engage with the community through ratings, reviews, questions and answers
• Find the best deals across their cities

By catering to the needs of these three user types and enabling thousands of local shopping guides worldwide, appy.market creates a thriving marketplace that drives economic growth, fosters community engagement, and promotes the adoption of Cardano. With its clear alignment to the goals of Fund 10 and the potential to deliver significant impact, appy.market is a compelling candidate for funding, offering a sustainable and transformative solution for the Cardano ecosystem.

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

• Analyze media coverage of keywords: "appy.market" + "Cardano" by searching for hits on Google during the Fund10 project duration, once every month; comparing the numbers each month to show the growth
• Number of total ADA wallet addresses connected to appy.market, first on test-net and later production-net once the project is ready to launch and we are live

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

The impact of appy.market will be publicly available on appy.market: 

• Number of appy.market Guides
• Number of Shops in each Guide
• Number of Offers in each Guide
• Number of Offer views
• Number of Events in each Guide
• Change over time (e.g. with WayBackMachine)

Guide Admins and Shop Admins will have access to further commercial, sales and performance statistics, including

• Total number and value of sales (Guide Level, Shop Level, Offer Level)
• Transaction volume (both, turnaround and revenue)
• Monthly shop performance PDFs with sales and bookings
• Monthly invoices (incl. local sales tax)
• Views per platform (Web, later Android and iOS)
• Expenses paid to partners (e.g. transaction fees)
• Transaction times of product or service description

Thinking of publishing condensed usage and transaction volume numbers on the product website (e.g. transaction volume per region and number of users)

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

The appy.market platform software is already around 90% finished, excluding blockchain integration. We encourage you to take a look at our (current) product website at https://ltd.appy.market, the software test environment at https://test7.appy.market, as well as a test guide with test-data we have compiled at https://test7.appy.market/grazexpats.

To examine further, please go ahead and 

• a) create a test guide yourself to see the capabilities for Guide Admins, or 
• b) signup as Shop Admin, to take the view of a local business owner, or 
• c) register as End User to rate, review, attend, buy and book.

Don’t worry, you cannot break anything in a productive system, because it’s still a test environment explicitly for your consideration.

As you will see, many hours have already been spent in the creation of the product, and we are already very (h)appy with the level of quality we have reached so far :-)

Moreover, our founder Jonas is a serial app entrepreneur, experienced software product manager and senior software engineer with decades of experience. We can assure you that his life’s purpose aligns with appy.market: We love facilitating proximity connections for exchange.

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

1) Finalization of the software product & bug fixing (going from 90% to 100%)

• adding important community features (questions + answers)
• fixing uploading of audio files
• checking software behaviour differences from dev, test and prod environments
• adding spam protection and a basic level of KYC to the onboarding process 
• Taking the feedback from testing of the Cardano community into account
• Testing
• Bug fixing
• Bi-weekly delivery of new test installations on the publicly available test environment to track progress

2) Design and implementation of a Cardano test project to proof feasibility of indented primary crypto use case for appy.market

3) Implementation of the primary appy.market blockchain use cases

a) secure proof for seller and buyer that a product bought was actually collected from the local shop by the buyer, before the payment held in escrow on the blockchain is transferred to the seller

b) pay for local services booked on the platform

c) payment flow implementation: pay transactions, subscriptions and operational fees

4) Testing and bug fixing of the Cardano blockchain integration

5) Cost analysis for blockchain layer transactions on Cardano based on test data

6) Developing our utility coin launch strategy for a 50% reduction in platform fees

7) Launching our coin for the platform

8) A key part of our strategy is to conduct a comprehensive market survey to assess the regulatory environment and identify the most suitable market for launching our local marketplace software

9) appy.market is going live on Cardano

[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.

M1 – Software on the web is ready to go live (without blockchain). Community features are implemented, spam-protection and basic level of KYC for the onboarding process is implemented, last impeding issues have been identified and fixed. Known issues such as errors in sales statistics and invoice generation are fixed. Map positioning errors have been fixed; map overlay errors have been fixed. Web project is ready to work without server (e.g. opening hour logic has been ported from server to web). Wording has been finalized, texts revised and updated, emails sent have been revised and design is finalized. Problems in responsive design have been fixed. Still unknown bugs have been identified through extensive internal tests, and feedback from the Cardano test users has been addressed, such as new found bugs by testing out the software. 

Timeline 2 months. Cost 75k ADA

M2 – We got familiar with Cardano impl. specifics (Haskell and smart contract development) and successfully implemented a payment flow, by keeping funds in escrow first, and then an automatic payment release is triggered by the software: Buyer -> Seller, escrow with GA, then releasing funds to Seller by external trigger (controlled by our platform). Also taking into account software design considerations for failed transactions.  

Timeline 1 month. Cost 20k ADA

M3 – Integration of the blockchain layer into appy.market with Cardano. Three use cases will be supported a) secure proof for seller and buyer that a product bought was actually collected from the local shop by the buyer, before the payment held in escrow on the blockchain is transferred to the seller, b) pay for local services booked on the platform, c) payment flow implementation: pay transactions, subscriptions and operational fees connection to external wallets is implemented (on the web). An oracle service for real-time fx calculations is implemented (to show prices in EUR or ADA, later our own coin). 

Timeline 2 months. Cost 100k ADA

M4 – Testing and bug fixing of M3. 

Timeline 1 month. Cost 40k ADA

M5 – Running a Guide with imitating at least 100 transactions, for the calculation of the cost of the blockchain base-layer infrastructure Cardano, and double-check the timing from a product-fit perspective. 

Timeline 1 month. Cost 20k ADA

M6 – Figuring out how to be launching our own coin, checking best practices from similar products (marketplaces) and crafting our own fair tokonomics. Creating a web platform for it, and describing the benefits for investors. 

Timeline 2 months. Cost 60k ADA

M7 – Implementing the plan from M6, and issuing the new coin. Implementing the payment option with 50% reduction of fees in appy.market. Updating the price oracle for hopefully near real-time conversion from and to EUR. 

Timeline 1 month. Cost 75k ADA

M8 – Ideally having found interested Guide Admins in the Cardano community, together we’ll define where we will launch first. It’s important that the regulatory landscape lets us operate. Guides can only operate in one country, and Shop Admins have to pay local sales tax. The platform supports that, yet payments must be able to be accepted in crypto to the wallets of Shop Admins and Guide Admins, respectively. We’ll take a closer look at African countries, as we intent to launch on this continent. 

Timeline 1month, Cost: 60k ADA

M9 – With M8 in place we are ready to go live! Domain will change from testx.appy.market to appy.market and servers with live performance will be setup in the background. Geo-restrictions will be in place to only allow Guide-creation where we are green to launch.

Timeline 1 month. Cost 60k ADA

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

M1 – OK quality to go live with appy.market version 3.0, no P1 or P2 known bugs are open.

M2 – Cardano test project showcases the feasibility to be used as payment and trust layer for appy.market and this produces a GO for the consecutive steps. 

M3 - Use cases a), b) and c) are implemented, a first development version will work on the test net with Cardano, the connection to external wallets is implemented (on the web). An oracle service for real-time fx calculations is implemented (to show prices in EUR or ADA, later our own coin). 

M4 - Installed test-system with Cardano integration on testx.appy.market.

M5 - Decision of feasibility based on (transaction costs are not too high, and can be borne by the platform, transaction finalization times are fast). 

M6 – Website live for our own coin.

M7 – Our own coin is live as an option to save 50% of transaction fees when used on appy.market.

M8 - The country where we will be launching is defined, local laws are checked. The Guide Admins from that country are on board, and ready to roll. Two follow up countries are defined. 

M9 – appy.market is live!

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

Project cost 510k ADA

• M1 75k ADA

• M2 20k ADA

• M3 100k ADA

• M4 40k ADA

• M5 20k ADA

• M6 60k ADA

• M7 75k ADA

• M8 60k ADA

• M9 60k ADA

Additional cost 120k ADA:

• Infrastructure cost (AWS, MongoDB) 60k ADA

• 3rd party cost (legal, marketing): 30k ADA

• Public relations: 30k ADA

Total 630k ADA

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

We have calculated many software and app projects in past, and therefore know from experience, that things sometimes take longer than developers expect in the first place. We mitigate that risk in the save selection of a project duration of 12 months. 

How are we giving back to the Cardano community?

We love facilitating proximity connections for exchange, and we feel that our mission is the materialization of Cardano vision to make the world work better for all. We are here to provide you with the first and best crypto enabled local marketplace on the planet, to collectively leave fiat behind.

We need your help to choose Cardano as our blockchain layer, because we think it’s the most active and honest community in the industry, that also „new people from outside“ can trust easily. We believe that thousands and millions of users will be using appy.market on a daily basis, and as such enter the world of Cardano and ADA. Also, our focus on Africa as our launching continent supports the choice for Cardano, because Cardano is popular there. 

[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