Chain Lobby - A multi-chain Web 3 Social Media Platform built for the masses to connect

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Daniel Lewis

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

dan@adadigies.com

Additional applicants

Marcuswalkerindustries@gmail.com

[GENERAL] Requested funds in ada

660000

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

9

[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.” .

All of our work has been self funded from the inception of the platform. We have already created a live NFT-gated beta that is currently being worked on daily. Blockfrost hosts the necessary infrastructure to help speed up rendering times of NFTs for the platform, and Digital Ocean hosts the website servers.

[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.”

Not at this point, we do plan to open source some of the platforms for other developers to contribute. This will be much later on once we’ve proved the concept. We plan to build open APIs for communities to access data & information that would be useful to the community IE Project updates, most common PFPs used, articles & learning material.

[METADATA] Category of Proposal

Other

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Our mission is to create a central place for web 3 communities to share resources, learn, & engage with communities & people. We want to help bridge the gap between blockchains; helping new people into the crypto & NFT space by providing the help and support they need to understand the ecosystem through the power of community.

We are absorbed in a world of isolation even though we are engaging on social channels like Twitter & Discord. The problem with current generation platforms is that we are being siloed into communities instead of having the power of choice in what we see and read. Investors and NFT enthusiasts alike are jumping between 10's of discords to keep up to date. The Twitter algorithm decides what you will see today based on how long you stopped to read or how many hearts you clicked. Content becomes condensed into numbers, resulting in tunnel vision. It is causing most of us to miss out on other areas of interest. 

Discords are exhausted with bots to perform tasks to help manage communities. Platforms such as Discord were never designed to handle the type of community growth it has had from the crypto space. Projects in our space suffer severely from being hard to find and even harder to manage, requiring a large amount of technical knowledge to create and maintain. 

 

Chain Lobby’s vision is to bridge the world of “Web2” with the infrastructure of “Web3” baked into the scaffolding created from the ground up with blockchain in mind. We started on Cardano and will steadily add other Blockchains to the platform as demand grows, along with the requested features from the community to make their experience rival that of any of the big corporations currently dominating the space.

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

Chain Lobby will be a space where people and projects can come together from across the block-chain community. High-quality information will be easily accessible and properly curated based on what the user wants, and not just what an algorithm decides. Allowing people to join groups dedicated to focused subject matter with personalized feeds - matching community members with their interests & to projects by connecting through their wallets. We have already integrated ADAHANDLE into our platform to address another serious concern in the crypto space. We can greatly reduce the amount and risk of scams and bad actors simply through the security inherent in the Cardano Blockchain NFTs. Since the user is linked through their wallet and their ADAHANDLE is their displayed name, it is literally impossible to create profiles without physically owning the NFT! 

Groups are created to give a space for just about anything the community desires to learn about or learn from. This platform is about empowering the users and creators by giving them the infrastructure to stay connected, without being limited, censored, or tracked in any way. Your business is your business, we are just here to help facilitate you reaching your target audiences!

Community members will be able to share their favorite youtube videos, write articles, quick posts, links, find web 3 jobs and more as the community demands.

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

We will be using a framework called OKRs to measure the success & impact of our project, these are:

1.Community activity

1. Monthly active users
2. Content produced

2.Quality content

1. Articles created by content writers
2. Volume of ADA tipping
3. Social post engagement

3.Community growth

1. Monthly user signups
2. Number of communities who joined
3. Invites been created

For us, the community is everything, especially for a decentralized blockchain. A platform that brings people together to build on a common cause will empower people and builders all through the Cardano eco-system. We believe we can provide a solution that brings people together without isolation.

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

We will be creating a number of ways to monitor and share the product performance.

• Community board > Meet quarterly with agenda & goals
• Monthly product reports > Transparency around platform performance (Internal dash with stats already exists)
• Twitter spaces with wider community to talk through product
• Bi-weekly product demos taking feedback (Already happening)
• Product driven interviews using product activity data and community insight to improve value

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

• Dan is the Director of product for a FTSE100 tech company and built multiple products in web2. Dan has run several successful tech businesses in his career
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/danlewistech/
• Kirsty(Dev) runs a successful international software development agency specializing in web and mobile applications. Kirsty has been delivering digital products for 20 years for a multitude of venture backed companies of all sizes. She holds a First-class honors degree in Computer Science.
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamskirsty/
• https://stacktiger.co 
• https://github.com/kirstywilliams 
• Rachel has a honors degree in Computer Science, and has experience developing React and React Native applications for international clients.
• Helena has a Masters degree in Computer Science, she is CTO of a software development agency and has been building and shipping React Native apps since it was first released. Helena has experience managing and working on engineering projects of all sizes, having worked at giant IBM and venture-backed startups. She is a maintainer of multiple Open Source libraries.
• https://linkedin.com/in/helenaford
• https://github.com/helenaford
• https://ford.dev
• Maynard is the Community Ambassador to Chain Lobby - He is responsible for running Twitter spaces, connecting with projects and the founders, and bringing awareness to what we are building. Maynard has over a decade of public speaking and runs his own business as a master of ceremony and speech writer. He owns two successful businesses of his own and started applying these skills to blockchain since his start in 2020. 
• Chainlobby(Beta) already delivered (Gated by NFT access)

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

Our main objective is to solve;

• Creation of project discoverability & engage capability for web3 projects
• Easier discovery of the the quality content catered to the person browsing
• Reduction of the learning curve for people coming to the blockchain through web 2 styled solutions that will not intimidate someone new to the space
• Assisting in helping to onboard other blockchain community members into 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.

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

We’ve delivered a private beta version of the platform (www.chainlobby.com) with 400+ community members and 64 Cardano projects including the likes of NMKR, UglyBros and Degen Crypto Club utilizing the platform.

The next stage is to allow pioneer token holders to invite 3 friends to the platform. The reason for this approach is to make sure we organically grow the community and keep out bad actors. We are also using the pioneer group to gather product feedback, feature ideas and squash bugs. Once we bring on the next cohort we will then offer the new people a chance to invite a few friends.

Our prime goals after this point is to create revenue models to keep the business sustainable long term. These are some of the revenue areas of focus;

 

• Job posting
• Community pro subscription
• Advertising
• Referral models

As part of creating an eco-system we plan to deliver a token for the community. This will reward them for good content and engagement. Can be used to spend and tip content creators (Think Brave/BIT).

For us to achieve our ultimate goal we need to open the platform to other blockchains. Which blockchain we bring on hasn’t been decided.

In terms of product & project management we will use an agile framework with sprints spread over two weeks. We publish releases publicly for anyone that wants to track our progress. For task management we use tools like Jara.

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

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

Costs have been driven from the day rates of contractors in the UK. Rate card detailed in budget.

We believe that we have already delivered a platform that offers huge value to the Cradano community that we have self funded. To take the platform to the next level we need financial support to help produce some of the more challenging objectives.

We believe with a community lead approach we can bring new people into the ecosystem & reduce the learning curve for those entering for the first time.

[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