Kreate - Vibrant Community & Marketplace for Millions of Art Lovers

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Hai Nguyen

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

hai@kreate.community

Additional applicants

• CTO: Kien Nguyen
• Operations: Ben Pham
• Business Analysis: Bao Nguyen
• Business Development: Wheels
• Marketing: Cham Nguyen
• Design: Tu Nguyen
• Senior Software Engineer: Dung Vu
• Software Engineer: Thanh Dinh

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

4

[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.” .

No dependencies.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s 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

dApp

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

As an all-encompassing Art platform, Kreate builds the vital Artwork management and social features necessary to create the network effects needed for a vibrant Arts culture on Cardano. 

We are giving Artists the power to thrive on Cardano with functionality such as Art portfolio management, comments, fine-tuned discovery, and custom galleries. On the Art marketplace side, we are bringing both tried-and-true and innovative features to support Art's commercial exchange and lifecycle. These include and are not limited to Edition support, Secondary sale royalties (Reseller fees), Auctions, Global offers, Provenance exploration, and more. With several years of experience on Cardano, we're confident we'll deliver top-notch UX & decentralised solutions, like our non-custodial on-demand minting feature that has been LIVE for two months.

Kreate is attentively studying the success of DeviantArt, Pixiv, and other established Web3 Art communities to deliver the same, if not better, experience on Cardano. Tezos has less than 10% of Cardano's market cap, but its flagship Art platform, Objkt, has half the number of users of Cardano as a whole chain. There should be no reason we cannot build a matching vibrant Art scene with more capital and solid technology.

With a focus on the human interactions that drive Art and the growth of Art, Kreate's number one differentiation is to build a community first and a marketplace second. A networked product will utilise Cardano's capital and technology to maximise user growth, which the chain needs to mature. Moreover, an Art-focused social network like DeviantArt connects Artists & Collectors through meaningful discovery and interactions. Contrast this to the struggle that Artists face cold-listing on existing marketplaces: an Artist must go to great lengths to market themselves in predominantly English-language, third-party channels not conducive to or focused on Art, usually failing to get into Collectors' Twitter feeds and getting zero sales or even minimal visibility.

Our solution also aims to grow the nascent Cardano blockchain Art scene via grassroots plans of attack at all Artist cohorts: the wider Web3 Indie Art scene, which has had thus far low accessible means to enter Cardano; Cardano's Early Adopters, especially its Artists, who've advised us throughout our development journey; and traditional fine Artists who have no experience with blockchain but are eager to join the ecosystem.

Finally, we will track key metrics such as the number of Artists & Collectors, the volume of Art sales, and user engagement to demonstrate our impact. We've been consistently achieving 50% MoM growth thus far! We actively and intimately work with the community to gather insights and improve the platform according to user needs and preferences.

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

Art has no boundaries, and fostering an international and diverse Arts culture is crucial to Cardano's roadmap of global adoption. Artists will come as we deliver the missing tools, and they, in turn, will lead their Collectors and all those who enjoy Art to the ecosystem. Kreate will provide the foundation for this, with an intuitive platform for Artists to showcase, disseminate, publish, and discuss their Works of any genre and build meaningful connections with the broader community.

People love Art, and it is vital to their daily lives. To many, it is essential to their professional lives. DeviantArt has over 75 million users, and Tezos's flagship Art marketplace, Objkt, has half of Cardano's entire blockchain user base. Art also has various subjects, schools, presentations, and media.

Cardano cannot catch up to the online Art scene when the blockchain's leading marketplaces focus solely on a single genre: generative PFPs. The asocial, cold-listing style of these marketplaces also needs more competition with the platforms and marketplaces of other ecosystems.

Our Art Editions support and accessible tooling have already onboarded many Artists onto Cardano from other ecosystems and traditional Artists with no experience with blockchain whatsoever. We continue innovating the Artist- and Art Collector-focused tooling available on Cardano. Our feature roll-out is strategic to meet the most urgent needs of Artists and Collectors. Our development roadmap will allow the Cardano Art scene to stand toe-to-toe with the already established ecosystems.

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

We currently track the following success metrics:

• Number of Artists: This is the hard side of our networked product. More Artists will naturally lead to more Artworks and Collectors.
• Number of Collectors: The spending side that completes the network. More Collectors lead to a denser network for sustainability.
• Number of Artworks: New refreshing Artworks are critical to catch the community's attention and maintain a creative environment.
• Number of Transactions & Volume: Determine how economically healthy the network is.
• Number of Comments & Loves: Determine how engaging the network is, which is essential to user retention.
• User Sentiment via Feedback: Qualitatively determine the satisfaction level of the core user group.

As a networked product, it is natural that our success will lead to the growth of the underlying infrastructure that is Cardano. The more Kreate grows, the more people hold and transact with ADA and invite more people into the ecosystem.

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

We post changelogs and product updates weekly on Twitter, Discord, YouTube, and in the various Artist communities we contact. We will maintain the update frequency for Catalyst but with even more depth through White Paper revisions that outline our whole protocol design. Our smart contract designs, such as for our non-custodial on-demand minting and royalties, will be proper contributions to dApp development on Cardano. Finally, we plan to fully open-source the protocol by the end of Catalyst's Round 10.

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

We already have a LIVE working product at https://kreate.community and have been releasing fixes, improvements, and features as aggressively as several times a day. We have collected well over a hundred glowing user testimonials unsolicited by us, which can be viewed here:

https://kreate.community/collection/VirtualOfficeFridge

Our team has years of experience working on DeFi & interoperability products on Cardano since 2021, including Indigo, MELD, Hachi, Akamon, Teiki, and Hyperlane <> Cardano integration, with several open-source contributions to Plutus.

The team is also fully doxxed. Please see our Team section for more information.

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

Our ultimate goal is to build the most vibrant Art community on Earth. We ask ourselves how many Artists & Collectors have joined, how many Works have been uploaded, how users are engaging with each other and to what extent, and how much Artists have made daily. We chose Web3 & Cardano for this mission because of the technology.

A nearer-term goal is to reach over 500K ADA in transaction volume and generate that much income for Indie Artists on Cardano. To validate our approach, we aggressively track user & volume data and enforce a 50% MoM growth rate. We update the numbers daily and seek new strategies if any critical metric falls below a 15% WoW growth rate.

We study, formulate, and carry out deliberate and distinctive product & network strategies. Our core users' demands—those of Artists and Art Lovers—drives our Product Development and Marketing. We are constantly studying and applying the network strategies of successful theories and case studies: Andrew Chen's The Cold Start Problem, Eric Ries's The Lean Startup, and David Ogilvy's Ogilvy on Advertising. Core principles of engaging game design inform our development of an interactive product with a social dimension: we glean tried and tested findings from professional game post-mortems, the Unity 2023 Gaming Report, and countless lectures hosted by the Game Developers Conference (GDC).

[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.

Milestone 1: Full Marketplace

• Duration: 1 Month.
• Projected Costs: 75,000 ADA (25%).
• New Features:
• On-chain Art.
• Locking options at both policy and asset levels.
• Unlimited Editions for a Limited Time (Countdown Timer).
• Secondary Market Offers & Listings.
• Full Marketplace UI.
• Acceptance Criteria: 
• Working features in production & mainnet.
• 500+ Artists.
• 2,000+ Collectors.
• 15,000+ Works.
• 175,000+ ADA in Volume.

Milestone 2: Art Immersion

• Duration: 1 Month.
• Projected Costs: 75,000 ADA (25%).
• New Features:
• Custom galleries.
• Asset lifecycle with the current list of Collectors, an activity & transaction history.
• Advanced notification systems to follow Artists, listings, offers, and more.
• An advanced comment, review, and recommendation system with mentions, threads, planning, and cross-posting.
• Better Mobile Support.
• Acceptance Criteria: 
• Working features in production & mainnet.
• 750+ Artists.
• 3,000+ Collectors.
• 25,000+ Works.
• 250,000+ ADA in Volume.

Milestone 3: Advanced Art

• Duration: 1 Month.
• Projected Costs: 75,000 ADA (25%).
• New Features:
• Secondary Sale Royalties (Reseller fees)
• English & Dutch Auctions.
• Token evolution.
• Policy migration.
• Gacha & private mints.
• Acceptance Criteria: 
• Working features in production & mainnet.
• 1,250+ Artists.
• 5,000+ Collectors.
• 35,000+ Works.
• 375,000+ ADA in Volume.

Milestone 4: Integration at Scale

• Duration: 1 Month.
• Projected Costs: 75,000 ADA (25%).
• New Features:
• Multichain integration with Tezos, Polygon, or Ethereum.
• Fiat payment integration with Crossmint, Winter, or Moonpay.
• Fuller search & explore experience with search suggestions, search by collections, search in metadata, and more.
• Extensive partnerships to onboard Artists & Collectors, hold Exhibits, and more.
• Digital frame integration research.
• Acceptance Criteria: 
• Working features in production & mainnet.
• Fully open-source code.
• 2,000+ Artists.
• 8,000+ Collectors.
• 50,000+ Works.
• 500,000+ ADA in Volume.

Spreadsheet version:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G76PnmMhIPc6kxmpeUE2NbzswUW36Lypzeur6b6dp1A

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

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

1.Technology: 50%.

• Protocol (smart contract) design and development.
• Infrastructure & Web backend development.
• Web frontend development.

2.Marketing & Business Development: 25%.

• Marketing & PR.
• Business Development.
• Community Management.
• Kreate Fest Budget.

3.Product: 15%.

• Business Analysis.
• Product Design & Management.
• UX/UI design.

4.Operations: 10%.

• Accounting & HR.
• Infrastructure & third-party service costs.
• Office & other operational costs.

Most of the budget is for employee salaries, with extra expenses for marketing, infrastructure, and third-party services and software.

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

We have already generated over 100k ADA in transaction volume and revenues for Indie Artists on Cardano. With this funding request, we aim to hit 500k ADA next. This volume is going to be a critical metric in the bear market for Cardano, as well as creating a network effect to grow adoption and attract talents from other ecosystems. Finally, we'll return 5-10% directly to the community via Kreate Fest prizes and minting Editions for aspiring new Artists.

[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