Custom Proof-of-Attendance Systems Creator for Zoom

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Sarah Faulkner

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

Individual

[GENERAL] Co proposers and Additional applicants

None

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

8

[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)

An open source solution for no-code creation of token-gated Zoom events with new conditions for registration, attendance and automatic rewards, flexible for most social and business contexts.

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

This proposal is scoped for an open-source Cardano-based NFT event management API server repository. In addition to making the repository available to the public to create their own versions, a front-end app will utilize a live version of this server to provide a self-service interface for consumers to create and manage token-gated Zoom sessions and automate rewards without technical knowledge.

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

We cannot ensure continuity and identity within Zoom meetings, and we cannot scale proof-of-attendance for governance or social incentivization without a developer team to create a custom solution for each use-case. Existing projects emphasizing a sense of community cannot provide additional value to token holders in a simple, self-service interface.

Governing bodies on Cardano, such as Catalyst, rely on the currency as the voting token, which is fungible and attainable with loans and onramps. A more fair system would be voting tokens released upon completion of a PoA session, if only such a system was flexible and scalable enough. 

Meetings of high importance, in the context of governing bodies or private sessions such as tele-health, are becoming increasingly susceptible to deep-fake technology. The attendees need a tokenized system in a world where even live video cannot be trusted to confirm the attendee.

This proposal is for an open source solution that allows no-code creation of token-gated Zoom events with new conditions for registration, attendance and automatic rewards, flexible for most social and business contexts.

The solution will require an easy-to-use interface for registering, creating events with custom token-based conditions, and configuring rewards systems in the form of currency, fungibles or NFTs that can be used to access subsequent meetings or for other utility outside the system. 

The Zoom events created must be configured to be invite-only, while the token-gating server adds RSVPs after passing the token portal. It pairs a consumer’s Zoom account with a wallet, and sends tokens to that wallet based on attendance as configured on the app interface.

The project will leverage the following Zoom API libraries:

1. Events API
2. Create Event
3. Delete Event
4. Update Event
5. Get Event
6. Registrants API
7. List Registrants
8. List Session Attendees
9. Reports API
10. Event Registrations Report
11. Event Attendance Report
12. Event Survey Report

Through a front-end app, users will be able to create and manage their own token-gated Zoom events without code, a website, or specialized blockchain knowledge. Attendance rewards in the form of currency, fungibles or NFTs are configured to be automatically dispersed to attendees that meet specific and lifetime attendance performance configurations. It can be used to quickly organize private meetings among friends, ensure continuity in identity between meetings, automatically provide completion certificates, or provide a higher level of security to remote meetings.

A Zoom events portal will allow attendees to register for and access events based on asset ownership and other event configurations. Attendees will be able to review their own event attendance actions in a private analytics screen, including actions and rewards received.

Main Goals

• Provide the greater Zoom business community with a real-world advantage to leveraging Cardano in their business operations.
• Provide governing bodies, private groups and organizations handling sensitive information, such as tele-health, with an elevated level in security with meetings token-gated by digital IDs or role tokens.
• Elevate existing token communities on Cardano by providing a free, codeless way to organize Zoom for webinars, movies, live shows, and other forms of additional value for holders.
• Bring a well-known mainstream business event into Cardano community with adoption of this tool by the business and its attendees.

Primary Components

Minting Server (Open Source)

Remote minting campaign server that can store custom minting policies and configurations into campaign IDs that can be referenced by the Gating Server.

Gating Server (Open Source)

Authorizes storing and retrieval of data by the app and event portal. Communicate directly with Zoom for event creation and attendee registration.

Event Management App

Create custom user profiles and activity history logs for all app users, consisting of attendees and event creators. This app will be a live use-case for making proper use of the open-source gate and minting servers.

Users will register accounts on this app by logging into Zoom, connecting a wallet and filling out profile information. Each account will have the capacity to create events and store event templates that behave as collections or event series.

A minting campaign interface will allow users to store different token policies and minting configurations into campaign IDs, which are referenced as actions to take when an attendee meets an event attendee requirements.

An event creation interface will allow users to add events to their Zoom account customized with token-based conditions for registration and attendance. Users associate a minting campaign to an event for when an attendee meets all proof-of-attendance conditions. These include percentage of the meeting attended, lifetime count for an event series, secondary asset requirements and more.

An event performance interface will allow users to see key performance metrics for specific events in real-time and can analyze past event performance in aggregate. Various visual aids will be available to filter, sort and segment KPI information into bar charts, pies, timelines and geographical “bubble maps” of GPS scan activity.

Zoom Event Portal

The authorization front-end for registering and attending events for consumers under registered Zoom accounts. Attendees must register with the app which includes connecting a wallet and authorizing read permissions to their own Zoom account. 

After logging into the portal a Home screen will curate events that users can register for and attend. An attendee is privy to their own personal event access history through the analytics available on their account home page.

Events created in the system that are configured as Public will be browsable in the Event Registrations UI, where users can either register to events they already have access to, or view event details for information on obtaining the access token.

The Event Attendance UI is the second interface reserved for logged-in users, where events that users have registered to are available to join. Through the Gating Server the app contacts the Zoom API to initiate joining a session, prompting the local Zoom client to open as normal.

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

Any Cardano user will be able to create their own proof-of-attendance system (PoA) for their own community on Zoom. This can be used simply to create private events to project holders for social gatherings, or it can be leveraged to take Cardano governance to another level.

Workshops and courses on and off Cardano can use such a system to track completion of specific echelons of meetings in a linear way - one must attend meeting A in order to access meeting B. This combined with a scalable way to automate attendance rewards means that completion certificates, proof-of-life, governing bodies and private or sensitive meetings can be set up in a scalable way for the first time.

This project scopes for a live version of this service, in combination with the release of the code as an open-source solution. Using your own server resources, databases and Zoom account, other developer teams can improve on the original design for alternate governance or meeting requirements.

[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?

Project Team

Sarah Faulkner

Fullstack developer and project manager

Sarah creates operational business strategies from competitive and internal analyses of e-commerce brands. As a Plutus Pioneer student she devotes his time to learning smart contracts for use in B2B services to grow utility and tooling on Cardano.

Relevant Experience Sarah Faulkner, MS Computer Science Sarah has twelve years of experience writing apps for e-commerce and web analytics applications. A graduate of Plutus Pioneer Program, she is also deeply familiar with blockchain queries and smart contracts.

Risk Factors

We have carefully assessed the risks to completion, from project scope creep to external unforeseen events, and we have a high level of confidence that we can complete all milestones on time. Below are a few of the primary concerns our team will be continuing to monitor.

The price of ADA could decrease significantly and if the market value of ADA is below 0.25 cents at any point in the next 12 months, the project could potentially be at risk of losing value it presumed it would have. However, we feel that 0.25 is a moderately low conservative guess for ADA moving forward this year.

The OAuth flow is a complex security mechanism for providing access to private resources, so the project has allotted time and resources for consulting on security and stress-testing the system prior to launch.

Deliverability

The team involved in this project has already created Cardano apps in prior funds and are looking to expand on what we have learned along the same theme of token-gating as a service. The app described in this proposal is already online and working, and is missing only the components listed in this proposal to be a full-fledged application for the in-person event space.

We have already set up our UML diagramming, shared drives, and project management through ClickUp. Top-level work-sprints were made to assess the time and cost of this project, and once funded will be broken down into smaller tasks for assignment.

Revenue Models

There are independent plans for adding features to this app that would require a monthly subscription payment in order to use higher levels of gate service and advanced gate features. However, that functionality is outside the scope of this project. 

The revenue model that will be available to the project at the moment of launch is the concept of the login token. This app will sell login tokens through a popular minting service whose policy ID is synonymous with account profiles. As the user base grows, we may be able to self-fund our billing server without the proposal we wrote specifically for it.

Performance Metrics

While our functional milestones represent the definition of complete for this project, key performance indicators measure the success of each milestone against arbitrary targets. 

Our core KPIs for this app after launch are listed below. Rate of growth is unknown, so success is measured as a percentage increase over the prior analytic sample.

The metrics we plan to measure post-launch are:

• Number of business users with at least one event created
• Average attendance and attendance rate system-wide
• Average number of repeat uses by an attendee
• Growth rate of registered attendees

We hope the beneficial effects to the ecosystem would be:

• More real-world businesses using Cardano to improve daily operations
• Cardano social projects providing instant utility to holders without additional coding
• New monetization options for live teaching, courseware, performances and private sessions

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

Minting Server (Open Source): Remote minting campaign server that can store custom minting policies and configurations into campaign IDs that can be referenced by the Gating Server.  This milestone includes hard costs for server expenses.

• 2 work sprints covering 235 hours
• Starting 12/8/23, target launch 1/4/24
• Projected cost: ₳44,337 ($11,084)

Store, Update, Delete Minting Campaigns: Receive requests from the app to modify minting campaign configurations or create new minting campaigns and policy/keys.

Minting Campaign Request Processing: Receive requests from the Gating Server to execute a minting campaign for a specific attendee. Consider per-asset limits, event limits, wallet requirements, and API security measures against spoof requests.

Event Management Interface V1: App initialization and structure. Creator Registration, Event Creation with token-gating conditions. Listing, editing and deleting events. Basic compound performance statistics.

• 6 work sprints covering 525 hours
• Starting 1/7/24, target launch 3/7/24
• Projected cost: ₳31,837 ($7,959)

Initialize Database, Event Manager Routes: Initialize API route access to database tables for Events, Users, Templates, associated logging tables, security information and helper functions

App Registration Interface: A login page with a registration form for new users. Associate a wallet and a Zoom account into one custom internal profile.

App Registration - Zoom OAuth: Attendees and event creators both register a profile on this app. Perform a "login with Zoom" Oauth with the attendee to read profile and event attendance data.

User Authentication Mechanism: Employ an OAuth / JWT process to protect user and event data from unauthorized users. Create a session checking mechanism on all private pages.

Event Creation UI: Allow self-service creation of tokenized Zoom events including Registration Conditions, Attendance Conditions, and Abilities (post-attendance actions)

Minting Campaign Interface: Allow self-service creation of custom minting campaign configurations, to be used when configuring attendance rewards for an event.

Event Management Interface V2: Users can store custom event configurations as templates to use for event series. Events created from a single template are collated into a series for segmented analysis. Introduce an analytics menu for customizable visuals pertaining to specific events or aggregate performance data. Export wallet / attendee activity for use in other systems.

• 2 work sprints covering 250 hours
• Starting 3/10/24, target launch 4/8/24
• Projected cost: ₳15,161 ($3,790)

Event Template Management: Users can store custom event configurations as templates to use for event series. Events created from a single template are collated into a series for segmented analysis.

Event Performance Interface: Browse, segment, filter and export attendee, wallet and minting KPIs pertaining to one event or events in aggregate.

Gating Server: Authorizes storing and retrieval of data by the app and event portal. Communicate directly with Zoom for event creation and attendee registration.

• 5 work sprints covering 570 hours
• Starting 4/11/24, target launch 6/16/24
• Projected cost: ₳34,566 ($8,642)

Initialize Database, Gating Server Routes: Initialize API route access to data tables for user objects, event objects, and associated logging tables.

Create, Edit, Get, Delete for Event Objects: Manage the secure handling of event objects for the web app

Create, Edit, Get, Delete for User Objects: Manage the secure handling of user objects for the web app

Zoom API: Create, Update, Delete Event: Communicate directly with the creator's Zoom account to manage events remotely.

Zoom Event Webhook Daemon: Ping Zoom API for attendance data post-event, and compare attendees against internal account information and event award conditions. Send minting requests to the Minting Server.

Zoom Event Portal: The authorization front-end for registering and attending events for consumers under registered Zoom accounts.

• 4 work sprints covering 350 hours
• Starting 6/19/24, target launch 7/29/24
• Projected cost: ₳21,225 ($5,306)

Embedded App Registration: Embed the app registration process into this page for non-users

Login and Account Home: Create a login interface for the Event Portal that provides access to available events to register or attend.

Event Registrations UI: Create a grid of authorized and valid events for user registration, provided the event and token-based configurations of each. Add individual access to events through the Zoom API after token authentication.

Event Attendance UI: Create a grid of registered events that the user is authorized to attend, sorted chronologically.

(this project has five milestones total)

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

Sarah Faulkner

Fullstack developer and project manager

Sarah creates operational business strategies from competitive and internal analyses of e-commerce brands. As a Plutus Pioneer student she devotes his time to learning smart contracts for use in B2B services to grow utility and tooling on Cardano.

Relevant Experience Sarah Faulkner, MS Computer Science Sarah has twelve years of experience writing apps for e-commerce and web analytics applications. A graduate of Plutus Pioneer Program, she is also deeply familiar with blockchain queries and smart contracts.

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

For more details on hard costs and work sprints please review the proposal worksheet, tab name Project Costs.

• Project Team
• Sarah, Full Stack Developer (proposal author)
• ₳117,040 ($29,260) for 1,930 work hours
• Hardware
• We do not need to purchase any physical equipment.
• Marketing
• This proposal does not take into account paid methods of advertising this app. A portion of post-launch revenue will be diverted to a marketing budget and the app team will continue to engage with the community online and in-person for onboarding.
• Technical Contractors
• No outside contractors are required for this project.
• Service Providers
• Netlify, 12 Months of Pro Tier, Web App, ₳912 ($228)
• Used throughout development and testing.
• Netlify, 12 Months of Enterprise, Oauth App, ₳7,200 ($1,800)
• For app performance post-launch, with 99% uptime, faster machines and a high-performance edge network.
• Render, 12 Months of Team Plan, ₳912 ($228)
• 500GB of bandwidth for hosting web app and Oauth app.
• Render, 12 Months Standard Tier Node Service, Web API, ₳1,200 ($300)
• One year of standard hosting for the self-service web app
• Render, 12 Months Standard Tier Node Service, OAuth API, ₳1,200 ($300)
• One year of standard hosting for the ticket resource (OAuth) server used in this project to demonstrate the usage of the 2FA server to be built.
• MongoDB Atlas Dedicated Cluster, GCP Tier M30, 12 Months, ₳18,662 ($4,666)
• Data storage at a service tier fit for development and first-year public use.

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

All token-based Cardano communities will be able to provide additional content and experiences to existing holders, Zoom events that can be used to provide private updates, education, entertainment or anything else.

The gating server and minting server created through this proposal will be open source - the app is a frontend that can begin leveraging this technology on behalf of all groups that use Zoom in their operations, without requiring specialized knowledge in blockchain or incurring developer costs. Other developer teams are free to create better versions of this product with custom servers and their own front-end.

This tool has objective value for the security and monetization of token-based societies and governing bodies, but is also potentially highly valuable to non-Cardano businesses and organizations. Such a tool could provide mainstream business users with a real-world use case for leveraging blockchain in their business, for anything from entertainment to business meetings to tele-health.

The Cardano community already contains a large number of governing bodies, private teams and social groups that could benefit from token-gated Zoom events for fun and profit. A musical group could token-gate access to a live-streamed performance on Zoom. The Catalyst Coordinator meetings can provide tokens to funded proposal authors to ensure continuity of presence in weekly check-ups. Existing NFT social groups can provide additional value to existing holders by associating event access with that collection. 

The operating revenue of Zoom in 2023 is $4.39 billion, with 45 billion minutes of webinars hosted and about half of a million users. A portion of these business users will begin using Cardano through this app because of the elevated level of security that it brings to meetings, and the scalability of automating rewards, certificates of completion, or roles and access to subsequent meetings.

In the near future, “deep fake” attacks will become more prevalent and costly to corporations and governing bodies. In a world where the stakes of a meeting are high, where security or privacy is paramount, not being able to trust the face on your screen will become problematic. Token-gating meetings with digital IDs as tokens is a more secure way to be sure you are talking to the right person. This solution can be quickly embedded into the tele-health industry, government and judicial proceedings, and as a consumer option for increased personal security.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agrees to Fund 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