Smat - Bridging the gap between wealth management and crypto

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Anthony Joaui

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

Entity (Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Co proposers and Additional applicants

Our board consists of 3 co-founders, myself, Anthony Jaoui, Pierre-Adrien Vibert and Anthony Touboul.

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

We bring the infrastructure (self and 3rd party custody), an optimal UI/UX and aggregate market solutions (C/DEX, Defi etc..) for the wealth managers to create (sub)wallets on behalf of their clients.

[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.”

The way we want to design our proof of concept makes us dependent on a digital asset custody provider. We could be fully independent if need be by building our own. 

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

No

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

Our platform will not be fully open source at the initial stages as we have some constraints with the partner we are building the solution with. 

[METADATA] SDG rating

Your Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Selection

SDG Goals

5 - Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

8 - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

9 - Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

SDG Subgoals

8.5 - By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value

8.8 - Protect labor rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

8.5.1 - Average hourly earnings of employees, by sex, age, occupation and persons with disabilities

8.5.2 - Unemployment rate, by sex, age and persons with disabilities

8.8.1 - Fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 workers, by sex and migrant status

8.8.2 - Level of national compliance with labour rights (freedom of association and collective bargaining) based on International Labour Organization (ILO) textual sources and national legislation, by sex and migrant status

9.b.1 - Proportion of medium and high-tech industry value added in total value added

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

We are building a gateway to digital assets for the wealth management industry. We give wealth managers (WM) the ability to manage wealth on-chain on behalf of their clients. To do so, we focus on 3 pillars: 

• The custody: We are creating the necessary digital infrastructure that will allow wealth managers to create their wallets and sub-wallets for their customers.
• The platform: We are developing an optimized UI/UX platform designed with retail codes for professional investors.
• The aggregator: We aggregate selected and curated investment solutions (Ce/De exchanges, staking solutions, NFT platforms, etc.) on the market and connect them to our platform.

For the custody, we bring an innovative mix between multi-party computation, a hardware security module along with a multi-signature access to a wallet. This will ease the process of access for the wealth managers and advisors to the wallets of their clients in order to invest into the digital assets which will be available on the platform interface. This is the unique aspect of Smat and what we are currently developing. This Fintech solution dedicated to professional investors is a game changer for the industry as it copies the current process they have with the custodian banks.

More info: https://docs.smat.io/

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

Today on our existing platform we have as a criteria on the product we list ESG considerations which are aligned with the blockchain view. We want to help the green company and the financial industry to meet and build together a better world. Indeed, it is key for the future of our world.

Thanks to our community, we will bring a large volume of investment to the blockchain. For information, today our community is managing approximately 45Bn of AuM).

Cardano will receive more attention from asset managers, and as a result, increase trading volume of ADA. Additionally, it will help the further development of the DeFi ecosystem of Cardano.

More info: https://docs.smat.io/4-deployment-on-cardano/deployment

[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 already have within our community 35 wealth managers who signed an LOI to use our platform. This community represents approximately 25Bn AuM approximately. Thanks to them, we will co-build the solution along with the market and optimize our costs to go to market.

Also, they will be the beta users of the platform.

Thanks to them, we will be able to validate quickly if our proof of concept works or if we need to pivot to meet the market needs.

More info: https://docs.smat.io/1-introduction/smat-today

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

Timeline:  1 month

Budget: 40’000 ADA

Milestone output(s)

• Confirm with the financial authorities that we can do with our authorization the custody of digital assets for wealth managers.
• Design the platform infrastructure and the meta transaction box system

Acceptance criteria 

• Obtention of the ruling from Finma and green light to move forward with our solution.
• Lawyer memo to cover our activity.
• A usable and complete documentation regarding the IT infrastructure

Info provided to verify the milestone achievement 

• Submission of the ruling to the FINMA
• The detailed documentation for review 

Timeline: End of February 2024

Budget: 37’000 ADA

Milestone output(s)

• Find appropriate partners to deal with regarding the digital custody of the assets (solution providers) 

Acceptance criteria 

• Comparison of multiple actors (at least 5) and fair due diligence done on the platform

Info provided to verify the milestone achievement 

• The document comparing the actors with our conclusion by year end

Timeline: 1 month

Budget: 20’000 ADA

Milestone output(s)

• Develop a proof of concept by end of March 2024.

Acceptance criteria 

• The platform is live with beta users.

Info provided to verify the milestone achievement 

• Access to our database
• Access to our user base

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

• Anthony Jaoui - CEO, Co-founder - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-jaoui/
• Anthony Touboul - COO, Co-founder - https://www.linkedin.com/in/touboulanthony/
• Pierre-Adrien Vibert - CLO, Co-founder - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pav001/
• Lucas Verdiell - VP Project Manager, Fullstack Developer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lverdiell/
• Tilman Schneider - VP Technology - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tilman-schneider-631b5729/
• Adela Pohancanikova - Business Analyst - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adela-pohancanikova/
• Mergen Haljanov - Investment Analyst - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mergen-haljanov/
• Pritam Thing - Backend Developer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/er-pritam-thing-73672014b/
• Adrien Mareel - Data Analytics - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrien-mareel-2ab326251/
• Ignacio Monzon - Frontend Developer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignmonzon/
• Tania Guena - Financial & IT Assistant - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tania-geuna/

More info: https://docs.smat.io/9-team/people

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

R&D and Tech 25% of the total funds raised will be used for research and development of the platform and technological improvements. The platform will be upgraded to include feedback from SMAT's users regarding the user experience and interface, to keep our users’ satisfaction level high.

Marketing and business promotion 25% of the total funds raised will be used for marketing purposes to promote our platform among potential users. As a result, this will help us increase our community and the number of transactions performed on the platforms and thus the intrinsic value of the tokens.

Sales & Partnerships 20% of the total funds raised will serve our commercial needs (team, events, representations...) and the conclusion of strategic partnerships such as partnership with third-party custodian, DeFi protocols providers, centralised or decentralised exchanges, insurance companies, etc.

Legal and regulatory 10% of the total funds raised is for all the legal work that is necessary for the functioning of our platform, such as the obtaining of the Fintech license from FINMA or any other regulatory authorization to conduct the SMAT Business in Switzerland and in other countries, as per our international expansion strategy.

Operations 15% of the total funds raised will be used for the operating expenses and other petty expenses that will occur regularly.

Provisions 5% of the total funds raised will be kept as provisions to use in the future for any emergency use or for any other major expenses incurred.

More info: https://docs.smat.io/8-financials/use-of-proceeds

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

Smat exists on the traditional asset market since 2020 and we raised 700k last year. We have 10 (none full time) employees/freelance and we manage to be there thanks to our solid financial management and smart way to develop and hire people. Also, thanks to the strong personalities of the co-founders, we manage to have a fairly stable team and an amazing team spirit for a mainly remote company. 

The barrier entry to our market is high as creating our community and animating it is time consuming, expensive and took a lot of time to gain the trust of the market.

To decide on the cost of the project we did an intensive and thorough market audit and review to ensure we were going with the right actors to co-build our solution.

Our monthly burn rate is less than 20K. If you compare this cost for our number of employees in Switzerland you will see the immediate benefit. Also, keep in mind that with your funding we will be able to increase our employees and increase the working time of our experts such as Tilman Schneider for exemple.

Also, we have a high cost on the regulatory side which is a one off to register. We already have the oral confirmation that it will be ok for us considering our long time lasting relationship with the Swiss regulatory authorities.

More info: https://docs.smat.io/8-financials/business-model

[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