Cardano's First Inheritance Protocol - GenWealth

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Rafael Cardoso

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

Entity (Not Incorporated)

[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 Inheritance Protocol that allows you to define rules and beneficiaries to claim your crypto once you’re gone and that generates a system to recover your crypto using access tokens.

[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, we have developed the smart contracts and have already the professionals to develop UI/UX, frontend, marketing, business, etc. We are just dependent on funding to make it happen.

[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

Not right now, we want to be sustainable and create a business model that allows us to keep on developing this product, so we need to launch and build a community of users before we are able to open source, which is something we want to do in the future. 

We don't have a huge budget, so anyone could easily copy our code and with a huge marketing budget get a lot more adoption, without investing a single cent in development.

In addition, we are planning to audit everything before going to Mainnet to ensure maximum security for the users.

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG Goals

1 - End poverty in all its forms everywhere

3 - Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

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

10 - Reduce inequality within and among countries

SDG Subgoals

1.1 - By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day

1.4 - By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including microfinance

1.a - Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries, in particular least developed countries, to implement programmes and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions

8.10 - Strengthen the capacity of domestic financial institutions to encourage and expand access to banking, insurance and financial services for all

8.2 - Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus on high-value added and labour-intensive sectors

8.3 - Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services

9.a - Facilitate sustainable and resilient infrastructure development in developing countries through enhanced financial, technological and technical support to African countries, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

1.1.1 - Proportion of the population living below the international poverty line by sex, age, employment status and geographic location (urban/rural)

8.2.1 - Annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person

8.10.2 - Proportion of adults (15 years and older) with an account at a bank or other financial institution or with a mobile-money-service provider

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

We are creating an Inheritance Protocol, one that you can easily access from your browser initially, and in the future use directly from your wallet through collaboration with existing wallet providers. This protocol is a similar version to the deadman switch contracts, based on proof of life, but with the added security of the UTXO model, and a tokenized vault and lock model for added security and flexibility.

An inheritance protocol solves a big issue because right now there is no safe and trustless way to make sure your crypto reaches your loved ones once you pass away. 

You need to either trust an intermediary with your seed phrase or the location of it or trust one or several family members. This is a huge risk because anyone to whom you give access to your seed phrase is as much of an owner of the wallet as you are and has the right to spend it. This goes against the ethos of cryptocurrency, as we believe in removing intermediaries and verifying instead of trusting.

With this inheritance protocol, you have a trustless way, without needing any intermediaries to make sure that your crypto wealth is divided by your loved ones according to your rules and wishes that will be executed by the Smart Contract. You won't need to share your seedphrase anymore and your crypto will always be safe and only accessible to you while you're alive.

From doing customer discovery, we’ve identified that many individuals don’t have a plan in place for an eventuality, both because they are too young to think about it but also because many don’t feel comfortable sharing the seed phrase or its location with others, and rightfully so. With this protocol you have a way to make sure your crypto isn’t lost forever once you’re gone, and that the wealth you create by being early in crypto will actually go to your loved ones and leave a positive legacy behind.

In terms of progress, we have bootstrapped with our own work, effort, and money the smart contracts of this protocol which we are currently testing and optimizing internally. We have a working proof of concept, with a very simple front-end and our smart contract backend, and now we are looking for Funding to prepare the MVP and take the project to the Cardano Testnet.

Now we need your help and the help of the Cardano community to be able to launch our MVP on Cardano Testnet and make it production-ready, with a stronger focus on the development of our frontend to make the Dapp ready for Testnet.

Here you can test our Proof of Concept. It's live on Testnet and we apologize for the low-quality user interface but is something we are using to test the smart contracts ourselves. We decided to make it live and share it with the community so that you can see our actual progress, and hopefully, if we get funded we will have everything we need to make it look much better and have a great user experience for the community. Please test it as much as you want and please share with us any issues you find!

We’ve also shared a video DEMO of the Protocol, with the working smart contracts if you don't want to go through the whole process of testing on your own.

How does it work

With this protocol, you are able to define which assets should go to each of the beneficiaries. You provide them with access tokens that give them the right to claim their part of the assets once you’re gone.

As we don’t yet have any reliable on-chain death certificates, we work with a proof of life, where you define the period within which you need to prove you’re alive. Whenever you are no longer able to complete your proof of life, then your beneficiaries are able to claim their part of your tokens.

This protocol can also be used as a way to further secure your tokens against losing your seed phrase. Typically, if you lose the seed phrase you lose access to your tokens forever. With this protocol, you can create a safety net, because you can deposit tokens to the protocol, to your own unique vault, and you can give permission to spend these funds to as many of your own wallets as you want. So even if you lose one seed phrase, as long as you have access to the seed phrase of some of the other wallets you added into the protocol, you will be able to recover that crypto.

While you’re alive you are able to deposit and spend tokens as you wish and you are also able to add more of your own wallets to the inheritance protocol, and as many beneficiaries as you want. 

This protocol is able to handle any Cardano Native Tokens including NFTs. In the future, we’re planning to add Cardano native staking and even to partner and connect directly with other Dapps on Cardano based on users' demand, such as Dexes for example.

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

The biggest impact and benefit of this protocol is solving a huge issue in the cryptocurrency industry: providing a clear and trustless solution to your crypto to benefit your loved ones once you're gone instead of being lost forever. It will allow you to make sure that all the wealth, money effort, you invested in crypto, and the rewards you got from being early will go to your family and/or leave a significant legacy behind. Right now there is not a trustless way to do it, you would have to trust third parties and provide them with full control of your crypto today. As long as someone knows where your seedphrase is they can access it and spend your crypto as they want. Our project will change that.

With this protocol, we create a trustless system, based on smart contracts with clear and defined rules. A smart contract where you are able to define how you want your crypto wealth should be distributed, and at the same time guarantee that that distribution will happen as you ordered, with no kind of intermediaries or third parties that you need to trust.

With this protocol, you will never need to share your seed phrase with anyone but yourself, and that contributes massively to decreasing the likelihood of someone else ever stealing your crypto, your beneficiaries will be able to claim their part of their crypto when the time comes all through the smart contract. Self-custody of crypto is empowered.

This protocol also allows you to establish a mechanism to protect against losing your crypto if you lose your seed phrase. You can use the protocol to create your own smart inheritance vault and give permission to several of your wallets to control this “smart” vault, meaning that even if you lose a seed phrase of one wallet, you are still able to recover all the crypto in your “smart” vault through the other wallets.

This protocol also opens the door to more adoption and to traditional investors. If you were a traditional investor, or someone older who is more concerned with the process of leaving his wealth to his family, would you feel comfortable investing any significant amount into crypto, knowing you have no secure way to ensure this crypto will go to your loved ones according to your desires? Probably not, but what if you had a trustless computer program that would just execute the orders you give him? Then we could argue it would be even safer to have the assets on the blockchain, that it would be a better way to manage your wealth than any other solution that exists in today’s world.

The seed phrase mechanism is definitely amazing, but at the same time one of the biggest barriers to entry and self-custody of your cryptocurrency, having a way to reduce the risks and inconveniences of the model is certainly extremely positive for adoption.

Another great advantage is that you can do all this without having to lock your crypto, you can at any time spend your crypto as long as you’re alive.

We think this mechanism is very valuable for blockchain and more specifically for the whole Cardano ecosystem because it decreases the number of tokens that will be lost forever as time goes on because now people have a way to leave their tokens for their loved ones.

The reality is that if we want Cardano to be adopted globally and be used for individuals in transactions, we need a decent quantity of supply of ADA, and we are all aware there is a maximum ADA supply of 45 billion. It’s great that ADA has a fixed supply, but in practice, the supply is actually deflationary because with current mechanisms a lot of cryptos are lost forever because most people don’t feel comfortable sharing their seed phrase, and rightfully so because we don’t want third party risks over our assets. While deflationary seems good, it is not in the long run because with ADA being used by billions of people, we could come to a point where the token is not divisible enough to be effectively used. By having a mechanism to recover your crypto and pass it on to your loved ones, we can reduce the deflationary effect, and increase price stability and utility for ADA and ADA holders of today and of the future.

In the future, we intend to measure the success of the project considering the following metrics:

• Number of Inheritance Vaults created in the protocol
• TVS - Total Value Stored -> Value of Assets Stored in the Protocol
• TVT - Total Value Transacted -> Cumulative Value of Assets that have gone through the platform.
• TVC - Total Value Claimed -> Value of Assets Claimed by Beneficiaries
• AVC - Average Value Claimed -> Average value claimed by Beneficiaries

We hope in the future to have direct integration of this protocol with wallets in Cardano making it easy and possible for the user to leverage this protocol directly on its preferred wallet, and we also aim to have direct integration of our inheritance protocol with as many Dapps on Cardano as possible, so that you could interact directly with any Dapp from our protocol without needing to leave it and provide users with an extremely easy and pleasant user experience.

[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’ve been working on the project in your own free time and at our own cost since September 2023, as we both have full-time jobs.

Our goal is to bring a solution to a problem we’ve identified in the cryptocurrency world and to build a business out of it, meaning to have a company that will keep improving this inheritance protocol but also developing new features and products, for example, a “smart multi-sig protocol” for companies with more features and functionalities.

We’ve been able to create the smart contracts, we have successfully developed some optimizations, even though there are still many more we intend to create, and we just need some extra funding to make the app production-ready.

Instead of trying to do it all ourselves, we are looking to hire experts for front-end and design to be able to deliver this project successfully and with a higher degree of quality.

In addition, even with Catalyst funding, we will likely have to keep investing our own money so naturally, we need to be very aware of how we manage Catalyst funds, to maximize what we can get from them. For us, this is not a matter of getting paid but as you can see from the proposal, it’s a matter of getting the necessary funds to be able to deliver the product with a high level of quality.

In terms of accountability, I believe we also have a great team for the job.

Rafael Cardoso - 5 years of tech startup experience in the web2 world. Was exposed to and worked on all of the business-related areas of the project. Led teams and projects inside the startup for the last 3 years t where he had to manage budgets. This is a natural next step. Learning and investing in Web3 and Cardano since 2020, has been creating content about the topic on his YouTube channel Decentralized Nation, leading to a lot of knowledge on projects and the space. Also participating in Web3 projects such as Deep Funding Academy.

Ariady Putra - a Fullstack Cardano Developer by trade, has been developing its Cardano Smart Contract skills for the last year. Created the morbid smart contract as featured on Awesome-Aiken, which was used as a low-level inspiration for this protocol. Enrolled in the Cardano Developer Professional course by Emurgo and DApp360.

The funds will be used as stated in this proposal where we go into great depth on the costs we will have and on how the money will be spent. We've been investing time, effort, and our own resources, but there are important things we are not able to afford, such as external expert help or smart contract audits to ensure the funds of the users are secure.

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

Optimize Smart Contracts -> Show reductions in memory and CPU optimization

                                          -> Be able to store more native assets

For the optimized Smart Contracts milestone, we want to show improvements from our current version. We will show before and after optimizations, comparing metrics such as memory usage, CPU, transaction size, and number of UTxOs / native assets stored in the wallet. The goals above are the ones we expect to reach.

The goal of optimizing smart contracts is to have a protocol that can be used on-chain, and that is as optimized as possible to provide the user with a good experience and flexibility. If we are able to improve these metrics the milestone has been achieved.

Timeline: 3 weeks

Costs: 20 400 ADA

UI/UX - A good user experience is very important, we are not experts on that as you can see by the demo, so we are hiring an expert to come up with the designs for our front end and create a good overall user experience using this protocol. We want this to be a very low-level protocol that beginners who have just set up their own self-custody wallet can start using immediately.

Acceptance criteria -> Have a UI-UX Professional Create designs for every page and functionality of our MVP for the DAPP

Timeline: 1 month

Cost: 11 150 ADA

Front-end development-> We don’t have yet an expert on the team for front-end development so we will be growing the team and hiring an expert to develop our front end based on the UI-UX designs. The goal is to have a good front end for our Inheritance Protocol. We're planning to build the front end using Mesh.js and we are hiring an experienced mesh developer.

Acceptance criteria -> Have a professional-looking and easy-to-use front-end to be tested on testnet.

Timeline: 1,5 month

Cost: 21 700 ADA

Marketing -> Start marketing initiative with Website Creation, Create Marketing visuals, and Development of a Marketing Campaign. We can’t ignore marketing because if we have the best product in the world but no one knows about it, it doesn’t really make an impact right? So this Marketing budget is to make sure we get the word out about this protocol and we are able to make people aware to test it out, join the community, and start using it in the future.

Acceptance criteria -> Launch Website, Launch Social Media (eg. Twitter, Discord) and have regular posts, have a set of branded visuals in our portfolio. Start a Marketing campaign building awareness with Giveaways and partnerships inside the Cardano community.

Timeline= 2 months

COST = ~43 340 ADA

Testnet Launch -> Prepare and pay for infrastructure to launch on Testnet, create a bug-bounty and feedback reward program for the Cardano Community to participate in the Testnet, and Launch the Testnet. We will also aim to make improvements with the community feedback.

Acceptance criteria -> Launch Public Cardano Testnet. Have a defined and live feedback and bug-bounty reward program. Create a Demo video of the test net.

Timeline: 2 months

Cost: 41 420 ADA

Audit -> We want to do an audit after correcting any bugs found on Testnet to make sure that the funds of the users are actually safe and that there are no vulnerabilities in the Smart Contracts before launching on Mainnet.

An auditing firm has estimated that to complete an audit it will take 80 hours with an hourly rate of $250/hr. Our smart contracts are written in Aiken.

Acceptance criteria -> Have a complete audit of our Smart Contracts from a Professional team. Correct any significant vulnerabilities in the Smart Contracts. Deliver a Final Report and Video on the whole project with the respective milestone.

Timeline: 3 months

Cost: 66 700 ADA

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

Rafael - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafael-cardoso-2b03ba146/

• Experience - 5 years of tech startup experience in the Web2 world. Was exposed to and worked on all of the business-related areas of the project. Led teams and projects inside the startup, for the last 3 years where he had to manage independent budgets to achieve KPIs. This is a natural next step. Experience and knowledge about blockchain, Web3 and Cardano, researches web3 companies, and creates content on the YouTube channel Decentralized Nation. Also participating in Web3 projects such as Deep Funding Academy.

• Responsible for Business and Marketing for the Protocol.

Ariady Putra - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariady/

• Experience - has been developing its Cardano Smart Contract skills for the past year. Created the morbid smart contract as featured in Awesome-Aiken. 

• Participated in Cardano Developer courses held by Emurgo and DAapp360.

• Responsible for the Technological Development of the Protocol.

• Certifications:
• Cardano Developer Professional - https://www.credly.com/badges/d40bc004-8d8d-4249-9cd3-cfd79c55f5ac
• Cardano Developer Associate - https://www.credly.com/badges/16206ae2-a403-4751-8efb-2694e2a89d8b
• Others -https://www.credly.com/users/ariady-putra/badges?sort=-state_updated_at&page=1

This is our current Team, we've identified a few UI/UX and Front-end professionals who fit our requirements and are interested in working with us, but we are now in the screening process. The final hiring decision is dependent on getting Catalyst funds and on the individuals we believe are the best fit for the team, and for the vision we have for the product and the project, after this thorough screening process.

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

1 - Smart Contract Optimization -> 3 weeks of work

Cost per hour 51$ 

Total hours: 120 

Total cost: 51 * 120= 6120 $

Cost in ADA = 20 400 ADA

More info: For cost per hour, we have the minimum pay for a Haskell developer according to Glassdoor( https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/haskell-developer-salary-SRCH_KO0,17.htm) which is 108 000$ per year. This is a great rate considering that the smart contract developer rate is usually much higher. In fact, we've asked around, and several of the expert companies charge around $250 dollars per hour, which is a very significant difference.

This translates into 51$ per hour. Considering 8-hour days we will need a total of 40 hours per week, summing up to 120 hours total. So the cost for optimization will be 6120$, and assuming an average price of around 0.3 we get to a total of 20 400 ADA.

2 - Ui-UX -> Timeline: 1 month 

Cost per hours = 19 $

Total days work = 19 days 

Total Cost = 22 days × 8 hours × 19 $= 3 344$

Cost: 11 150 ADA

More Info: Considering a very competitive rate we were able to get 40 000$ per year(we are getting an inferior rate to the one charged for knowledgeable UI-UX developers in the UK, according to UI-UX institute (https://www.uxdesigninstitute.com/blog/ux-designer-salaries-uk/ ))

For the total cost we are assuming a 5-day week and a total of 22 days worked, we reach an hourly rate of 19$ per hour translating into a total cost of 3 344$, which is approximately 11 150 ADA, considering an ADA price of 0.3

3 - Front-end development.-> Timeline: 1,5 months

Cost per month = 4340$

total cost = 4340$ + 4340$ /2 = 6510$

Cost: 21 700 ADA

More Info: Considering a competitive rate of 52 000$ per year according to Glassdoor( https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/react-developer-salary-SRCH_KO0,15.htm) study of salaries for react developers. This is competitive considering the difficulty of finding good mesh developers because it is a niche programming language. Dividing this value by 12, we get a monthly cost of 6510 $, approximately 21 700 ADA, at a price of 0.3 ADA

4 - Marketing - Timeline 2 months

Cost Breakdown

6000$ -> Website -> Quote we got after sharing ideas for the website

2000$ -> Marketing Visuals -> Quote we got from a recommended professional in the space.

5000$ -> Marketing Campaign -> Value we will have for giveaways to be distributed to the community and Marketing partnerships and initiatives, including hiring professionals.

Total Cost= 13 000 $

Cost =43340 ADA

More Info = For marketing these are the most competitive quotes we got from professional freelancers, considering everything we will need to develop. In addition to this, our internal team will also be actively contributing to marketing, creating our own marketing campaigns and partnerships to drive the project forward. The money here will be to hire freelancers to take our Marketing to the next level, a more professional level and to have some funds to bring more attention to our campaigns, and be able to do initiatives such as giveaways for example.

5 - Testnet Launch - Timeline: 2 months

Prepare and pay for infrastructure to launch on Testnet and create a reward system for the Cardano Community to participate in the Testnet. Have $10 000 in rewards to be distributed across the Cardano community for participating in the Testnet, giving feedback, and helping us find bugs.

Hosting =: 850$

Api's = 1380$

Domains = 196$

Bug and Feedback Bounty = 10 000$ in rewards

Total Cost = 12 426$

Cost: 41 420 ADA

The Infrastructure cost in terms of hosting and domains is mostly fixed, APIs can vary a bit. The rewards will go to the community members participating in the process of finding bugs and giving feedback whenever the Testnet is launched.

6 - Audit ->Timeline: 3 months 

Hours: 80

Cost per hour: 250$

Total Cost = $20 000

Cost = ~ 66 700 ADA

More Info: Our smart contracts are written in Aiken, we’ve been asking for several quotes and this was the most competitive price we got with an auditing firm that has estimated that to complete an audit it will take 80 hours with an hourly rate of $250/hr, considering the extent of our smart contracts. The cost of the video and the final report will be covered by the team. In terms of timeline, this is our estimation of the time to do an audit and fix any bugs that may come up in an audit.

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

Info: We are considering a price of 0.3 ADA for all the values of ADA requested in the proposal, to make sure we can actually get enough USD to pay for the above milestones.

As noted above, you can see that the costs for each milestone are extremely competitive considering the average rates charged by professionals and services we will need to complete each of the milestones.

We also believe this project is a good value for money, because we have already bootstrapped the development of the Smart Contracts on our own, but also because we will keep investing our own time and money into the development of the protocol.

The Catalyst funding will allow us to hire professionals to help us deliver in areas in which we are not experts, so we can build a higher quality product, and also be able to pay for an audit after Testnet and before Mainnet to be able to ensure the security of the protocol and make sure there are no vulnerabilities before launching on Mainnet.

In addition, this is a long-term project, we will have a business model to try to capitalize on this protocol to become self-sustainable in the future and keep on developing this product without needing to be constantly submitting proposals.

We are also not only worried about developing the product and the technological side but also about making the word known about our project in order to have a real impact with the technology Project Catalyst is helping us develop.

Besides this, the project solves a huge problem in the Cardano Ecosystem and the whole Cryptocurrency Industry, while at the same time providing a better product and better solution to leave your assets to your family, than the solutions that currently exist in the Web2 world.

It empowers ADA and Native token users to have more control over their assets and their wealth, increases the security of your assets by removing the need to share your seed phrase, and adds more control and functionalities to self-custody.

[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