Catalyst DYOR Tool

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Eric Helms

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

Entity (Incorporated)

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

6

[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 need a simple tool to help identify the relevant information, assess which ones will bring value to Cardano, and create reports to easily share this information with others.

[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

Everything that our team produces is Free and open-source software (FOSS) and able to be utilized in anyway that anyone likes with no permission.

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

What Problem Are We Solving?

Project Catalyst is a very important factor in the success of Cardano. In order for Cardano to thrive, we need to have useful projects, tools, and communities built on top of it. Catalyst is what many people rely on to fund these types of things. But there is a limited amount of funding to go around, and as many of us have seen, there are people submitting low effort proposals as well as teams never delivering on what they promised.

Having a tool that we can all use to assess Catalyst proposals, weed out the bad actors, find the hidden gems that will bring value, track prior history and track records, and create reports that are easy to share on social media will allow us to keep proposers accountable and help us identify what we should be voting yes or no for. Investing in a tool like this will end up saving us far more because it will lead to less waste of our treasury funds.

Catalyst Tool Objectives

For this to be effective and successful it should meet the following objectives

1. It needs to be quick and easy. There are thousands of Catalyst proposals. So you need the most important aspects to take note of. It should take 5 minutes or less to evaluate these.
2. It needs to create something visually pleasing and easy to share. People need to be able to share their findings with the greater Cardano community, so having a report that is easy to read, understand, and share is key.
3. It makes it easy to compare. Being able to compare and contrast reports is important so having an easy way to host, view, and sort the reports is important.

Who Will This Project Engage?

This will be relevant to anyone who participates in Project Catalyst. It will allow people to use the tool and assess proposals. If people do not wish to do that work themselves, they will also be able to review the work of others. So either way, if you plan on voting on future Project Catalyst rounds, it will be a very useful resource.

What Is Unique About This Solution?

There have been projects in the past for rating Catalyst proposals and there are trusted people in the ecosystem who share their picks each round as well. Both of which are helpful. What is different about this is it does not provide the community with ratings from a single person or group, it empowers everyone with the ability to perform a quality rating themselves quickly and efficiently. It teaches you what to be focusing on to make an informed decision. And it allows this information to be easily shared so that we all become better informed as a whole. And if community members choose to utilize it to share their picks, it documents the exact reasons why they are voting yes or no on a project so that everyone can understand the decision.

NOTE: What we are proposing is not a tool for searching Catalyst Proposals and obtaining data. For that there is already an excellent tool provided by Lido Nation. This is for taking the data and creating a report and score used to decide which projects you would like to support. We would likely be utilizing the data from Lido Nation to make our assessments.

Note: This Category requires us to have a prototype as part of our eligibility requirements. Our DYOR Tool has been in operation for over a year with several improvements and 1 new NFT version already created. We have over 100 DYOR Reports created with it and have run several contests to encourage the Cardano Community to practice and improve their DYOR skills. The tool is hosted here https://dyortool.io/. Unfortunately, our developer left recently and the website is currently down. We are trying to get it back up it is difficult without our developer. Part of the funding here is to hire someone to fix and maintain this, as we do not currently have the funds to hire someone new. In case it is down while you are reading this, to demonstrate the tool and what it does to anyone who might not already be familiar with it, we have provided the following information.

V1 demo video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj8Lkqf-sRA

V2 NFT demo video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nZIGvcoqpg&t=13s

PDF of a Completed Dapp Report:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MQzWpv20W2evlW-FIxAX1H61_pOA-eg5/view?usp=sharing

Image of a Report Score Card for sharing on social media:

Copy of our Questionnaire used in the tool:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oELsIcIXz89PWfseCFPt7rGEkAuhJfmqxhu7npsRb90/edit?usp=sharing

A DYOR Report Review video where one of our team members breaks down a report on a project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0--VZhqwPSU

Even with our website disabled we are still currently running a DYOR Contest with just the questionnaire. We do not let these setbacks stop us from completing our work:

https://x.com/SCATDAO/status/1730977863203999963?s=20

https://medium.com/@scatdao/do-your-own-research-contest-butane-10ace8ffe01e

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

How Will This Bring Value to the Cardano Community?

Our current DYOR Tool gets approximately 6,000 unique visitors each month. With the relatively small size of our ecosystem, we feel that 6K unique visitors each month is a huge win and we believe we can continue growing and improving. This demonstrates that the tools we have built are being used and therefore, we believe this one will be used as well. Because after all, if we build things with Catalyst that nobody ends up using, it is not a very good use of funds. We also intend to use this as one of our ways to measure impact as it is quantitative and easy to track over the months.

The other way this brings value to the Cardano Community has already been touched on above in the solution section. Catalyst is currently giving away 50M ADA per fund. This is no small amount and we need to take steps to ensure that we are spending it as efficiently and responsibility as possible. Having this tool to assess proposals and proposers can end up saving millions in ADA by identifying the right projects and people to be allocating funds too.

How Will We Measure This Impact?

There are three main ways we can measure this impact.

1. This first is by unique visitors to the tool. As shown in the image above, we have averaged around 6K unique visitors per month. During the weeks of project assessment and voting, we will utilize this metric to assess what kind of impact we are making. If the unique visitors is jumping by thousands, this is direct evidence to show that the tool is being utilized. If we are seeing an increase of 2,000 or more unique visitors during the first round after its release, we would see this as a success.
2. Number of reports created. The end result of this tool are the reports that are created with it to assess Catalyst Proposals. For the first round that it is used, and thing less than 80 reports created would be considered a failure.
3. Proposal completion rate is the third. Historically we have seen several proposals that have still not been completed. This has been improving, especially with the milestone initiative that has been added, but there is still always room to improve. We cannot assign a specific number here as it is too difficult to estimate and there are many factors to account for, but we hope to see an increased number of projects closing out that have been funded as a result of this tool.

How Do We Plan To Share The Outputs And Opportunities That Result From Our Project?

Our organization has been around for almost 2 full years now. In that time we have built a solid organic following in our main social media channels. We currently have 5,200+ followers on Twitter (@SCATDAO), 500+ members in our Discord (https://discord.gg/SbfHZBPpVA), 94 followers on YouTube with 37 different videos (@smartcontractaudittoken434), and 182 followers on Medium with 45 different articles published and several with thousands of views (@SCATDAO). And again, these are real organic numbers. We never purchase followers or engagement as we feel that is cheating and provides no real benefit since instead of supporters you have bots. 

Since we have spent the time and effort to build this passionate and organic following, we now have several excellent vehicles to share the outputs and results of our project. We plan to make regular updates through the channels mentioned above to keep the entire community updated and aware of what we are doing, our progress, and our end results. 

[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 believe the best way to predict the future is by looking at the past. Projects and teams that have consistently delivered the things they have promised are likely to continue doing so while teams that have collected hundreds of thousands of dollars while delivering nothing will likely continue to do so as well. So I would start answering this question by looking at our track record in previous Catalyst rounds. 

Our team has been funded for 3 separate proposals in three different rounds (5, 6, and 8). And I am proud to say that we have closed out each one of those proposals. The close out videos are copied below to evidence this. 

The F8 Proposal was specifically to build a new version of the DYOR Tool for NFTs. This was completed and delivered as promised, and has been used to make many reports on many different NFT projects by Community members. We believe this provides clear evidence that we are capable of delivering another new version of the DYOR Tool. Because we have already successfully done it twice.

NOTE: If you look us up using the LIDO Nation tool, you will see a few other projects that we are associated with. These are things like the Audit Circle or of Token Vesting Dapp. This is something that one of our team members helped out with and so is included on the proposal but that we do not collect funds from.

F8 Close out video:

https://youtu.be/8nZIGvcoqpg

F5 Close out Video:

https://youtu.be/aG22acr_8HY

F6 Close out Video:

https://youtu.be/EfS-eBq6zyg

What demonstrates we can manage funds properly?

The person leading this project is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive) who has spend over a decade in industry. He has many years of experience creating and reviewing budgets and is very financially literate.

We have also posted our projects financials at the end to share our receipts and a breakdown of how the money was actually spent vs how it was budgeted. We feel this is very important and plan to continue doing it with this proposal. Below is the link to view our past proposals.

https://catalystaudit.com/smart-contract-audit-token-f5-expenses/

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

Create Assessment Criteria

The first milestone will be creating the actual questionnaire that which will be the heard of the tool. This is what the reviewer uses to assess each proposal. This will require a deep analysis of current and past Project Catalyst proposals, Catalyst proposers, trends in completion, and the current information being requested in a Project Catalyst proposal. Once that is completed a draft of the questionnaire will be made that contains the most important information that a reviewer should have when assessing a Catalyst proposal. 

Here is an example of our dapp questionnaire: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oELsIcIXz89PWfseCFPt7rGEkAuhJfmqxhu7npsRb90/edit?usp=sharing

Milestone Outputs: 

A: A draft questionnaire that lists out the questions a reviewer must respond to in order to complete the work program. Each question will be assigned a point value and answering yes, no, etc will earn a certain number of points for that question (in the end the total points earned is added up to determine the overall score). For example, it could ask “Has this proposer completed all previous Catalyst proposals” with Yes earning 1 point and No earning 0 points.  

Acceptance Criteria:

A: A draft questionnaire must be created with questions related to Project Catalyst. Each question must have a point score assigned to it. 

Evidence of Completion:

A: The questionnaire will be completed in either a google doc or google sheet. A link to the sheet will be provided that will evidence the completion of the questionnaire. 

Obtain Community Feedback on Assessment Criteria and Finalize

The second milestone will be soliciting feedback on the assessment criteria from the Cardano community. At the end of the day, this tool is for everyone. So having a small group of people solely responsible for determining the questionnaire information and the points assigned to it does not make sense. Therefore, the draft will be shared with out community members and feedback will be requested. Specific feedback will be on the questions asked (do they make sense, should anything else be added, is there anything there that should be removed) and the points assigned to each question (should that question be given more or less points). 

Milestone Outputs: 

A: A finalized questionnaire that lists out the questions a reviewer must respond to in order to complete the work program. Each question will be assigned a point value and answering yes, no, etc will earn a certain number of points for that question (in the end the total points earned is added up to determine the overall score). For example, it could ask “Has this proposer completed all previous Catalyst proposals” with Yes earning 1 point and No earning 0 points. This will be the completed and final version that is used in the tool

B: A document that contains the comments and feedback received on the draft version that has ultimately been incorporated into the finalized version. Requests for feedback will be sent from the SCATDAO Discord and Twitter account to alert anyone who is interested in participating. 

Acceptance Criteria: 

A: A finalized questionnaire must be created with questions related to Project Catalyst. Each question must have a point score assigned to it. 

B: Feedback from at least 5 other people must have been received. At least one discord announcement and Twitter announcement should be made to solicit feedback. 

Evidence of Completion: 

A: The questionnaire will be completed in either a google doc or google sheet. A link to the sheet will be provided that will evidence the completion of the questionnaire. 

B: link to the Tweet that was made and a screen shot of the discord announcement will be provided. A google sheet or Google doc that contains the draft questionnaire with the feedback comments will be provided (will utilize the note function). A list of participants who provided feedback will be provided (nickname or handle may be provided instead of legal names if people wish to stay anonymous).

Deliver Completed Tool And Promotional Materials

The third milestone will be to deliver the completed Catalyst Tool as well as create some educational and promotional materials that demonstrate how to use the tool and generate interest in it. 

Milestone Outputs: 

A: A completed working product will be delivered. It will be a web based tool that anyone can enter the information and generate a completed report 

B: The following promotional and educational materials will be created:

i. 30 second promotional video

ii. Series of 5 one minute walkthrough videos 

overview + navigate homepage, how to answer questions + navigate tool, completing and submitting report, sample report + save feature + load saved report, view the collection of reports 

iii. A written guide that outlines how to use the tool, including screen shots, or tips and tricks, that allow a total newcomer to utilize the tool properly. 

Acceptance Criteria: 

A: A completed tool for assessing DYOR is finished. The tool needs to be web based, allow someone to answer the questions, and then have a report generated at the end with a score 

B: 

i. Promotional video should be approximately 30 seconds and introduce the tool.

ii. % videos should be approximately 1 minute in length each and demonstrate the areas mentioned in output.

iii. Written guide should be prepared that covers key areas of how to use the tool like creating a new report, answering questions, submission, viewing reports, etc. Should contain screen shots where necessary.

Evidence of Completion: 

A: The URL to the website where the tool is hosted will be provided. An assessor can go through each question and generate a report themselves. In addition a demo video will be provided that shows the functionality and the creation of demonstration of a report.

B: 

i. link to the promotional video hosted on Youtube will be provided.

ii. Links to the 5 demo videos hosted on Youtube will be provided.

iii. Link to Guide hosted on Medium will be provided.

Final Project Completion Report and Video

The final milestone will be to deliver the final project completion report and video which officially closes out the proposal.

Milestone Outputs: 

A: A final project completion report and video which meets all the Catalyst requirements for time, length, and content.  

Acceptance Criteria: 

A: The project completion report and video must meet all Catalyst requirements for time, length, and content. 

Evidence of Completion: 

A: A link to the closeout report which is hosted on google docs will be provided along with the URL to the video which will be hosted on YouTube. 

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

Eric Helms - Eric is a Certified Public Accountant (License Inactive) who has spent 10 years working in Corporate Audit from both the public and private side. He is passionate about blockchain and its ability to make society and business fairer and more transparent for everyone. He is currently a Veteran Community Advisor for Project Catalyst and is proud to be a member of the Cardano ecosystem. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-helms-cpa-97866a3b/). Eric wrote all of the content for the first version of the DYOR Tool. Eric has written a large majority of our articles on Medium (https://medium.com/@scatdao) and is a member of the core team. He will be writing the assessment criteria for the tool. Eric will also be working on general management of the DAO, performing our monthly accounting and reporting, and will also be responsible for managing the monthly Catalyst reporting.

Gabe Carr-Harris - Gabe is a very active Cardano Community member who is passionate about blockchain and education. He is currently an employed at Summon on the Association side. Gabe was PA in F9 and active in Catalyst. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gcarrharris0310?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app). He will be making the promotional videos.

3rd Party Programmer - Our regular developer has left, so we will need to seek out someone who is able to do the work we need. We already have found a few good 3rd party options who we are confident can build this for us.

Cardano Community - We will be going to the Cardano Community for feedback on the first draft of the tools and the point scoring. Your feedback is crucial in building a tool that represents what our community feels is important when assessing Catalyst. Therefore I have listed them here.

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

Item 1: Create Assessment Criteria

Description:

The Catalyst DYOR Tool needs a questionnaire that which will be the heard of the tool. This is what the reviewer uses to assess each proposal. This will require a deep analysis of current and past Project Catalyst proposals, Catalyst proposers, trends in completion, and the current information being requested in a Project Catalyst proposal. Once that is completed a draft of the questionnaire will be made that contains the most important information that a reviewer should have when assessing a Catalyst proposal. 

Deliverables:

A draft questionnaire that lists out the questions a reviewer must respond to in order to complete the work program. Each question will be assigned a point value and answering yes, no, etc will earn a certain number of points for that question (in the end the total points earned is added up to determine the overall score).

Budget: $10,000

Item 2: Feedback Rewards

Description:

As previously stated, a draft questionnaire will be developed and then we will go to the community for feedback and input. Based on this feedback and input the draft will be updated to ensure that the community agrees with the questions being included and the point value assigned.

Deliverables: At least 5 people must provide feedback before it is finalized. So this money is to incentivize and compensate the people who will be participating. The amount will be divided up amongst the people who participate.  

Budget: $1,000

Item 2: Program Tool

Description:

The Catalyst DYOR Tool needs to be programed, utilizing the assessment criteria generated in Item 1 and turning it into a web based tool. Our current developer has left, so we will need to seek out someone who is able to do the work we need. We already have found a few good options, but since we currently do not have this person locked in we have budgeted it to be slightly higher to accommodate any uncertainty. 

Deliverables: A completed web based tool that is easy to navigate and follow, visually pleasing, and generates reports 

Budget: $20,000

Item 3: Project Management

Description:

This would include processing monthly expenses for costs that we incur (servers, domain fees, etc) as well as doing the monthly bookkeeping for these. It would also include the time spent attending Catalyst meetings, preparing our monthly Catalyst reporting, preparing close out reports and videos, and everything else related to that. As well as monitoring this project, the people participating in it, and ensuring everything stays on schedule and on budget. 

Deliverables: 

Pay all monthly bills, perform monthly bookkeeping, attend Catalyst meetings, submit catalyst reporting with evidence of completion. Submit milestone data. Process payments to team members from Catalyst funding received. Ensure project stays on schedule and on budget. Prepare and submit close out report, including close out video that demonstrates what was delivered.

Budget: $1000 per month, $6000 Total for 6 months

Item 4: Educational/Promotional Materials

Description:

In order to demonstrate how to use the tool and to generate interest so that people actually use it, some promotional and educational materials will be created.

Deliverables: 

6 videos that introduce or walkthrough various aspects of the tool. A written guide that someone can read to understand how to use the tool correctly.

Budget: $500 for videos, $200 for guide

Item 5: Educational Articles Explaining the Need and Use for the Tool

Description:

We are planning to put out some videos listed above but some people prefer to read an article to learn about a topic. To accommodate these people we will be putting out 2 articles on the subject. They are to help people learn about what the tool is and what you will be able to do with it.

Deliverables: 

2 articles that help the community learn about the tool and what you will be able to do with it. 

Budget: $400 total

Item 6: Server Cost

Description:

The tool will be web based and therefore we will need servers to run them. The cost for the tool is currently about 200 dollars a month. So we are budgeting 200 dollars a month for this additional tool that we will be running. 

Deliverables: 

Run server for 6 months

Budget: $200 per month, $1200 total

Item 7: Miscellaneous Costs

Description

This is a catch all for any unforeseen or miscellaneous expenses that might arise. Perhaps there is some promotion we want to do for it that we had not considered? Perhaps the usage is higher than expected so the server cost goes up? We wanted to include this catch all in the budget to ensure we hadn’t missed anything that might be difficult to estimate. 

Deliverables: 

Cover any unforeseen expenses that were not accounted for in the general budget. 

Budget: $2000 dollars total

Total Dollars = $41,300

Total ADA = 137,667

ADA Cost Used = .30

 

Note: We have used a price per ADA of .30 in our budget. The current cost of ADA at the time of writing is .37. We have gone with a price of ADA of .30 as we are currently in a market rally that has drastically risen the price of ADA. We performed an analysis using the prize data from Yahoo to see what the average price of ADA has been in the last 6 months. This gives us an average price of .2947. While we hope that the rally continues, there is no guarantee this will happen and it is entirely possible that we return to the mid .20 levels we have seen most of this year. We have budgeted very carefully and would have financial hardship if prices dropped back significantly. Therefore, we have taken a conservative approach in estimating the ADA conversion rate. 

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

As mentioned above, we believe that the cost of this project represents value for money for the Cardano ecosystem because of its potential in helping spend future funds appropriately. For the relatively small cost to bring a tool like this to market, there is potentail to save millions of ADA by steering it away from projects that will not bring value or be completed and towards ones that will. This efficient use of funds alone represents an excellent value for the money spent for the ecosystem.

In addition, we are requesting less than half of the maximum for a proposal in this category. We believe that if you review the other proposals in this Category, you will see that we are offering a powerful tool with a clear use case and strong previous track record for a lower cost than average.

[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