PATHFORM: Consciousness Development for the Age of Blockchain and AI, Minting Brain/Biometric Data on Cardano

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Dr. Gabriel Axel Montes, PhD

[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)

Precision Consciousness: targeted micro-practices, with neuro/biometric data captured into liquid blockchain assets on Cardano.

[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?

No

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

This proposal will support necessary R&D of a project that is being designed to sit on Cardano. Some of the R&D is privacy-sensitive. The project also takes user privacy seriously, so these aspects cannot be public/open-source.

[METADATA] SDG rating

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

SDG Subgoals

3.4 - By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being

#proposertoolsdg

#sdg

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

Pathform is a consciousness development (i.e. "mind hacking") that promotes custom growth paths for users using neuroscience-and-consciousness-expert–based micro-practices, leveraging both quantitative and qualitative user data to refine user journeys. Pathform currently already exists in prototype-MVP app format, thanks to a successfully closed-out Catalyst F7 project, as well as the incorporation of psychometric tests via a successfully closed-out F8 project. The prototype app already has an initial selection of safe, neuroscience-based consciousness-hacking micro-practice techniques (30 seconds -4 minutes in practice length). The present proposal aims to add a brainwave measurement feature set, with the ability to capture user brainwave and biometric response to micro-practices thereby mint Cardano NFTs based on the user's response. This will create the first brainwave enablement of expertly created and curated no-fluff micro-practices for consciousness development on blockchain, and it will sit on Cardano. This project is not an NFT project per se; NFTs are simply serving as a way to represent unique user responses to practices, allowing them to be utilized in other ways (example potential use cases below). This F11 project will focus on capturing first the brainwave/biometric responses of the project lead (Dr. Gabriel Axel Montes, PhD) and one student in order to establish the reference data patterns for these practices. This is an important step before deploying the brainwave/biometric feature and hardware broadly/publicly, as mass deployment will require quality standards in order to work properly as intentioned.

The project lead is Dr. Gabriel Axel Montes, PhD, who has a an expert background in neuroscience, AI, blockchain, and consciousness research and practice.

This proposals comes on the heels of three directly relevant previous successful and closed-out Catalyst proposals (1 in F7, 2 in F8), all executed by the proposer. The present proposal builds upon previous work.

Proposer Achievements to-date:

• Pathform biometrics for consciousness development MVP (F7)
• Pathform enhanced with Neuralprint MVP (F8)
• Neuralprint MVP [brain-based authentication] created (F8)
• Neuralprint Patent-pending Status
• DAOJob/Gov3: Cardano governance dashboard (F7 & F8)

See Successful and closed-out Pathform F7 prototype-MVP project for more background information and overall vision, as relevant to the present proposal, here.

Neuralprint MVP was added to the Pathform MVP prototype web app (which was partially incubated with SIngularityNET), as a result of closed-out Catalyst F7 (Pathform prototype creation) & F8 (Neuralprint integration into Pathform) proposals. You can access Pathform here and there are public discussions about it here.

Risk Mitigation:

• Risk (1): Immediate hiring need. Our team is actively searching for a machine learning now. Due to global demand for AI talent and in order to attract suitable talent in a timely manner, we are offering (in the budget) an above-average salary. This will also help to increase the chances of keeping a strong engineer beyond the scope of this proposal.

• Risk (2): EEG brainwave biometric development, like much of any hardware development, can take time, typically more than software development. To mitigate, the proposed project is focusing on one or two study participants (the proposer and one student), which removes the logistics barrier associated with recruiting participants, etc.

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

This is a cutting-edge, first of its kind, project -- and it is being developed for Cardano.

The proposed project brings a novel technology to Cardano, making Cardano a first-mover chain in the space. This proposal poises Cardano to be used in a key technology in the world. It also builds on and adds functionality to existing projects (successful, closed-out proposals from F7, F8).

This proposal thereby fulfills criteria of Cardano usefulness, including the following metrics:

• Increasing the number products available for the community to use that help to enrich the ecosystem with new use cases.
• Increase the number of integrations that bring existing solutions together for a more seamless and connected experience between different products.
• Increased quality of existing products & integrations through improvements and new functionality.

[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?

This project comes on the heels of 4 previous Catalyst proposals that have all be successfully completed and closed-out. This offers a measure of predictability for proposer trust and accountability in delivering on this proposal.

The project is based on neuroscience and blockchain, two of the proposer's areas of expertise. Feasibility is based on the technical achievability of the R&D, which we have already been doing successfully since Catalyst F7. The main objectives are to be a first mover in the space to solve future blockchain issues that are foreseen.

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

Survey of key brain/biometric states of interest with regard to Pathform micro-practices

Target biometric device(s) identified

Output: Progress report

Acceptance criteria: Output describes the progress and technical achievements/learnings developed.

(Due to the research nature of the project, it is a challenge to predict the precise advancements that will be made with each milestone, which is why we defer to a standard progress report and technical outline format, which is sufficiently flexible to accommodate a range of advancements.)

Micropractices selected (new ones optionally added, if deemed necessary/useful)

Biometric device(s) identified and ordered (if not yet ordered and received)

Output: Progress report and technical outline

Acceptance criteria: Output describes the progress and technical achievements/learnings developed.

Data capture begins; initial analyses commenced

Troubleshooting, if any

Output: Progress report and technical outline

Acceptance criteria: Output describes the progress and technical achievements/learnings developed.

Data capture and analysis continued

Encoding the datasets into categorized NFT sets commenced (if data is ready at this stage for encoding)

Output: Progress report and technical outline

Acceptance criteria: Output describes the progress and technical achievements/learnings developed.

Data capture and analysis continued

Encoding the datasets into categorized NFT sets (if data is ready at this stage for encoding)

Output: Progress report and technical outline

Acceptance criteria: Output describes the progress and technical achievements/learnings developed.

Data capture and analysis (completed)

Encoding the datasets into categorized NFT sets (completed)

Output: Progress report and technical outline

Acceptance criteria: Output describes the progress and technical achievements/learnings developed.

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

Dr. Gabriel Axel Montes, Ph.D.

[LinkedIn]

Neuroscientist, SingularityNET (Cardano partner) pedigree; founding extended team, Head of People, Music Co-Director and guitarist for in-house touring band with humanoid robot vocalist.

Formerly, VERSES Director of Communications and researcher, building the Spatial Web (realistic metaverse).

Will serve as the project creator, leader, and director, and delegating tasks for execution. Gabriel has a team of contractors who have track record of delivering on past Catalyst proposals, including and not limited to neuroscience engineers, tokenomics experts, blockchain developers, and project management.

Advisors:

• David Harding: Advisor. CTO, SVP Engineering, Renown Security, Identity, Cloud Expert. Private Equity.
• Dan Mapes, PhD: Advisor. Co-designer of the Spatial Wb IEEE Protocol. President, VERSES.ai & The Spatial Web Foundation.
• Edward Brennan: founding CFo & Advisor. Venture Capitalist, Board Member, Advisor to Several StartX & Y-Combinator Companies.

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

R&D and Project Management: $40,200 ($6,700 x 6 months)

Engineering: $22,200 ($3,700 x 6 months)

Social media: $10,800 ($1,800 x 6 months)

Biometric equipment: $22,800 (2x slim form-factor EEG interfaces)

Data analysis (cloud time and algorithm use): $14,200

Total: $110,200

An exchange rate of $0.38/ADA (reflecting that of the time of this writing) was used for budget calculation.

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

All costs will be commensurate to majority of wages and capital required to execute. Due to the high value-add scientific and engineering work required of the proposal, costs are above that of the average proposal; due to the nature of the work and in order to rapidly secure the human resource talent and equipment needed to conduct the work.

All previous work on this project has been centered in Western countries, now with Western (US)-based patent work, and thus costs account for Western wages and inflation.

[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