[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Dee Boshoff

[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

Aaron Arfman

theartbanker

[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)

Deliver MVP of Cardano-first cross-chain web3 directory/token gamification platform, improving project discovery, and incentivizing engagement to boost the marketing reach of Cardano-based projects.

[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

The project and all of its information outputs are open source, however, the code will not be open source due to the proprietary nature of what is being built.

[METADATA] SDG rating

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

16 - Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

Despite having one of the fastest growing and most vibrant ecosystems in crypto, Cardano-based startups have to largely rely on their own efforts to build a social following and have no way to systematically piggyback on the existing users in the crypto ecosystem, let alone the Cardano ecosystem. 

We have already developed a suite of tools on our Splash platform that effectively enables listed projects to distill their messaging, market their products, and expand their reach thereby increasing customers and sales. To aid with this, we will look to harness social media incentive mechanisms to onboard collectors, creators, and KOLs on Cardano as well as other blockchains that feature thriving communities across a wide range of categories. 

We are making inroads into Polygon, Ethereum, and Solana and these collaborations will boost followings as cross-chain pollination occurs. This is accomplished by an operational cross-chain, ‘living’ community directory that aggregates all the interrelationships between a community and its partners, and showcases how and where its tokens are used in apps/games to effectively display its true network effect in the broader ecosystem. 

By structuring the flow of information simply, communities will be able to curate media-rich, SEO-optimized listings that will aid in the organic marketing of their products, promote deeper collaboration between projects, and help collectors discover new projects and have a comprehensive overview of the value of their holdings in a single platform.

Key Features and Benefits

1. Interconnected Communities

Splash supports directory listings from multiple blockchains, starting with Cardano. This growing network will not only attract digital traffic from other blockchains but also expose Cardano projects to a larger audience, stimulate social growth, and encourage the sharing of information and ideas.

2. Showcasing The Interrelationships Between a Project and All its Digital Assets

Splash allows projects to feature their complete bouquet of products and services enabling newcomers to quickly understand the ins and outs of each project without the need to wade through multiple Discord servers or read lengthy whitepapers. In addition, Splash equips the newcomer with not just the important links of each project like socials and website, but also with a marketplace to acquire tokens and become a part of any community they wish to.

4. Stay in Touch With The Ongoings of The Communities That Matter To You

Connect your wallet and instantly filter to see which communities your assets are linked to. Check-in daily to get notifications of community posts and events, discover new communities in a wide range of categories, and understand how networked your assets are and their value.

5. Social Media Following Count and Twitter/Discord Update Feed

Users will have a high-level overview of how active communities are when doing their research. This will provide them with the most up-to-date information on any given community, and encourage project owners to commit to keeping in touch with their followers and creating a living directory that benefits all participants in the ecosystem.

6. Social Media Sharing Incentivization Mechanism

Collectors will be rewarded for actively promoting projects whose assets they are holders of. Rewarding real evangelists helps projects to retain loyal followers and promotional sharing is more authentic, increasing the likelihood of converting someone in an evangelist's immediate network to a follower and holder.

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

Having interviewed multiple project creators, the one agreed-upon problem with Cardano is the lack of marketing solutions. We are determined to solve this problem. New projects typically struggle to acquire meaningful social clout because of the difficulty in forging partnerships, distilling key information on how a community can benefit its participants in a simple way, and managing online marketing campaigns with small teams. 

Unlike ecosystems on Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana, where robust collaborative tools have been developed to assist new projects to solidify social traction, the insular nature of Cardano has meant that many projects fail to make it into the social media limelight even when their infrastructure, resources or tooling could be of great benefit to the space. 

Splash boosts projects' social following by attracting look-alike audiences through our improved directory and incentivization model. Listed projects and any new communities, whether developing or developed, will be able to claim/add their listings and all of their tokens, apps, games, funding proposals, and physical venues associated with their community.

Armed with this information, users will be able to participate in purchasing assets to effectively join a community, understand the value of their holdings, and be rewarded with tokens for becoming social media advocates for the communities they love. This will lead to an increase in marketing reach for communities, bringing in new entrants to the space and growing the overall ecosystem.

By helping new projects and creators more easily attract thousands of followers across their social media channels, Cardano will become more of a destination for projects to build on and increase the adoption rate of existing and non-crypto natives in the space. 

Impact Measurement

Splash is determined to have 2,000+ project listings from Cardano and 10+ other blockchains by the end of Q1 2024. All of the listings will be indexed in Google search and a knowledge base will be created to help projects SEO optimize their listings to increase the searchability of their project and drive organic traffic back to their community.

The longer-term vision of Splash is to become a sort of ‘Web3 Linkedin’, a veritable web of communities, their products, and live updates that inform creators and collectors and promote collaboration and growth of projects and their ecosystems.

Sharing of Outputs

Splash has a live running counter of all the communities and the networkability of their assets across partnering communities/chains to provide greater transparency to users that showcase the growth of the platform. Other useful information like growing social followings and NFT sales data will also be featured.

Regular updates on the growth of Splash and analytics reports of traffic and its sources will be shared via our social media channels.

[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?

Our small team has completely bootstrapped this project over a year to build a functioning app and timely deliver key product features with limited resources that today attract hundreds of monthly users who are using our gamified NFT sales solutions, a multi-chain community directory with thousands of projects listed, and a suite of token utilities. 

Our dev team has built robust multisig minting solutions and token conversion tech on Cardano. Our most used product, the NFT Recycler, can receive 24 NFTs and send out 12 FTs all in a single transaction. To date, around a thousand collectors have recycled a whopping 34,000 NFTs using this advanced Web3 tool. 

In addition, our operations team has analyzed and classified all 9,000 Cardano NFT policies that have at least 10+ NFTs. This was a Herculean feat that took us over 6 months to complete but it has proved very useful because we have learned much about the types of NFT collections and their utilities.

The main goal for Splash is to onboard hundreds of new communities in the coming months and have the existing communities on our platform claim and update their listings. The networking potential of our platform will enhance discoverability, incentivize community participation, personalize the user experience, and ultimately help projects sell their digital assets. When this happens, we will have succeeded.

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

Community Modules Optimization & Testing (Months 1-2)

• Posts & Events
• Games 
• Apps
• Funding Proposals

Milestone Outputs: A user can easily register an account with their email and explore every single module Splash has to offer. By connecting a Cardano wallet, collectors will be able to see all the communities that they are a part of, understand the networkability of their collections and discover new communities. Cardano project owners will be able to make use of an inline editor to easily update the communities they have created, and establish interlinked connections between their services/products/tokens/proposals and their partnering communities. Furthermore, project owners will be able to create posts and events to update their community regularly. Once this has been achieved, the milestone would qualify as delivered.

Social Media Feed Integration (Month 3)

• Integrate Twitter feed and testing
• Integrate Discord feed and testing
• Add followership metrics of each social media channel to listings

Milestone Outputs: Users will be able to see key followership metrics of social media profiles on a community page including buttons to follow and share the community via any of the social media channels available. There will also be an integrated Twitter/Discord feed that will provide users with a high-level overview of recent posts from any given community. Once this has been achieved, the milestone would qualify as delivered.

Cross-Chain Integrations and Community Onboarding (Months 4-5)

• Commence wallet and blockchain feed integrations for Polygon and Ethereum
• Integrate token market data feeds
• Invite existing communities to claim listings/self-onboard

Milestone Outputs: Successfully integrate with two additional blockchains including wallet connectors, blockchain data, and pricing feeds. The users will be able to connect their cross-chain wallets and see all projects that they follow/support and/or own digital assets of. Continued listings of projects on these chains will commence as well as the option for projects to claim existing listings, bringing their communities over to Splash and exposing a new audience of users to them. Once this has been achieved, the milestone would qualify as delivered.

Social Incentivization Module (Months 6-7)

• Develop a basic social incentivization structure using a loyalty/membership token on Cardano, Monet, and base the rewards on user wallet profiling of Cardano projects
• Implement a social incentivization mechanism for Cardano users

Milestone Outputs: Develop a basic social incentivization structure to reward users for promoting the projects that they are investors in and love. Users who have found a project on Splash and purchased/own a collectible from that project will be rewarded in fungible tokens for following/sharing that project’s listing with their own network, helping to extend the marketing reach of Cardano projects. Once this has been achieved, the milestone would qualify as delivered.

Final Project Completion Report and Video Milestone (Month 8)

• Draft/script and publish the final project completion report and video

Milestone Outputs: Work with the entire team to draft and publish a comprehensive completion report that showcases evidence of completed milestones with platform growth analytics. Script out and publish a video walkthrough that covers the completion of the milestones, the use of key features of the platform, and user feedback/testimonials. Once this has been achieved, the milestone would qualify as delivered.

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

Dee Boshoff - Linkedin

Ops Manager

Dee Boshoff is a digital marketing expert and blockchain enthusiast who spent a decade studying, living, and working in Asia with a leading digital marketing agency. He is currently helping to conceptualize, build, and grow Splash, a gamified NFT minting and data aggregation directory looking to onboard the next wave of Web3 projects and users into the creative ecosystem.

Ramon Vos - Linkedin

Marketing

Ramon Vos has been a cross-chain NFT degen, crypto trader, and investor since 2021. He has over a decade of experience in the luxury hospitality industry working in Asia, Africa, and Europe. He is Dutch by nationality, multilingual, and currently is based in France. He has a Master's Degree in marketing and finance.

Aaron Arfman - Linkedin

Product

Aaron Arfman is an entrepreneur with 20 years of operations experience in China and a Cardano supporter since 2018. He is passionate about developing products that make blockchain more accessible to the masses by leveraging his cross-industry experiences from private equity, and fintech startups to wine production and distribution.

Jacques Bosch - Linkedin

CTO

Jacques Bosch, a tech entrepreneur from South Africa, loves the way harnessing software can reshape the real world. With a quarter of a century career spanning a diverse range of industries, from Blockchain and Auctioning to Education and Insurance, Jacques has a wealth of experience in implementing successful systems across many countries. For over 18 years, he has led competent teams founded on strong and respect-based relationships. Currently, he is concentrating on developing blockchain products and generative AI solutions for enterprise scenarios, highlighting his love of innovation and progress.

Piro Vorster - Linkedin

Developer

Piro Vorster is a skilled tech professional and founder of 2 successful software startups, Inversion and Pink Fish, with 17 years of experience in technologies like .NET, Azure, C#, and more. He's worked in a broad range of sectors, including Auctioning, Insurance, and Reinsurance, and relishes the thrill of solving complex challenges. Piro's credentials include a BSc (Hons) Computing degree and a wealth of leadership experience. He also boasts an unusual asset — a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, reflecting his commitment to discipline and strategic thinking.

Paul Cowan - Github

Developer

Paul Cowan is a seasoned programmer with over 20 years of experience, largely with C# .NET. He's worked across multiple industries, most notably in online retail, gaming, and now in the emergent fields of blockchain and NFTs. Working in both private and open source spaces, and a keen problem solver, Paul brings a blend of expertise, lateral thinking, and collaborative spirit to every project.

Vitaliy Kydon - Linkedin

Designer

With over 10 years of dedicated experience, Vitaliy Kydon specializes in crafting immersive and user-centric interfaces that redefine the digital landscape of blockchain and crypto technologies.

From sleek and secure wallet interfaces to intuitive decentralized exchanges, each project exemplifies my commitment to creating visually striking, yet functionally robust solutions tailored for the crypto ecosystem.

Danielle Erasmus - Portfolio

Creative Director/Senior Video Editor

Danielle Erasmus is a Creative Director, Senior Video Editor, and Copywriter with 13 years of industry experience. Dani’s Honours graduating film won a SAFTA amongst many other international awards which launched her into the best of the industry. After spending many years as a freelancer, creating video content for local and international brands including CROCS, Supersport, DSTV, Jaguar Land Rover, and many more, Dani joined the Splash/CUR8/Cardano Center team full-time to dedicate her skillset to showcasing their platforms.

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

Development - 180,000 ADA

2 developers working 160+ hours per month to build out all of the specified functionality detailed in the development milestones over 5 months.

Operations - 35,000 ADA

1 operations member working to onboard at least 1,000 projects on Cardano with an aim of reaching 3,000 projects by the end of 7 months. Responsibilities also include direct sales, conceptualizing future functionalities, and continued data input to grow the number of projects using the platform.

Marketing - 25,000 ADA

1 marketing member working to promote Splash and manage online communities over the course of 7 months. Responsibilities also include social media calendar creation, social promotion, and community management to onboard new users and educate them about the power of using Splash.

Design - 25,000 ADA

1 designer working to create visual content for Splash app updates over 7 months. Responsibilities also include branding updates, wireframe design updates, and additional design content for marketing campaigns.

Video Editing - 35,000 ADA

1 video editor working to strategize, direct, and edit video content to help promote Splash and the Cardano communities listed on the platform over 7 months. Responsibilities include editing, publishing content, and working with marketing to grow the social following of Splash.

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

We are helping to solve one of Cardano's largest weaknesses...social marketing. Projects usually need dedicated staff and budget to onboard new users through the use of online marketing channels and campaigns. With Splash, we are providing these projects with a one-stop platform that aggregates users from other chains and rewards them for their participation, effectively reducing their customer acquisition costs.

We are already using our existing app to build out this functionality and leveraging the reach of social media to acquire these users where they spend time online, significantly reducing the total cost to market.

The costs of the project are based on conservative estimates (based on the current exchange rate of ADA) of the going rates for the professionals located in South Africa who are required to see this project through to completion over 8 months.

Splash has been bootstrapped for over a year now with our small team of committed members. The funding requested is the minimum amount required to support our team of professionals to bring this project to where we know it can realize its full potential in helping to take Cardano to the masses.

[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