Hlabs: CIP-113 - Finalize the standard for assets with programmability over transfers

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

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

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

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language

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

CIP-113 is the closest to a standard we can adopt at the moment.

We propose to review and complete the latest version to allow better dev experience and implement a library for creating these assets.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

[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?

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

The project will be open-sourced under Apache-2.0 License

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

CIP-113 proposes a standard for smart contracts to respect in order to be considered a "programmable tokens" (pretty much like tokens are implemented in the EVM ecosystem).

The standard went through many revisions and changed a lot during the course of time.

A proof of concept was already set up for one of the previous revisions showing how the possibility for programmable assets is very real on Cardano and already feasible (without hard forks).

With this proposal, we want to ultimate the latest proposed standard, in order to improve the composability and developer experience of the standard (so that other contracts can easily interact with programmable tokens)

And we also want to produce a library for plu-ts to facilitate the creation of on-chain contracts that respect the standard.

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

Programmable assets can have many use cases.

The most prominent example would be the ability to freeze tokens, presumably one of the requirements on the side of Circle in order to have USDC native on Cardano (requirements are still unclear).

But that is really just one of many possible use cases, an other example would be Real World Assets (RWA) which could then implement logic to allow the transfer of tokens only if the transfer happens in the real world too.

Ultimately, the library is an important step in allowing the standard to be adopted and easily used.

[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?

Michele Nuzzi has been part of the Cardano ecosystem at the beginning as a single stake pool operator and later as developer. In this time he wrote and still maintains numerous dependecy free typescript libraries that require a low level understanding of the Cardano protocol.

A non-exhaustive list list of some of the projects would be:

• plu-ts: a typescript framework for the creation of Cardano Smart contracts
• plutus-machine: typescript library for the evaluation of contracts off-chain
• cardano-ledger-ts: collection of classes and functions for Cardano specific data types and respective serialization and deserialization in CBOR format.
• ouroboros-miniprotocols-ts: library for low level interactions with the cardano-node based on the ouroboros mini protocols specification.

And more recently actively developing an alternative implementation of the cardano-node, thanks to previous catalyst funding.

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

Design the standard (Retroactive)

review the CIP to implement the latest suggestions for interoperability with other contracts

implement a proof of concept for the standard (for the latest version)

produce the on-chain library to facilitate the creation of programmable assets.

close out report and video

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

1) Michele Nuzzi

• X.com (former Twitter)

Initial proposer of the CIP

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

The proposal is partially retro-active, covering the research and implementations done so far.

estimating the costs of research and implementation of the first proof of concepts around 100'000 ADA

we then count 8 months for a production-ready library for the creation of the assets, for 6'000 $/month at an average of 0.46 dollars per ADA

6000 / 0.46 * 8 ~= 104'347,82 ADA that we round down to 100'000 to meet the challenge requirements

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

Many possible applications to be built on Cardano can benefit the standard