RYP/Reach Your People: Governance, Stakepool and on-chain activity right to your inbox

[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)

We will enhance the Reach Your People prototype to allow fully automatic pushing of on-chain activities that end users subscribe to, to the social media and messaging solutions of their choice.

[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

Apache License 2.0

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

The solution in a single paragraph:

Cassandra is a new user on Cardano and just created her first wallet after receiving an onboarding QR code at local Blockchain event. The wallet guided her through the process of staking her ADA to a Stakepool and signing up for "Reach Your People", where she also connected her Facebook account and verified her phone number. A few days later, Cassandra even delegated her ADA to a dRep who shares her vision of a decentralized future. Within the first two weeks on chain, she gets an invite on Facebook from her Stakepool operator to a virtual event where all the delegators connect with each other, and a text message with a link to a governance proposal her dRep just voted on. She was also sent a link to a holder-only raffle by a mysterious dog, since her wallet came with a few million $HOSKY. Cassandra did not need to follow a single social media account or join any Discord, to get all this information, because she is using RYP.

On the foundation of our Fund 10 proposal "Reach Your People", which was our prototype implementation for NFT and FT-projects that can now reach out to their holders without having any of their social media or messaging info, we will build out our initial solution to a full product.

Our current platform requires projects to explicitly send announcements, which is great for project-to-community communication. However, on a public blockchain, there are more entities than projects with tokens, and many activities can be automatically discovered and communicated to end users, because it is relevant to them. This can include activities of their stakepools, like changes in fees, or pools retiring, as well as governance activities like dReps voting or becoming inactive, and even blockchain-wide events like hard forks or parameter changes.

All of these commonly happen without the users knowledge, and while not everyone may care about a hard fork, most users will want to learn when their stakepool stops producing rewards for any reason or their dRep votes for unexpected things. RYP will fill this gap by listening to on-chain events and communicating them to end users that have their wallets connected.

In addition to automatically being subscribed, the service also offers the ability to mute events that are not relevant to them, and to do that easily across multiple connected wallets. The notification choices are also up to the consumer, letting them choose more time-sensitive events to be sent for example via text message, but just getting an email or Discord notification for less important announcements.

Next to the on-chain events, we will look to implement the verification processes for dReps and SPOs, to allow them to publish announcements, surveys and other communications in a manner that is verified, secure and trusted by the recipients.

We will also work with wallet providers to allow easier onboarding during the initial wallet creation or restoration process, either via authorization flows or API calls, making sure that any new users can stay in the know.

Some example automated on-chain events we may build and support (non exhaustive list):

• Transactions in your wallets
• Actions by dReps
• Votes on proposals
• Inactivity
• Deregistration
• Actions by Stakepools
• Zero block epochs
• Retirement
• Fee changes
• Epoch Blockchain wide summaries
• Epoch Staking summaries
• External stake contribution (if someone stakes ADA they own with your staking address)

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

For Communities

Engaged communities are a crucial point of a thriving economy. It is important for an ecosystem that actually interacts with the blockchain, instead of just being a collective of passive bystanders. RYP will allow people to be informed and engaged without requiring major effort on their end. Instead of spending an hour to catch up with what my dRep or Stakepool does, I can simply have this info sent to me in almost real time.

Metrics for this area will include:

• Number of connected wallets/signups
• Number of received notifications (for both on-chain events and manually published announcements)
• Number of social media and messaging connections (total, but also analyzed how many of the different social media sites and messaging solutions are leveraged)
• What type of notifications users are subscribed to
• Reviews from end users (published via a yet to be determined mechanism)

For Projects

For projects and companies, our solution will enable them to focus on their core competencies. Currently, many teams are spending a lot of time getting their communities, holders, delegators and other stakeholders to follow and remain engaged with their social media accounts, or subscribe to newsletters. With RYP, this effort is minimized so that these teams can align their goals around making a bigger impact with their unique solutions.

Metrics for this area will include:

• The number of projects signed up
• The number of projects publishing actively via RYP
• The number of sent announcements (by project type and other dimensions, like recipient counts)
• Reviews from projects (published via a yet to be determined mechanism)

Metrics will be shared either via a public Grafana Dashboard or a suitable different public solution where not applicable (for example reviews)

[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 have previously shown our ability to implement the Reach Your People prototype via a Catalyst grant in Fund 10. Currently, milestones 1-4 out of 6 have been delivered and we have proven to deliver on time, with well designed architecture and showcased our ability to build thoroughly tested and scalable products. Our prototype is slated to be complete end of June 2024.

We have a consistent presence in the Cardano ecosystem and have shown to implement reliable services with Vibrant (previously HAZELnet). Vibrant has been a cornerstone in the Discord servers of many projects since early 2022, currently used by over 700 servers and with 44000 verified wallets (Source: Public Vibrant Dashboard )

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

Milestone 1 will be the research phase (1 Month)

• Even with a prototype released, we will have to find existing implementations or indexers that can provide the necessary on-chain data for governance events, parameter changes and stakepool-related activities.
• We will also have to follow the still very in-flux CIPs on governance to discover which data will be available with the introduction of CIP-1694 and the adjacent CIPs on metadata.
• Mockups or UI prototypes for the new capabilities will be built (Governance related subscriptions, SPO-related subscriptions, as well as the verification process for these entities).

Outputs will be Decision Records that document our research, findings and next steps in the public repository, as well as the mockups or links to the prototypes. Based on the research, architecture diagrams for the existing solution will be enhanced to cover the proposed capabilities and initial tickets will be written up in the public issue tracker.

Milestone 2 will be the initial implementation of one set of core services (2 Months)

• Implementation of the core services for either SPO, governance, or other on-chain events, including tests, continued integration pipelines
• Building out the UI prototypes, or, if prototypes were already present, refining them and connecting them to whichever core services have a working version at the time.
• Infographics for the respective choice will be commissioned

Outputs will be a demo video publicly shared on YouTube, as well as the open source code and deployment instructions, shared in our repository. Design ideas for the infographics will be shared, likely as mermaid diagrams in the repository.

Milestone 3 will be initial onboarding and continued implementation (1 Month)

• For whichever group of stakeholders (dReps or SPOs) we built services in Milestone 2, we will reach out to a set of early tester for beta invites.
• Development on the previous services will continue, as well as starting development on the second set of services (whichever was not chosen in Milestone 2)
• We will also share infographics about the newly built services from Milestone 2 on Twitter and other applicable social media

Outputs will be a demo video publicly shared on YouTube, as well as the open source code and deployment instructions, shared in our repository. For the beta test, it will be the list of invited teams and proof of their interest, where given. For the infographics, links to the announcements and the infographic(s) themselves will be provided

Milestone 4 will be finalizing the implementation, second cohort and review collection (1 Month)

• We will launch the beta test of the feature set from Milestone 2, as well as reach out to projects for their initial reviews.
• The group that we started building capabilities for in Milestone 3 will start to be invited to their own beta test.
• Implementation of any outstanding capabilities will continue.

Outputs will be any reviews we receive (if none are available yet, they will be provided in Milestone 5), as well as a video showcasing the last iteration of the product prior to public launch.

Final Milestone will be production release (1 Month)

• This includes launching the new capabilities to the general market. At this time, users should already be using the tool for its token-based capabilities, so they will automatically receive the features developed for on-chain events.
• Test coverage and security tests will be verified that they are still within an 80% coverage and no vulnerabilities, as well as no high priority bugs.
• Social Media campaign for launch of the new capabilities as well as the remaining infographics will be published.

Links to social media announcements and launch infographics will be provided, alongside a video showcasing the final version of the product.

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

The project engineering team consists of me as the core developer.

I am Director of Engineering at a leading business process management solution that builds enterprise grade web applications. With over 25 years of experience in web development, building full stack applications for companies with more than 50.000 employees, I was able to bring this knowledge to Cardano via VibrantNet, a widely used Cardano community tool, as a stakepool operator of HAZEL as well as providing educational content for the ecosystem, I have shown the ability to build, deliver and reiterate on my projects, all the while making sure that the input of the community comes first in deciding what needs to be done.

We will also hire a part time Frontend Engineer for the UI work, to allow us to iterate faster. We have the opportunity to hire locally, but are also looking to leverage offers by folks like Sheldon Hunt from Emurgo, who recently proposed introductions to skilled people that are interested in working in the Cardano ecosystem.

Part time project management will be done by my wife Nicole, who is an experienced Cloud Project Manager and who will continue the work she did on helping to plan our initial prototype.

Marketing materials will likely be outsourced to a service provider.

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

The cost breakdown is as follows:

• Basic server costs and costs for development tools are in row 4: Total of $3000 for 6 months
• Engineering time for the core development team in rows 5+6: Total of $69000 for 6 months
• Part time project management cost is in row 7: Total of $9000 for 6 months
• Marketing costs will be through services or part time hires throughout the project: Total of $5000 for 5 months

A link to the spreadsheet is available here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XptllcjgAWB4pwxRYDC6NVXDf1nBZz7fowrSttoUOQA/edit?usp=sharing

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

We believe a product like Reach Your People will be able to engage people that are currently on Cardano, as well as make retaining users significantly easier for projects, SPOs and dReps, making the chain much more engaging and relevant to end users. It will also make onboarding new users and making them feel like they are connected to the activity that happens on chain much easier.

While it is hard to quantify the exact value ahead of time, if 50 projects save just $500 dollars a month of effort and tooling work in their community outreach, the development costs for RYP are recouped within under four months. (50 x 4 * $500 = $100000, project cost at time of submission is $86000)

Our cost explanation is as follows:

6 months x ~$500 for ongoing operational costs

• $300/month (monthly backend server cost - current)
• $99/month GitLab CI/CD pipeline with automated security checks and private repositories
• $100/month cost for AWS Amplify Website hosting and other business related services (Google Workspace, domains

6 months x $9000 for a full time Full Stack Developer

• Based on an annual salary for a mid-level Full Stack Engineer of $108000 in the US Northwest. Engineers with this level typically have no blockchain knowledge or no enterprise experience. The in-depth knowledge required to work with Cardano commonly comes at a premium that is ignored here.

6 months x $2500 for a part time Frontend Engineer

• Based on an annual salary for an entry level Frontend Engineer of $80000 in the US, utilized at about 1/3 full time. Engineers with this level typically have no blockchain knowledge or enterprise experience.

6 months x $1500 for a part-time project manager position

• Based on an annual salary of $55000 and the expectation that we only need a part-time role with ~ 15 hrs/week.

5 months x $1000 for a part-time community manager and marketing material creation

• About $50 / day for social media exposure and outsourcing any design work required.