TripHut + MLabs: Mainnet launch!

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Jaymeon Jones

[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

MLabs

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

5

[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 will launch on the Cardano mainnet an MVP of a Travel Club managed by smart contracts that sustainably sends its members on free or discounted vacations using community resources and partnerships.

[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.”

Between our internal team and our contractors, there are 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

Both the on chain code and the off chain code are open source. We use the MIT open source license and our repos can be seen in the "relevant links" section.

For ease of reference: https://github.com/yaadlabs

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

Introduction

Travel & Tourism is one of the largest industries in the world, as it contributes towards 10.3% of global GDP and employs roughly 300 million people (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2021). We believe that the industry presents a large opportunity for Cardano to gain mass adoption, not only because of the industry's size but also because of the level of consumer interest in the sector.

That being said, accessibility to travel is a problem. At the very peak of travel in 2019, only 18.9% of the world’s population travelled abroad (Statista, 2022); and if we were to use America as the marker, who are largely considered to be among the most well-travelled citizens, only four in ten U.S natives planned a trip locally or otherwise in 2019 (AAA Travel Survey, 2019).

If we were to provide a solution that boasts being able to send people on free &/or discounted vacations, what would that do for real world interest in, and adoption for Cardano?

A lot!

How will the Travel Club Work?

We intend to contribute to the solution of accessible travel by using three models:

Model A/Travel Grants - From the Travel Club's economic activities (NFT/membership sales and a small mining facility) the DAO will allocate a portion of the earnings towards travel bursaries. Bursaries are distributed via a smart contracts that execute decisions based on a relative majority vote from the community. The idea here is that the least fortunate will get the chance to vacation, all expenses paid, up to the ADA equivalent of $1800 USD. This is so as to be more inclusive and offer the project the kind of leverage needed to get the mainstream travel media & community's attention.

Winners are chosen once a month.

Model B/Community Owned Property - After establishing proof of concept, the idea is to allocate funds from utility token sales, to acquire or build a boutique hotel that is both self sustaining (as rooms will be sold to travelers outside the community) and member-rewarding, as there will be dedicated accommodation, set up for member use (for free or at a discount).

The intention is also to optimize the model so that rooms sold or rented to the wider public can cover expenses and allow for member-allotted accommodation to remain free, or at worst, discounted. Additionally, the average occupancy rate is approximately 70%; and so with proper planning, that unused room space can also be given to the community.

Model C/Third Party Partnerships - The intent is to partner with third parties internationally to pass off their owned experiences (think restaurants, hotels & attractions) at a discount to our members through "e-vouchers". The relationship is formed on the premise that they get marketing value (exposure to our community to help sell unsold inventory) and that this happens only on the basis that the community gets the best rates. This scales well in theory (proven by other active and profitable organisations), and will put us in a position to bring value to everyone in the TripHut X Tipsy Turtles community.

Who will the project engage?

Our stakeholders are as follows:

Members (Phase 1 & 2) - Persons that purchase a travel pass and/or a utility token (To comprise of mostly the Cardano NFT & wider Cardano Community in the short run)

Members (Phase 3) - Persons that purchase a travel pass and/or a utility token (To comprise of mostly persons from the broader travel community, outside of Cardano, in the medium to long term)

Customers - Persons who want to book our experiences (non-members)

Project Partners - Persons who own experiences and are willing to share in the mission of affordable travel

Keen to note though is that the scope of this grant proposal will fund MVP completion and get us through the first two phases of TripHut's road map.

How will we demonstrate impact?

• Membership sales
• Community size
• DAO Participation
• Solution Sentiment

Conclusion

With this plan, we can achieve a first-of-its-kind, token-gated travel club, that is self sustaining, eco-friendly, community led, and that contributes to accessible travel and ultimately, real world adoption for Cardano!

Keen to note too is that our solution is open source and would provide a reasonably safe alternative for developers and project owners to leverage for their own DAO's, without having to commit the same amount of time and resources we have.

References

Edmonds, E. (2019). AAA: Nearly 100 Million Americans Will Embark on Family Vacations this Year: Retrieved from: https://newsroom.aaa.com/2019/03/100-million-americans-will-embark-on-family-vacations/

Statista. (2022). Number of international tourist arrivals worldwide from 1951 to 2021. Retrieved from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/209334/total-number-of-nternational-tourist-arrivals/

World Travel & Tourism Council. (2021). Global Economic Impact & Trends. Retrieved from:https://wttc.org/Portals/0/Documents/Reports/2021/Global%20Economic%20Impact%20and%20Trends%202021.pdf

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

Broadly speaking our solution will:

• Contribute to the body of open source work around DAO's on Cardano
• Provide another opportunity to demonstrate what DAOs on Cardano look like
• Provide the community with another unique D'App to use
• Generate positive media attention for Cardano and bring more users with said positive media attention

We will measure impact by tracking:

• Membership sales
• Community size
• DAO Participation
• Solution Sentiment

Apart from the usual channels that Project Catalyst provides like the open milestone modules, public closeout report and impact surveys - outputs can be observed in our community channels on X and Discord; and when they are technical, they can be observed in our public repo.

[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 know our solution is feasible as we have already completed the prototype which anyone can reference in the links we included as part of this proposal. After some final tweaks to the code to make it safer and more scalable, we will be in a good position to launch an MVP usable under reasonable load (given the size of our community). This approach is not novel and it is relatively straight forward. We have very experienced developers working on this project including well recognized community members from MLabs who are demonstrably capable of building DAOs on Cardano.

The breakdown of tasks and estimated timeline of delivery is as follows:

The community can also reference the delivery of our last two proposals which are searchable by the name "Jaymeon Jones" to get a sense of proof of patterns and be able to trust that we can deliver. This proposal is actually the natural follow up to our last two submissions.

It would be keen to note that a part from the first tranche, Catalyst does not release funds unless specific milestones are met, which should help to further alleviate concerns over any mismanagement of ADA.

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

Enhancement of the security of the on-chain code

1. Milestone outputs: Address the issues found during the TripHut DAO audit. This will need an update to the on-chain scripts, which will enhance their security.
2. Acceptance criteria: The main criteria is having an updated audit report where all the found issues labelled with Critical, Major or Medium are marked as addressed.
3. Evidence of milestone completion:

• Proof of having the updated audit report with all the Critical, Major or Medium severity issues marked as addressed.
• Report of the work done which includes the main pull requests in the repository https://github.com/yaadlabs/DAO associated with it.
• Passing tests for any fixes and mitigations performed.

Enhancement of the capabilities of the TripHut DAO

1. Milestone outputs: Update the on-chain code to add the extra capabilities needed for the mainnet launch. Among others, the desired features include a better handling of the treasury funds, collection of fees to fund the club’s activities and authentication of eligibility to submit a travel request, as well as minor optimizations.
2. Acceptance criteria: Documentation is provided describing the new features added, such as fee collection and authentication of proposals. When applicable, tests verifying the correct behaviour of the implemented features are added to the testsuite.
3. Evidence of milestone completion:

• Report of the work done which includes the main pull requests in the repository https://github.com/yaadlabs/DAO associated with it.
• Passing tests for any new features added.

Upgrade of the off-chain code

1. Milestones outputs: Upgrade the current off-chain infrastructure to be able to more efficiently submit transactions and process the on-chain data. This may include updating the transaction builder, building a bot responsible for ending proposals and counting votes, and possibly equip the bot with transaction chaining capabilities to increase the throughput.
2. Acceptance criteria: The upgraded infrastructure can handle a minimum of 100 concurrent voters, tallying the votes in a reasonable amount of time (less than a maximum of one hour, and ideally aiming for less than 15 minutes).
3. Evidence of milestone completion:

• Benchmark test showing the successful tally of 100 votes.
• Upgrades to the transaction builder can be tracked in the repository https://github.com/yaadlabs/DAO-Off-Chain.

Revamping of the User Interface

1. Milestone outputs: Update the User Interface to integrate with the upgraded off-chain infrastructure, add support for wallets other than Nami as well as polish the user experience with features like video uploading.
2. Acceptance criteria: Transactions interacting with the upgraded on-chain scripts can be built and submitted through the TripHut website, using Nami or at least two other Cardano wallets.
3. Evidence of milestone completion: Video demonstration of the successful submission of transactions through the TripHut website using three different Cardano wallets and proof of their inclusion on the blockchain ledger.

TripHut mainnet launch

1. Milestone output: A public facing TripHut website that interacts with the DAO on-chain scripts deployed on the Cardano mainnet.
2. Acceptance criteria: The TripHut website needs to be deployed for the public to freely browse through it and submit transactions that interact with the DAO on-chain scripts deployed on mainnet. A public announcement needs to be made through the appropriate social channels (X and/or Discord).
3. Evidence of milestone completion:

• X post or Discord message announcing the launch of the TripHut DAO on mainnet.
• Link to the publicly accessible TripHut DAO website.
• Closeout report that summarises all the activities done under the scope of this Catalyst proposal.

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

Jaymeon Jones - Project Management

Education: MSc in Management Studies with a focus in Marketing - Distinction

BSc in Marketing & Economics

Certifications in Digital Marketing, Social Media & Content Marketing

Experience: Ten years of experience in Marketing, Project Management & Product Development with most of it in Finance & Membership based products

Accolades: JN Groups Marketer of the Year

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaymeon-jones-8a55968b/

Randy Burrell - Technical Lead

Education: BSc in Computer Science

Experience: Over Nine years of experience as an Engineer

Accolades: Held roles as VP of Engineering & Lead Engineer for several International Web 3 companies

https://www.linkedin.com/in/randyburrell/

MLabs - Contractor

MLabs has quickly become one of the premier development firms in the Cardano Ecosystem. They are an IOG Plutus Partner and work regularly with IOG to develop the Cardano blockchain and ecosystem. Their team is composed of talented developers who have helped build community projects such as:

• Liqwid
• SundaeSwap
• Minswap
• Indigo
• Optim
• Many others

Through their work with early-stage projects, they have one of the largest groups of Cardano developers in the community.

Website: https://mlabs.city/

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

Milestone 1: Enhancement of the security of the on-chain code.

• 184 hours of a Plutus developer: 67,467 ADA
• Managerial and marketing activities: 6,747 ADA

Milestone 2: Enhancement of the capabilities of the TripHut DAO

• 190 hours of a Plutus developer: 69,667 ADA
• Managerial and marketing activities: 6,967 ADA

Milestone 3: Upgrade of the off-chain code

• 185 hours of a Plutus/backend developer: 67,833 ADA
• Managerial and marketing activities: 6,783 ADA

Milestone 4: Revamping of the User Interface

• 72 hours of a frontend developer: 26,400 ADA
• Managerial and marketing activities: 2,640 ADA

Final Milestone: TripHut mainnet launch

• 52 hours of a frontend development: 19,067 ADA
• 60 hours of a DevOps engineer: 22,000 ADA
• Marketing and managerial activities: 4,106 ADA

Subtotal:

• 743 hours of development @ 110 USD/hour = 81,730 USD
• 10% for marketing and managerial activities = 8,173 USD

Total: 89,903 USD @ $0.30* USD / ADA = 299,677 ADA

*In the interest of full transparency, please note we have applied a conservative USD/ADA exchange rate in pricing this proposal (6-months low from October 2023 to April 2024). This is to ensure our operations remain stable regardless of market conditions. Although we firmly believe the future of Cardano is bright, we recognize the price of ADA and all cryptocurrencies is inherently volatile. Our financial obligations are denominated in fiat. Most importantly, this includes the salary of the engineers whose hard work makes projects like this possible.

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

The cost of each line item is in alignment with Industry Standards:

An average blockchain developer costs between $80 USD to $100 USD.

https://arc.dev/freelance-developer-rates/blockchain

Though ideally we'd like to be spending more on marketing, we believe we can get by with the budget we have. The article below claims teams spend approximately $7,000 USD - $20,000 USD on marketing a month when launching a project.

https://guerrillabuzz.com/ido-marketing-and-pr/

We believe this project represents value for money as the value proposition and the partners we have and are in talks with securing, will bring organic/earned media value that far exceeds spend.