[nftcdn.io] NSFW NFT Identification Tool

[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 create a NSFW detection capability for all NFTs, using advanced machine learning & computer vision to create an automated system capable of detecting explicit content within NFTs.

[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 solution design and architecture will not be open sourced as it is entwined within NFTCDN’s enterprise architecture and all the intellectual property components therein. It should be noted that while the NSFW capability being developed will be proprietary, we will provide open access to this capability for testnet (pre-prod and preview) networks that will be free to use.

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

About NFTCDN

NFTCDN is Cardano’s dedicated NFT Content Delivery Network, enabling products and services to display NFT media content easily, efficiently and at high-speed to their worldwide user base through our global CDN. Our capabilities include NFT Image Display delivery and Metadata Information provisioning, and we seek to introduce the NSFW capability as we see this as a highly beneficial, important and much-needed feature for the Cardano community’s growth and adoption, prioritising inclusivity for a diverse and wider range of audiences.

Problem Statement

Over 8.45 million NFTs have been minted on Cardano to date, and the vast majority of these are created by content creators in the form of images. A significant challenge that emerges for products and services that display NFTs is the presence of explicit content which may not be age appropriate to younger and sensitive audiences, presenting the following risks to them and to the Cardano ecosystem as whole:

• Consumer Protection and Legal Risk - Exposing users to adult content without their consent, especially when it comes to intentionally not moderating content provision to minors, poses significant ethical and legal risks, harming a product’s or service's reputation notwithstanding breaching laws built to protect minors, leading to serious legal consequences like lawsuits and fines. 

Examples of such laws include, but are not limited to, the UK’s Digital Economy Act, Protection of Children Act, Online Safety Act and the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive, and Safer Internet Programme. While state legislatures in the United States are numerous, unique and varied to each state, they do include provisions such as the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (California) and Online Protection of Children Act (Utah). Additionally, federal legislation towards the Transportation of obscene matters for sale or distribution (18 U.S.C. § 1465), Engaging in the business of selling or transferring obscene matter (18 U.S.C. § 1466) and Possession with intent to sell, and sale, of obscene matter on Federal property (18 U.S.C. § 1460) in addition to the Transfer of obscene material to minors (18 U.S.C. § 1470) necessitate the creation of a NFT NSFW detection capability to identify and label content, reducing the legal risks for products and services.

• Operational Stability and Compliance - The risk is exacerbated by the need to comply with numerous third-party vendors’ acceptable use policies and/or terms of service - that prohibit the direct breaking of local laws of the end user and indirectly prohibit explicit content - upon which platforms are built upon, including Internet Service Providers in nations within the Middle East and Asia often take a blanket approach in blocking websites that host adult content. By deploying a NFT NSFW detection capability for products and services, we are able to enable them to ensure compliance to the terms of use of their third party service providers.

• Hinders brand partnerships and market perception - The presence of NSFW content can severely hinder partnerships with established brands and investors who would prioritise their reputation and would take a firm stance about associating with products and services displaying explicit material. This risks missing opportunities for funding, market expansion and innovation, as both mainstream brands and serious investors are looking for universal appeal and responsibly managed content.

• User safety, retention and product/service growth - Inadequate or insufficient content moderation or intent to moderate, risks compromising user safety which will lead to a loss of trust and decline in user retention. It will also form a barrier to attract more users who prefer a safe and professional environment. Negative public reaction, particularly from ardent users of products and services from within the Cardano ecosystem, can also lead to long-term reputational damage, hindering overall growth.

• Manual Screening - Manual screening and moderation methods are time-consuming, labour-intensive, subject to human error and biases, and the risks scale proportionally with every new NFT minted on Cardano. Furthermore, there is today, no capability provider within the Cardano ecosystem that is offering the ability to reliably and consistently identify explicit content within NFTs at scale. Our NSFW NFT capability will enable products and services to programmatically identify and deploy their own moderation policies, thus enabling them to maintain a safe and law-abiding space within the Cardano ecosystem.

Solution Design

The proposal aims to deliver a capability that will return NSFW score(s) behind an NFT’s image, specifically, the confidence rating behind the presence of adult content. 

It is expected that the end product or service will deploy their own moderation policies and thresholds to take action against the content, for example, by either disallowing the NFT to be displayed on their platform or by displaying a placeholder image/screen indicating the potential presence of explicit content, requiring user approval before proceeding to view the NFT image, or blurring/redacting/censoring the NFT image, or not displaying the NFT image entirely.

Solution Scope & Limitations

NSFW content can be categorised as containing (i) explicit nudity, (ii) suggestive content, (iii) sexual activity, (iv) violent or graphic content, (v) hate speech or symbols, (vi) illegal activities. This proposal aims to make explicit nudity its primary scope for identification. This consequently also means that non-nudity NSFW content (items ii through to vi) will not be covered as a deliverable within this proposal.

We have proposed this approach to keep the requested development budget comparatively small and deliver a Minimum Marketable Product for NFTCDN customers for 6 - 18 months and for us to acquire feedback on the Machine Learning model deployed. Additional screening capabilities will form part of product increments and be subject to future proposals to support development activities.

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

Performance Measure

We will measure our performance of our developed solution’s capability to successfully identify explicit content within a sample data of already known NSFW NFT policy IDs. It should be noted that no machine learning model is perfect, and some models are more performant than others in select areas and vice versa. As such, we shall endeavour to provide a confidence range between 0% to 100% as to the NSFW rating of an NFT image.

Outputs

We intend to publish the following outputs over the course of this proposal’s deliver:

• High-level performance information against a sample dataset of already known NSFW NFT policy IDs.
• High-level chart showing the overall volume of NSFW NFTs on Cardano
• Publication of guidance notes (including limitations) of how to use our NSFW NFT capability
• The above will all feature in our final report submission, alongside details of future opportunities with this capability.

Benefits to Cardano

• The successful delivery of this capability would enable Cardano to be an ecosystem that prioritises inclusivity, catering for a wider range of audiences. The consequential result of products and services adopting this capability would be one where users can rest assured that the content they are viewing has a proactive identification layer behind it for NSFW content.
• Products and services will also be able to confidently operate in view of the legal and reputational risks highlighted within this proposal.
• New & existing products and services will have a ready to use end-to-end capability that would be able to flag NSFW content within NFTs, without having to secure funds to develop their own bespoke solutions.
• Once delivered, this capability will be powered by NFTCDN - a trusted name in the Cardano ecosystem, with a reputation for quality, reliability and performance.

[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?

NFTCDN - The Company

NFTCDN, a UK limited company, was created to deliver value to its users and their end-users by providing a service responsible for the end-to-end delivery of NFT media content, with performance at the heart of everything we build and abstraction of all the intricacies and complexities involved in displaying NFTs, streamlining the process of displaying NFT media content and allowing developers to focus on the success of their core products. 

We deliver on these objectives through our three core capabilities already available in the market today for testnet (free of charge) & mainnet (pay-as-you-use service); NFT Image API Endpoint, NFT metadata API endpoint and NFT files API endpoint. Since our launch in December-2022, these endpoints are being used by our customers and we serve on average over 1,700,000 NFT images per day and have served a total of 491,581,159 requests as of the 1st of May 2024. Our services are being used by well known names in the Cardano ecosystem, including Eternl wallet, VESPR wallet, Hazel.net, buffy bot, Ape Society, pool.pm, iceberglabs, KWIC, NEWM, tokenriot, pixl.page, cur8, Tokeo and many more.

Our capabilities are all-encompassing in the ability to display NFT images and files. Our infrastructure is built and run on industrial-grade setups to serve high volumes of NFT media content at high speeds worldwide through our Content Delivery Network (CDN). Furthermore, our services are backed with multiple redundancies at every point in the value chain to ensure continuity of service and we have an uptime of 100% since launch.

NFTCDN - The Team

The team comprises Smaug and Rocky - two individuals with decades of experience in their respective domains of technical development and management with a proven track record of successfully delivering on complex large-scale cross-functional projects that seek to deliver value to the end user and community as a whole.

NFTCDN - Proposal Delivery Capability

NFTCDN was created as a result of Catalyst funding in Fund 8, wherein we were granted a budget of $76,886 and as per our F8 proposal milestones, the team had delivered a working product on time, to cost and at the scope we had defined and is presently being used by NFT marketplaces, wallets and bespoke projects without issue underscoring the effectiveness and success of our proposal delivery history, product service provision and the dedication of our team members to bring value to the Cardano ecosystem.

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

Milestone #1: Initial Research & Solutions Shortlisting

- Duration: 1 month

- Total Budget: 25% of total

- Outcomes: 

• (i) Initial Research completed.
• (ii) A shortlist of solutions to test with a limited data set.

- Acceptance Criteria: 

• (i) The research reviews existing solutions in the market, including costs and machine requirements.
• (ii) The research outcome makes a recommendation of a shortlist of proposed solutions to test.

- Evidence: Summary report of our initial research.

Milestone #2: Solutions Testing

- Duration: 1 month

- Total Budget: 25% of total

- Outcomes: 

• (i) Test results on a limited dataset of NSFW and SFW NFTs
• (ii) Software solution selected to progress development

- Acceptance Criteria: 

• (i) NFTs selected are manually classed as NSFW and SFW.
• (ii) Tests are conducted with the machine learning model and results collated.
• (iii) A recommendation is made on the best choice of software based on performance, and any other relevant dimension for the purposes of delivering the capability.

- Evidence: Summary report of test results against a small dataset.

Milestone #3: Solutions Development

- Duration: 2 months

- Total Budget: 25% of total

- Outcomes: 

• (i) Development of a working solution ready for full integration into NFTCDN.
• (ii) Tested against larger dataset to analyse outcomes and performance

- Acceptance Criteria: 

• (i) The solution has been built and tested to assure readiness to implement on NFTCDN
• (ii) The machine learning model is run against a larger dataset successfully with no major issues identified

- Evidence: Summary report of our test results against a larger dataset.

Milestone #4: Solution Implementation

- Duration: 2 months

- Total Budget: 25% of total

- Outcomes: 

• (i) Development of the full NSFW identification product.
• (ii) Close out Report and Video.

- Acceptance Criteria: 

• (i) The NSFW identification capability has been deployed as a working product within NFTCDN.
• (ii) The product can be tested through an open access endpoint for Cardano testnet and produces expected results, 
• (ii) The close out report and video has been completed to requirements

- Evidence: 

• (i) Open-Access testnet endpoint for anyone to use 
• (ii) Close out report and video

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

Smaug

Founder of NFTCDN

Owner & creator of pool.pm

Blockchain Dev, Full Stack Dev and System, Network & Security Engineer

20+ years Tech Lead experience

Proposal Role: Technical, Support, Marketing

Rocky

Founder of NFTCDN

Owner & creator of BlockchainArt.Works

Strategy development, execution & operational delivery

15+ years Project Management experience

Proposal Role: Project Management, Support, Marketing

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

• Labour (Development, Management, Education) = $45,600
• Development, testing & deployment of NSFW capability
• End-to-end proposal delivery management
• All reporting & communications as per Catalyst requirements
• Community engagement on capability awareness activities
• Infrastructure (Hosting) = $9,100
• Hosted GPU machines to run ML/CV models
• Total = $54,700 (ADA 127,210 @ ~$0.43)

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

Labour Costs: Rates used to calculate labour costs are substantially lower than their respective national freelance averages. Both the proposer and co-proposers hold substantial industry experience in their respective domains, being able to confidently and efficiently deliver the proposal within the short 6 month period, thereby reducing the total number of hours and therefore funding required.

Proposal Funding: By funding this proposal, Cardano introduces a much needed capability within the ecosystem that would enable bringing a diverse range of audiences to new and existing products and services that use and display NFTs, promoting the growth and adoption of Cardano as an inclusive blockchain for everyone.