Cardano Mercury for MedusaJS

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Adam Dean

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

Entity (Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Requested funds in ada

134000

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

6

[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 develop a payment processing plugin facilitating direct business to consumer payments for the MedusaJS e-commerce platform allowing for payments in $ADA as well as Cardano native tokens.

[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.”

N/A

[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

Code will be released under our public GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license to align with the "normal" open source license for Cardano software.

[METADATA] Horizons

E-commerce

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

What is MedusaJS?

MedusaJS is an open-source, headless commerce platform built on JavaScript, designed to provide developers with a flexible and customizable solution for building e-commerce applications. It allows businesses to decouple their front-end from the back-end, enabling the creation of unique, tailor-made user interfaces while managing complex commerce functionalities like inventory, orders, products, and payments through the backend. MedusaJS is designed to be modular, allowing for easy integration with third-party services and extensions.

What is Cardano Mercury?

Cardano Mercury is a suite of tools and services designed to facilitate the use of the Cardano blockchain for business. We began in 2021 with our beta release of the Cardano Mercury for WooCommerce plugin for the highly popular WooCommerce platform on Wordpress and have since grown to include Mercury: Invoice (an invoicing SaaS platform for freelancers) and Mercury: Financials (an accounting and auditability tool).

Why a MedusaJS plugin?

We have been asked to support a variety of e-commerce platforms over the years and MedusaJS stood out as an up-and-coming e-commerce platform that shares many of the same principles as the Cardano ecosystem including being fully open source and taking a modular approach to development.

MedusaJS is also a different type of product and platform from WooCommerce and other, existing e-commerce platforms. MedusaJS allows for greater developer flexibility in designing the commerce solution so we view this plugin as a complementary solution to more traditional “storefront” style solutions like WooCommerce.

The plugin will be developed to initially support payments in Lovelace before moving on to supporting Cardano native assets. The goal will be to have feature parity with Cardano Mercury for WooCommerce by the end of the primary development phase.

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

The development of a MedusaJS plugin will increase developer and business options to accept Ada and Cardano native assets as payment methods in traditional “Web 2.0” e-commerce solutions. The positive impact goal of this project would be to increase the ease of adoption of Cardano as a payment facilitating blockchain and of course on-chain transaction volume through increased usage of the blockchain.

[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 track record of producing high-quality business-first solutions to the Cardano ecosystem has been proven over the past three years and more. All source code throughout development will be published to GitHub with regular updates to the community via the Project Catalyst milestone reporting modules. We already know that our approach is feasible as it has been proven via our WooCommerce plugin and this will merely expand our capability to offer more solutions to Cardano projects looking to accept payments in $ADA and native assets through their storefronts.

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

Basic $ADA Payments

Develop initial project scaffolding including testnet environment and develop the plugin to the point that simple, $ADA-only transactions are possible.

Native Asset Payments

Develop the framework to support payments via Cardano native assets.

Testing and Refinement

Work with internal and external partners to thoroughly test the integration and make refinements as necessary.

Publicly release a first (release) version of the plugin along with a closeout report, associated marketing, and plugin documentation.

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

Adam Dean - Software Engineer and Cardano Mercury for WooCommerce Lead

Latheesan K. - Full-Stack Developer and Mercury: Invoice Lead

Dmitrii Yakovich - UI/UX and Graphic Design

QA Analyst - Outsourced

Technical Writer - Outsourced

Project Manager - Outsourced

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

Project Manager: 19,200 ADA

The project manager will be responsible for project coordination and communications, specifically Catalyst Milestone Reporting requirements. Estimated to be 40 hours of work per milestone/closeout and billed at a regular rate of $36/hour. 

Software Developer: 72,000 ADA

The software developer will be responsible for generating the plugin code and coordinating with the Project Manager for reporting and status updates, the QA Analyst for test development, deployment, and remediation, and the technical writer for documentation development. Estimated to be 120 hours per month for 4 months billed at a regular rate of $45/hour.

QA Analyst: 14,933 ADA

The QA Analyst will work alongside the Software Developer to set up a test/demonstration environment in their own control and execute functionality testing of the software throughout the development process. They will be responsible for communicating issues and bugs discovered to both the Software Developer and Project Manager to ensure that remediation is accomplished and will work with the Technical Writer to ensure that documentation is sufficient. Estimated to be 40 hours per month for 4 months billed at a regular rate of $28/hour.

Technical Writer: 6,667 ADA

The Technical Writer will work with all other team members to develop plugin usage documentation in preparation for public release. This will include common best practices, installation instructions, and configuration option explanation. They will work with the graphic designer to ensure that branding and styling is consistent with the Cardano Mercury brand. Estimated to be 80 hours at a regular rate of $25/hour.

Graphic Designer: 11,200 ADA

The graphic designer will work with the Software Developer to design and address any UI or UX concerns as well as the Technical Writer and Project Manager to ensure that all public communications are consistently branded and styled in alignment with the Cardano Mercury brand. Estimated to be 40 hours per week for 1 month billed at a regular rate of $21/hour.

Miscellaneous Expenses: 10,000 ADA

The development of the plugin will likely incur some additional infrastructure costs such as testnet and staging deployment environments. We will reserve an additional 10,000 ADA from the budget to cover these infrastructure costs as necessary.

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

This project represents value for money by lowering the barrier to entry for interested merchants to start accepting Cardano payments quickly and easily through a variety of e-commerce channels. Increased adoption of Cardano and its native assets as payment methods through traditional commerce channels will increase blockchain adoption and drive on-chain transaction volume. By facilitating direct B2C transactions without a middleman we can enable merchants while staying true to the cypherpunk ethos of open source and mitigating risks (and fees) associated with traditional payment processors who can take 3% or more of most transactions!