Onboard +700k users through Bookster: Creating a blockchain-based raffle system for our lottery system

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

This project is presented by the Bookster team

[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

Jan Kostandinov

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

8

[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)

Onboard Bookster, the N.1 audiobook app in LATAM with +700k users, by developing a PoC blockchain-based raffle system for their app. We’ll also do a prize pool reward in ADA, raising Cardano’s brand

[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.”

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

Smart contracts for the blockchain-based raffle system will be open-sourced, as well as other types of documentation from our results.

[METADATA] Horizons

Learn to Earn

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

About Bookster:

Bookster is the fastest growing ed-tech consumer startup you’ll ever see. They are building an addictive alternative to reading that actually works. Users select the most pressing issue they are dealing with for Bookster to create a 30 day lesson plan combining the most important takeaways from best selling books that actually solves that problem in just 3 minutes per day, using short interactive video or audio lessons that give users real prizes (coins that turn into $) for learning.

It’s the #1 app in the books category in multiple countries on iOS & education on Android

Our vision: Our goal is to help over 2 billion people in the world that don't read a single book per year and incentivize them to learn through gamified book summaries, single and multi-player trivias, casino games like Stake.com's Crash, Mines, Plinko, Blackjack & others. We also want to include curated, useful short form content such as Tik Tok or reels to show only the highest quality content possible.

Our specific approach:

Online casinos have continuously grown in popularity, with over $3B USD in annual revenue.

Negative behaviours - such as gambling and mindlessly scrolling on social media - are increasing exponentially, and yet people are building "solutions" that intend to counteract the billions of dollars invested in creating these addictions by deviating people's attention into less attractive educational products that make users feel like they are back in school.

Instead of trying to “solve” these behaviours, our approach focuses on leveraging them to acquire users rapidly and improve the value proposition these toxic incumbents are offering. To do so, our areas of focus are:

• Books: Summaries gamified with trivias that test user's learnings and rewards them with coins they can use to win real prizes and "make money" while they learn.
• Social Media: Instagram/TikTok short form content experience with content curated to ensure it is educational and productive for the user, "tricking" them into reading a full book summary over 5 to 10 short videos, with trivias that test the user's understanding and reward them with coins they can use to win real prizes while they scroll.
• Casino: Most popular online casino games turned educational with trivia questions popping up in the middle of a bet to ensure that the only way to win is to learn, incentivizing users to study in order to increase chances in the games.
• Lottery prizes: Lastly, we develop a lottery where users can invest their hard earned coins for a chance to win real prizes up to $100k/$1M USD. This is where we plan to use Cardano initially.

What we’ve achieved so far:

We have a functional product with book summaries (and other types of content), trivias, crash games with an educational turnaround and daily lotteries with real prizes.

We have reached over +700,000 installs - including iOS & Android users -, +175,000 Monthly Active Users (MAU), 100,000 bets placed in the last month and a half, 65,000 books read in the past month.

We got the #1 app in the Books category on iOS in multiple countries for weeks and #3 in Education in Android as well.

How we’ll leverage Cardano:

Traditional raffle systems face significant issues related to transparency, accessibility, security, and efficiency.

They often lack transparency, leaving participants unable to verify the drawing process, undermining trust.

Security is another major concern, as physical raffles are susceptible to fraud, manipulation, and errors.

Finally, managing these raffles also involves considerable administrative overhead and trusting a third party or intermediary to conduct the drawing.

The solution:

We want to address these problems by leveraging Cardano’s blockchain to provide a transparent, secure and efficient raffle system. In this system, transactions and results would be publicly verifiable and immutable, leveraging smart contracts to automate and secure the process.

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

With more than +700k users so far - and taking into account that our raffles are being made daily with considerable money prizes - we believe our solution can onboard a big number of users to Cardano’s ecosystem, while also attracting a fair number of liquidity and transactions thanks to increased user participation through our solution.

Success metrics:

Quantitative:

• User Engagement: Track the number of users participating in the raffles.

• Wallets: Track the number of new wallets created through our platform.

Qualitative:

• User Feedback: Collect and analyze feedback to assess user satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.

[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?

Bookster’s team is composed of highly-capable individuals and successful entrepreneurs.

We have already built a successful functional product that reach to hundred of thousands of users and is arguably the #1 book app in LATAM’s market.

Our product passed the market test, and we have upwards of 100K USD generated already, with a 25K MRR and more than 175k MAU who are learning with us and find value in our app’s features.

With a team of +20 people, we believe we have strong arguments to deliver a successful proposal implementation.

Scope of the project:

Our plan is to validate our theory that we can leverage Cardano’s blockchain to improve our raffle system’s transparency, effectiveness and automation through a Proof of Concept (PoC).

These project proposals will focus on planning, designing, prototyping, testing and validating our initial hypothesis, and finalise by documenting the entire PoC process, including methodologies, findings, and any issues encountered.

If the result is positive, we’ll move forward in the future by designing an MVP for our validated idea and launching it to the market and implementing it with our current user base.

We also plan to launch a marketing campaign to promote Cardano’s ecosystem to Bookster’s user base, by giving away a prize reward in ADA inside the app. This will allow to promote onboarding to winners while raising awareness about Cardano to a large base of users.

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

Milestone 1: Requirement gathering and feasibility study (2 weeks)

• Define technical requirements, and business objectives.

• Assess technical feasibility, identify potential challenges, and determine resource requirements (APIs, smart contracts, wallet integration, etc.)

Acceptance criteria:

• Comprehensive list of technical requirements and business objectives documented.
• Detailed feasibility study report including potential challenges and resource requirements.

Evidence/Outputs of milestone completion:

• Documented requirements and business objectives.

• Feasibility study report.

• List and evaluation reports of blockchain development companies/individuals.

Milestone 2: System and smart contract design (4 weeks)

• System architecture design: Design the overall architecture. This includes smart contracts, blockchain integration, and UI components.
• Smart contract design: Draft the initial design of the smart contracts to manage raffle rules and execution.

Acceptance criteria

• Completed system architecture design, including smart contracts and blockchain integration.
• Initial draft for raffle rules and execution.

• Wireframes and mockups for the raffle interface within the Bookster app.

Evidence/Outputs of milestone completion:

• System architecture design document.

• Drafted smart contracts.

• Wireframes and mockup designs.

Milestone 3: Smart contract development and UI integration (6-8 weeks)

• Smart contract development: Develop of smart contracts on Cardano.

• UI testing: Test the raffle UI within the Bookster app internally to ensure seamless integration with existing features.
• Backend integration: Set up the backend node to handle communication between the app and Cardano’s blockchain.

Acceptance criteria

• Developed and tested smart contracts on Cardano’s preview testnet.

• Functional and tested raffle UI within the Bookster app.

• Backend set up.

Evidence/Outputs of milestone completion:

• Tested smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain.

• Internal testing reports of the raffle UI.

• Documentation of backend integration setup.

Milestone 4: Development of smart contracts and UI integration (4 weeks)

• Testing: Conduct thorough testing to ensure the PoC meets the defined objectives and functions as expected, and fixing any bugs.
• Data collection: Gather data and metrics to evaluate the performance, efficiency, and effectiveness of the PoC.

Acceptance criteria:

• Conducted internal alpha testing to identify and resolve bugs.

• Comprehensive testing to ensure PoC meets objectives.

• Collected data and metrics on performance, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Evidence/Outputs of milestone completion:

• Alpha testing reports detailing identified bugs and fixes.

• Testing documentation ensuring PoC objectives are met.

• Collected data and metrics report.

Milestone 5: PoC Analysis and Feasibility Validation (2-3 weeks)

• Result analysis: Analyze the data collected during the testing phase to determine if the PoC objectives were met.
• Feasibility validation: Assess whether the concept is feasible for full-scale implementation based on the PoC results.

Acceptance criteria:

• Thorough analysis of data collected during testing.

• Validated feasibility for full-scale implementation.

Evidence/Outputs of milestone completion:

• Data analysis report.

• Feasibility validation document.

Milestone 6: ADA Prize Reward Lottery Implementation and Launch (6 weeks)

Develop and launch a prize reward lottery system using ADA, aimed at engaging Bookster’s user base (700k+ users). This initiative will drive Cardano’s brand awareness by integrating blockchain and onboarding the prize winners to using and creating a Cardano wallet. We aim to deliver 25k ADA in prizes, and help onboard at least 100 winners of the Bookster ADA raffle.

• System integration: If successful, integrate Cardano-based lottery system into the

Bookster app. (Note: In case of not being able to release a fully functioning MVP for this, we’ll still do the prize pool as a marketing campaign for onboarding new users to Cardano and raise brand awareness among Bookster users who’ll participate in the raffle).

• Marketing campaign: Launch a marketing campaign to promote the new ADA prize lottery to Bookster users. Educate users on how to participate.

Milestone 7: Documentation and reporting (1-2 weeks)

• Reporting: Prepare a comprehensive report summarising the results, conclusions, and recommendations for next steps, including a Project Catalyst close-out report.

Acceptance criteria:

• Comprehensive documentation of the PoC process, methodologies, findings, and encountered issues.
• Final report summarising results and conclusions.

Evidence/Outputs of milestone completion:

• Detailed PoC process documentation.

• Final summary report.

• Completed project Catalyst close-out report.

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

Bookster (bookster.ai) is a leading ed-tech company in Latin America that has onboarded over 700,000 users and continues to innovate in the fields of gamified learning, interactive content, and user engagement. With a strong user base and a growing presence in the digital education landscape, Bookster’s mission is to revolutionise how people consume educational content.

The project team will primarily consist of professionals from Bookster and external collaborators, ensuring a streamlined and focused approach to achieving each milestone. Team members for the project scope are detailed on the budget area.

Linkedin resources:

Bookster team:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/bookster-app/

Bookster’ CEO: Jan Kostadinov

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

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

Project Manager

• Hourly rate: 60 ADA/hour

• Total hours: 280 hours

• Total cost: 16.800 ADA

Blockchain Engineer

• Hourly rate: 75ADA/hour

• Total hours: 320 hours

• Total cost: 24.000 ADA

UI/UX Designer

• Hourly rate: 60 ADA/hour

• Total hours: 200 hours

• Total cost: 12.000 ADA

2 Full-Stack Developer

• Hourly rate: 70 ADA/hour

• Total hours: 270 hours each = 540 hours combined

• Total cost: 37.800 ADA

Product Manager

• Hourly rate: 60 ADA/hour

• Total hours: 200 hours

• Total cost: 12,000 ADA

Additional technical infrastructure requirements & spendings:

Node APIs

• 9,200 ADA

Raffle (management & backend setup)

• 8,000 ADA

Cardano marketing promotion

ADA prize pool and marketing campaign to onboard Bookster users

• 25,000 ADA

Milestones budget breakdown:

• Milestone 1: Requirement gathering and feasibility Study (2 weeks)

Total cost: 7,000 ADA

• Milestone 2: System and smart contract design (4 weeks)

Total cost: 21,500 ADA

• Milestone 3: Smart contract development and UI integration (6-8 weeks)

Total cost: 46,000 ADA

• Milestone 4: Testing and data collection (4 weeks)

Total cost: 20,000 ADA

• Milestone 5: PoC analysis and feasibility validation (2-3 weeks)

Total cost: 12,000 ADA

• Milestone 6: ADA prize reward campaign on Bookster (4-6 weeks)

Total cost: 25,000 ADA

• Milestone 7: Documentation and Reporting (1-2 weeks)

Total cost: 5,400 ADA

Total Requested Funds: 129,900 ADA

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

The requested funding offers substantial value for the Cardano ecosystem by focusing on several key areas:

User acquisition and ecosystem growth:

• The possibility of onboarding +700,00 users & counting to the Cardano ecosystem enhances the network's user base and activity, creating a larger, more engaged community. This increase in users will directly contribute to Cardano’s adoption and visibility.

Enhanced transparency and trust:

• Implementing a blockchain-based raffle system increases transparency and trust within the industry. By leveraging Cardano's immutable ledger, we ensure that all raffle transactions are transparent and verifiable, reducing the risk of fraud and manipulation.

Economic impact and liquidity:

• By integrating Cardano into our platform’s daily activities, the project could increase transaction volume significantly within the ecosystem, potentially bringing more liquidity and economic activity on the network.

Open source contribution:

• Open-sourcing our smart contracts and PoC results documents would contribute valuable resources to the developer community and other enterprises building on Cardano, fostering innovation and collaboration.

Educational and social Impact:

• Our project not only promotes the use of Cardano’s blockchain technology, but we’re also addressing social issues - like gambling addiction and social media scrolling - by turning these negative behaviours into learning opportunities, underscoring the benefits of integrating blockchain technology into socially responsible applications.

Additionally, we provide competitive rates when compared to global standards (for instance, the average hourly rate for blockchain developers range from $50 to $150/hour, depending on the region. Our proposed rates are in the low threshold). The rates proposed above ensure we can attract top talent to work in the project, while being cost-effective and providing excellent value for money. We’ll ensure high-quality delivery of the project within a reasonable budget that will ultimately benefit the Cardano ecosystem.