K3 Labs and Waffle Capital | initial AI Automation MVP

[Proposal setup] Proposal title

Please provide your proposal title

K3 Labs and Waffle Capital | initial AI Automation MVP

[Proposal Summary] Budget Information

Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA

100000

[Proposal Summary] Time

Please specify how many months you expect your project to last

4

[Proposal Summary] Translation Information

Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated

No

Original Language

en

[Proposal Summary] Problem Statement

What is the problem you want to solve?

Blockchain complexity slows DeFi adoption for developers and non-Web3 users; K3 Labs’ no-code platform simplifies automation, reducing development time from weeks to hours.

[Proposal Summary] Supporting Documentation

Supporting links

• https://drive.google.com/file/d/12lcbpwFzBL2qRroOTLtGPN0GQBkiz3dD/view
,
• https://docs.k3-labs.com

[Proposal Summary] Project Dependencies

Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

No

Describe any dependencies or write 'No dependencies'

No dependencies

[Proposal Summary] Project Open Source

Will your project's outputs be fully open source?

No

License and Additional Information

MIT standard license on the smart contract side

[Theme Selection] Theme

Please choose the most relevant theme and tag related to the outcomes of your proposal.

AI

[Campaign Category] Category Questions

Describe what makes your idea innovative compared to what has been previously funded (whether by you or others).

As far as we know there are no other Agent orchestration or workflow tools that work natively with the Cardano ecosystem. Allowing devs to create no-code workflows rather than building each and every routine from scratch can dramatically reduce build time and get projects to market faster.

Describe what your prototype or MVP will demonstrate, and where it can be accessed.

The initial prototype will allow Read and Reporting access to Cardano smart contracts through the tool hosted at app.k3-labs.com. Upon completion K3 will record a video showing how the community can use those features to their own benefit

Describe realistic measures of success, ideally with on-chain metrics.

Similar integrations with other ecosystems have seen between 200-300 users try out the features within the first few days of launch. The louder and more active our partnership has been with an ecosystem the longer and broader the initial bump lasts. The retention rate for those users to go from testers to DAV tends to run between 10-12%. It would not be unreasonable to assume this MVP will attract between 25-40 projects who will use the basic functionality available through this MVP and continue to the more complex functionality suggested in our subsequent project submission

[Your Project and Solution] Solution

Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem

Building on blockchains is simply too hard. It requires too much specialization and takes far too long. K3 is a drag and drop platform for automating common Web3 workflows. Users can easily toggle between prebuilt, existing workflow Agents and configurable functions, then customize the automation with a drag and drop design tool and deploy to production with a single-click. Users can automate processes in minutes rather than days or weeks, which spares them the busy work of day-to-day operations. K3 automation tools are a key enabler for AI agent tools, managing stablecoins, staking operators, and DeFi projects for asset and collateral management.

The Web3 automation market is still in its early stages, with very few solutions offering comprehensive, decentralized automation. Most existing tools are either highly centralized, requiring users to trust third-party infrastructure, or limited in scope, focusing only on specific use cases like trading bots, marketing, or alerts rather than full-scale workflow automation.

K3 addresses these gaps by:

Providing a fully decentralized execution layer, removing reliance on centralized infrastructure

Offering broad functionality beyond simple alerts or trading bots - supporting on-chain monitoring, DeFi automation, data pipelines, and more

Delivering seamless interoperability across multiple chains and protocols, unlike siloed automation tools tied to single ecosystems

Enabling both no-code and developer-friendly automation, making it accessible to enterprises, DeFi traders, and protocols alike

[Your Project and Solution] Impact

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

Once a full integration of the K3 UI/UX and the Cardano ecosystem is complete the automation opportunities and system-specific Web3 use cases are nearly unlimited. Typical initial use cases include, but not limited to:

Decentralized AI: Any AI agent project can benefit from leveraging K3 to automate critical back-end workflow tasks so developers can focus on differentiated AI offerings.

Wallet Monitoring: Alerts, wallet top-ups, and nightly reports

Trading: Enabling protocols to offer new features such as limit orders and Dollar-Cost-Averaging (DCA) on DEXes, automated transfers from token vesting contracts and/or unlock events, and monitoring specified staking pool yields and moving funds between them.

On-Chain Event Alerts: Configure alerts based on smart contract events into Slack, Telegram, or Email messages.

Web2/Web3 Connectivity: Use web2 APIs as a data source for smart contract interactions on chain, run indexing on on-chain data and store in internal data repositories (S3, SQL database, etc.).

Data Mirroring: Monitor all new data being written to a smart contract on chain x and copy it to another contract on chain y.

The initial MVP will cover Agent orchestration for Reporting and Alerting - radically reducing the time and effort any developers in the ecosystem will have to spend coding up, running, and maintaining their own monitoring routines. Its goal will be to bring an initial tranche of Cardano users into the platform and engage directly with them as to which of the features we offer natively on other chains are needed by them within Cardano specifically.

[Your Project and Solution] Capabilities & 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?

The management team is described in more detail in the Project Team section but in summary the founders have more than 30 years of experience between them and have been in Executive roles at 6 companies with exits totaling more than $500 million. The base K3 product is already live and successful integrations have already been completed with more than a dozen other L1s and L2s

[Milestones] Project Milestones

Milestone Title

Smart Contract Reads

Milestone Outputs

Summary: Create a schedulable, no-code interface for fetching and distributing content from Cardano smart contracts

Details:

Successfully deploy a no-code workflow in-house that Reads data from a mainnet Cardano smart contract based on a UI-configurable schedule

Be able to summarize the contents of the contract using AI

Delivers it to a recipient via email

Confirm that orchestrations can also be designed that Write to Cardano smart contracts and Monitor on-chain events

Extend alert functionality to include Slack and Telegram notifications

Acceptance Criteria

Implemented above defined functionality validated by the execution on the mainnet and on the K3 application deployed in the production.

K3 Exec team to verify with committee leads that everything has met expectations

Evidence of Completion

Implemented above defined functionality validated by the execution on the mainnet and on the K3 application deployed in the production.

K3 Exec team to verify with committee leads that everything has met expectations

Delivery Month

1

Cost

25000

Progress

20 %

Milestone Title

Test the no-code interoperability with a beta test group

Milestone Outputs

Summary: Test the no-code interoperability with a beta test group in both testnet and mainnet environments

Details:

Identify a group of 5-7 builders working on Cardano through community channels

Onboard them onto K3 and teach them how to create workflows that interact with Cardano smart contracts

Assist them with their creation experience and be sure they can successfully accomplish what they intended through the product

Acceptance Criteria

Confirmation from each participant that they’ve successfully launched a test case

Gather feedback from the beta test group as to what they like, don’t like, and want to see improved in future versions

Evidence of Completion

Implemented above defined functionality validated by the execution on the mainnet and on the K3 application deployed in the production.

K3 Exec team to verify with committee leads that everything has met expectations

Delivery Month

2

Cost

25000

Progress

40 %

Milestone Title

Open the MVP up to the broader community

Milestone Outputs

• Allow the broader Cardano community of users to design and deploy their own no-code reporting and alerting workflows for their own internal use based on data and events on Cardano smart contracts.
• Market to the largest projects in the Cadano ecosystem in search of longer term GTM partners
• Attend Cardano meet-ups to encourage new users to experiment with the tool

Acceptance Criteria

• QA sign off
• Confirm that at least 50 Cardano-centric users have tried the MVP and are getting value from no-code automations
• at least two co-marketing event or post/tweet with the Cardano community

Evidence of Completion

Implemented above defined functionality validated by the execution on the mainnet and on the K3 application deployed in the production.

K3 Exec team to verify with committee leads that everything has met expectations

Delivery Month

3

Cost

25000

Progress

80 %

Milestone Title

Project Close-out

Milestone Outputs

• Record a video that both confirms the integration work has been successfully completed and serves to educate the community as to how they can start using it.
• Add details and examples of the Cardano integration to our product documentation (docs.k3-labs.com).
• Submit a final report to the committee summarizing the project accomplishments and calling attention to both of the deliverables above.

Acceptance Criteria

K3 Exec team to verify with committee leads that everything has met expectations.

Interactive walkthrough over a demo presentation with the team and handover of updated documentation and the video file.

Evidence of Completion

K3 Exec team to verify with committee leads that everything has met expectations.

Video file, at least 3 agents on Cardano and a final documentation.

Delivery Month

4

Cost

25000

Progress

100 %

[Final Pitch] Budget & Costs

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

The development team that will be assigned to this effort will compromise of:

1 back-end dev for 2.5 months ($5000/m x 2.5 = $12,500)

1 front-end dev for 2.5 months ($5000/m x 2.5 = $12,500)

1 QA specialist for 3 months ($3000/m x 3 = $9,000)

1 Product Manager for 3 months ($5000 x 3 = $15,000)

.50 CTO oversight for 2.5 months (approx $20,000)

The totals above don’t assume contiguous effort by all parties at all times but the overall project will not exceed 4 months.

The remaining budget of approximately 20k ADA (depending on exchange rates) is set aside for marketing, communications, and GTM activities to launch the MVP to the broader Cardano community and the necessary labor to on-board and train devs who want to start deploying orchestrations on the service.

[Final Pitch] Value for Money

How does the cost of the project represent value for the Cardano ecosystem?

Dev teams who have used K3 to automate their day-to-day tasks on the K3 platform have told us that they have been able to save and reallocate as many as 10 hours a week (approximately $500-$750 of labor each month).

The MVP should attract as many as 50 developers - which would result in an ROI for this initial deployment of as little as 4-5 months in efficiency savings alone.

[Required Acknowledgements] Consent & Confirmation

Terms and Conditions:

Yes