Cardano RealFi Protocol: Trustless Financing + Engagement

[Proposal setup] Proposal title

Please provide your proposal title

Cardano RealFi Protocol: Trustless Financing + Engagement

[Proposal Summary] Budget Information

Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA

200000

[Proposal Summary] Time

Please specify how many months you expect your project to last

8

[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?

Cardano’s path to adoption and scale hinges on production-ready RealFi dApps, yet the ecosystem still lacks core primitives like trustless financing and a fair, on-chain engagement layer.

[Proposal Summary] Supporting Documentation

Supporting links

• https://reafino.io/
,
• https://reafino.io/dashboard
,
• https://reafino.io/reafino_litepaper.pdf
,
• https://x.com/reafino/status/1955060260449947907

[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?

Yes

Please provide details on the intellectual property (IP) status of your project outputs, including whether they will be released as open source or retained under another licence.

All smart contracts will be open sourced and published under the MIT license.

[Theme Selection] Theme

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

RWA

[Campaign Category] Category Questions

Describe what makes your idea innovative compared to what has been previously launched in the market (whether by you or others).

There are no solutions on Cardano to provide:

• fully trustless crowdfunding with no intermediaries
• verifiably fair, oracle-powered on-chain games
• permissionless creation of campaigns or games
• parallelized UTXO design for scalable throughput
• reusable modular RealFi architecture
• production-grade workflows already tested on public testnet

This proposal introduces the first audited RealFi protocol layer delivering both funding + engagement mechanisms on mainnet.

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

A full prototype of the crowdfunding module is already live on Cardano public testnet: https://reafino.io/dashboard.

It includes campaign creation, contributions, refunds, payouts, metadata backend, UX, and multi-asset support.

For the engagement layer, game flows, randomness integration (Orcfax), winner-selection simulations, and contract outlines are design complete. Here is a related x post: https://x.com/reafino/status/1971922364775780773/quotes

Shared UI components from the crowdfunding module significantly lower dev timeline.

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

On-chain KPIs

• 10+ crowdfunding campaigns created in first 3 months
• 3+ successful fully-funded campaigns
• 4–6 weekly on-chain live raffles/jackpots
• 300–500 unique wallets interacting within first quarter
• 1,500–3,000 transactions (funding/refunds/tickets/payouts)
• Adoption of stablecoins/native assets in both modules

Off-chain KPIs

• 3 marketing events ( events, NGOs, communities)
• Help raise 50K ADA over 3+ real-world initiatives.
• Weekly community participation in engagements

[Your Project and Solution] Solution

Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem

Cardano’s RealFi vision needs ready-to-use, trustworthy building blocks that everyday people and organizations - businesses, creators, youth groups, NGOs, students, and Web3 communities can rely on. These modules should work without middlemen or technical hurdles. Right now, Cardano doesn’t yet have dApps that provide this in a truly production-ready way.

We propose to deliver two powerful RealFi modules built on a shared, modular architecture:

1. Trustless Crowdfunding Module

(Feature name: SmartStarter)

This module brings a fully on-chain, all-or-nothing crowdfunding system to Cardano:

• Contributors deposit funds directly into smart contracts
• If the target is achieved, projects receive funds automatically
• If not, refunds are triggered trustlessly
• No admin keys, no custodians
• Multi-asset support including stablecoins
• Permissionless campaign creation

This architecture eliminates counterparty risk, increases transparency, and unlocks crowdfunding for creators, entrepreneurs, student groups, NGOs, climate initiatives, community causes, and more.

The full lifecycle is already live and tested on the Cardano public testnet, proving feasibility. The remaining steps are audit, refinement, and mainnet preparation.

This will open doors for RealFi/RWA adoption on Cardano. It caters to diverse user groups - artists, creators, and content makers, as well as entrepreneurs, innovators, and communities and has the potential to pool in people en-mass onto the Cardano ecosystem.

2. Engagement & Participation Layer

(Feature name: SmartPlay)

This module introduces customer cashback, raffles, live draws, NFT utility, product-discount lotteries, and social-impact events—all fully on-chain and verifiably fair.

A privacy-safe, fully on-chain customer loyalty platform enabling automated cash back rewards and customer lucky-draws.

Businesses can instantly create reward schemes, and customers earn rewards automatically through purchase events with no extra steps. Rewards accumulate on-chain and are distributed through efficient, batched payouts powered by Cardano.

The system is built to scale freely across multiple businesses and thousands of customers, supported by a plug-and-play SDK that integrates seamlessly with merchant billing systems.

No customer personal data is stored on-chain, ensuring a privacy-safe and user-friendly experience.

Key innovations:

• On chain randomness via Orcfax price feeds extensible to cryptographic VRFs
• Permissionless, Parallelised winner selection - Chaotic manipulation-resistance design for draws
• Parallelized ticketing and payout logic
• Permissionless game creation
• Live participation flows (TV-style draws)
• Works with stablecoins and all Cardano native tokens

Cardano currently has zero trustless engagement layers, yet such mechanisms are essential for onboarding youth, NFT communities, creators, decentralized brands, event organizers, student collectives, and social-impact groups. This module drives excitement, adoption, and repeated engagement—complementing RealFi funding workflows.

The multi billion dollar trust deficit in digital engagement:

Reputational Opaqueness - Brands/DAOs cannot cryptographically prove impartiality, causing user skepticism and loyalty erosion

High Compliance Cost - Manual and costly audits required to verify fairness post-event

Misaligned Incentives - On-chain contributions lack transparent, automated, verifiable reward loops.

Reafino’s Modular RealFi Protocol Layer

These two modules sit atop a shared, scalable RealFi infrastructure:

1. Shared UI components (wallet, dashboard, discovery)
2. Shared metadata backend
3. Multi-asset transaction pipeline
4. Aiken-based contract architecture
5. Parallel UTXO design
6. Extensible to future modules like decentralised equity and event linked insurance

This modular approach drastically reduces future costs, accelerates delivery, and provides reusable building blocks for all Cardano developers.

[Your Project and Solution] Impact

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

This proposal delivers high-value, multi-segment impact:

1 RealFi Adoption at Scale

Creators, climate groups, student innovators, local businesses, and NGOs can use trustless crowdfunding to raise on-chain funds transparently—bringing real-world activity into Cardano.

2 Youth & Community Onboarding

The engagement layer is the ideal entry point for young users, campus groups, NFT communities, and casual participants. Weekly live raffles and jackpots create excitement and increase daily active wallets.

3 High On-Chain Value Flows

Both modules contribute continuous transactional activity: deposits, refunds, payouts, randomness requests, ticket sales, utility redemptions. This supports Cardano’s long-term sustainability.

4 Ecosystem Visibility & Branding

The crowdfunding module includes a public acknowledgement requirement in real-world project materials, generating natural Cardano exposure through funded initiatives. Live draws from the engagement layer create high-visibility weekly events.

5 Open-Source RealFi Infrastructure for Builders

Developers gain access to audited, production-grade Cardano smart contracts, enabling: forks, integrations, new dApps, hackathon bases, enterprise pilots, RealFi experimentation. This reduces redundancy and accelerates ecosystem development.

Crowdfunding segment

Crowdfunding is a $20B+ global segment. Crowdfunding is a product category currently missing on Cardano. SmartStarter introduces it as fully on-chain, trustless, permissionless, transparent, and decentralized on Cardano.

Cardano’s defining moment will be when it starts driving real-world economic activities. Reafino’s products will contribute to that vision of Cardano being a financial operating system for the world.

Engagement layer:

1. For End-Users and Participants

Guaranteed Fairness: Users no longer have to trust organizers, as the protocol uses oracle-seeded randomness to ensure provable impartiality in every draw.

Full Transparency: Participants gain full visibility into the raffle's mechanics and outcome, with every action being a verifiable transaction.

Verifiable Proof & Instant Rewards: Participants automatically mint an NFT as immutable proof of entry. Winners receive trustless, automatic distribution of rewards (ADA, native tokens, or NFTs) immediately after the draw.

2. For Businesses and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)

Verifiable Compliance & Trust: Riffle provides cryptographically verifiable fairness, transforming opaque reward systems into transparent, auditable processes. Every stage, from creation to payout, is recorded on-chain, creating a permanent audit trail for compliance and mitigating reputational risk for brands and DAOs.

Trustless Automation: The protocol is fully non-custodial, operating without admin wallets. Draws and payouts are permissionless, automated, and final, reducing administrative overhead and counterparty risk.

Enhanced Engagement: Facilitates effective incentives, allowing organizations to securely run loyalty raffles, transparent brand giveaways, and DAO voter drives to increase community participation.

[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 Reafino team has already delivered more than most early-stage dApps:

• Fully functional trustless crowdfunding prototype live on Cardano public testnet
• Backend metadata infrastructure supporting both modules
• Front-end UI with dashboards, detail pages, creation flows
• Aiken smart contracts tested on-chain
• Simulations and winner-selection logic for the engagement module
• Orcfax randomness integration scoped and confirmed
• Discussions with top Cardano audit firms already completed

We have funded a major part of the development and we’re now requesting help to cross the final stage. We encourage voters to experience the public testnet.

What remains is late stages of development, audit, mainnet preparation, and adoption efforts.

Our team brings experience in:

• Plutus/Aiken smart contracts
• Frontend engineering for dApps
• Cardano architecture & UTXO model
• RealFi product design
• User onboarding & outreach

Operational risk is low, technical architecture is solid, and timelines are realistic.

Our approach to validating market fit

Firstly, by design, we are building a purely Web3 version of crowdfunding on Cardano with UX and features at par with popular platforms in the Web2 space. Traditional crowdfunding platforms are a huge $20+ billion industry. Further, all Reafino features have a clear revenue model for meaningful ROI and operational sustainability.

Secondly, we have already done small levels of community outreach to introduce our RealFi products, and the feedback we received has been positive. Reafino SmartStarter will onboard new economic sectors and new users through Reafino to Cardano. Sharing a recent tweet about our outreach: https://x.com/reafino/status/1955060260449947907

[Milestones] Project Milestones

Milestone Title

Development & Audit Preparation

Milestone Outputs

1. Refine the Crowdfunding contracts in the prototype for audit
2. Develop the core contract logic for the Engagement Layer, including raffle mechanics, jackpot logic, and winner-selection flows
3. Integrate Orcfax randomness workflow into the raffle contract
4. Conduct internal testing on preprod for all contract interactions
5. Build fronteng pages related to engagement layer
6. Refine UI/UX to align with updated contract logic
7. Prepare documentation for auditors
8. Sign contract with the security audit firm

Acceptance Criteria

1. Clean contract repositories fully prepared and organized for audit review
2. Successful internal deployment on testnet demonstrating stable contract behavior
3. Signed and confirmed audit engagement letter from the selected security firm

Evidence of Completion

1. Updated and cleaned crowdfunding contract modules with commit history.
2. Implemented engagement-layer contract logic (raffles, jackpot, winner selection) with tests.
3. Verified Orcfax randomness integration via successful request/response logs.
4. Preprod transaction hashes and internal test reports confirming contract interactions.
5. Updated UI/UX assets or builds aligned with revised contract logic.
6. Audit documentation package prepared (architecture, specs, threat model).
7. Signed audit engagement letter stored in the project docs.

Delivery Month

2

Cost

40000

Progress

30 %

Milestone Title

Audit, Fixes & Public Testnet Deployment

Milestone Outputs

1. Conduct full audit
2. Apply fixes, optimizations & security improvements
3. Re-run fairness simulations
4. Deploy both modules on public testnet
5. Publish early documentation
6. Collect pilot user feedback

Acceptance Criteria

1. Audit findings have been fully addressed, with all identified issues resolved and retested.
2. The updated modules are now live and operational on the public testnet.
3. A final or interim audit report has been formally published.

Evidence of Completion

1. Completed audit report received from the security firm.
2. Commit history showing applied fixes, optimizations, and security improvements.
3. Fairness simulation results documented and stored in the repo.
4. Public testnet deployment transaction IDs for both modules.
5. Published early documentation (README, module specs, usage guides).
6. Recorded pilot user feedback (forms, transcripts, test session notes).
7. Confirmation that all audit findings have been addressed and retested.

Delivery Month

4

Cost

50000

Progress

60 %

Milestone Title

Mainnet Launch: Crowdfunding + Engagement Layer

Milestone Outputs

1. Deploy audited contracts on mainnet
2. Deploy production frontend & backend
3. Launch initial crowdfunding campaigns
4. Launch weekly on-chain raffles
5. Publish release notes + developer docs
6. Publish mainnet public announcement

Acceptance Criteria

1. Both modules are now fully functional on mainnet, demonstrating end-to-end stability and readiness for real-world usage.
2. The first real projects have been successfully onboarded, showing early adoption and practical application of the platform.
3. The first live draw has been completed, confirming that the full workflow operates reliably in a real environment.

Evidence of Completion

1. Mainnet deployment transaction IDs for all audited contracts (crowdfunding + engagement layer).
2. Live production frontend and backend URLs with deployment logs confirming successful rollouts.
3. Records of the first crowdfunding campaigns launched, including campaign IDs and on-chain activity.
4. On-chain proof of weekly raffle executions, including randomness calls and winner selection transactions.
5. Published release notes and developer documentation available in the main repository.
6. Public mainnet announcement link (blog, Twitter/X, or official website).
7. Confirmation that both modules are running stably on mainnet with end-to-end tests.
8. Evidence of first real projects onboarded: project listings, campaign pages, or user confirmations.
9. Evidence of the first live draw executed on mainnet: transaction hash, event logs, and result output.

Delivery Month

6

Cost

60000

Progress

80 %

Milestone Title

Adoption & Growth Campaign

Milestone Outputs

1. 6-8 outreach sessions
2. Targeted onboarding of creators, students, NGOs, NFTs
3. Weekly live events
4. Incentive campaigns (refunds, multipliers, utility rewards)
5. Publish 90-day metrics dashboard
6. Partnerships with 10+ initiatives

Acceptance Criteria

1. At least 10 real campaigns are created and visible on-chain, demonstrating active usage of the platform.
2. A minimum of 300–500 unique wallets participate through creating, supporting, or engaging with campaigns and events.
3. Weekly live community events are conducted and publicly logged through posts, recordings, or published summaries.
4. A comprehensive adoption and growth report is published, detailing metrics, outreach outcomes, partnerships, and overall user impact.

Evidence of Completion

1. Public links or transaction hashes for 10+ created campaigns.
2. Dashboard or analytics export showing 300–500 unique interacting wallets.
3. Calendar, recordings, or posts documenting weekly live events.
4. Attendance logs or summaries from 6–8 outreach sessions.
5. Records of targeted onboarding sessions (creators, students, NGOs, NFT groups).
6. Proof of incentive campaigns executed (refund logs, multipliers, reward distributions).
7. Published 90-day metrics dashboard link.
8. Signed or announced partnerships with 10+ initiatives.

Delivery Month

8

Cost

50000

Progress

100 %

[Final Pitch] Budget & Costs

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

Smart Contract Engineering - 60,000 ADA

Engineering, testing, and documenting the Aiken contracts, integrations, and UTXO optimizations.

Smart Contract Audit - 50,000 ADA

Complete third-party audit of both core modules.

Frontend Engineering - 25,000 ADA

UI/UX development and implementation of new engagement and campaign flows.

Infrastructure - 20,000 ADA

Mainnet/testnet operations, metadata backend, and essential deployment services.

Adoption Campaign - 25,000 ADA

Targeted community outreach, events, and promotional activities.

Community Incentives - 20,000 ADA

Participation refunds, multipliers, and small grants to stimulate early use.

Total - 200,000 ADA

[Final Pitch] Value for Money

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

This proposal offers high ecosystem ROI:

1. Delivers two audited RealFi modules for the cost normally required to build one. Shared architecture means Catalyst funds go further.
2. Crowdfunding + engagement = powerful adoption loop. Funding workflows bring serious users. Gamified engagement brings broad audiences. Together, they create daily activity and repeat participation.
3. Open-source contracts reduce future ecosystem costs. Builders can fork, reuse, extend - without starting from scratch.
4. Mainnet launch closes the gap between RealFi’s vision and reality. Cardano’s RealFi narrative strengthens dramatically with audited, production-grade modules.
5. A proven team and completed prototype reduce risk significantly.

Catalyst funds finalize delivery rather than subsidize early experimentation.

Overall, for 200k ADA, Cardano gains its first comprehensive RealFi protocol layer on mainnet — bringing users, activity, visibility, and infrastructure that enables hundreds of future integrations.

[Self-Assessment] Self-Assessment Checklist

I confirm that evidence of prior research, whitepaper, design, or proof-of-concept is provided.

Yes

I confirm that the proposal includes ecosystem research and uses the findings to either (a) justify its uniqueness over existing solutions or (b) demonstrate the value of its novel approach.

Yes

I confirm that the proposal demonstrates technical capability via verifiable in-house talent or a confirmed development partner (GitHub, LinkedIn, portfolio, etc.)

Yes

I confirm that the proposer and all team members are in good standing with prior Catalyst projects.

Yes

I confirm that the proposal clearly defines the problem and the value of the on-chain utility.

Yes

I confirm that the primary goal of the proposal is a working prototype deployed on at least a Cardano testnet.

Yes

I confirm that the proposal outlines a credible and clear technical plan and architecture.

Yes

I confirm that the budget and timeline (≤ 12 months) are realistic for the proposed work.

Yes

I confirm that the proposal includes a community engagement and feedback plan to amplify prototype adoption with the Cardano ecosystem.

Yes

I confirm that the budget is for future development only; excludes retroactive funding, incentives, giveaways, re-granting, or sub-treasuries.

Yes

[Required Acknowledgements] Consent & Confirmation

I Agree

Yes