Last updated 5 months ago
We address the issue of non-paying clients and scams, which cause freelancers significant financial stress, lost income, and countless hours spent chasing overdue payments.
Design a user friendly platform where freelancers create contracts and secure payments in an escrow. Funds release on approval from both parties. Fast and transparent dispute resolution is avialable.
Please provide your proposal title
Ensuring Freelancers Get Paid
Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA
70000
Please specify how many months you expect your project to last
4
Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated
No
Original Language
en
What is the problem you want to solve?
We address the issue of non-paying clients and scams, which cause freelancers significant financial stress, lost income, and countless hours spent chasing overdue payments.
Supporting links
Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?
No
Describe any dependencies or write 'No dependencies'
No dependencies
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.
The Smart contracts will be open source and published in a repository.
Please choose the most relevant theme and tag related to the outcomes of your proposal
Payments
Describe what makes your idea innovative compared to what has been previously launched in the market (whether by you or others).
SmarTrust stands out as a user-friendly, self-managed, and cost-effective platform designed to restore trust in the global freelance economy. While competitors rely on slow manual processes, high fees, and narrowly define escrow as only a payment step, SmarTrust delivers protection throughout the full lifecycle of work, starting from contract creation to mediation and adjudication. The root cause of disputes lies in the fact that the contract is not clear to start with.
Our platform combines AI-assisted mediation with human adjudication to resolve disputes faster and more fairly than traditional systems, which favors one side mostly. With smart-contract-powered escrow, payments are locked in up front (in milestones if so desired) and released instantly once both parties agree, ensuring secure, predictable compensation at highly competitive fees.
The innovation lies in how SmarTrust integrates contract development, automated escrow, and high-quality human adjudication into one seamless solution. An innovative element is how we incorporate human adjudication in our system, which is something others do not have. And innovation only becomes true innovation when it is adopted by the market—our own quantitative research confirms strong demand, with over 80% of freelancers wanting exactly this kind of protection and payment assurance.
Where many competitors build marketplaces and treat escrow as an afterthought, SmarTrust delivers escrow-as-a-service specifically. By focusing on the workflows freelancers actually value, SmarTrust is positioned to define the standard for fair and secure payments in the future of work.
Our focus is simple: we want freelancers to get paid!
Describe what your prototype or MVP will demonstrate, and where it can be accessed.
The MVP will demonstrate how to generate a contract that both parties can agree to, develop the smart contract, fund the smart contract or escrow, and disseminate the funds to the freelancer once the work has been agreed upon by both parties.
In addition to this workflow, the freelancer and the buyer will be able to see the tasks that are pending for each party, the invite link, the overview, and overall earnings. They will be able to request adjudication in case of dispute, and an adjudicator will be able to issue a ruling with a split of how much to pay the seller versus how much to refund the buyer.
The MVP will be available on https://prototype.cardano.smartrust.me
Describe realistic measures of success, ideally with on-chain metrics.
Measures of success:
Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem
We are creating a user-friendly platform that facilitates agreement authoring, milestone-based service delivery and secure and timely payments for freelancers.
An AI model helps author an agreement with clarity on what will be delivered, and in what sequence (milestones). Buyer and seller can request how much they want to know about each other, and get KYCd
Funds are locked in an Escrow powered by Aiken Smart Contracts at the start of a project, and can be topped up in case of scope expansion etc.
An in-platform chat feature provides opportunity for the parties to chat with each other, an AI advisor, an AI mediator and/or a human adjudicator for fast issue resolutions.
Services are delivered, reviewed and approved inside the platform.
Funds are automatically released once the services have been delivered by the freelancer and approved by the buyer.
This ensures fast, predictable cash flow while reducing the risk of non-payment, wasted time, and the frustration of chasing clients or dealing with courts.
Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community
Any Cardanao users can use SmarTrust to engage in freelance work so they can get paid. They can be paid in ADA or Stablecoins, and can freelance around the world if so desired. Remember that freelancing is for a fee not free.
SmarTrust provides the following benefits to Cardano:
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?
SmarTrust is funded by two senior entrepreneurs with complementary skill sets and a proven track record: A CEO with deep experience in strategic foresight, user research, and teaching business and entrepreneurship at the university level. Our CTO has 25 years of experience as an IT strategist to Fortune 500s plus 5 years of experience building web3 apps with a web2 look and feel. We have a team of developers hired and actively working on building our MVP.
To date, we have over one hundred users on our waitlist. We also have over 100 responses to our survey, indicating a strong need for a platform such as SmarTrust.
We are continually engaging in user testing of individual features as they are developed, before integrating them into the MVP (see https://www.smartrust.me/demo for examples). To further prove our MVP we ask a set of trusted alpha testers to regularly test any new features released on the MVP, and engage in focused interview sessions with them to gain insights and improvement suggestions.
Once launched we plan on tracking and analyzing user behaviour on the site, run continuous A/B testing, and we also plan on offering a referral campaign as well as measuring net promoter score, churn and other metrics.
Milestone Title
Core Aiken Smart Contracts & Local Simulation Environment
Milestone Outputs
Milestone Outputs
Acceptance Criteria
Acceptance Criteria
Evidence of Completion
Evidence of Completion
Delivery Month
1
Cost
28000
Progress
30 %
Milestone Title
TypeScript SDK, CAL Adapter & Preprod Deployment
Milestone Outputs
Milestone Outputs
Acceptance Criteria
Acceptance Criteria
Evidence of Completion
Evidence of Completion
Delivery Month
2
Cost
25000
Progress
30 %
Milestone Title
Catalyst Workflow Layer, End-to-End Testing & Mainnet Preparation
Milestone Outputs
Milestone Outputs
Acceptance Criteria
Acceptance Criteria
Evidence of Completion
Evidence of Completion
Delivery Month
4
Cost
17000
Progress
40 %
Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources
Category ADA
On-chain Aiken development 28 000
Testing & simulation 13 000
TypeScript SDK 11 000
Infrastructure 5 000
Documentation 8 000
PM + QA 5 000
TOTAL 70 000 ADA
How does the cost of the project represent value for the Cardano ecosystem?
This project creates Cardano’s first standardized, reusable escrow framework in Aiken which is a tool the ecosystem has needed for years.
Instead of every team reinventing fragile payment logic, SmarTrust provides a single, secure, open-source foundation for agreements, payouts, disputes, and accountability.
Because it is chain-native and deterministic, SmarTrust also becomes an ideal fit for Project Catalyst itself. After a proposal is approved, it can be registered as a smart-contracted agreement: Catalyst funds the first milestone, the freelancer delivers, and Catalyst either approves or requests revisions. Once both sides agree, ADA releases automatically. If milestones are missed or work is abandoned, the contract expires and remaining funds return safely to Catalyst. All steps are transparent, predictable, and tamper-proof.
If disagreements arise, Catalyst can assign its own adjudication team within the system. This ensures fairness while avoiding centralized bottlenecks. It also gives Catalyst a verifiable, auditable trail of work completed, funds released, disputes raised, and outcomes ruled.
Beyond Catalyst, this MVP provides value to the ecosystem as a standalone platform which delivers:
For 70k ADA, the ecosystem receives a public good along with a hosted platform with real utility for real-world use cases : secure infrastructure that powers real economic activity, strengthens dApp reliability, and creates a practical payment and accountability tool for Catalyst itself.
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
I Agree
Yes
Idlir (CEO) is a university professor teaching strategic foresight. As a market researcher, he deeply understands the challenges independent professionals face — late payments, poor protection, limited leverage. He has conducted qualitative and quantitative research, focusing on actionable insights. He gives SmarTrust sharp insight into user behaviour and global market dynamics.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/idlir
Noak (CTO) is an IT strategist with 45+ enterprise projects and a strong record bridging Web2 and Web3. He’s built dApps for proof-of-personhood, KYC, DAO governance, and elections. Previously responsible for $25M grant distribution, he had to work hard to not lose money to grifters. Noak’s passion, technical depth and execution power will drive SmarTrust from concept to scalable reality.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/noak-lindqvist/
With Idlir’s strategic foresight and Noak’s technical expertise, the team can rapidly turn insights into action, execute with precision, and adapt seamlessly as the market evolves.