[Proposal setup] Proposal title

Please provide your proposal title

Scavenger Mine SDK

[Proposal Summary] Budget Information

Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA

191902

[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?

For a project that wants a broad and fair token distribution, existing options are limited. Airdrops can be complicated and expensive, and can be extracted by sybil accounts of airdrop farms.

[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.

Open source, MIT License

[Theme Selection] Theme

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

Infrastructure

[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).

The Scavenger Mine SDK is a significant improvement on existing token distribution models (such as airdrop), and on the well-known Scavenger Mine app used by Midnight and Defensio.

In terms of the Scavenger Mine model’s innovative approach to token distribution:

• it provides a project with a fairer, easier to set up, less time/work intensive, more affordable, and more community-driven alternative to an airdrop
• a Scavenger Mine requires no prepayment, expertise or special equipment in order to participate, which makes it accessible to crypto users of all abilities

Regarding the SDK’s improvements on the existing Scavenger Mine app:

• for projects, optional token-gated registration (to prevent bots and mining farms from unfairly extracting rewards)
• smart contract included for token distribution
• API, server and UI templates for quick and easy setup
• for miners, ability to mine with multiple addresses in one interface, donate earned tokens to a single address (for easy claiming), customize how many CPU threads used to mine, set maximum age of challenges, and solve any challenges missed from the previous 24 hours

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

The SDK’s MVP will allow a project to run a token distribution event from start to finish in any interface they choose (dApp or wallet). As described in this proposal, the MVP will facilitate all stages of the token distribution, from initial setup (using templates for servers, API and UI), to miner registration, fetching challenges, recording miners’ progress/earned token amounts, donating, and – finally – token distribution.

Upon completion of the project, we will host a frontend demo of the Scavenger Mine SDK on a publicly-accessible site and make a Github repository available for projects to fork and customize (which will include all outputs detailed in this proposal).

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

We will consider the project a success if the pilot project and at least 5 more Cardano teams use the SDK to successfully run a token distribution event, report ease of setup and technical reliability, and report their miners’ satisfaction with the SDK’s functionality and overall mining experience. Other metrics like the creation of new Cardano wallets (used for mining) would be an excellent indication of new users onboarding into Cardano in order to participate in a Scavenger Mine, but fresh wallets may not be from newly-onboarded users, so this metric can be tracked but is hard to validate.

[Your Project and Solution] Solution

Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem

Background: What is a Scavenger Mine?

The Scavenger Mine model was introduced to Cardano by Midnight Network in October 2025, in a 21-day event that distributed 1 billion $NIGHT tokens.

The goal of a Scavenger Mine is to distribute a project’s token through a proof-of-work model that requires no financial commitment from participants. Its ease of use and fairness make it a popular alternative to airdrops.

We believe that the Midnight Scavenger Mine model can be improved and made fairer with a token gating model so that only the addresses holding the gating token will be able to register to mine. The gating token would be obtainable only once per user through KYC or proof of unique humanity (e.g. through biometrics), through a manual process that can't be easily automated (e.g. solve some logical puzzles, achieve a score in a game) or through some historical achievement of the wallet (e.g. age, average balance, number of transaction or transaction volume).

How a Scavenger Mine works

• Participants use their computer’s processing power to solve cryptographic challenges (aka ‘mining’) on a website
• Mining doesn’t require any expertise or special hardware: simpy register a Cardano address (which receive the rewards later), click ‘Start’, and the computer mines in the background – just set it and forget it
• A new challenge is available to solve each hour, every hour, for the duration of the Scavenger Mine
• A miner earns a share of the available daily tokens proportionate to how many challenges they solved that day
• At the end of the Scavenger Mine, the project’s token is redeemed by the Cardano address that earned it (via airdrop or claim portal)

Advantages of Scavenger Mine model for token distribution

For the project: a Scavenger Mine is much easier to run than an airdrop. An airdrop requires significant work, for example a snapshot or whitelisting/registration event (that may require tasks for users to complete to become eligible), a smart contract or multisender tool to distribute tokens plus the funds to cover transaction fees, and significant customer support throughout the process (as users want information about tasks and eligibility, or complain about ineligibility and not receiving tokens). It’s a complicated, expensive way to distribute a token that doesn’t build loyalty to the project over time.

On the other hand, running a Scavenger Mine requires just basic infrastructure and few other costs, while the community – which is engaged daily – acts as support for new miners and becomes a project’s best word-of-mouth marketers.

For the miner: a chance to earn a project’s token with no prepayment or financial commitment. No competition with private investors or VCs (who get preferential prices or vesting schedules). No special hardware or expertise needed.

NUFI’s solution: Scavenger Mine SDK

(including API, UI, and server templates)

A project will be able to integrate the Scavenger Mine SDK into any interface (dApp or wallet) and run a token distribution event from start to finish. The SDK handles:

Registration. This is the first step of a Scavenger Mine.

• When registering, a miner designates an address as the destination for their earned tokens. In order to register, a miner simply needs a non-custodial Cardano wallet with at least one account.
• A participant can mine using one or more addresses belonging to a single account in one interface. Each address earns its own token allocation.
• A project can choose whether an address must be unused, can be used or if the address should have a rich history.
• Registration does not involve any on-chain activity, and includes message signing to prove wallet ownership.
• Staking key registration may be more convenient for the architecture of the app and it will be decided later if the user will register address or staking key but for the sake of convenience we will be using address registration in this document.
• A gated registration option will be available. Token gating may be useful to add an additional layer of user verification that could prevent mass mining by cloud mining farms. A good example would be a distribution of tokens to users who pass KYC, or who used a service in the past, or who do some certain action that can't be easily automated. Minting and distribution of these gating tokens is outside the scope of this proposal but we will support gated registration through a configuration flag so that a project can configure their own eligibility logic externally and return the ‘eligible or not’ verdict for an address.

Challenges: The SDK presents a new challenge every hour for a miner to solve.

• A challenge – based on AshMaize hash algorithm – is marked ‘solved’ when a miner’s device has computed the required number of hashes to complete the challenge.
• Miners can solve up to 24 challenges per day per address; challenges are queued and solved sequentially.
• Challenges can be solved retroactively (up to 24 hours after they become available); this way, if a miner is offline for several hours, they do not miss their chance to solve a challenge.
• A project can customize a challenge’s difficulty (i.e. how many computational hashes are needed to solve it), for example depending on how many miners are participating in the Scavenger Mine.

Rewards: After each 24-hour cycle, the SDK calculates how many tokens each solved solution is worth based on the number of tokens available for that 24-cycle, divided by how many total solutions submitted. The SDK updates a miner’s earned rewards per address every 24 hours.

Donating/Consolidating: If a participant is mining with multiple addresses, they can consolidate rewards into one address by reassigning redeem rights.

• By donating, a single address can claim the tokens earned by multiple addresses (which reduces the number of transaction fees needed).
• Donations can be undone (reset) in the user interface.
• Donating does not involve any on-chain activity.

User Experience Enhancements: The SDK makes available a number of UX enhancements to make mining more productive for participants.

• Customize how many CPU threads are used to mine.
• Set the maximum age of challenges to be allowed into the challenge queue.
• Solve challenges that were missed (if miner was offline when challenge became available).
• Information about current mining session: number of hashes computing per second, number of CPU threads being used to mine, hashes computed/hashes needed to solve challenge, number of challenges in queue, number of solved challenges for current session, when next challenge becomes available.

Token distribution: The SDK includes a smart contract to distribute the earned tokens after the Scavenger Mine period ends. Alternatively, a project can choose to manually send earned tokens.

• A project will be able to use the SDK to create a claiming portal (in the same or different interface).
• A script will manage token claiming. It is possible that the user will have to apply for the token airdrop (and create a specific UTXO using the script) in order to be able to claim the tokens.
• To redeem their earned tokens, a miner will connect to the claiming portal using the wallet they mined with and see the token allocations earned by each of the addresses in their wallet.
• The miner signs a transaction – for each address individually – and transfers their allocated tokens into their wallet.
• A project can decide if tokens are vested (i.e. released all at once or in installments) and the vesting schedule (same for all miners, or a custom vesting schedule per miner to stagger token releases).

UI template: A template DApp that allows users to register, mine and redeem the tokens.

API template: An API template is included in the package. The API is the middleman between the Scavenger Mine interface and the project’s server (where mining-related data is stored and retrieved). The API template is customizable and includes endpoints to:

• Register an address and agree to terms and conditions
• Fetch available challenges (and challenge data, e.g. ID, difficulty)
• Submit solution and issue receipt for submission
• Reassign redeem rights (donate), undo reassignment, display reassignment status
• Display number of tokens earned per address

Server template: a server template will be provided to assist projects in setting up the database needed to store mining-related data. Guidelines on bot protection will be included. We will build:

• Public Docker image with API configuration
• Docker-compose file with API + database + periodic jobs deployment on a single node/server
• Terraform module to deploy scalable API + database in the cloud

[Your Project and Solution] Impact

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

The Scavenger Mine SDK will positively impact Cardano projects and users alike.

For projects, it will provide a free-to-use, all-in-one token distribution model that’s easy to run, requires minimal hardware, and is more engaging than an airdrop, while building a sustainable community over time.

For participants, it’s an appealing way to receive a new token: participants can earn tokens based on their own work/effort, with no financial commitment, in a fair and trusted way (and then finish with a sense of accomplishment that other distribution models can’t create).

[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 NUFI wallet team is best-placed to deliver such a project; the NUFI team integrated a Scavenger Mine solution inside NUFI wallet’s interface during Midnight’s Scavenger Mine and for Defensio’s Scavenger Mine too.

Continuous user feedback and iteration helped us to create a solution that was preferred over Midnight’s official mining app by almost 20,000 miners thanks to its innovations and superior user experience.

The NUFI team is also experienced in creating SDKs for use by Cardano projects, such as NUFIConnect (an SSO solution for Cardano dApps) and Cardano Wallet Snap SDK that allows MetaMask users to connect to Cardano dApps; these SDKs were created with funding from Project Catalyst Fund11, where NUFI completed the projects within budget, on time, and in full.

Alongside this, the NUFI team's reliability has been proven by our strong track record of building in Cardano, which includes developing AdaLite.io (Cardano’s first browser-based wallet in 2018), the Cardano firmware and apps for both Ledger and Trezor hardware wallets, and Cardano compatibility for MetaMask wallet (through Cardano Wallet Snap).

[Milestones] Project Milestones

Milestone Title

Scavenger Mine service backend

Milestone Outputs

• Development of basic BE codebase for running a Scavenger Mine service, including all the necessary server-side logic
• Development of Scavenger Mine APIs
• Development of accompanying developer documentation

Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance criteria will be met when there exists a codebase for the backend infrastructure (which a project needs to host a Scavenger Mine) with developer documentation; additionally, a completed API (that allows for the functionality detailed in this proposal) and the accompanying developer documentation.

Evidence of Completion

• BE codebase and API/documentation available in open-sourced repository
• Video or images showcasing the completed development

Delivery Month

1

Cost

39512

Progress

20 %

Milestone Title

Front End, Server Scripts and Token Gating Mechanism

Milestone Outputs

• Development of front-end template for Scavenger Mine
• Development of server scripts and server packaging for the BE and FE services
• Development of token gating mechanism
• Developer documentation

Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance criteria will be met when there exists a working front-end template, server scripts/packaing for the backend and frontend services, and working token gating mechanism, as well as developer documentation (or notes) updated as appropriate.

Evidence of Completion

• Front-end template, server scripts and packaging (for FE and BE services), and token gating mechanism available in open-sourced repository (along with necessary developer documentation/notes)
• Video or images showcasing the completed development

Delivery Month

2

Cost

61463

Progress

40 %

Milestone Title

Token distribution tooling

Milestone Outputs

• Development of the token distribution tooling (via smart contract) that a project can use to distribute the token at the end of a Scavenger Mine event
• Developer documentation (that details the smart contract's capabilities)

Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance criteria will be met when there exists a working token distribution toolkit, including smart contract capable of distributing a token to an address with desired paramters (e.g. correct token amount/vesting schedule); alongside this, the accompanying developer documentation has been updated.

Evidence of Completion

• Token distribution tooling is available in an open-sourced repository (along with necessary developer documentation/notes)

Delivery Month

3

Cost

64390

Progress

60 %

Milestone Title

Testing, Polishing, and Pilot Scavenger Mine

Milestone Outputs

• End-to-end testing
• Collect feedback and implement improvements
• Pilot Scavenger Mine project: launch a meme coin using our own tooling; 100% of the token supply will go to miners who participate in the pilot
• Creation of marketing materials to promote pilot project, alongside user how-to documentation

Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance criteria will be met when there exists a written or video report on the end-to-end testing and feedack (and details of the improvements that this led to); in addition, the documented completion of a pilot project in which we test the Scavenger Mine SDK with participants from Cardano community, who mined in our pilot project to earn a meme coin; meme coin has been distributed successfully to miners.

Evidence of Completion

• Testing/feedback/improvement report available in open-sourced repository
• Documented proof (via social media posts/video) of the pilot Scavenger Mine project being completed, with on-chain proof of the meme coin token being distributed successfully to miners

Delivery Month

4

Cost

26537

Progress

80 %

Milestone Title

Final/Closeout

Milestone Outputs

• Project Close-out Report (PCR) and Project Close-out Video (PCV) showcasing the working Scavenger Mine SDK, the major accomplishments, challenges, and learning points from the development, and future plans if any.

Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance criteria will be met when there exists a completed and shared Project Close-out Report (PCR) and Project Close-out Video (PCV) that include the contents required by Project Catalyst team, and which successfully illustrates the project's successful completion

Evidence of Completion

• PCR and PCV have been successfully shared via the channels required by the Project Catalyst team and are publicly available for review

Delivery Month

4

Progress

100 %

[Final Pitch] Budget & Costs

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

Milestone 1 - Scavenger Mine service backend

• For research, implementation, testing, project management: 27 dev days at a day rate of 1463 ADA, for a total of 39,512 ADA

Milestone 2 - Front end, Server Scripts, Token Gating Mechanism

• For research, implementation, testing, project management: 42 dev days at a day rate of 1463 ADA, for a total of 61,463 ADA

Milestone 3 - Token distribution tooling

• For research, implementation, testing, project management: 44 dev days at a day rate of 1463 ADA, for a total of 64,390 ADA

Milestone 4 - Testing, Polishing, Pilot project

• For testing, implementation, project management: 16 dev days at a day rate of 1463 ADA, for a total of 23,415 ADA;
• For support and marketing: 4 support/marketing staff days at a day rate of 780 ADA, for a total of 3122 ADA

Milestone 5 (Closeout)

• no cost

[Final Pitch] Value for Money

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

The Scavenger Mine SDK provides an all-in-one package that will save considerable developer time and money for any Cardano project that wants to distribute a token.

The SDK enables any Cardano project to forego the complexity and cost of an airdrop and easily run an engaging token distribution event whose appeal can onboard new users into their project and into Cardano's ecosytem by engaging them on a daily basis – take Midnight’s Scavenger Mine as an example of an event that engaged non-Cardano users for the first time.

The accessibility of the Scavenger Mine model - made possible through this SDK - is a valuable tool for onboarding and sustained engagement long-term.

[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