Delegation Tracker

Improve the customer experience of onboarding and staking and provide a solution that will allow for better distribution of stake.

We are a software company. Our dev team has many years experience in building complex scalable cloud native solutions.

Last update: 03/08//2021

PROPOSAL: DELEGATION TRACKER

Problem statement :

Onboarding barrier for ADA delegators. For newcomers to Cardano who bought ADA it is very difficult to understand the staking process. Once they have their ADA stored in their wallets they are asking themselves to what pool they should stake.

Since they have no idea, the majority is staking with stake pools that have a large amount of ADA or are even saturated. Due to this, stake gets concentrated in large stake pools and they are creating pool farms leading to centralized power.

The existing solutions are stimulating this process by ranking stake pools which accelerates this process.

Since there are so many technical parameters in play it is nearly impossible for a newcomer to understand how this all works. As stake pool operators we encounter the same questions over and over again.

Due to this complexity many ADA owners leave their ADA on exchanges avoiding the hassle to stake themselves.

For us this was a clear sign that the current solutions in the Cardano ecosystem don't provide the necessary customer experience required for mass adoption.

Next to this these solutions lack the necessary tools to support existing delegators and stake pool operators.

Describe your solution to the problem

With the Delegation Tracker we like to improve the customer experience of onboarding and staking. For newcomers and existing delegators we like to remove the complexity of the lottery protocol. We like to advise them on the basis of their stake which stake pools would be best to stake with. A list of stake pools will be presented to them on the basis of which they can make an easy decision without having to know about the technical parameters being in play.

Since the solution will have no preference for any stake pool unlike with a ranking system, we think this will better serve the ecosystem as a whole and increase the diversification of stake over different stake pools.

For advanced delegators and stake pool operators who like to make their own decisions we will provide tools for comparison between stake pools so they are able to get insights in how certain technical parameters of the lottery protocol are influencing the overall results on their stake or performance of their stake pool.

Relevant experience

We are a software company that is building custom solutions for enterprise companies. Our development team has many years of experience in building complex scalable cloud native solutions on the basis of microservices, IoT, machine learning, ai, mobile technologies and blockchain.

We have released an alpha-version of the Delegation Tracker on the 25th of February 2021. Everyone is able to use and try this solution out. The alpha-version of the Delegation Tracker can be reached via following url: https://delegationtracker.com

Although the alpha-version is a very early version, missing functionality and is far from what we are aiming for, it should give the community already an impression in what direction we are thinking.

To engage with the community we opened a channel of direct communication on the website of the solution via which the user can give direct feedback and suggestions. We will use this feedback to prioritize future functionalities of the solution and make them integral part of our roadmap as well to improve the solution and fix bugs.

For community users who like our idea and like to be actively involved in the progress of the Delegation Tracker we published our development version of the Delegation Tracker in which the latest changes will be visible via following url: https://dev.delegationtracker.com

A MODULAR AND EXTENSIBLE FRAMEWORK FOR A BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN ONBOARDING DELEGATORS AND TOOLS FOR ADVANCED DELEGATORS AND STAKE POOL OPERATORS TO COMPARE RESULTS

VISION

We didn't come up with this idea to compete with the already available solutions in the Cardano ecosystem, we rather work with them together to make the Cardano ecosystem as a whole stronger. As such we are not going to spend our valuable time on rebuilding things that do already exist, unless we think we can make things easier or provide more value for delegators or stake pool operators.

We like to give all users (technical and non-technical) the opportunity to participate in our project by giving them the option to file their ideas, let them vote for functionality on the roadmap and communicate to us what they like and don't like about the solution. For this we already implemented in our solution the possibility to give direct feedback to us.

The Delegation Tracker enables all users (technical and non-technical) to be included in the Cardano staking process.

As growth and competition within the Cardano community increases, we feel it imperative that we as a community consider how to collectively and strategically align our efforts to generate greater synergy and adoption for Cardano.

We seek support from the community for our idea in delivering a better customer experience in onboarding delegators and providing existing delegators and stake pool operators with better tools.

We believe that our solution with the support and the help of the community will be of value in driving the growth of the Cardano ecosystem and will lead to reduction of centralized stake.

VALIDATION

We validated our idea with several community users and we think there is a demand for new innovative solutions like the Delegation Tracker that serve these users in what is important to them.

TARGET MARKET

Our target market comprises delegators and stake pool operators but we also envision other parties for which this solution could be interesting.

What do we need for success:

• A market - the market for Cardano is already there
• A product - the product, stake pool (block producers) is already there, smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain will be there within 4 months
• Users - the users are already there, Cardano has a large community and their numbers will only grow with the delivery of smart contract functionality

We are confident that we can provide value to a significant number of users within the Cardano community and convert them to daily users of our solution. Besides, we know, the number of newcomers to Cardano will only increase.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

As mentioned before we don't see existing solutions as competitors since these solutions have different purposes and goals, we see them as complementary and would like to work together with them to build a stronger Cardano ecosystem.

Complementary solutions

• Pooltool.io (we already provide out link where appropriate)
• Adapools.org (we already provide out link where appropriate)
• Pool.pm
• Cardanoscan.io
• Adastat.net

BUSINESS MODEL

Currently our business model is based on self funding.

Since early 2017 we have been involved in the Cardano project, as such we decided to contribute and support the project by running a stake pool. We were part of ITN, HTN and helped in bringing this project together with many other great stake pool operators forward to where we are today.

Having worked for 3 years on this project as a stake pool operator gave us a lot of insights of what is important to delegators and stake pool operators and what is not covered by the current solutions available in the Cardano ecosystem.

This made us decide to develop the Delegation Tracker in order to contribute to the community and the Cardano ecosystem and to give a further meaning to our stake pool other than only contributing to the decentralization and security of the network.

In our opinion a stake pool should be run by a responsible operator/owner that uses its rewards to contribute to the ecosystem, to grow it and make it stronger. A real Cardano representative. Stake pools are not meant to make the operator or owner rich from the rewards they get for their work or to make them retire from their current job.

Our stake pool goes under the ticker JUNO and our website is https://ada4profit.com

You might think the name ada4profit does not match up what it written above but actually it does, we decided for this name not because of ourselves but to be appealing for delegators. The majority of the delegators are looking for profits on their investments in ADA.

Since our stake pool has a co-owner in it, some of the stake pool rewards go to this co-owner since he's not involved in the Delegation Tracker solution.

Next to this we have costs to run the hardware, to market our stake pool and to maintain it.

We decided to reserve 50% of our stake pool rewards for the development of the Delegation Tracker, this money is not immediately available since we locked our stake pool rewards for 3 years as a commitment to our delegators. We locked these rewards by automatically re-delegating them to the stake pool. To keep our promise we don't pull any of these rewards out of the stake pool before the term of 3 years is expired.

As such our stake pool rewards are not sufficient to cover all our costs related to the development of the Delegation Tracker since there are more resources involved. Next to the earlier mentioned developers, an architect, a project manager, a UX/UI designer and marketeer.

This is for us the reason to apply for funding in Project Catalyst. We hope the community is supporting our idea so we can further enhance the Delegation Tracker and can turn it into the place to go for delegators and stake pool operators.

BREAKDOWN REQUEST FOR FUNDING

Total project costs and 6 months development & deliverables starting from May 2021

Developments already paid by us (covered by the stake pool rewards)

• Architecture - $ 1,200 - work in progress - paid for
• Alpha version project management - $1,000 - done and paid for
• UX/UI design - $ 1,500 - work in progress and paid for
• Back-end development (4 months) - $4.800 - done and paid for
• Alpha version front-end development (4 month) - $4.800 - done and paid for

Total: $ 13,300

Development costs estimation for the coming 6 months starting from May 2021

• 1 Developer full time - $7,200
• 1 Developer halftime - $3,600
• 1 Project manager - $3,000
• 1 Architect - $3,000
• 1 UX/UI designer - $3,000

Deliverables

March

• Favorites
• Near real-time updates on delegation (left and joined)
• Categorization of stake pools

April

• Performance improvements
• Enhancements of the activity timeline
• Blog

May

• Delegator focus

• Comparison
• Timeline

June

• Stake pool operator focus

• Registration for stake pool operators
• Enhanced functionality related to registration

July

• Delegator focus

• Enhanced functionality related to delegator rewards

August

• Delegator focus

• Registration for delegators
• Enhanced functionality related to registration

Total: $18,800

Marketing costs estimation for the coming 6 months

• Activities

• Setup a website
• Implement mechanisms to track user behavior
• Have a global roadmap available on the website
• Marketing campaigns and outreach

Total: $5.000

Total project costs: $37,100

Funding asked for: $18.550

We are asking for $18.550 in funding so that we can continue developing the solution and bring it to a level where delegators and stake pool operators will really benefit from this solution.

Via our stake pool JUNO we contribute 50% of the total costs as specified.

Team

The majority of our team consists of very young talented people with very deep technological understanding of system architecture, development, security and operations.

In our team the following roles are covered:

• Business development
• Project management
• Architect
• Devops
• UX/UI design
• Marketing

Conclusion

We believe that together with the community we can build a valuable solution that supports the growth of the Cardano ecosystem.

A message to the reviewers of our proposal:

Your positive funding vote for the Delegation Tracker is a vote for a community driven open source development initiative by JUNO stake pool in which you can participate and will have a say. Our goal is to lower the entrance barrier for new delegators and deliver tools for existing delegators and stake pool operators that will give them better insights. The Delegation Tracker will be beneficial for delegators, stake pool operators and many others and will directly contribute to the adoption of the Cardano ecosystem.