Proposers feel left out once their ideas have been rejected, while others further in the Catalyst funnel receive rewards for participating.
Borrowing from traditional heraldry, I propose CF/IOHK issue individual NFT digital assets based on the Canadian Order of Merit system.
This is the total amount allocated to "They desire a better country.".
"Desiderantes meliorem patriam" - "They desire a better country."
It's from the Bible actually, the book of Hebrews.
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This proposal was inspired by the submission from @jbpin : https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Encourage-proposals/340111-48088 . I'm not sure if I should be adding him to the Co-submitters since I think this is a competing proposal.
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People who participate should be acknowledged for their achievements, which scale up according to the delivery of service to the Cardano Movement (In my opinion the Cardano "Ecosystem" or "Platform" should start to be purposefully referred to as a "Movement", but that is between the 3 entities and McCann Dublin. I will be referring to the overall structure as a Movement henceforth).
@jbpin mentioned that lots of effort into proposals has no value if the proposal rejected. He acutely describes the problem that the inevitable rejections that will come from the inexperienced non-professional, but vital, participants would have the unintended consequence of discontinued usage eventually less participation.
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One can also picture blowback in the form of complaints, discontent, and possibly even an unintended culture of discouraged participants that no longer want to participate - with all the projects going to the professional Venture Capitalists.
What I propose would help to develop a grassroots Movement that gifts, rewards, and honors the "little guys", "newbs", "normies", "hodlers" and "spec-you-later's" - all of us; to participate in the Movement long term, to develop a sense of ownership with healthy pride, and free citizenship empowered by the Movement.
What I propose would have positive effects:
Together, we can create a system that issues a specific NFT from CF/IOHK/IOG to the participant that has a value in ADA. This token should only be able to be "minted" and issued by the appropriate body in the spirit of recognition of merit. I propose it should have a value in ADA decoupled from all other forms of currency regardless of hyper bull or bear markets so as to suggest its preeminence as community service based token of citizenry.
Initially I propose this system be loosely based on the Canadian Order model which has a series of tiers:
Those are the 3 levels. It is possible to have participants escalated through a similar heraldry. Interestingly, the councils in Canada that decide this sort of membership apparently do so by a consensus mechanism rather than a pure vote, but I'm not sure what that means in practice.
The 3 highest merit medals a Canadian can receive are:
My initial proposal is to issue an NFT based on the above structure for proposers/participants based on a metric of merit agreed upon by IOHK. I am not proposing that ALL proposals should receive something, aside perhaps from formal feedback so as to empower the participant to create an improved proposal in the future if they wish to do so.
I am proposing that an NFT could be issued if a participant has a proposal that enters a certain stage of consideration, generates a certain amount of proposals, wins a proposal, gets multiple proposals past certain stages of consideration, and so on and so forth.
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Structure, Value, and Branding of the NFT's
I propose that the value of the NFT's should be strictly decoupled from all other currencies past, present, or future and issued as having a constant ADA value in perpetuity. The value in ADA would be guaranteed by the issuer in the understanding that the token is at any time redeemable for the value in ADA, purchased back by the issuer regardless of satoshi or usd equivalency.
In other words, I can sell my "Order of Military Merit" back to IOHK for the 1 or 5 ADA it is worth regardless if 1 ADA is at 5$USD or $250 USD. These tokens would only be purchasable by the original issuer as they are for the purpose of recognizing service to the Movement. As a digital asset they could be redeemed by the fair-weathers that wish to profit and leave, while also having and hodling intrinsic value by their guaranteed liquidity. I also propose that these tokens could be used as collateral in loan programs, to be immediately liquidated for ADA in the case of a default on the loan and collections from the loan issuer. I believe this structure of the preeminence of ADA to be a key aspect in the value of this proposal overall and a defining characteristic.
Branding: Obviously the branding and name schemes of tokens or Citizenry should be cohesive with proposals coordinated with McCann Dublin. It is possible that Project Catalyst can have its own branding and marketing/story as a subset from the full Cardano branding suite, and I am not fully aware of McCann Dublin's intentions and general scopes of work, but obviously all branding should be cohesive throughout the Movement. I propose to work with whomever is the point of contact at IOHK with McCann Dublin so as to come up with a token schematic that flows with the overall McCann Dublin implementation. The branding issue seems like it would be hard to change after it's started - to change the names of the tokens for example, 5 years from now. I would require technical advisory on the flexibility of NFT's in the long term. I suppose an older token could stop being "minted' in favor of a new one.
Funding.
I have no developers or developing ability. I have a contact with my main marketing service provider that works with programmers that I can consult with - participation from them, if they would be qualified - would be at going rates for java developers. I feel I would have to borrow very heavily from the IOHK talent pool to implement this proposal, and the budget would reflect their salary, and a bonus.
Trademarking I think I can get done for about 2k USD per trademark, but I have to look into it. Trademarking would be useful so as to not infringe on other IP and well as provide grounds for takedown in the case of counterfeits and scams. I have a trademark lawyer that is very experienced that I can work with.
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1 well paid developer salary at 100k per year for 4 weeks(?) = 10k
Developer bonus 10% = 1k
Trademarking at 1 trademark per token for 3 tokens = 6k
Total 17k
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I have a demanding full time job, am a landlord, and have multiple side businesses (in various stages of development and activity) including 3p selling on Amazon, e-commerce consulting and partnerships, as well as developing my own brand - which involves somehow starting a podcast probably. So, I haven't included a plan to pay for my own participation in this proposal. If this proposal moves further through the process of consideration I will seek out counsel on how to properly and accurately do a cost/time analysis and append accordingly.
Please reach out to me through however this site works for any clarifications or suggestions. And here's to a better country ;)
-Dallas
*Digital Marketing (from the E-Commerce space).
*Experience with Branding, Trademarking. Relationships with service providers.
*Canadian ;).