The Cardano Global Treasure Hunt

The Cardano community is a global one, we propose we make use of this by organising a global "treasure hunt" for blockchain tokens in order to promote the ecosystem and attract new members in a fun, engaging and potentially rewarding way.

A global treasure hunt with challenges, puzzles and mysterious clues hidden in both the physical, digital and fictional spheres with substantial prizes in ADA, meant to promote Cardano in general, engage the community, attract new members and in the process inform about the technology and philosophy behind what Cardano is trying to achieve.

We're aiming to get as many members as possible from the Catalyst/Cardano community involved in the creation of the puzzles, ensuring they'll be far more challenging and diverse than any single person could create.

What we're trying to achieve. Project Description.

Participants in the treasure hunt could either join in teams, solo, or form teams after sign-up/the onboarding process.

The treasure hunt will be broken up in multiple stages, with clues, riddles and locations to be discovered in each stage and a smaller reward for solving a stage. Discovery of the solution/final objective for each stage will generate the first clues of the next stage. After successfully solving all stages, the clues for the final stage will be revealed, leading to the potential discovery of the "treasure" and the grand prize. Seeing as each new stage will only be triggered by successfully solving the previous one the grand prize will be divided between the participants/teams that successfully solved the previous stages with a small bonus for the participant/team that solves the final stage.

Each stage will be sub-divided in three phases:

1. An initial set of challenges/problems/questions to solve from a wide range of fields, from mathematics, astrophysics and medicine to literature, music and film. This will be the primary incentive for people to team up and possibly call on friends and family to join in. Sure you could tackle every problem/challenge alone, but it will highly increase your efficiency to be in a team with diverse expertise/knowledge, thus substantially increasing the likelihood of successfully solving the stage.
2. Successfully deciphering a challenge from the first phase will reveal a part of a riddle. The second phase will consist of correctly piecing together all the parts, solving the riddle and thus revealing the clue that will point to the stage's final phase.
3. Correctly interpreting the clue revealed in phase 2 will point to a location, either physical or digital, that when interacted with via an AR smartphone app will reveal the stage's objective and issue a blockchain token and the corresponding stage prize to the participant/team that first discovers it. This is to ensure that each objective discovery is possible only once and is tamper-proof. Location in this context is a general term that could refer to a number of things, starting from the obvious physical location, to a page in a book, a frame in a movie, a spot in a video-game, even a fragment of a song and so on.

After a stage is successfully solved and the stage prize issued a notification will be sent out to all participants informing them of this development and starting the next stage by relaying the challenges/problems/questions of the first phase of the next stage.

Even if the members of a team will hail from various parts of the globe, there still will be a high likelihood that if a stage's final clue points to a physical location, that location will be out of the reach of any team member (with a greater likelihood for solo participants). To solve this, the treasure hunt platform should allow participants to register as "scouts" for their geographical location, thus enabling them to be contacted by the team/participant who first solves a given stage and direct them towards the final objective, after entering a form of NDA. The scout will be incentivised to respect his end of the agreement and seek out the objective by the fact that he will receive a percentage of the stage prize. Another obvious solution to this problem would be to have all the objectives hidden away in digital locations, more easily accessible to everyone. However, we argue that this would negatively impact engagement in the project as a whole. We estimate that there will be a few thousand participants enrolled in the event from all regions of the globe, so geographical cover will probably not be an issue. The scout system would also enable people who aren't able to be in a team and maybe don't have the skills required to solve the puzzles on their own to still take part in the event, thus making it more accessible and appealing to anyone interested in taking part.

The event/treasure hunt will start with the issuance of the first set of challenges/problems for the first stage on a given date, at that time the agreed upon ADA amount for the prizes (reflective of the market price on that day) will be locked in escrow to be transferred accordingly to the winners when the unlock conditions are met. The start date will allow for an adequate amount of time for sign-up/onboarding and teams to form, from when the contest is first announced. However, when it comes to the event's end we consider that having an open-ended time frame will potentially attract a growing number of participants over time, particularly if the participants get stuck on a given puzzle/clue. And who knows, if ADA substantially increases in value in the future, the prize, being far more than initially intended, will generate additional buzz and interest from an ever-larger number of people - just an amusing thought.

How we're Planning to Achieve It. Implementation.

Like we stated in the introduction, let's make the most of the fact that we're a global community. More precisely this can translate into two distinct advantages - the ability to formulate the puzzles/challenges drawing from a wide breadth of cultural and experiential diversity with relative ease - and secondly the ability to implement the event in all corners of the globe at a low cost. There's no need for a small team to travel around the world and place clues and objectives if there's already a community member in that region willing to get involved.

From a technical standpoint, two distinct products need to be deployed.

1. An online platform for registering and managing users, which will also serve as a repository for info regarding all aspects of the project.
2. A mobile app with a VR component for interacting with the treasure hunt's clues and objectives.

Our company is a registered Apple developer, however, our development skills don't extend too much beyond building interactive art books and experiences. So we would definitely need assistance in building the mobile app, particularly the AR side. Ideally, we could collaborate on this with someone from the Cardano community, but if that won't be possible we could hire outside help.

We plan to create awareness about the event primarily by producing a high-quality promotional short film portraying a fictional stage and providing an overview of the "hunt", its mechanics and potential prizes. To illustrate the global, cross-cultural nature of the event the promotional short should be shot in diverse multiple locations with universal appeal and featuring a cast of diverse characters, representative of as many groups/regions as possible. Producing the short will also serve as a good test run for the members of the community that will choose to implicate themselves in the creation of the project, to see how easily we come up with satisfying challenges and engaging puzzles, even if at first it will be for a fictional stage. Along with the promotional short, we plan on producing and launching several short ads and social media campaigns.

Roadmap.

So, to summerise, our roadmap after successful funding would consist of:

1. Begin development of the event platform and accompanying mobile apps.
2. Engage the community in constructing challenging and satisfying puzzles spanning a wide range of fields and cultures.
3. Draw up the precise Rules and Regulations with guidance from legal advisors.
4. Produce and post-produce the promotional film & shorter ads.
5. Integrate the platform within the Cardano ecosystem and set the event launch date.
6. Launch the platform, mobile apps and promotional film announcing the treasure hunt's start date and details.
7. Allow for approximately 1-2 months for people to discover and register for the event and for teams to form.
8. Launch the event and lock the prizes on the Cardano blockchain.

KPIs

• Level of engagement on social media platforms surrounding the event.
• Number of views on all platforms of the promo short and ads
• Number of mentions on social media channels of the event
• Interest generated among other content producers (articles, blogs, videos, etc.)
• Number of participants registered on the platform pre-launch

Budget

• 1500 - Legal fees for drafting the final version of the Rules & Regulations.
• 12000 = (2000x3) x 2 - Developer Salaries - 2 devs for 3 months each.
• 1000 - Hosting & other platform and software costs. We're looking at using decentralised storage solutions if possible such as Holo or the Akash DeCloud.
• 16180 - Production Costs
• These represent an estimate of production costs for 3 days of shooting in 4 different locations in 4 different countries in Europe. All costs have been estimated at the lowest possible prices. Final location choice will be dependant on the COVID restrictions that'll be in place in June - July.
• 2500 - Actors
• 1500 - Extras
• 3600 - Gear Rental (we'll provide some of the gear needed for the shoot and the editing stations but we'll need to rent more on-location camera, drone, lights)
• 3600 - Crew (we'll do the work of screenwriter, producer, director, DP and editor - but on location we'll need some extra crew - first AD/ production assistant, sound engineer & licensed drone operator)
• 4200 - Travel Expenses
• 780 - Video Storage (2x2TB SSD)

Total - 30680

We have decoupled the budget needed to implement the proposal from the budget that would be needed for the prizes and for platform maintenance after the event is launched. This way, if the community sees value in our proposal it can fund its implementation without the requirement of sending us the prize pool as well. After successful implementation of the first part of the project, we'll apply for a second round of Catalyst funding to secure the prize pool and the amount needed post-launch. We plan on deciding the amount of the prize pool together with the community members that will choose to participate in this project. This would not be sent to us, but rather locked in escrow on the Cardano blockchain for the event's winners. We haven't included any compensations for us in this budget, as we believe that will come later if we add value to the Cardano ecosystem together with this community.

Risks and Challenges.

1. The community doesn't get involved with the project.

As we stated earlier in the project description, no single individual can come up with puzzles and challenges as diverse and satisfying as those that would be generated by a community of dozens of inquisitive minds. However in the event that we don't get enough community participation to make this a reality we will draw on our experience as game designers to overcome this potential obstacle.

2. A worsening of Covid restrictions.

If Covid restrictions worsen in the following months, potentially due to new variants emerging, it could impact the project in two ways:

a) Limiting our ability to design puzzles & challenges that would feature clues and objectives in cities and other potentially restricted areas. To combat this we'll monitor the situation and if the need arises we can eliminate interactions with physical locations entirely from the event.

b) Limit our ability to travel through Europe even further and stop us from filming in diverse iconic locations throughout the continent for the event's promo short. If this will be the case we're fortunate to be currently based in Romania, a country with a very diverse landscape featuring many of Europes last remaining primeval wildernesses from a picturesque delta, to sprawling mountain ranges and untouched forests. We won't be able to film in iconic European urban environments but we can definitely make up for it with diverse and unique landscapes.

However, the likelihood of Covid restrictions being tightened is low. Things seem to be moving in the opposite direction as more and more vaccines are distributed and administered.

Conclusion.

Impactful promotion does not come from marketing campaigns, it comes from genuine engagement. This is our proposal to generate a memorable promotion for Cardano and showcase some of its technical capabilities and lead people towards discovering its values in an engaging, stimulating, fun and rewarding way.

The Proposers.

We're NewMindflow - One artist in two humans. Creative medium explorers.

Polyglot, fluent in film, photography, writing, game design, illustration, painting and more. We're also a small creative studio in Transylvania, Romania. Award-winning film directors, film-makers by trade, we left that scene some time ago to explore new avenues, both artistically and entrepreneurially. We set up a small game dev studio in Jogjakarta, Indonesia, we launched interactive art in the form of iPad apps, and we've more recently focused on visual art - illustrations, painting and photography both digital and analogue.

For more details, please visit our LinkedIn pages, the studio's website, and take a look at our portfolios.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rares-k%C3%B6vesdi-551260106/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anamaria-k%C3%B6vesdi-354649106/
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3439147/
http://www.newmindflow.com/
https://www.behance.net/freemindflow
https://www.youtube.com/newmindflow

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