Blace.io: Marketplace Creator

Provide developers with a base layer marketplace functionality, so they can focus on the specifics of their products and services.

An experienced team of developers, Plutus pioneers, legal experts, project managers, and CTOs.

Problem: Same fundamental code base being developed over and over

With the increasing adoption of Cardano as a platform to build many new decentralized applications, we have already encountered many redundant and common approaches to many projects. While these projects have their specialized use-cases, the internals are all too common.

Naturally, one may realize these patterns and recognize that there are many opportunities to develop common code to be used by many applications. This code, once developed and open-sourced, could be used and improved by the community constantly, so everyone in the ecosystem would benefit from a shared solution. We want to replicate this successful model — that allowed many libraries, frameworks and the projects that built on these flourish — and bring it to the Cardano eco-system by spearheading a framework to create strong marketplaces.

Solution: A Marketplace Creator

Numerous projects are being built or proposed in Catalyst that aim to create decentralized marketplaces to serve as intermediaries between supply and demand, sellers and buyers, server and clients.

We have identified the need to build a framework in order for people to spin-up their marketplaces.

Just like their simpler Web 2.0 equivalents, blace enables scaffolding marketplaces with a simple blace new, thus cutting down development time and cost.

This proposal aims at developing a core that will power service-oriented marketplaces such as:

• Win-Win Dispute Resolution Marketplace: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/368353-48088
• Proposals Mentors Marketplace: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/369749-48088
• A Tutoring Service
• A Language Exchange
• A Shared Housing Marketplace
• ADA Fans (a media content sharing platform only for ADA fans)
• A job board for Plutus developers

Furthermore, product marketplaces (think Etsy, Kickstarter, Ebay) and donation platforms (such as Gofundme) can be built with blace, too.

Plugins / Functionalities

The Base Layer's core functionality can be altered and extended through plugins.

Core components that ship with blace address:

• Authorization
• Certificates
• Currency conversion
• Fee collection
• Identity management
• Offering a service or product
• Payment
• Requesting a service or product
• Review system
• Smart contract composition
• Status tracking
• User profiles

Plugins can have custom rules and parameters (e.g. fees paid to the marketplace operator, refund eligibility, permissions, identity requirements) on a per marketplace level.

Furthermore, by designing core functionality as plugins, even integral parts of blace can be replaced.

If your marketplace needs to meet specific KYC requirements, you can extend or replace the identity management solution that ships with blace.

While not in scope for this phase of development, plug & play NLP-assisted matching of suppliers and buyers will be central to the accelerated growth and usefulness of blace in the years to come.

CLI tool

To create or edit a marketplace, you install and run blace from your terminal.

The command line tool is built in Haskell. It will be open sourced once the first marketplace using blace is deployed.

See the gif or our website for a simple demo when setting up a new marketplace via blace new.

Other interfaces (e.g. web interface) for ease of access are planned as well.

Supporting Cardano's Developer Ecosystem

By creating blace, we help developers by enabling them to skip base layer marketplace work and thus decrease the time to launch their Cardano mvp.

The leading question of the Developer Ecosystem Challenge is: "How can we create a positive developer experience that helps the developer focus on building successful apps?". And we answer: By providing an extensible marketplace creator, so developers can cut costs and focus on the specificity of their projects.

Among the potential directions described in the Challenge Campaing Brief ( https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/campaign-home/26094 ), we believe we are directly addressing:

• Developer productivity: IDE's, scripts to automate stuff
• Knowledge base & Documentation
• Deployment, testing, and monitoring frameworks
• Samples, recipes and templates
• Support structures

Team

Meet the key personnel for this project.

Our team site ( https://winwin-team.web.app/ ) has additional information on each team member incl. LinkedIn and/or Github links.

Plutus Developers

Matthias Sieber

• Professional Software Engineer for over 20 years
• Development focus on Recommendation Engines and Marketplaces for the past 7 years
• working on Liqwid through MLabs internship
• Community-elected Moderator on Cardano Stack Exchange
• Plutus Pioneer (1st cohort)
• Project Catalyst Community Advisor
• Cardano Ambassador
• Built successful marketplaces, startups, SMBs, and mission-driven teams
• Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member

Ganesh N.

• Professional Software Engineer for over 8 years
• Plutus Pioneer (1st cohort)
• Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member
• BTech in Electronics and Communication Engineering
• Has lead development of large scale applications
• Experience in the financial services industry

Angela Gatende

• Professional Software Engineer and Entreprenuer for 8 years
• Plutus Pioneer
• Community Advisor at Project Catalyst
• Working on Alonzo Purple testnet
• Dip of Building Design from RMIT and a BBA from SMC
• Involved in the IOHK colab with EBU to give scholarships to teach African students Haskell/Plutus

Eli Selkin

• Professional Software Engineer for over 5 years
• Plutus Pioneer
• Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member
• MS in Computer Science, specializing in Machine Learning
• ML architect
• B.A. in Psychology
• Masters of Social Work
• Licensed clinical social worker

Project Manager

Victor Corcino

• Energy Industry Engineer for 6 years
• Member of the first Catalyst Circle as Community Advisors representative
• Catalyst Veteran Community Advisor and Proposal Mentor
• Co-creator of AIM Community Tools (CA/vCA Tools, Voter Tool)
• BSc Chemical Engineering and MSc Chemical Engineering and Software Development
• Specialization in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
• PhD candidate, researching the field of Machine Learning applied to Computational Fluid Dynamics

Frontend Developer

David Bradley

• Professional Software Engineer for 2 years
• Shipped production code to React and Vuejs applications
• Experience across multiple organizations aiming to better people's lives
• BA in Business Management

Other members of our team may be pulled into this work as needed.

Roadmap

September 2021:

• Finish Requirements Research
• Define System Architecture

October 2021:

• Prototype Smart Contracts
• PAB Prototype
• Development of Base Layer Core Plugins

November 2021:

• MVP Launch on Testnet

December 2021:

• MVP launch on mainnet with Win-Win Dispute Resolution marketplace
• Support Proposals Mentors Marketplace

Q1 2022 and beyond:

• Expand capabilities of blace
• Meta Marketplace (buy, sell, or share plugins for blace)
• Start building of shared housing marketplace to put an end to homelessness (a non-blockchain variant has already been built and is in use by a housing service provider in Los Angeles, California)
• Engage with other community projects for new use cases

KPI

• Number of transactions among all marketplaces
• Number of marketplaces using blace
• Number of commercial licenses sold
• Number of contributors
• Number of plugins

Budget breakdown

Category Amount in USD

Labor (at an average rate of $4,000 / mo.) totaling $112000:

- 4 Plutus Developers (full-time for 5 mo.)

- 1 Project Manager (full-time for 5 mo.)

- 1 Frontend Dev (full-time for 3 mo.)

Tech services (hosting, GCP, GSuite etc.) 1 year: $2200

Marketing: $1500

Total: $115700

Project sustainability

While the team is committed to maintain and extend blace post-launch, once the first marketplace is launched through blace, the project will be open sourced for the community to adopt and improve on.

Marketplaces that utilize blace need to either open-source their marketplace or purchase a commercial license. Commercial licenses offset the cost incured through maintenance and running costs.

Related proposals by the team

Win-Win Dispute Resolution: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/368353-48088

Skill certification for Mediators: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/368777-48088

Proof of identity for mediators: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/368367-48088))

Gravatar for ADA Wallets: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/367448-48088

Other projects

Cardano in South L.A.: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/367936-48088

Scam Alert: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/367015-48088