In recent funds many small Dapps haven't been funded (but approved), as proposals with high budgets requests exhausted funds.

At least 20 novel and viable small decentralized applications get built of top of Cardano in a short time horizon, attracting new users.

To assess the challenge we will be asking ourselves: Did our efforts manage to attract users to the platform? Did our efforts result in new, viable applications built on top of Cardano?

Let an "application output" and an "application transaction" be an outputs and transactions that use the applications' script addresses; and an "application token" be a token that's issued by the application.

Usage of applications developed during the challenge:

• Number/growth of application output
• Number/growth of application transactions
• Total volume of Ada involved in application transactions
• Total/growth of resource usage by applications
• Number/growth of distinct addresses mentioned in application transactions

If the application uses tokens:

• Number/growth of application tokens
• Number/growth of distinct addresses holding application tokens
• Viability of applications developed during the challenge:
• How many of the applications are still being developed in the next 3 months?
• How many of the applications made a profit for their creators?
• How many of the teams which built the applications grew in the next 3 months?
• How many of the teams which built the applications built (or plan to build) another application?

This challenge is designed to create a parallel challenge for "Dapps and Integrations" reserved to small projects that can deliver finalized products with a limited amount of budget in a short time horizon.

Therefore, some specific guidelines are introduced, in addition to those of the traditional "Dapps & Integrations", for the submission of a proposal in this challenge:

• The budget should not exceed $10000
• They should be complete projects, usable by end users on delivery
• The delivery should take place within 3 months from funding

As the release of smart contracts is imminent, it may make sense to create a specific challenge that will ensure at least 20 new applications to attract new users to Cardano in the next 3 months.

Guiding questions

What are the key applications that underpin the application ecosystem on other platforms?

What are the most profitable or most used applications on other ecosystems?

What needs do users of Cardano have that could be solved by new applications?

What applications deliver the highest amount of value with the least amount of technical sophistication?

Potential directions

Swaps, simple variants (multi-party etc.)

Escrow, simple variants

Integrations with existing products