Raising small ghosts, SPOs and devs

To achieve greater decentralization and resilience in the blockchain through sustainability/feasibility for small SPOs and devs.

Small SPOs and developers have more options, services and tools to get delegates and funding + Greater distribution in block minting.

• Number of onboarded devs outside Catalyst funding
• Number of onboarded teams outside Catalyst funding
• Number of pools created*
• Number of delegates over time*
• Number of pools retiring over time (0, 3, 6 and 12 months after this challenge)
• Ratio between retiring pools/total operating pools over time (0, 3, 6 and 12 months after this challenge)
• Percentage of delegation distribution in ALL pools over time (0, 3, 6 and 12 months after funding)

*Metrics should be evaluated for pools benefiting from proposals funded by this challenge

Cardano received the "ghostchain" nickname by many skeptics, despite the number of SPOs, developers in the Plutus Pioneer Program, community engagement in social media, and several other metrics saying otherwise.

Many in our community embraced the term "ghost" in a positive way. Some of these "ghosts" are extremely dedicated and talented people, but they need and deserve greater reach and support in the community.

Since Shelley's launch, one of the issues that has created long and fruitless debates has been about the sustainability and the difficulty of small SPOs raise delegation versus large pool groups (like Binance), SPOs with multi-pools (like 1PCT) and SPOs influencers (I won't quote them, but you know who they are). I want to make it clear that this is all in the rules of the game, but it doesn't mean that it is good for decentralization.

We know that the K parameter and pledge are important for defining the theoretical number of SPOs, but marketing capacity and social outreach distort the playing field, harming and overshadowing small SPOs. 

How can we level the playing field with sustainable, rational and aove all, free market incentives?

Furthermore, Catalyst has been an amazing funding option for developers in the Cardano community, but the 3-month cycle of each Fund can dampen innovation. Some projects need quick funding sources. Some projects could be funded by the community itself. Not every good proposal fits a challenge. There is demand for alternative funding models, so why not create space for them outside Catalyst?

Each team can request up to 25% of the total $100,000 USD budget

E.g.

• Team A with 2 proposals of $12,500 USD
• Team B with 5 proposals of $5,000 USD
• Team C with 1 proposal of $25,000 USD
• Team D with 1 proposal of $15,000 USD + 1 proposal of $10,000 USD

Due to the experimental and new nature of the challenge I think it is appropriate to set a relatively low budget ($100,000 USD) but a sufficient amount to address a problem that has been regularly debated in the community and which to date there is no clear solution. The idea of limiting a team to requesting up to 25% of the budget is to allow for a greater diversity of ideas and approaches to solving the problem.

It is important to note that 25% is the maximum, any amount below that can be requested. This means that the challenge will have space for at least 4 proposals from different teams, which guarantees greater chances for teams with less popularity and that may be overshadowed by more popular teams in the community.

Potential Directions

• Marketing teams to promote small SPOs
• Alternative Reward Models (FISO, NFT aidrops)
• Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing platforms
• Creating advanced filters for selecting small SPOs
• Multi delegation research
• Explorers and adaptation of wallets to build multi delegation portfolios

In this video Sebastien Guillemot( Former co-VP of Engineering at Emurgo and dcSpark CTO and co founder) explains the importance of pools distribution(consensus distribution) to increase reliability and assurances for users and dapps on the blockchain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwlN3DZvmgQ