PanDAO: Focus on interoperability

Background

This funding request is an integral part of our roadmap, which got started with the success of our fund 6 proposal: 'osNFTs for science popularization'.

Our project is built on Cardano (dAPP, NFTs, smart contracts) and Arweave (NFT data and web hosting), and we are at a stage where it is essential to start tackling cross-chain governance and treasury management. This proposal will give us the resources required to build governance components, which will be completely open-source.

Due to the exponential rise in popularity of NFT-based projects, we believe that these tools will be an important contribution to the Cardano ecosystem. We will be taking extra care in ensuring that code is modular and general so that other projects with cross-chain needs can plug them into their systems.

Team

Core team:

• Albert Feghaly: Project leader and blockchain developer (Plutus smart contracts).
• Louis Gendron: Web and blockchain developer (Arweave NFT data storage and permaweb hosting).
• Jordan Quenneville: Backend developer.
• Jack Bauer: Science and art communicator, osNFT and logo design.
• Yahya Benslimane: Networking coordinator within the academic world.

Advisors:

• Roger Palou: Academic advisor.
• Tariq Daouda: Infrastructure and AI expert.
• Maude Dumont-Lagacé: Scientific advisor and art/design expert.

More information about the team can be found at https://intellart.ca/#/team

Project tracking

You can find/reach us at:

• https://intellart.ca
• https://github.com/intellart

Weekly updates are and will continue to be pushed to https://intellart.ca/#/weeklyUpdate in a very succinct manner to allow for fast progress tracking and auditability. Moreover, starting from January 2022 we will be writing short blog articles on intellart.medium.com to let the community in on our successes, struggles and evolution.

Purpose of this proposal

Charles Hoskinson very often talks about the importance of cross-chain communication and collaboration. It is very useful to understand the strengths and specialties of different technologies to be able to leverage their optimal use-cases. When designing our approach for the 'Open Science' concept, we had this in mind. We were drawn to the Cardano community for many reasons, but mostly for its serious focus on governance, robustness and long-term vision. This satisfied the first half of our needs. The second half included data permanence, NFT standards for data and metadata relationships and a web hosting experience resistant to central points of failure. The Arweave ecosystem was the answer to that second part.

We also needed:

• A DAO, to gradually start outsourcing governance to the community.
• A treasury connecting the osNFT marketplace on Cardano to PubWeave, our decentralized scientific publication platform on Arweave.

Having 2 DAOs and 2 treasuries, each living separately on their respective blockchains and communicating in a 'hackish' sort of way was far from ideal. Also, what if we needed access to some service provided by a third blockchain ? Or a fourth ? The main challenge was to have a single decentralized entity (DAO) that controls one treasury, with seamless communication between all blockchain agents.

As mentioned, we plan to create a toolset for anyone who wishes to use these tools. We are aware that some developers extensively use IPFS and Filecoin, which is why we will build the tools with this support in mind. The modular aspect of the toolset would allow a straightforward interface with whichever data storage blockchains one wishes to use. We might even build one for IPFS/Filecoin ourselves if some funds remain and we have completed all the other requirements!

Development will be as future-proof as possible, because we're still in the early stages of these technologies, and new decentralized storage solutions might come along at any point in time. Having a modular system would have the benefit of only requiring a new interface to be built for this new hypothetical technology, while keeping the rest of the code very much useable.

Relevance

Cross-chain issues are a trending topic, but we still lack well-established network technologies that can do this at scale. Efforts are certainly being made, but they are either too broad, or too new. One such technology is pNetwork ( https://p.network/ ), an ambitious DeFi-focused project with the aim to connect multiple blockchains for cross-transferring assets, NFTs, and even DAOs. However, it does not support Cardano, and there is nothing we could find regarding decentralized data storage either. Moreover, they seem to have been the target of a recent hack worth $12M ( https://decrypt.co/81301/defi-bridging-protocol-pnetwork-suffers-12-million-hack ), which attests once more to the need of developing code that can be formally verified. In the Cardano community we are fortunate to have the Plutus Framework that tremendously helps with building secure apps.

A fairly new but interesting project, Koii Network ( https://koii.network/ ) has a whole section dedicated to cross-chain transfers of NFTs. They recommend starting by minting and storing NFT data on Arweave, where data and smart contracts are linked. This is known as the atomic NFT standard ( https://atomicnft.com/ ) which adds another layer of uniqueness and security to NFT data. We have been exposed to the Koii community and Koii Network's CEO through Arweave, and we look forward to what they will offer the crypto community.

Their solution solves part of the problem, and we have started using their technology for NFT standardization and cross-chain capabilities. This leaves governance and treasury management. These 2 aspects will be our main focus for PanDAO.

Impact

DAO infrastructure on Cardano is still lacking compared to Ethereum, but is definitely progressing, and the community is starting to develop Cardano-native solutions fast. We will be looking closely at the progress, and look for potential collaborations along the way. What we are building extends beyond what exits on other chains, and would extend the use-case for DAOs not just on Cardano, but for the crypto community at large, placing Cardano at the centre of innovation. Cardano is widely known for its focus on security and privacy, and that would make it the perfect place to build a DAO for treasury management and decision-making.

Execution

Our 3-step roadmap for this submission:

• 3 months -- Backend skeleton is built; Start testing NFT data storage system interfaces; Website for hosting tutorials and guides is up.
• 6 months -- More than 20 tutorials, videos and guides made; Arweave integration is completed; More than 5 DAOs are testing the platform's functionalities
• 12 months -- More than 25 DAOs start using the platform; IPFS integration started; Iterations and enhancements well underway.

Budget

• Senior blockchain developer -- 65$/hour * 40h/week * 16 weeks = 38,400 $
• Junior smart contracts engineer -- 50$/hour * 40h/week * 5 weeks = 10,000 $
• UI web designer -- 30$/hour * 40h/week * 4 weeks = 4,800 $
• Educational content creator -- 25$/hour * 30h/week * 6 weeks = 4,500 $

Total = 57,700 $