DLT Classification offside the hype

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Summary for Community Advisors:

1)   Our Proposal in a Nutshell: The DLT/Blockchain space is currently full of hype and toxic lobbying. We want to contribute to objectivizing the discussion by establishing a science-based classification framework. While working on our fund 6-funded DLT360 Risk & Opportunity Radar, this will be part of our second core-product: The DLT360 Blockchain Monitoring & Rating Framework. For this purpose we need an inter-disciplinary classification scheme for auditing the major Layer-1 protocols. This proposal aims to establish a sound classification scheme for the major technical properties, e.g. regarding consensus, security, decentralization, scalability, cost and interoperability.

2)    Impact: We are placing this proposal under the Miscellaneous Challenge, because its orientation is highly inter-disciplinary and it does not fit into any other baskets of Fund 7. Just as the DLT360 Risk & Opportunity Radar, the DLT360 Blockchain Monitoring & Rating Framework will provide great value to the Cardano Community (and also to professional users of Cardano). These two DLT360 core-products are the basis for resulting improvement proposals and for establishing tangible, inter-disciplinary Implementation Blueprints and Consulting Artifacts. We are furthermore convinced that the advantages of Cardano will become rather visible when applying a solid, data & fact based rating framework. For more details about DLT360 please refer to our WEB-Site and/or to our Business Model Canvas section below.

3)    Feasibility: This proposal is part of a bigger picture. Our DLT360 team has started its journey after being funded in fund 6 with one of our major services: The DLT360 Risk and Opportunity Radar. Based on this funding, we have implemented a small operational core-team. We are furthermore growing an extended team of inter-disciplinary domain-experts from the Catalyst community, industry and academia for adding their knowledge on demand (For more details please refer to our WEB-Site and/or to our Business Model Canvas section below.).

4)  Audibility: Our Business Model Canvas section outlined below contains major activities, milestones, deliverables, roadmap and costs. Due to various projects being interlinked and due to the overall complexity of proper planning and tracking, we do this in our DLT360 - MIRO environment. We offer on-demand visits to these MIRO boards for deeper-going discussions during the assessment phase. Due to already running a fund 6-funded project, we are part of the Catalyst Coordinator Process and acquainted with the relevant reporting processes.

Please note: We are applying a best-practice Business Model Canvas approach. We have added tags to our details below, hoping that the Catalyst-funded 'The Great Filter' application will be able to identifying the required sections in our text.

Business Model Canvas - Section containing further details(Our Canvas is maintained in DLT360 MIRO environment, access upon request)

This proposal is part of a bigger picture. Our DLT360 team has started its journey after being funded in fund 6 for one of our major services: The DLT360 Risk and Opportunity Radar. Fund 6 is about establishing this foundational framework for professional risk (and opportunity) management. This new fund 7 proposal will allow us to start the work on our second core-product: The DLT360 Blockchain Monitoring & Rating Framework. Points 1 to 5 of our Business Model Canvas are therefore explaining the bigger picture (where this proposal is a part of), while points 6 to 9 and the listed activities, milestones, deliverables, roadmap and costs are kept specific to this project.

1. Customer Segments / Target Groups

• Primary Clients: CARDANO Community (including Catalyst, Foundation, IOG and others)
• Secondary Clients: DLT-relevant public, selected high-quality YouTube channels, universities, regulatory bodies, industry clients

1. Value Proposition

Dependent of the above listed customer-segments, we see our value proposition as following (more details in MIRO):

• Enabling science-based auditing, monitoring and rating of major blockchain ecosystems
• Providing contextualised inputs to professional risk-management frameworks (e.g. ISO 31000 compliant)
• Providing inputs to creating value-adding Implementation Blueprints and Consulting Artifacts

1. Distribution Channels

Depending on customer-segment and corresponding value-proposition, the following delivery channels will be used:

• Quarterly online-live and video-recorded reporting
• Based on case-by-case agreement: In-person presentations e.g. on selected community events or summits
• Intergration into various Implementation Blueprints and Consulting Artifacts

1. Customer Relationship

Currently we do our DLT360 startup-activities based on investments from Heinz Gassner, our core team and the first funding received from Catalyst fund 6. With this basic funding we will demonstrate the value of our work. Fund 7 will hopefully provide us with various funded projects for expanding our activities and for growing our flexible and scalable team. Based on this demonstrated value, we are aiming for more stable service and consulting agreements. The relationship with outside-Catalyst clients will be based on longer-term service agreements, on project-based service agreements and on charges for different access-layers to our work.

1. Revenue Structure

During this early stage of our startup, we are fully focusing on servicing the Cardano Community. The fund 6 funding of our basic DLT360 Risk & Opportunity Radar will lead to delivering 2 quarterly reporting events (one planned for March and one for June 2022). This project will provide additional content, but will not be separately considered in terms of a revenue stream. We are applying a careful 'Lean Startup' approach during our journey and will plan, check and iteratively adjust our Business Model according to our learnings, all documented in our MIRO environment. For the time after Q2 2022, we see the following approaches regarding securing sufficient revenue streams for maintaining and growing our services as well as the required expert team and network:

• We have posted a specific Fund 8 Challenge Setting Proposal for simplified and more reliable funding of such continuous service-formats to the community
• For outside-Catalyst-clients we plan to implement a revenue-ladder-model with basic content free of charge (as appetiser) and stepping-up subscription models for additional access
• Specific Implementation Blueprints, Consulting Artifacts and specific in-depth research will be charged separately

1. Key Activities (now very specific to this project)

This project requires the following specific key-activities

• Analysis of status-quo, research within DLT-world and academia
• Interaction with the various other Catalyst projects
• Basic design of a technical DLT Classification Framework
• Domain-expert interaction and validation of the concept
• Integration into written reports
• Integrating this into our quarterly DLT360 live & video reporting package
• Reporting co-moderation with the required domain experts

1. Key Resources

DLT360 is built by a small core-team and a flexible team of highly renowned domain experts as well as a scalable network of contributors from the Cardano community, from academia and from industry. For this specific project we will need the following key resources

• Overall lead and representation (handled by Heinz Gassner)
• Project Management: Coordination of execution, collaborating within our team and with external teams & network members (covered by Jonas Weinberger and Guilherme Peirera)
• Back-office work (assistant job, located in Sao Paulo, Brussels and Malta)
• Researchers: Interdisciplinary team, mainly composed of community experts, alumni-network and students from DLT-related study programs
• Domain Expert(s): Quality check of content (see the current status on our website)

For an always up-to-date-info about our team, please consult our WEB-Site:

• Heinz Gassner, Malta, with more than 30 years of industry-leadership experience: http://linkedin.com/in/heinz-gassner-9540a241
• Jonas Weinberger, Brussels, Student and assistant at the Brussels School of Governance:
• http://linkedin.com/in/jonas-weinberger-0b14801ba
• Guilherme Peirera, Sao Paulo, Student and assistant at SENAI Institute: http://linkedin.com/in/guilherme-pereira-da-silva-977a361a3
• Backoffice resource to be defined
• Additional experts and contributors (see our WEB-Site)
• Dr. Joshua Ellul acting as Senior Academic Advisor, Director of DLT Center at University of Malta: http://linkedin.com/in/joshuaellul

1. Key Partners

We are partnering with other Catalyst projects and proposers and outside-Cardano actors. Please find them always up-to-date on our WEB-Site.

1. Cost Structure

This project is a major element of our second DLT360 core-product: The DLT360 Blockchain Monitoring and Rating Framework. We are approaching this mission very cost-conscious smartly by integrating as many elements form other initiatives from inside and outside the Cardano ecosystem and by utilizing university internships in a responsible win-win way. We are convinced that the community will see the value of these activities, so that we can all together examine, how to transform this into a continuous service format later-on. Based on our listed key-activities and key-resources, we plan with the following costs (please note that we are in progress of setting up a formal company body and need to calculate according to strict European tax regulations):

• Project Management (20 hours for USD 50/h = USD 1.000)
• Backoffice work (25 hours for USD 20/h = USD 500)
• Basic research (internships and student projects, USD 2.500)
• Analysis and integration (80 hours for USD 50/h = USD 4.000)
• Quality checking by domain experts (20 hours for USD 100/h = USD 2.000)

This list of cost is not including the work of Heinz Gassner (contributed by Heinz at this early stage of the DLT360 startup).

Roadmap, Milestones and Deliverables

Please find below the major activities and milestones for this project. Due to the linkage with other activities of the DLT360 project and due to the lack of a graphics-integration-support in IDEAscale, all details are maintained in our MIRO environment. The plan below is just an orientational overview-listing:

• FEB 2022 Getting started, project formation
• FEB, MAR 2022. Status-quo research, building the network, collecting material
• MAR 2022 Drafting the generic, technology-oriented DLT Classification Framework, first expert-quality checks
• 3-Months MILESTONE / Deliverable: Concept of a generic, technology-oriented DLT Classification Framework
• APR-JUN 2022 deepening the research, analyzing, integrating, forming the framework
• JUL 2022. Quality checking and review
• 6-Months MILESTONE / Deliverable: Part of DLT360 live reporting to the community
• JUL-AUG 2022: Final reports and. integration into DLT360 Blockchain Monitoring & Rating Framework
• 12-Months Success: We see this as integral part of our quarterly DLT360 reporting to the community

KPI Progress and Success Measurement

• KPI 1: Status-quo research and forming of partnerships & network - progress (0-100%)
• KPI 2: Design of technical classification framework - progress (0-100%)
• KPI 3: Quality rating of results (0-10)
• KPI 3: Integration in various reporting formats - progress (0-100%)
• KPI 4: Result Presentation feedback NPS (1-10)