The Littercoin Stake Pool

At OpenLitterMap.com, several people are downloading our app every day to help map and collect data on litter and plastic pollution. Thanks to Fund 4, we have debugged and improved our app and we are now transitioning from the age of debugging to the land of new features.

We are developing a data collection experience to unlock societies largely unexplored data collection capacity. But empowering people to map is not enough. We have tokenised the data collection process (for the first time) in order to create an incentive. This will accelerate the global collection of data about the environment when we can give Littercoin economic value and utility.

The Littercoin Stake Pool will accumulate rewards in a Smart Contract to give each Littercoin value in ada.

Littercoin is the easiest way to get started with crypto. Instead of signing up to an exchange and parting with cash, users simply help collect data about the environment to earn rewards. We then teach users how to set up a wallet and make their first transaction or we plan on facilitating the transaction on their behalf.

However, our users are not typically interested in cryptocurrency, they just want to fix the litter problem. Therefore, we have taken careful steps to make Littercoin different from every other token giving it properties that will make it appealing to our users. Our token will not be listed on any exchange therefore Littercoin is an aspeculative "non-tradable" asset. We have decided that Littercoin can only be spent in pre-approved zero waste stores and other stakeholders in the climate & circular economy (eg. bike repair shops). These pre-approved climate friendly businesses will be *the only ones* who can exchange Littercoin for ada from a smart contract. Giving Littercoin value in ada gives retailers a reason to accept our token because they can attract new happy discounted customers who are being rewarded for their work, and the retailers get free publicity from us. Mapping litter is important to understand the geography of the problem and this will become a powerful tool in the war on waste. However, a far more proactive approach can be found in incentivising participation in the circular economy to tackle waste and climate change at source. Our knowledgeable users understand this and will welcome discounted access to the low carbon products and services that match their values. Our superusers regularly go out picking up litter and now they are empowered to record what they are finding. By proving they are doing the work, we want to recognise and reward their behaviour that will inspire others to get involved.

The governance and economics of this could be controlled by a DAO but for now, our community is openly helping shape the development of this ecosystem and token based voting is not needed at this time but we are open it adding it and decentralising the governance and economics of our platform later.

This budget is needed to create the Littercoin Staking Pool, The Littercoin Smart Contract, attract delegates, and attract our pioneering zero-waste stakeholders who will earn the rewards via our litter picking community in different parts of the world where our users are already active.

As there are a small number of cardano developers available, we will need some time to experiment with plutus to develop an MVP and get ready to review the code of others. The result of this proposal will bring new business use cases to crypto, new open source code and tools to Cardano and citizen science, and new people and businesses into the our communities.

Timeline:

1 month: Pool online and accepting delegates (Q1 2022).

3 months: Launch of the Littercoin Smart Contract which will accumulate rewards from the pool.

6 months: First Littercoin Transaction.

12 months: Several people are now using Littercoin which is starting to grow.

Initial Estimated Budget Breakdown:

10% will be needed for the time to set up and maintain a pool

5% will be put into the Littercoin Stake Pool
5% will be put into the Littercoin Smart Contract

50% will be put into smart contract development and the development of OpenLitterMap app + web to facilitate transactions and guide new users. This is necessary to make our pool valuable.

20% will be put into marketing to attract more people into Littercoin and Staking on our pool. For example, we are going to start giving free live coding lessons back to Cardano community for supporting us. This will attract more people to our community/pool and help improve the skills in the ecosystem.

10% will be put into operational expenses (hosting, miscellaneous)

Advantages of voting for this proposal

- We are eliminating 2 of the biggest barriers to entry for crypto (cash & exchanges) and we are bringing new people and businesses into the ecosystem.

- Support the pioneering development of an open source platform to map and measure the worlds waste.

- We have several partnerships with universities and corporates who are using and contributing to the development of our platform.

- We are experimenting with new economic ideas and legitimate non-FUD climate friendly use cases for crypto.

- With the right balance of data collection and now an incentive, we can begin to unlock societies largely unexplored data collection capacity which is the missing link to solve urgent global problems like plastic pollution.

- Prove to the world that Project Catalyst is about disruptive new ideas that current systems cannot produce.

- We are going to start giving weekly beginner and intermediate free coding lessons as a way to give back to the Cardano community for supporting us. Learn how to build and improve open source code with us across web, mobile and the integration of smart contacts.

- We have a lot more ideas to create value for society with dApps. By voting for our proposal you are supporting the development of our ability to create value for the community. This is our first project on Cardano. We have many more ideas!