Smart Contracts: Royalty Payments

Provide smart contract service incl. automated royalty calcs & dispersements on a cost-effective basis for PBEs & organisations globally

Legal: 11 yrs in corporate & commercial legal work (incl. contracts), PR, & advocacy Busines Intelligence: 8 yrs BusDev: 7 yrs in SME space IT Dev: 13 yrs DevOps: 9 years Banking: 15 yrs incl. treasury, capital management, & regulatory exp. (nat. & intl)

[IMPACT]

LTS currently has two confirmed customers and two major POC projects in play:

Confirmed:

• manage the royalty payments for an animated show produced in Nigeria and South Africa, which has been signed by a major international cartoon channel. Total show value +/- USD$20 million. Project would handle the royalties for show airing and any subsequent merchandise sales
• manage the royalties and payments for the 25+ participants in a major documentary series (pending final show approval). Contract would manage the payments to participants in 20+ countries across five continents to ensure each is paid the same amount and give them contract protection

POCs:

• Manage the royalty payments for a large entertainment segment across South Africa that currently experiences mismanagement and delays in payment of said royalties. This project aims to supplement then replace the existing payment repatriation process, with the total market worth approximately R500 - R750 million per year (USD$33 to USD$50 million). As these entertainment royalties are accumulated and dispersed every year, this would be an ongoing concern, providing entertainers with security and transparency around their payments.

• Implement smart contract payment solution for an entire team in a major professional league in North America. Payments include base game payments plus performance targets. If successful, the POC will be carried over to a second team in the league in 2023, with a proposal made to the entire league for adoption.

LTS is a going business concern, and requires funding to expand our development team to deliver on these POCs, which in turn will be used as a basis for our confirmed customers. LTS's business aim is to deliver an affordable smart contract service for performance-based earners and organisations to better handle their contract requirements. With specific attention to the South African POC leg, we have been mapping and planning this project since mid-2020.

With actual business contracts and POC opportunities in place, servicing projects totaling over USD$50 million in yearly revenue, LTS is well placed to deliver an effective smart contract solution that will address trust and transparency issues in multiple markets in South Africa and North America.

Our solutions would provide a working model for the sports industry, where players are regularly subjected to delayed payments based on manual calculations of performance-based targets, as well as complicated tiering of compensation. Currently, the National Basketball Association spends USD$600,000 annually on contract compliance for player payments.

We currently have one smart contract developer committed, however with the scope of the POCs and existing opportunities, we need to expand in this area.

Our proposal targets multiple KPIs in the B2B:B2C challenge

• A Feasibility Study / Proof of Concept / Minimum Viable Product that could be built on Cardano - CHECK
• An existing business-ready product or service that could be converted to run on Cardano - CHECK
• A business-oriented training or consultancy service - CHECK
• A prototype or demo in operational environment - CHECK
• A creation of model of a system or subsystem - CHECK

Our main challenges are around:

• Speed of delivery: the POC/MVP for the sporting environment is time-sensitive. This is a professional sports league in North America, and a working MVP solution is required by the end of September, to run alongside existing systems before the end of the
• Adoption: in the South African royalties space, there is a danger of non-acceptance of new technologies, even though it will definitely solve a raft of issues. Education and clarity will be required
• Securing of additional skills: with very little time to start on our solutions, securing the right smart contract developer skills will be a challenge.

[FEASIBILITY]

Planned delivery milestones (based on successful funding):

• POC 1 (North America):
• begin logic development of contract processes (March 15, 2022)
• consultation with sports team begins April 4th 2022
• pre-MVP delivery by August 1st
• MVP launch week of Sept 7th

• POC 2 (South Africa):
• contract consultation with entertainers begins March 24th 2022
• first royalty payments schedule by end of April 2022
• integration with automated reporting by mid-August 2022
• MVP of royalty smart contract offering by Sept 7th 2022

• Animation Customer: show data expected mid-2023. Individual payments confirmed one month after, MVP of payment dispersement to be in place at that time (based on POC work throughout 2022).
• Documentary Customer: show production confirmation expected mid-2023. Individual payments confirmed one month after, MVP of payment dispersement to be in place at that time (based on POC work throughout 2022).

Requested amount: 95,000 (USD conversion to ZAR at 15.5 to 1)

Additional smart contract developers - 40,000 (ZAR 620,000)

Full time customer consultation team - 20,000 (ZAR 310,000)

Project Management - 15,000 (ZAR 232,500)

IT Infrastructure - 10,000 (ZAR 155,500)

Administration incl documentation - 5,000 (ZAR 77,500)

Sundry expenses - 5,000 (ZAR 77,500)

Founders and executive team are bootstrapping, with all funding going to additional skills to accomplish goals.

Legal, Comms, and PR Specialist: Sade Lekena (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sade-lekena-bb090524/). Specialises in contract and PR law, will oversee customer royalty and repayment contracts, direct overall company communication strategy, and ensure legal compliance regarding international remittances

Director of Business Development: Les Allen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/les-allen-2659b91/). Currently responsible for negotiating and closing of POC opportunities, secured the first two actual customer commitments

Banking and Regulatory Specialist: Jeanette de Beer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanette-de-beer-a6b7806/). Team advisory on banking and repayment regulations and procedures nationally and internationally.

CTO and Chief Development: Ricardo Carvalho (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricardo-carvalho-hooligan-development/). Significant experience with platform development, credentials include the VOD platform for Discovery Channel.

[AUDITABILITY]

There is a project management provision for the entire POC process responsible for tracking and adherence to milestones, which will include:

• Customer consultation and liaison
• Product development
• Testing
• Product delivery
• Post-implementation support

We have earmarked a major public event in the first week of September to demonstrate our working MVPs. All milestones will be balanced in lieu of delivery at that event

Success for this project will be the delivery of a working smart contract platform that allows performance-based earners to have trust in the contracts they enter into. Success in the sports POC space will mean the adoption of a smart contract process by a major sports team, which will spotlight the use case of smart contracts for professional athletes.

Success will further be entrenched with a working smart contract covering the performers and artists in our two client commitments - to spotlight that creators will be paid based on their outputs, with trusted smart contract solutions, will further enhance the value of smart contracts in the marketplace.

When it comes to the South African POC - the entertainment industry in South Africa has long been the victim of fraud, mismangement, and lack of visibility when it comes to royalty payments. "Done" will be when a completely transparent royalty collection and dispersement system that is automated and trusted can continue to provide security to performance-based earners in this space.

While this is an entirely new project, we would expect to continue working on the platform and would submit proposals for funding in future phases.