Ferrum's Staking as a Service MS1&2

Ferrum will bring its battle tested staking solutions to Cardano. W/ 1/2 billion in lifetime TVL & over 150 clients, they're best in class.

Ferrum's staking solutions have been around since 2018 w/ over 150 clients across Ethereum, Polygon, BSC, & Avalanche. Having received a grant from Algorand the ASA compatible version has been shipped for auditing. These contracts have accrued 1/2 billion in TVL w/out an exploit.

[IMPACT]

Staking as a Service
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O2a9U-4WRNXiaBBWw9pFK4itpRoFefzB/view?usp=sharing

Our Staking as a Service products have been used by over 100 projects in the space. Most of these have been repeat customers. Through the hundreds of staking contracts we have deployed, we have been responsible for a lifetime TVL of over half a billion dollars and an ATH of over 100 million.

These products are fully audited white label solutions, deployed on the client's website with their brand assets. These solutions add an immense amount of value in regard to token utility for both early stage and established projects.

Traditional Staking
Projects can incentivize communities to stake and lock their native token and earn rewards in their native token at the end of the staking period. This creates instant utility while rewarding long term holders.

VIP StakingVIP Staking allows projects to implement a whitelist feature. This will enable the project to allow only whitelisted addresses to participate in the staking pool. These addresses could be whitelisted based on a number of factors including but not limited to:

• Token holdings
• Pre Sale/IDO Participants
• Holding a particular NFT
• Usage of their dApp
• Engagement with their social networks/community

Liquidity StakingLiquidity staking allows folks to take their Liquidity Pool (LP) tokens and stake them for what would likely end up being far greater rewards.

Multi-Asset StakingContributors to these types of staking pools may be rewarded in alternative assets to the ones they stake.

NFT Collection StakingArtists and their fan-base can create staking pools for NFTs as a means of rewarding their supporters who hold their NFTs with exclusive collections, VIP events, etc, thus strengthening the bond between the artist and their collectors.

We use an iterative and lean approach toward integration and development in general. We focus heavily on quicker deployments internally to incorporate feedback, then start detailed usability, security, functionality and reliability testing to capture any gaps in our initial approach. We quickly implement this feedback and then get the product in the hands of our customers when it passes our standards for performance and security.

Once the product is in the customer’s hands, we utilize an effective feedback loop to continuously improve our product by prioritizing the feature enhancements and bug fixes based on the priority of the feedback we are receiving.

In order to integrate with Cardano we’ll be utilizing the same principles. We will first scope out the integration, then start with a shell app version of the deployment that will explore the possibilities of the functional integration. Based on the results of this initial effort, we’ll identify high traction and demand areas to prioritize and build further into a production ready product. We will then proceed to develop and deploy the integration through our deployment cycle. Dev -> QA -> UAT -> Staging -> Launch.

We will repeat this process to integrate the rest of our product suite and future products as well.

After the integration is complete we will have a very strong go to market strategy. This will entail but is not limited to working with Market Across (top marketing/PR firm in the space), Influencer marketing, interviews, AMAs, etc.

The main risks that any staking protocol faces are that of security breaches. We will implement architectural and OpSec security measures to ensure the security of the protocol.

This includes: Node architecture and related infrastructure updates. For example, the signing of withdrawals is often centralized. Ferrum Network has updated the Node Signing Architecture and related Infrastructure (v2.0.0) to enable decentralized Node signing. This major update will provide additional security and reliability layers while allowing stakeholders like Cardano to run Generator and Validator nodes for withdrawals. The ability for more stakeholders to run Generator and Validator nodes brings state-of-the-art decentralization to the our products. This major upgrade will be pivotal in improving architectural security while maintaining the protocols reliability.

[FEASIBILITY]

Milestone #1: Build, Deploy, and Internally QA Staking Shell App

Details of what will be delivered in milestone:

• Build and deploy a shell app that will allow traditional staking including:

1. Deployment of pool
2. Staking Period
3. Mandatory Lock
4. Early Withdrawal
5. Redistribution of Early Withdrawal
6. Maturity

• Share Staking shell app with internal team for QA and incorporate QA feedback

Acceptance criteria:

• UI deployment for staking
• Smart Contract Deployment for traditional staking
• Cardano compatible wallet integration

1. Ability to proceed through staking flow as described below:
2. Ability to deploy the pool.
3. Ability to set and test staking Periods
4. Ability to set mandatory lock and early withdrawal
5. Ability to set and test reward redistribution of Early Withdrawal
6. Ability to set and test rewards distribution for full maturity

• Internal QA feedback incorporation

Milestone #2: Testing by Cardano and Audit Submission - Staking

Details of what will be delivered in milestone:

• Share Staking deployment with Cardano to get their feedback and then incorporate it.
• Share Staking smart contract with an auditing firm in parallel to above step

Cardano team will test the staking tech and provide their feedback / report bugs (if any). The feedback provided by Cardano will be reviewed by Ferrum team. Ferrum team will implement the mutually agreed upon feedback and share the staking tech with Cardano to approve and sign off the milestone.

Acceptance criteria:

• Cardano provides feedback
• Ferrum incorporates the mutually agreed upon feedback provided by Cardano
• Cardano signs off on shell app post their feedback incorporation
• Submission of staking smart contract to a third party auditing firm

The funds from the grant will be used to fund the allocation of engineering, project management, support and executive resources to integrate Ferrum's Staking as a Service solutions with Cardano over the next quarter and to support the adoption and acceleration of the evolution of this product on Cardano in the following quarters.

We feel that this is the best path forward for Ferrum to be able to justify prioritizing this integration. With a small but quickly growing team, we need to be cognizant of our backlog of items and how this affects our overall roadmap. However, a relationship that entails the aforementioned items, we believe, is crucial to the execution of our overall mission to break down barriers to mass adoption and to the overall success of Ferrum Network. On the same token, through this relationship we intend to add an immense amount of value to and aid in the expansion of Cardano!

Naiem Yeganeh, PHD - Founder, CEO and Lead Developer

Having worked as a software engineer at the likes of Microsoft and Amazon to leading a core machine learning team at Bloomberg, Naiem is the mastermind behind the products at Ferrum. His technical prowess has laid the foundation for Ferrum’s success.

Email: Naiem.Yeganeh@Ferrum.Network

Ian Friend, ESQ - Co-Founder and COO

Ian worked for many years as a lawyer before meeting Naeim in 2018 and deciding to embark on the Ferrum journey. Ian is one of the most beloved founders in the space and is the face of the company. The confidence that he has been able to instill not just in the community but also the multitude of projects that Ferrum has advised is invaluable to the success of Ferrum.

Email: Ian.Friend@Ferrum.Network

Taha Abbasi - CSO

Taha has co-founded a multitude of companies including a wildly successful software development house called Web N App. Taha has worked as the CTO of multiple companies including National Geographic - Singapore and has led teams responsible for the Mars 2020 and Europa missions at NASA. Taha serves as the CSO at Ferrum and oversees the development of Ferrums wide array of products.

Email: Taha.Abbasi@Ferrum.Network

Salman Haider - Lead Blockchain Architect

Salman has a rich-experience of 7 years working in corporate companies from being a Software Engineer to CTO. He had worked with Etisalat (Largest Telecom Network in Asia) & Avanza Innovations as a Senior Blockchain Engineer & Project Head of UAE Trade Connect (UTC - National Trade Finance Platform) and implemented the Blockchain Solutions in 13+ National Banks of UAE. (https://www.etisalatdigital.ae/en/uae-trade-connect.jsp).

He has been working in Blockchain Space for past 2 years with an in-depth and diverse experience in developing & Architecting Complex Blockchain Systems. He also teaches Blockchain Architecture at Althash University as an Associate Professor & Faculty Chair.

Salman is serving as a Senior Blockchain Architect at Ferrum & providing cross-bridging solutions for EVM to Non-EVM Compatible chains. He is currently implementing the cross-bridge for Algorand & Casper Blockchains.

Email: Salman.haider@ferrum.network

Georges Chouchani - Smart Contract and Blockchain Architect

Georges started his career as a Data Science engineer and database security machine learning architect. In 2017, during the Bitcoin and Ethereum surge, he got interested in decentralization and permissionless trustless transactions on deterministic state machines.

Spending day and night learning everything about blockchain and smart contracts, participating in multiple hackathons, Georges started working with different projects on the Ethereum blockchain and then moving to the Cosmos Ecosystem using Rust to build different DeFi protocol smart contracts and finding solutions for building safer and more scalable communication protocols between smart contracts. George has worked with over 10 startups and projects in the blockchain sphere.

Georges is now serving as a Smart Contract and Blockchain Engineer at Ferrum Network building Rust smart contracts for staking and cross-bridging solutions on different blockchains.

Email: georgeschouchani1@gmail.com

Nichell Logue - EVP Operations

Nichell served as both a Project Manager and ultimately a Team Leader at CSC for over a decade before joining as the EVP of Ops at Ferrum. CSC ​​is the world’s leading provider of business, legal, tax, and digital brand services to companies around the globe. At Ferrum, Nichell plays an integral role in ensuring the internal operations of the company are running smoothly. She’s a genius in terms of creating SoPs for the otherwise overwhelming amount of moving pieces at the company and also heads up our HR department.

Email: Nichell.Logue@Ferrum.Network

Nick Odio - EVP Partnerships and Growth

Nick is a serial networker. From being heavily involved in the music industry, working with Grammy award winning artists, to leading field operations divisions for companies, Nick has extensive experience in areas related to strategic partnerships and relationship management, as well as strategic initiatives.

Nick.Odio@Ferrum.Network

[AUDITABILITY]

We use SCRUM tactics and run 2 week sprints. We will provide Catalyst with a open sourced Jira board to track the progress of each task and epic.

Ferrum Network vows to provide Progress Updates to the Foundation every month to any of the information provided above:

• Progress reports: detailing how our project is advancing, including any deviation from the initial plan or if you expect such deviations in the future.

• Financial reports: expenses and other items related to the use of our budget, including any deviation from the initial plan or any expected deviations.

This project will not be considered a success until the product is deployed to production and we are seeing projects across the ecosystem deploying the contracts. We would like to see 10s of millions in TVL in 2022.

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