Real world smart contract use case

[IMPACT]

CA summary

Our proposal is a feasibility study that will specifically focus on the use of smart contract blockchain solutions to deliver engagement to a company’s community of interest. The resultant whitepaper will set out any gaps in capability between smart contracts and business use cases, and how they can be resolved.

The whitepaper will be driven by the needs of the use case companies that are already on our client list.

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Introduction

It is incredibly exciting when technology reveals itself in solutions to problems that businesses never knew they had and enables new ways of commerce and trade.

Now is one of those moments.

The first step is to understand the gap between the capability of technology and the need of ‘business’, and to then close it.

This proposal is one of three feasibility studies that will research real world business use cases in the context of Cardano blockchain capability. Each will result in a blueprint for the steps for blockchain developers to deliver the business needs towards a future, proof of concept MVP.

The related proposals are:

Real world business process use case 

Proof of provenance use case

This proposal is to undertake a feasibility study and produce a whitepaper that will succinctly describe the need for smart contracts to deliver an innovative method of enabling a community of interest to participate in the decision making of a social impact organisation – that is, one that is purpose-led and is driving by its impact rather than profit.

We expect the whitepaper to produce a blueprint that will be used to create applications that will deliver on this specific use case.

The use cases

We will use two real world business use cases.

The first is a conversational AI technology start-up.

The company proposed for the use case needs to capture samples of speech from different dialect speakers around the world for use in conversational AI products.

A percentage of revenue will be set aside in an ‘impact pool’ for distribution to community causes identified by and voted on by the community of interest.

The community will be compensated for their participation by receiving a vote on the distribution of funds in an ‘impact pool’ to community causes.

The second is an impact focused angling retailer with revenues of US$75m that has grown both a large footprint of stores and an online presence, and recognises that the leisure activity they support has a mental health impact on communities. While they have a strong community of interest that supports their community impact goals, they need to understand how this can be further developed through the use of blockchain capability.

Similarly, this use case will seek to understand how Cardano blockchain capability can deliver on the impact goals of the founders.

In both cases we are dealing with the proof of trust that a group of stakeholders requires from a commercial company.

The constraint

It is not possible to show ‘proof of trust’ through traditional applications and ‘promises’ – there is not, at present, a trustworthy method of recording the participation of individuals in communities of interest, such as the allocation of voting on the distribution of community support funding.

The solution

For use case one, the recording of the speech information transactions will be recorded in a traditional database, this recording being tokenised on the blockchain. The token will be associated with a smart contract that will allocate one vote per token.

Thus, the solution is seen to be delivered through the use of Cardano blockchain smart contracts.

For use case two, we will investigate how tokenisation can support the community to spread the purposeful intent of the company.

Our proposal is a feasibility study that will investigate how the business process needs can be translated into technical process descriptions that can then be assessed by Cardano blockchain developers. Where a gap in need and capability exists, the resultant whitepaper will describe the technical development steps needed to provide the technical capability of the Cardano blockchain to the food and beverage sector of the economy.

The solution that we propose will present a pathway that describes an impactful real world business use case that has a clear pathway to development and deployment of blockchain based applications.

It will achieve this by:

• Understanding the gaps between technical capability of Cardano blockchain smart contracts and how they can be integrated into real world business application.

• Presenting the solution described as a configurable product that can be employed by purpose-led companies that need to maintain a community of interest

Many of the people in the emergent community of interest are business leaders. Our solution will expose these people to the possibilities presented by Cardano blockchain smart contracts.

The solution will:

• Describe a product that supports a business solution

• Increase the number of companies proposing and being exposed to Cardano solutions

• Provide the platform to facilitate the proof of trust to communities of interest

The solution will be communicated through the community of interest that will be created as a part of the feasibility study.

• Challenge – identify key technical partners to assist in describing the gap between capability and delivery of the smart contracts. We will work with technical developers within the Cardano ecosystem.

     o Mitigation – Engage with the Catalyst co-ordination team to identify appropriate partners

• Challenge – Describing the solution that delivers the outcomes required by the business use case in terms that will lead to a coherent scope of work for the development phase of the project in the future

     o We will partner with developers to learn what technical development needs to occur to technically deliver the solution, and how to describe it in a scope of work

[FEASIBILITY]

This is a feasibility study to determine the capability of the Cardano blockchain smart contracts to deliver a specific business use case.

The main deliverable will be the creation of a whitepaper that describes the gaps between technical capability and business need, and how these gaps will be closed. The whitepaper will describe how these actions will enable the crafting of technical scopes of work for future business solutions.

Project roadmap

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOErZ4_0=/?invite_link_id=389250413150

After voting takes place and funding is successfully secured:

Understanding and articulating the business process use case (all times in duration of activities, not work effort)

• Meet business process owners – 2 days

• Agree requirements of blockchain – 2 days

• Map business processes – 2 days

• Agree process map with process owner – 4 days

• ID links to blockchain – 2 days

Investigate technical feasibility of blockchain technologies to deliver the business process use case

• Write technical description of blockchain requirements – 7 days

• Consultation with blockchain developers – 3 days

• Second round of developer consultation – 3 days

• Blockchain developer response to business process requirements – 2 days

Milestone – receive blockchain developer report

Writing of a whitepaper and development pathway to deliver the blockchain technologies to deliver the business process use case

• Map blockchain capability to business needs – 8 days

• Consultation with blockchain developers – 4 days

• Develop blueprint plan to close capability gaps – 2 days

• Whitepaper authoring – 4 days

Overall, the project will have a duration of about 7 weeks dependent on the availability of participants.

The total cost of this proposal is US$33,280

The cost rates that we have estimated are:

• Edify team – US$195/hr

• Blockchain developers – US$130/hr

Understanding and articulating the business process use case – US$10,140

• Edify team – 52 hours – US$10,140

Investigate the technical feasibility of blockchain technologies to deliver the business process use case – US$9,100

• Edify team – 36 hours – US$7,020

• Developers – 16 hours – US$2,080

Writing of a whitepaper and development pathway to deliver the blockchain technologies to deliver the business process use case – US$14,040

• Edify team – 36 hours – US$12,480

• Developers – 16 hours – US$1,560

Harry Hellyer

Harry will ensure that the requirements of the companies providing the use case/s will be met, and will liaise with the executive leadership of each company to ensure that they have a clear expectation of the capability of the Cardano ecosystem.

NED, and chairman, executive and business coach specialising in full value-based impact innovation programmes for enterprises and organisations.

Founding partner of 50th Generation – one of the UK's first Social Business Generational Accelerators – 2014-2018

Credited for supporting the development of the NHS's first Sustainable Development Vision and Strategy programme.

Coached Fellows on the Cambridge University, Programme for Sustainable Development,

Coached Fellows and Lectured for the Cambridge University, Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning - Social Enterprise

VP and director of strategy, marketing strategy and business development for several global IT, media and telecoms companies.

Alan Case

Alan is a specialist in technology – business process integration. He will lead the investigation into the needs of the use cases, their interpretation in technical scopes of work and the drafting of the resultant whitepaper.

Manager of a sovereign national grid control centre during a period of technological and cultural change.

Founder and consultant in an organisational effectiveness measurement system deployed into a global advertising and marketing communications network.

Founder of a conversational AI company creating systems that evaluate and improve competence in key organisational skills.

Member of the Edify Community.

Fellow of the RSA.

Mark Constable

25 years+ working in small business as a Leader, Founder, consultant and coach - Supporting impact focused business leaders in building future fit organisations

Proven track record of helping clients in building high value, high performing organisations focused equally on both wealth and wellbeing.

Relevant Experience:

• Development and delivery of high impact leadership programmes for fast growth businesses.

• Launched a business line providing specialised business development training to bid management and sales teams globally.

Member of the Edify Community.

Jon Arnett

Background in Operations and Project Management with startups, small businesses and social enterprises.

Founder of a coaching and consulting business supporting small businesses and startups.

Experience in coaching, facilitation, workshopping and programme delivery (online and in person)

Won multiple EU funded L&D contracts, delivering workshops on entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship and leadership to diverse stakeholders.

Member of the Edify Community.

[AUDITABILITY]

We will create and deploy and project plan overseen by a programme manager. The plan will have key milestones.

An overview of the plan is attached to this proposal.

‘Done’ for this project will be the publication of the whitepaper as described above.

It will describe a pathway towards the development of innovative products and services based on the Cardano blockchain smart contracts.

The specific business use case will describe how the eventual product will enable a previously unattainable level of stakeholder engagement that will support purpose-led businesses worldwide.

This is a new project.

SDG Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

SDG subgoals:

4.7 By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

4.7.1 Extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii) education for sustainable development are mainstreamed in (a) national education policies; (b) curricula; (c) teacher education; and (d) student assessment

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