Littlefish - Coordinating Action

[IMPACT]

Introduction

We live in an era where it is easier to meet knowledgeable and passionate people interested in the same things as us online rather than in real life. Littlefish Foundation was founded under these circumstances, by the gathering of like minded and like hearted individuals around the fire of Catalyst. We found out quickly that finding people and starting online communities with shared values and common goals was simple. The problem is coordination.

Almost as quickly as a global decentralized community gathers, it struggles with the tools available. Discord, Telegram, Miro, Drive and the entire suite of existing, popular tools play their roles. Yet there are few tools that solve the common problems of decentralized communities. Littlefish Platform focuses on these problems, removing friction and making decentralized collaboration more accessible to everyone.

Concept

The components of the solution are:

• littlefish - individuals that participate in the system 
• Colonies - collection of littlefish that act in the real world
• Actions - a real action in the world that is represented by an NFTs 

Littlefish are the actors of the system. They are individuals who want to enable and enact change in the world. They come together on the Littlefish Platform and form colonies. 

Colonies are digital representations of real world relationships. These can be as loose as a group of friends or well defined entities like a business or a charity organization. 

Colonies perform real world activities. A group of friends may clean litter on the beach. A business may produce a new report or announce a new product. A charity may organize a new campaign, build houses for those in need, etc. These activities are then documented in whatever way colony members choose - video, image, recordings, tweets, instagram, … Collected multimedia is then published as NFTs called Actions. 

Actions are Proof of Activity. They contain information showing that something has been done to impact the world. Once generated, an Action can be sold by the colony to generate funding. But why buy an Action which represents something that has already been done? There are several reasons:

1. Buying an Action supports the colony, incentivizing them to continue performing similar actions. In this manner buying is akin to donating.
2. Actions represent values. Buying an action means you support the activity the action represents. It signals the buyers’ values.
3. Actions can be resold. They may be investments. For example an Action representing the act of writing the first draft of a Whitepaper could be worth much more if the project takes off. 

Current Stage

All work leading up to this proposal: 

• Development of a Wordpress website started February 2022. This website allows the users to connect their wallet and join/create new colonies. Currently we are able to: 
• Create &/ Join colonies
• Open a colony treasury wallet
• Delegate to an SPO
• Donate to a colony
• Our most recent work: Detailed colony model, systems map, initial UI/UX designs: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOPNZgXQ=/?invite_link_id=938169107806
• Our earlier work: Flowcharts and Platform Design Tool analysis: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOWGnhvE=/?invite_link_id=377119452817
• https://github.com/littlefish-foundation 
• https://discord.gg/tBKZd5AGUS
• Our weekly community meeting, Mondays at 7PM UTC are available on our youtube channel:

• Website: https://littlefish.foundation/ 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/LittleFishDAO 
• Whitepaper - Work in Progress: https://docs.littlefish.foundation/

Proposal Scope - Phase 1

We are in the product design stage and have many ideas that can be incorporated into the system. This proposal outlines our first steps where we start small and take on an iterative approach. Our proposed solution consists of these parts:

• Continue the development of the website with colonies, a gamified UI/UX based on the adventures of littlefish, NFT gallery for littlefish and colonies, browse colonies.
• Blockchain Features - NFT minting, direct donations to colonies and NFT purchases for colony NFTs
• Colony Features - Members, selling Actions, displaying Actions created by the colony, reward sharing for Action sales, colony wallet, colony dashboard including all relevant information like Discord, Telegram, Number of Donations, Members, sponsor SPOs, etc… (see our Miro Board for early designs)
• Littlefish Features - Colony membership, creating Actions, buying Actions, NFT gallery.

Future of the Project - Phase 2 and Beyond

The proposed solution is the first step in implementing a platform of services. Beyond these early features, we are considering:

• A Littlefish Token, the currency with which each Action is sold. Rewarding token holders with additional tokens generated from each Action sale. 
• Guilds - Specific type of colonies collecting professionals with similar skill sets. Eg. Artists Guild, Developers Guild, … These will allow professionals to promote their skills, build reputation and allow skills markets to emerge in the future. 
• Royalties from secondary market sales of Actions. 
• Additional tooling for within and inter-colony collaboration: Advanced colony search, member search, custom data integrations, Discord bot …
• Custom colony NFTs 
• Colony member tracking - How much support, activity has the member provided?
• Colony tokens with basic governance, colony member rewards.

Note: These features are beyond the scope of this proposal. They’re given here to highlight the larger project and various future routes it may evolve.

Coordinating decentralized collaboration is one of the most valuable problems in blockchain. Many great minds are at work organizing communities and struggling with the tools available. Littlefish is a solution to decentralized collaboration that supports both the end users and the builders of these communities. 

Our guiding questions:

1 - What are the key applications that underpin the application ecosystem on other platforms?

Tools enabling decentralized cooperation exist on other chains and are growing in popularity while Cardano lags behind. Tools like Coordinape and SourceCred provide a method of valuing effort and funding decentralized work. Littlefish Platform funding colonies through Actions is comparable yet a complementary method of funding work. 

2 - What needs do users of Cardano have that could be solved by new applications?

A critical problem many Cardano users are learning about is coordinating collaborative efforts in a decentralized world. Existing tools lack the focus and the incentives to align individual efforts towards collective goals. Decentralized communities like Catalyst, Cardano4Climate and others need user friendly tools that are purpose built to coordinate between members.

3 - What applications deliver the highest amount of value with the least amount of technical sophistication?

Most blockchain DApps are not user friendly. They demand technical knowledge. Wallets, signatures, irredeemable funds, terrible UI/UX … Things are scary for the layperson. The applications that will provide the most value will be those that make it as user friendly as possible. It will be those that abstract away the technical complexities and hide it behind pretty UI/UX. This is what we believe in our design. We will always aim to improve usability and bring value to casual users beyond the blockchain bubble by making things accessible. We believe this will not only provide the most value to end users but bring in more users. As the challenge states: Quality Dapps and integrations will increase utility & adoption of Cardano. 

The success of the proposal depends on our ability to execute the technical and social challenges ahead. The barebones version of the system, without a Littlefish Token, is relatively easy to implement. It is more or less a web2 application which uses existing tools to communicate with the blockchain. Our expertise as a team lies in producing such products. In the early stages the main challenge will be to technically specify, implement and test Action NFTs. Yet again this is more or less a software development problem.

The real challenge is in implementing a tokenized economy, where the Littlefish Token implements some core logic of the system. Royalties and reward sharing systems must be created. An iterative design and deployment approach must be devised in order to implement features in the future while making sure the system continues operating smoothly. The development of these features will be technically challenging and we’ll have to learn how to do these things.

Project’s success also depends on our ability to market and promote it. If we can overcome the technical challenges and build such a system, but only a handful of people use it, then we’ve failed. And even to solve the technical challenges, we’ll need expert help which we can get through communicating our vision and building our own colony. As Littlefish Foundation we’ve been active in the Cardano & Catalyst space since the start of Fund7. Our Discord is approaching 100 people and we have around 10 people who join our meetings consistently. We’re building the first colony on our platform. Our main and most difficult challenge is to bring these people together to produce actions that will turn this idea into reality.

[FEASIBILITY]

As seen above we already started to work on the solution. Our next step is implementing Phase 1 (Explained in detail under Proposal Scope - Phase 1). We aim to deliver a Wordpress Website with the features highlighted under Impact - Phase 1 by September 2022. Early versions will be available starting in May and we’ll implement features in an iterative fashion. The roadmap outlines our plan of delivery:

April

• Colony creation, colony ADA address
• Wallet Integration
• ADA transfers (donations)

May 

• Minting NFTs, selling/buying NFTs
• NFT gallery for the colony + littlefish

June

• Colony shortlink/QR code for simple support links
• Reward sharing for NFT sales between seller and colony
• Colony membership

August

• Colony dashboard
• Colony information - Discord, Youtube, …
• Number of members, supporters, assets, …
• Donate to colony
• Colony browser
• Displaying colonies on a single page
• Basic search

Note - Steps below are out of the scope of the proposal, highlighting the future direction of the project.

Following the early stage we plan to work on the Littlefish Token, NFT royalties and reward payouts based on solid token engineering principles. Estimating for these features is more difficult, but a tentative roadmap would put out a working Littlefish Token on the testnet in Q4. We will iteratively work on the token in testnet until we feel confident in the token design achieving our system objectives. NFTs with secondary sale royalties we expect to launch in Q4 2022 and reward payouts for token holders as we’ve developed the token. 

Beyond these features we have Guilds and SPOs that we’d like to introduce. Guilds will most likely be an earlier addition since they will be offchain. We can expect Q3 2022. The first SPO on the platform will be a funding mechanism for Littlefish Foundation, so it’s already under way and can be expected to be implemented within the platform by Q3 2022.

Up to date, we have been working on this project with a small team without compensation. We will continue to do so. The budget will be used as follows:

Frontend Development - 300h * $50 = $15,000

• The implementation of the website using Wordpress, wallet Integration (Nami), landing page, colony view, colony browse, NFT Gallery, documentation.

Backend Development - 200h * $50 = $10,000

• The development of backend services for colonies and littlefish, API development, database integrations, documentation.

DevOps - 20h * $50 = $1,000

• Deployment, system administration, scalability and services.

UI/UX Graphics Design - 50h * $50 = $2,500

• Designing and developing Littlefish badges, banners, logos, buttons.

Writing - 200h * $50 = $10,000

• Developing whitepaper, 
• Website content such as landing page, about the project, …

Marketing - 100h * $50 = $10,000

• Preparing marketing materials 
• Community engagement on Twitter, Telegram and Discord
• Promoting project in Cardano community events

Next section is not critical to read, but this is how we’ll try to use our system to fund our own activities

As many decentralized collaboration efforts are finding out; getting things done in a decentralized fashion is a challenge. It’s difficult to coordinate efforts, value the work done and to align targets without traditional structures. That’s why we’re building this and that is why Littlefish Foundation will be the first colony, solving our own problems of coordination, generalizing our solutions and making them available for others on the platform. 

This means that we will be organizing our efforts with the tooling we are building. The funding we receive we will spend by rewarding the actions that move the project in the right direction. Examples of such work are: 

• A developer within the community will write a donation script
• A community member will make a video to promote the project
• A graphics designer will create littlefish buttons, badges … 

Such work will be published as NFTs and purchased by Littlefish Foundation. The purchase will be payment for the work. The NFTs will later be displayed in the Platform where they will gain value if the project is successful.     

Valuing each piece of work and deciding within the team will be a challenge. Yet this is a challenge for all decentralized organizations. We will work on this as a governance problem and eventually apply our solutions to the platform. 

Cem Karaca - 20+ years experience of Software Development, hardware and network infrastructure. Fintech Data Center owner, Cyber Security startup founder. Electrical & Electrınics Engineer Ms. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ckaraca/

https://github.com/ckaraca

Cagkan Acarbay - 3+ years experience as a Backend Developer. Python, REST, Postgres, sys-admin basics. Majored in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Learning within the Catalyst/Cardano ecosystem for 4 months with a focus on Haskell and Plutus. Interested especially in the economics, game theory and behavioral aspects of creating tokenized economies. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/%C3%A7a%C4%9Fkan-acarbay-b2210b136/

Yoram Ben-Zvi - 20+ years of business experience working with technology companies (strategy, partnerships, investors). In recent years, Yoram is focused on combining impact and business. 4 years ago he left his comfort zone and worked for 2 years for an NGO Earthworm.org focusing on sustainable business models across agriculture supply chains. Yoram is very active in Catalyst as a CA, successful proposer, and at Cardano4Climate. Yoram is part of the AIM team and is involved with the Catalyst SDG tool cardanocataly.st/proposer-tool-sdg/#/ (which is included in the proposal process) and the Catalyst alignment to SDG research. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoram-ben-zvi-446836/

Mert Akyazi - 2+ years Software Developer experience on Back-End and 1+ years experience on Blockchain development, mostly on EVM compatible networks. Currently working with a close to launch NFT marketplace “LEXIT” as Chief Cryptographer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mertakyazi/

Sebastian Pereira - 5+ of strategic planning for public institutions as an Economist. 2 years in the blockchain industry EMURGO Academy instructor, content writer for EMURGO Blog and CT team leader.  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastianpereira33/

Seomon - CA, vCA, Challenge Team - Open Source & Open Standards, funded proposer IT-consultant, project manager 

https://github.com/Seomon4u

[AUDITABILITY]

Where to track progress?

To make tracking progress easy, we will be publishing all work on the project in a dedicated Discord channel, allowing auditors and community members alike to see in one place all that’s under development.

Transparency is key to us. We are an open community at Littlefish Foundation. All our work is publicly available. Auditors can easily track progress and development through these channels:

• https://github.com/littlefish-foundation 
• https://discord.gg/tBKZd5AGUS
• A weekly community meeting on Monday 7PM UTC with recordings available on our youtube channel
• A colony detailed model can be seen in the miro board: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOPNZgXQ=/?invite_link_id=938169107806
• Flowcharts and PDT analysis: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOWGnhvE=/?invite_link_id=377119452817
• Website: https://littlefish.foundation/ 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/LittleFishDAO 
• Whitepaper - Work in Progress: https://docs.littlefish.foundation/

How do we measure progress?

The main measure of progress will be the implementation of features: This is the key indicator of development progress. Have we implemented the things on the roadmap in time? Github commits and usable demos will be used to show progress. At the end of the 4 months, we will have all features of Phase 1 ready to be used.

A secondary measure will be community participation: How much activity is there in Discord? Are people being engaged by the idea? Do they want to contribute to the project? How many people are active within the community? This will be an early indicator that we are building something the community wants to use. 

Once features are implemented and the product is being used, we will measure success with these numbers (KPIs):

• Number of users (littlefish)
• Number of colonies created
• Daily/Total amount of donations
• Number of NFTs minted
• Number of NFTs sold

The project’s aim is to have non technical people use it to coordinate their efforts. We plan to finish phase 1, complete and self contained as an MVP by September 2022. The first and most important thing in our definition of success is the implementation of all features listed under Phase 1 - Project Scope. One month within mainnet launch, success would be:

• 3 colonies
• 200+ users
• 100+ transactions made on the platform
• 40 minted NFTs
• 20 NFT sales

Beyond the metrics, true success will depend on the usability of the product and on the value brought to users. Non technical people can easily create colonies, collect funds and publish actions. Similarly, they can join colonies, contribute and get rewarded for their actions.

This is our follow up to an unfunded proposal in Fund7 - DAOs Love Cardano Challenge: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384063

Our F7 proposal was to build a DAO with the aim of building tools which tackle SDG issues. We didn’t have a project to work on back then, but since then we’ve been at work. Talking and discussing the many facets of the problem. Since then our decentralized global community has grown to about 100 (https://discord.gg/pwcmfYfrsJ), with 20-25 participants who have taken part in our weekly meetings. 

We’ve collected funding of 1000 ADA from our community and ran a charity event to observe first hand the difficulties of decentralized, uncoordinated operations. We’ve had many discussions amongst ourselves and with outside experts on the problem, the platform and the technical challenges. Through that we’ve converged on this project.

Note that even though we were not funded, we have accomplished these KPIs from the original proposal:

• Held first donation cycle with member-trusted projects. Voted and delivered funds. Got results back from the winning proposer.
• ~100 community members 
• 12+ meetups held

SDG Rating

Littlefish Foundation was started with the aim of tackling SDG funding. Our Fund 7 proposal explicitly states the problem as: 

Limited TRUST in International Organizations, lack of transparency, and lack of involvement in fund allocation in SDG activities.

The project we propose here is more general. There are no limitations on the types of colonies and actions. But Sustainable Development Goals are strongly represented in the people and the values of Littlefish Foundation. We want this platform to be a platform that helps address these issues. We aim to build that with a strong SDG culture as we launch the project in mainnet. 

In concrete terms, we will contact existing organizations with SDG work to build our initial set of colonies. Our community includes individuals with extensive experience in NGO and charity work. We will use their connections and knowledge to market the product in those areas, ensuring a cultural origin aligned properly with SDG values.

We also aim for the Foundation to act as an incentivizer of SDG activities. We want Littlefish Token to have reward incentives for such SDG activities. An alternative might be an allocation of tokens for such activities, to be funded by the Foundation. These are important to us. This is why Littlefish Foundation was founded.