DYOR Tool

[IMPACT]

Note - V1 of DYOR Tool is already completed and free for community use. Please feel free to check out the tool at https://dyortool.io/

What is DYOR?

Do your own research is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in the crypto world. And while it’s a crucial step before making any investment or using any new product, it’s also confusing for a beginner as it is completely lacking in any specific details or instructions. Many people have been told DYOR but are likely unsure of what exactly doing your own research entails. Have you done sufficient research if you review the project website, read the whitepaper, or spent some time on their Telegram? The answer is extremely subjective and will vary from person to person. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a resource that could guide someone through the research process from start to finish? Something that allows us to use a standardized approach when assessing projects so the community is aligned on factors that make a project strong vs potential risks and red flags? Look no further.

What’s Our Solution?

We have developed an online tool that walks you through 27 different evaluation points and assists with the following:

- It provides an explanation of why each point matters so that you can understand what you are researching.

- It gives you clearly written steps to follow to perform the evaluation.

- It calculates a score based on the information you entered so that you have a standardized basis for comparison across different projects.

- Lastly, it generates a report that you can share on social media so that others can benefit from the research you have performed.

By providing all of this functionality into one location, we will be able to teach newcomers what information is relevant when trying to ascertain a projects strengths and weaknesses. The tool is also meant to be updated based on the feedback that is provided by the community, so that it reflects the general consensus or what we all feel is important when performing research (more on that below). This gives allows us a vehicle to develop our own research standards together as a community as well as train others in learning them. It will allow us to all be aligned when discussing different projects strengths and weaknesses as well as having standardized grading to compare and contrast different projects.

Who Can Use it?

It is designed with the total beginner in mind to properly evaluate a project PRIOR to investing in or using it. So no prior experience or knowledge is required. And while it is designed for a total beginner to use, it is also a useful resource for crypto veterans as well. Even if they do not need to learn how or why to do to research, it provides a platform that assists with documentation and generates reports that will greatly benefit the community.

Learn to be a Better Investor

With Smart Contract Audit Token, our mission is to make Cardano as safe and transparent as possible for investors and users. This involves performing community-driven, decentralized smart contract audits, but it also involves a lot more. We want to give you the tools and knowledge to properly evaluate a project before investing in it. Simply having a smart contract audit does not mean it will be a good investment. There are several other factors that need to be taken into consideration while researching a potential investment before you should be comfortable committing your hard-earned money.

Designed to be Updated

People will have varying thoughts on what should be covered in this review and how much each item should be weighted. That is a feature, not a bug. We want to get everyone’s input and then have it reflect the consensus of the community. Because that is what it is made for, our community. This will allow us all to use the same standards in evaluating a project and ensure when comparing two projects that it is a true “apples to apples” comparison. Therefore, we have designed this tool to be a good starting point and allow a comprehensive review, but we do not want it to be a final version. Anyone who has suggestions of things to add, things to remove, changes to the worksteps, etc. can submit a form with their suggestions and have the changes incorporated into the tool. This ensures that the research we are performing and sharing truly reflects our combined values, standards, and beliefs.

V1 is Complete, We Want to Build New Versions

We have already built V1 using the funding we got in F5. It is a good MVP and can be viewed at DYORTool.io. But this is just the first version and the goal of the tool is to continuously improve it based on the feedback we get from the community. We would also like to create other versions of it. Right now it is designed specifically for tokens, but we would like to have another version of it designed specifically for NFT project. So we need to create an entirely different workprogram focused on NFTs, using the same tool functionality, and allowing it to generate a different report. We would also be interested in adding other versions that the community suggests such as stake pool research or anything else they can think of.

I have copied in the Key Metrics to measure from this campaign that the DYOR specifically addresses and have included details on how this project accomplishes them.

Open standards adoption should increase among cardano projects. On the long term, all of the community-funded projects should be open and transparent by following common standards.

One of the main purposes of this tool is to create common standards that the community uses to research and assess a project prior to investing in it or using it. This tool has a baseline of research questions and weighting that was assigned by our dev team, but we are soliciting feedback from the community so that it will reflect what we all agree is relevant when performing research. If we are all using a similar set of criteria to research and judge a projects strengths and weaknesses, then we will all be aligned while discussing and debating them within our ecosystem. It will also increase adoption, as the community will quickly be able to identify which are the quality projects and which have several red flags present. Finally, we we have agreed as a community what we believe is important from a project, it will begin to affect how projects behave in order to be successful. If the community agrees that huge allocations to insiders or unqualified dev teams are unacceptable, than we will see less teams and projects with these characteristics because they will not has as much investment as the projects which do conform to our standards.

There should be observable improvements: easier to discover projects and find project resources, more intuitive to access project knowledge base (documentation, how-to, etc.), and simple to find and contact project members.

We are currently working to include a search functionality on the website so that users can search a project and find reports that have already been completed. Longer term, we would like it to have the functionality that the community can upvote the highest quality projects so that the community is self-selecting which reports investors should be paying attention to. Also, one of the key features of the DYOR Tool is that it creates a research report that can be shared with the community (currently has this functionality). A good report will contains links to supporting documentation such as dev team contact info, website, GitHub, etc. By encouraging the community to use the tool and share their research, we will eventually create a complete library with multiple reports for each project in the Cardano ecosystem. Our hope is that this will be a one stop solution for anything who is beginning their research journey into Cardano and can find high quality research reports for every project.

We should observe an increase in reputability of the Cardano Open Source projects. The measure can be done by looking at media communications of various open source communities.

We expect the DYOR Tool to be responsible for a large increase in the reputability of the Cardano Open Source Projects. The tool will hopefully get the community focused on researching all aspects of every project, and doing it with a similar set of criteria while sharing this research so that the entire community is aware of it. By putting a big spotlight onto each project, it will reduce the number of bad actors who choose to build on Cardano and encourage the good actors. By having a well-informed community that can spot potential issues and demand transparency or changes, it will become more trouble than it’s worth for bad actors to build on Cardano which will ultimately lead to an increase in reputability because all projects are being thoroughly vetted.

How will the outcomes of your project be communicated or marketed once completed?

We will provide updates on the outcomes of this project through our Discord, Twitter, and Reddit accounts (more details in the “what does success look like” section) to ensure the community is kept well informed of our progress and completion.

We have already designed a beta version of the tool that is available for free at DYORTool.io. By releasing this beta and getting feedback from the community, we are able to make adjustments to improve it. This is vital information that is assisting us with developing the updated features as well as other versions such as one designed specifically for NFTs.

So based on successfully releasing the V1, I am not too concerned in being able to deliver the project successfully. However, there are risks to consider. The biggest one is generating interest in actually using the tool and sharing your research reports. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. Even if we put out a high quality tool, there is no guarantee that the community will care about it, want to use it, or that it will have its intended impact. If we cannot achieve that, then the tool is essentially a waste of effort and resources. There is also a risk that people will not understand what it is or how to use it. IF we cannot make this easy to understand and highlight the benefits of using it for people, then it will not be a success.

Mitigating Risks

1. People not understanding the tool

We are mitigating this risk by creating high quality training materials to show people how the tool works and what the results of using it are. This comes in the form of training manuals and how to videos. We have already created some of these for the V1 (video link provided), but the requested funds are to further develop V1 as well as create another version specific for NFTs. Based on the feedback we have already been getting for the V1, we will incorporate that information into the next versions training materials as well as when we are creating them for the NFT version.

1. People not being interested in the tool

We are mitigating this risk by creating incentives to encourage people to use it. In the budget breakdown, there is a portion specifically for promotion. We will run regular contests each month where the community can do research reports on their favorite tokens or NFTs. The community can vote for which projects they like the best on our discord, and the winning report creators will be awarded with ADA. We will also create incentives for people to engage in discussions around the reports, as this is another key reason the tool exists. So that people can learn how to do research, and to spur discussions on different projects strengths and weaknesses that have been identified using the tool.

[FEASIBILITY]

Main Deliverables:

NFT Tool –The current tool is currently only designed to research and assess tokens/coins. Successful completion of the project will produce a version of the tool specific to NFTs, including community curated research points, steps to perform those research points, and descriptions of why those research points matter. There will be special scoring for each research point to assign points based on how important the community feels that specific point is, which will be used to assign an overall score to a project which can be compared to other projects on a consistent “apples to apples” basis. There will also be a separate customized NFT specific report that is created based on the information that the user inputs.

DYOR Tool V1 Improvements – The tool has been released with a baseline of research points, but we would like to expand on those based on community feedback. We will add new research points along with the steps to perform that research, explanations on why it is important, and scoring criteria.

Research Contests - We plan to hold regular contests to promote the use of the tool and encourage people to learn about research and share it with others. We would like to hold them twice a month, with the contests spanning over a two-week period. So over a 6 month time period, we would like to run at least 10 contests (using 10 instead of 12 to give a buffer). We hope to have 10 submissions on average per contest to start, building to 20 to 30+.

Timeline:

1 Month - Within the first month of being funded, we will begin holding our research contests, sticking to the plan of holding two per month. The initial contests will be on the V1 of the tool that is currently available. We will begin soliciting feedback from the NFT community on what they feel is important when researching an NFT project and leverage their knowledge and experience to create the new workprogram. We will also continue obtaining feedback on V1 of the tool to keep improving that as well.

3 Months – During this timeframe, we will program the tools using the information obtained in the first month. Within the first 3 months, we plan to have made updates to the DYOR Tool based on the community’s feedback and suggestions. We also plan to have the V1 of the NFT Tool released within this time frame as well.

6 months – Within 6 months we will have held 10 research contests that encourage the use of the tools and incentivize newcomers in learning how to perform research. We will also have incorporated feedback of the tools, updating the questions and worksteps. At this point, we believe the project can officially be closed out, but the improvements to the tools based on feedback will continue to be made.

Development cost – $15,000

Cost to pay our developer to build the NFT version and make updates to the V1 and NFT version based on feedback received over the 6 month period. We are setting it at $15,000 over the 6 month period as some of the earlier months will be very busy and some of the later months, less so. Instead of creating an hourly estimate we have determined that 12,000 over the period is fair for the amount of work involved.

Website/Domain/Server – $0

Already built and covered by our previous funding

Feedback Compensation – $2,000

We would like the NFT version of the Tool to be created by the community. We would like this to be primarily because they see the value in it and want to contribute, but we would also like to compensate people for their time and effort. $2,000 will be reserved and distributed to people who have made significant contributions in writing the workprogram.

Research Contests – $10,000

We plan to hold at least 10 research contests over a 6 month period. Each contest will have $1000 available for prizes (including best research reports, best commentary & analysis, etc).

Promotional Materials – $1,000

We would like to create promotional materials for the tool that can be given out at Cardano/blockchain related expos or sent to community members who are involved with and support the tool (bottle opener keychains, t-shirts, etc. $1,000 allocated for this.

Marketing Materials - $3,600

We would also like to release regular articles and YouTube videos that explain the tool, interesting research that has been performed, and strengths and weaknesses discovered. 3 article/videos a month * 200 per article/video * 6 months = $3,600

As mentioned, this project is created by Smart Contract Audit Token. The entire team breakdown along with links to our LinkedIn Accounts can be found on our website (https://www.scatdao.com/team). For this proposal, there will be two primary members working on it which I will detail here.

Eric Helms - Eric is a Certified Public Accountant who has spent the last 10 years working in Corporate Audit from both the public and private side. He is passionate about blockchain and its ability to make society and business fairer and more transparent for everyone. He is currently a Veteran Community Advisor for Project Catalyst and is proud to be a member of the Cardano ecosystem. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-helms-cpa-97866a3b/). Eric wrote all of the content for the first version of the DYOR Tool.

Juan C Rey - Juan is a full stack dev and Plutus Pioneer Programmer from the first cohort. He has been in the Cardano ecosystem for many years, where he has developed his skills as a software developer and analyst. He has a degree in Computer Systems Development and a law degree. His inspiration is the thoughts of Nick Szabo. He combines his love for decentralized systems with his passion for contracts. He currently spends his time researching formal contract verification in the Cardano ecosystem. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjcr1/). Juan designed and built the platform for the first version of DYOR Tool.

Cardano Community – The next versions we would like to come from the community, not just our team. So we will be soliciting feedback on what our community feels is important when they do research and reaching out to experts within our community to get their tips and tricks they use when researching tokens or NFTS.

[AUDITABILITY]

We have developed the following criteria and metrics that we will use to measure the progress, development, and completion of the project:

NFT Tool – As mentioned, the tool is currently only designed to research and assess tokens/coins. Successful completion of the project will produce a version of the tool specific to NFTs, including community curated research points, steps to perform those research points, and descriptions of why those research points matter. There will be special scoring for each research point to assign points based on how important the community feels that specific point is, which will be used to assign an overall score to a project which can be compared to other projects on a consistent “apples to apples” basis. There will also be a separate customized NFT specific report that is created based on the information that the user inputs. We cannot estimate the number of commits we will make when creating this, so this project will not be considered complete until all the items mentioned above have been completed.

DYOR Tool V1 Improvements – The tool has been released with a baseline of research points, but we would like to expand on those based on community feedback. We would like to add no less than 5 new research points along with the steps to perform that research, explanations on why it is important, and scoring criteria. We will rely on the community to help provide this information and 5 will be the minimum with hopes of adding as many as people propose to us and the community agrees should be included.

# of Research Contests – We plan to hold regular contests to promote the use of the tool and encourage people to learn about research and share it with others. We would like to hold them twice a month, with the contests spanning over a two-week period. So over a 6 month time period, we would like to run at least 10 contests (using 10 instead of 12 to give a buffer). We hope to have 10 submissions on average per contest to start, building to 20 to 30+.

# of Research Reports – Having the community use the tool and share their research is the ultimate goal. So we are setting a metric of 50 research reports created per month. Over a 6 month period, this would give us 300 reports which would cover the majority of the Cardano ecosystem.

On a high level, success for this project would mean a large portion of the community is now focused on researching a new project prior to using or investing, using a similar set of standards and criteria so that all comparisons across projects are “apples to apples”. It would also mean that newcomers to Cardano have a resource to learn how to perform research right from the start instead of just being told that DYOR is important and spinning their wheels trying to figure out how to do it.

Those are both high-level metrics that are difficult to measure. Here are some criteria that will be easier to measure the project against.

1. Updated questions and functionality for the V1 DYOR Tool: We have already begun soliciting feedback from the community for ideas and suggestions on how to improve the tool through our discord (https://discord.gg/hE9Q6JS4QA) and have gotten some good feedback which we have been incorporatin

2. NFT Research version of the tool designed by the community: We would like to have another version of the tool focused on NFT research, that has its own questions, scoring and report generated. Our team will program the tool, but we would like to enlist the community in designing the questions, worksteps, and scoring this time. Success would be measured by having a completed functioning tool specific for NFTs.

3. 10 Research Contests held: Part of this proposal is in generating interest in people using the tool. We would like to do that by by running regular contests for whoever can create the best research reports using DYORToo.io. Best is subjective, but we imagine people would judge them based on quality, accuracy, and usefulness. It will be open to everybody and the community will be the ones who select the winners each round through our discord. We will be running these contests to achieve the following goals:

• To increase awareness of DYOR Tool and encourage the community to use it

• To increase the number of research reports in the ecosystem

• To incentivize people to learn more about researching projects and spotting red flags

• To increase dialogue and discussion around research that is being performed by the community

Success here would be measured by running 10 contests over a 6 month period. Results and proof of prize money sent will be transparent and supplied by our organization.

Smart Contract Audit Token (SCATDAO) was funded in F5 to bring decentralized and truly independent audit services to Cardano. SCATDAO solves audits’ inherent problem; the conflict of interest that comes from paying for audit services. Auditors are meant to be independent of the people they are auditing, but how can you be independent when you are auditing your employer? To solve for this SCATDAO has created a unique funding mechanism that self finances their operations so that independence is always maintained.

The final version of our platform that we are working towards is a huge endeavor with many different parts that combine into a comprehensive audit program. It will involve a manual review of the smart contract code, a holistic review of the others aspects of a project such as the Dev Team, Tokenomics, and Community, and a bug bounty round to find anything the auditors may have overlooked. Instead of waiting for all parts to be completed and releasing a final version which takes considerable time and effort, we are rolling out different aspects of it that are helpful and provide utility to the community as they become available.

We have chosen this approach as we think that the community can benefit from each of these parts of our workprogram, and we can use the feedback obtained from the users to improve and refine how they work. The DYOR Tool is one of these pieces that will be part of our completed audit program that we felt the community can start using now to help learn about how to perform research and get the community focused on fully vetting projects before using and investing in them. The additional functionality that we would like to add such as NFTs was not initially part of the workprogram we were building, which is why we would like to keep building on it and adding extra functionality that the community would like.

You can review the original F5 proposal with the following link:

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/351387