DLT360: Metaverse and Taxonomy

We aim for important clarifications to answer: What is WEB 3.0? What is the Metaverse? University of Malta DLT institute will guide us

The DLT360 Domain Expert Team and the contributing network with

• Senior industry leadership experience
• Specialised University experts, assistants and students
• Industry partners
• DLT360 supporting team

Detailed information & links provided in 'Feasibility' section below

[IMPACT]

As in all waves of radical innovation before, there are honest and meaningful players, willing to build something solid for the long-term future. As before, there are also the ones aiming for quick wins at any cost, ready to cheat the uninformed majority. DLT/Blockchain, WEB3.0 and Metaverse can be both: Empty and mis-used buzzwords or challenging concepts with enormous potential.

In order to get to tangible progress, we decided to structures this still very fuzzy topic into 4 main perspectives:

1) Investigating the governance aspect

2) Investigating taxonomy and definitions

3) Investigating status and concepts of Interoperability

4) Investigating the necessary technical requirements behind WEB 3.0 and the Metaverse.

This proposal is about the second aspect: Taxonomy & Definitions. We will do our investigation in a way that this becomes systematic part of our overall DLT360 approach.

Please note: This proposal is part of a bigger picture:

The basic setup of the DLT360 Risk & Opportunity Radar was funded in fund 6 and greatly supported by a number of projects in fund 7. Fund 8 will hopefully let us continue and finally get to the status of mature, subscription-based services. Our initial work of fund 6 will be completed by approximately end of Q1/2022 with a first 360-degree roundtrip-video and roundtrip-presentation.

Why are we doing all this?

Cardano - similar to successful professional companies - needs to continuously investigate facts, trends, risks and opportunities. In commercial companies, this is typically done by independent risk-management entities reporting directly to the C-suite. With our services, we want to support Cardano in

1. Making sure that the millions (billions) are wisely invested
2. Enabling the future dREPs and Cardano governance-bodies in making data & fact based decisions
3. Having major trends, risks and opportunities precisely analysed and visualised (collecting from a multitude of sources)
4. Demonstrating this carefulness to regulatory bodies and professional clients (e.g. governments and corporations who rely on Cardano as public, permissionless blockchain)
5. Benefitting form continuously updated interdisciplinary perspectives in a PESTELE format (Politics, Environment/Health, Social/Reputation, Technology, Ethics, Legal, Economy/Business/Application Portfolio).

We are currently presenting our activities in form of single projects, hoping to overcome this stage with fund 9. At the end of 2022, we want to be a subscription-based service, also available to outside-Cardano clients worldwide (like commercial companies), becoming economically successful and independent from the initial Catalyst startup funding. Please also check and support our proposal for future subscription-based funding (Proposed F9 Challenge Setting:

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/400085).

Gaming-industry will be first with claiming to implement WEB 3.0 and Metaverse approaches. It will be important to run fast, but it will be at least as important to run into the right direction. We see the following aspects contributing specifically to this challenge setting:

• Clear definitions and taxonomy are key for getting to WEB3.0 and a Metaverse, without dropping all promises along the road
• This proposal is not an isolated effort, but is part of an overall DLT360 approach
• We are actively reaching out to relevant initiatives inside and outside the Cardano world
• We will apply a very practical approach for understanding the risks and opportunities of cross-chain governance

No specific challenges and risks, as we are handling this as part of our ongoing DLT360 journey. Main challenge comes form the need to pack our activities into single projects, but we hope to overcome this stage with Fund 9.

At the end of 2022, we want to be a subscription-based service, also available to outside-Cardano clients worldwide (like commercial companies), becoming an economically successful service-provider, independent from the initial Catalyst startup funding.

[FEASIBILITY]

The DLT360 team is applying a Business Model Canvas (in MIRO) for continuously optimising the overall business model approach. As most of our activities are highly interlinked, we see overlapping as well as specific elements when looking at the business model canvas project-by-project. Therefore, this part contains both: Generic and specific elements:

1) Customer Segments / Target Groups (generic for DLT360)

• CARDANO Community
• CARDANO-related projects in the need to perform ongoing risk & opportunity management
• Selected industry-clients, major consulting firms, universities, regulatory bodies, DLT-relevant public, selected high-quality YouTube channels and more.

2) Value Proposition (generic for DLT360)

Dependent of the above listed customer-segments, we see our value proposition as following (more details in MIRO):

• Inter-disciplinary & contextualised inputs as basis for improvement proposals and for effective and efficient lobbying
• Enabling professional risk-management frameworks (e.g. ISO 31000 compliant)
• Creating value-adding Implementation Whitepapers, Yellowpapers, Blueprints and Consulting Artifacts

3) Distribution Channels (generic for DLT360)

Depending on customer-segment and corresponding value-proposition, the following delivery channels will be used:

• DLT360 WEB-site with a public and a subscription-based area
• Quarterly online-live and video-recorded reporting based on the DLT360 Risk & Opportunity Radar
• Based on case-by-case agreement: In-person presentations e.g. on selected community events or summits
• Integration into various Implementation Whitepapers, Yellowpapers, Blueprints and Consulting Artifacts
• Academic papers and submission of commentaries

4) Customer Relationship (generic for DLT360)

After handling our startup-activities based on fund 6 and on investments from Heinz Gassner, the fund 7 and fund 8 funding allows us to deepen our content-creation and to grow our team. Based on demonstrating the value we create, we are aiming for subscription-based service agreements in the future. The relationship with outside-Catalyst clients will be based on such subscription-based services and on specific project-based agreements.

5) Revenue Streams (generic for DLT360)

During this early stage of our startup, we are fully focusing on servicing the Cardano Community. The fund 6 and fund 7 funding of our basic DLT360 Risk & Opportunity Radar will lead to delivering 2 quarterly reporting events (end of Q1 and end of Q2 2022). This specific fund 8 project will not be separately considered in terms of a revenue stream. We are applying a careful 'Lean Startup' approach during our journey for planning, checking and iteratively adjusting our Business Model according to our learnings, all documented in our MIRO environment. For the time after Q3 2022, we see the following approaches regarding securing sufficient revenue streams for maintaining and growing our services as well as the required expert team and network:

• We have posted a specific Fund 9 Challenge Setting Proposal for simplified and more reliable subscription-based funding (Please check and support our proposed F9 Challenge Setting: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/400085).

• For outside-Catalyst-clients we plan to implement a revenue-ladder-model with basic content free of charge (as appetiser) and stepping-up subscription models for additional access

• Specific Consulting Artifacts and specific in-depth research for e.g. industry-clients will be charged separately

6) Key Activities, Roadmap and Deliverables (now specific to this project)

This project requires the following specific key-activities - all during Q3 / 2022:

• Participation in the 2-weekly meetings of the DLT360 Technology Team
• Active efforts to integrate other projects and cooperation-partners form inside and outside Cardano
• Perform a literature review and expert interviews
• Analyse findings and summarise in document (most likely an academic paper together with University of Malta)
• Supporting integration into DLT360 Risk & Opportunity Radar
• Active role in sharing/discussing the content during the current quarter

Based on our listed key-activities and key-resources, we plan with the following costs (please note that we are in progress of setting up a formal company body and need to calculate with taxation according to applicable law):

• Overall project management, updates on MIRO (10 hours for USD 50/h) = USD 500,00
• Communication, social media and back-office support (20 hours for USD 25/h) = USD 500,00
• Participation in the 2-weekly meetings of DLT360 Technology Team (50 hours for USD 75/h) = USD 3.750,00
• Active cooperation with partners form inside and outside Cardano (50 hours for USD 75/h) = USD 3.750,00
• Perform a literature review and expert interviews (100 hours for USD 50/h) = USD 5.000,00
• Analyse findings and summarise in document (200 hours for USD 50/h) = USD 10.000,00
• Supporting integration into DLT360 Risk & Opportunity Radar (10 hours for USD 50/h) = USD 500,00
• Active role in sharing/discussing the content during the current quarter (20 hours for USD 50/h) = USD 1.000,00

This specific team is composed as following:

• Overall lead: Heinz Gassner, Malta, with more than 30 years of industry-leadership experience: http://linkedin.com/in/heinz-gassner-9540a241
• Senior Academic Advisor: Joshua Ellul, Director of DLT/Blockchain Institute, University of Malta, linkedin.com/in/joshuaellul
• Project Management: Guilherme Peirera, Sao Paulo, http://linkedin.com/in/guilherme-pereira-da-silva-977a361a3
• Content Coordinator: Jonas Weinberger, Brussels, Student and assistant at the Brussels School of Governance: http://linkedin.com/in/jonas-weinberger-0b14801ba
• Researcher 1: University of Malta Student (DLT/Blockchain Technology-expert)
• Researcher 2: University of Malta Student (DLT/Blockchain Technology-expert)
• Radar Tool Implementation: Elias Nassall, Student in Security Management, Berlin, https://www.linkedin.com/in/elias-nassall-227858231/
• Communication, social media and Back-office: Eduardo Nunes, Sao Paulo

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[AUDITABILITY]

Most of our DLT360 projects are highly interlinked and we handle the overall planning and tracking in our DLT360 - MIRO environment. Due to already running our fund 6 and fund 7 funded projects that way, we are well familiar with Catalyst Coordinator and acquainted with the relevant reporting processes. We are tracking our progress as following:

KPI Progress and Success Measurement (for our activities during Q3 of 2022)

• KPI 1: Progress of activities as outlined above (0-100%)
• KPI 2: Number of partners and interacting projects / initiatives (number).
• KPI 3: Passing academic quality check (Y/N)
• KPI 4: Overall Ratings of the Result (NPS)

Our Definition of Done and our success criteria by end of Q3 of 2022 are derived from the above listed KPI measurement:

• Progress of activities as outlined above (0-100%)
• Number of major partners and interacting projects / initiatives (> 5).
• Passing academic quality check (Y)
• Overall Ratings of the Result (>8)

This is a new proposal.

SDG Rating

To be completed.