Bring Bored Apes* to Cardano

A multi-chain web3 platform giving ADA hodlers the scope to trade shares of investment-grade EVM NFT assets directly on the Cardano network.

Team includes: Senior Information Security Systems Officer w/ Cyber Warfare Technology and techniques.

Active traders - all currencies since 2015. MSc Blockchain. Active Catalyst member since 2019. 30 years small and medium business owner, previous 2 Catalyst funded projects.

[IMPACT]

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Imagine owning shares in an expensive asset such as a CryptoPunk, Bored Ape or even an original Banksy artwork.

With regards to Banksy, the walls they are painted on would likely make it quite difficult. However, were these creative geniuses willing to mint and issue a certified digital representation of their most highly-sought work, an NFT proving a direct connection to the artist, then our unique platform would at the very least ensure that the price to entry would not be an issue.

Why Vote to Fund?

Voting to fund this proposal will bring high value, investment grade EVM-blockchain creative NFT’s (such as Bored Apes Yacht Club, Crypto Punks and many others) into the Cardano ecosystem. Curated, deployed, securely vaulted and fractionalised, thus opening up the assets to wide scope of potential investors regardless of budget.

Enthusiasts of CNFT's will gain access to the wide world of crypto investors - regardless of their blockchain ecosystem preference.

Cardano community members who want to invest in high value, investment grade NFT’s but do not have the capital available to purchase complete NFT’s will be able to invest smaller amounts, to purchase tradable fractions of those very desirable NFT’s. And to do so within the Cardano ecosystem. 

Exclusive art galleries, do not create fine art. They are curators of fine art. Finding and helping the best creative talent connect with and reach the best collectors.

ShareHodler is much more than the technology that makes our services possible. We are curators for creative NFTs. Going, yet, one step further. Offering and managing fractional ownership shares. Making ownership of these high value, investment grade digital assets affordable, to a much wider market.

Join us for discussion on this discord server. https://discord.gg/kv33MyTB

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Q. This Challenge asks: 

"How might we make it easy and fast for dApps and other projects to expand or completely move from Ethereum to Cardano?"

1. By building a multi-chain web3 marketplace/platform that allows EVM-based NFT creators to fractionalise at low cost, gives ADA hodlrs the oportunity to add shares in high value investment grade NFTs. Expands the group of potential investors in CNFT's to include the other blockchain communities.
2. High value, investment grade NFT’s are priced out of the normal investor’s price range. Fractionlised sharehodling is the only way to make them affordable.

Voters might wonder:

"How can Cardano possibly compete with the Ethereum NFT juggernaut?" 

1. The answer is classic. Don’t fight them. Wrap them. Bring them into the Cardano World and fractionalise them. Make those expensive NFT's available to a broad base of small investors
2. Using open source technology already funded through Project Catalyst, developed by DCSpark.

The cost to mint 10,000 fractions of an investment grade NFT within the OpenSea platform can cost $500,000 and more. Making fractionalisng NFTs on that industry leading platform uneconomical. The cost of minting a fractional shares in NFT's on Cardano is very low.

Q. Why is it important?

Creative NFT originators (artists) seek to reach the broadest possible market of collectors or investors to get they best price for their work. 

High value, investment grade creative NFT projects are not required to begin life (be "minted"*) on any particular blockchain. But, until today most are minted on EVM-based blockchains.

Cardano community collectors and investors, not ordinarily active in EVM-based blockchains, also seek opportunities to invest in high value, investment grade digital assets. Often as part of a diversified investment portfolio.

ShareHodler will

• bring EVM-based creative NFTs into the Cardano ecosystem as "wrapped" NFTs
• bring Cardano-based creative NFTs (CNFTs) into the EVM ecosystem.

In order to provide

• originators opportunities to reach the broadest audiences for their work
• Cardano investors opportunities to purchase shares in high value investment grade creative "wrapped" NFT's** created in the EVM-based ecosystem.

* See discussion of "minting" below

** Effectively clones of the original NFTs moving in either direction between ecosystems.

Q. What does success look like?

There is no dispute. Ethereum is the biggest player in high value, investment grade NFT collectibles. Boasting some of the most valuable collections such as BAYC and CryptoPunks.

Auction houses like Sotheby's facilitate sale of high value NFT’s, but only deliver those NFT’s to Ethereum wallet addresses. Which means they only deal in EVM based creative NFTs. Read from Sotheby's fine print.

"How is NFT ownership transferred? 

Sotheby’s will request from the Buyer a valid ETH address that supports NFTs (ERC721 and ERC20). Sotheby’s will then authorize and direct the transfer of the NFT from the seller or the seller’s agent to the Buyer’s wallet. Please note, exchange addresses will not be accepted for transfer of the NFT."

When Cardano creators of collectible CNFTs mature to the level of being high value, investment grade, Sharehodler will offer to hold their CNFT's or (wrapped) wCNFTs on the ecosystem of choice. Cardano collectors will bid for and buy high value, investment grade EVM-based NFTs or less expensive fractionalised shares of those assets.

With that in mind, this proposal answers the simple question.

"How can Cardano creatives ever break into the high value investment grade NFT market? Now monopolised by Ethereum"

Success looks like Cardano creators and collectors/investors taking a front row seat in the high value, investment grade multi-chain NFT market.

What is Minting?

For voters or assessors who are not seriously involved with the process of creating collectible NFT's (as opposed to utilitiy NFT's) some additional information maybe helpful.

"When you decide to create an NFT, you must first “mint” the digital version of your artwork. Minting an artwork refers to the act of tokenizing the artwork, i.e. uploading it to a given marketplace platform (SuperRare, Nifty Gateway, Makersplace, Foundation…) and issuing a token to guarantee its authenticity. You will then have to pay “gas fees” to initiate the transaction on the blockchain and publish your artwork as an NFT on a marketplace.

Once you have minted a piece of artwork on a marketplace as an NFT, you should never mint it on another platform. If you ever decide to do so, note that most platforms reserve the right to delete the NFT or even ban you from their platform. However, you maintain all commercial rights to the artwork underlying the NFT. That means you can still market your art by making prints or merch, or even license it.

Collectors are not allowed to do so - they only have the right to sell, trade or transfer the NFT.

This means they can’t (unless they have written authorization from the artist): mint a copy of that NFT, make people pay to view the NFT, sell any derivative object incorporating the NFT or exploit the NFT in a commercial way.  

This leads us to an important question: are NFTs protected by copyright? NFTs are likely not protected by copyright, because they do not meet the basic criteria for copyright protection. They basically represent data on a blockchain, which would not constitute an original work of authorship under intellectual property law. However, the artwork that you mint may be protected by copyright. For that reason, you should never mint an artwork you didn’t create yourself (or in collaboration with other artists). In the United States and Canada, copyright protection only extends to the expression of ideas, and not ideas or concepts only. This means you need to “fix” your idea on a medium for it to be protected." 

https://www.rennoco.com/post/nfts-minting-and-copyright-what-you-should-know-as-an-artist

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Every proposal includes similar predictable risks, and plans or mechanisms to manage those risks.

Secure Technology: Our IT strategy is led and managed by a senior Information Security Systems Officer qualified in Cyber Warfare Technology. Where other development teams approach security as part of their design, Sharehodler system design is centerer on security, surrounded by features. Adoption of Fracada open source fractionalising code gives our development team a tremendous head start. Thank you dcSpark. Thank you Catalyst for funding initial development of Fracada and the soon to be complete security audit. Still we will require Plutus Smart contract expertise. Either we will source that expertise in house or subcontract for services. dcSpark is clearly one resource, for services or simply advice. Other fund 8 proposers have also announced their Plutus credentials. Finally, we will commission a 3rd party audit of our code.

Funding: Our work to create the multi-chain web3 platform is self-funded, to date. The funding we requested will bring us into the Cardano ecosystem. And as much as any other benefit, a show of strong support by a vote to fund - will express broad support from the core Cardano community. If this proposal is not funded we may have to slow development, but in any event will continue to completion seeking alternate financial resources.

Time and Cost Overrun: Always an element of project implementation planning. Whilst we are eager to launch as soon as possible, we believe the NFT market, while maturing rapidly, is still in a very young stage. So a reasonable delay in delivery should not hurt our competitive place in the market. Given that we have completed the system design and are able to complete core smart contracts using in-house resources we can be relatively confident of the time schedule. A decision to shift the system to be based in the Cardano ecosystem could cause delays, while we acquire new skills.

Customer Acquisition: Focus to date has been on system design and coding of the ShareHodler Management Platform. We expect to begin efforts to publicise ShareHodler after we have satisfied all security concerns. As soon as we have a Secure, MVP, we will add NFTs to the platform ourselves, fractionalise and begin offering shares for sale as a beta version.

We intend to offer a white-label service to art galleries. Or Private, exclusive rooms on ShareHodler.

If this proposal is funded, our first offerings will be on the Cardano ecosystem. Announcing through popular TG groups first. The Cardano NFT Guild has almost 500 members. We are hopeful that many NFT Guild members will be interested beta testers. Cardano NFT Sales and Trading has 200 members (with possible overlap).

Competition: The main NFT platforms are in the Ethereum space (OpenSea, Infura, etc.). In Cardano it is NFT-Maker. They differ from ShareHodler in the services they offer, mainly minting. And differs in the quality of NFT's managed and traded. Aimed specifically at high value, investment grade NFT's (created on any blockchain that we ultimately support). We would say Sharehodler's more direct competitors are fine art auction houses (like Christie's and Sotheby's) and exclusive art galleries. Of which the market supports very many.

https://www.christies.com/auctions/christies-encrypted

"Welcome to the future - Digital Art: NFTs

On 11 March 2021, Christie’s sold the first non-fungible token based purely on a digital work of art ever offered by a major auction house for US$69,346,250. This summer Christie’s latest Art + Tech Summit dedicated to NFTs was sold out, with over 1,000 attendees in person at Rockefeller Center in New York and virtually, tuning in from all over the world. "

Human Resources: Recruiting for talent will probably be first aimed at Cardano community resources.

Sustainability: Project Catalyst funding will enable our team to make strong process towards a initial launch on Cardano. The team members are committed to bring this project to success. If needed we have other sources of financial support to launch on ethereum blockchains. Once launched our operational staff will be manageable. Additional development, sales and marketing initiatives will be slower-paced than desired. Our team members are very experienced in funding start-up projects in which we believe.

Teaming Issues: Teams are always weak points in new business ventures. Before the results of Fund 8 voting are revealed we will have a teaming agreement in place which defines clearly roles, rights, decision-making, dispute resolution, succession and exit issues.

Strategic Differences: As mentioned above, decision making can be problematic. We intend to have a starting point in our teaming agreement which assigns final decisions based on technical, commercial and tokenomics areas.

Legal Issues: The NFT market is white hot. And like the ICO boom of 2017-2018, regulatory and legal issues should be considered a "known," "unknown" risk. Accordingly ShareHodler considers the subject of jurisdiction a very important matter. Legal advice will be considered as the project/ company grows. Certainly, established players like Christie's, Sotheby's, OpenSea, NFT-Maker and others have and are watching these issues closely. Still, so far legal risks are the matter of speculation, not actual regulatory initiatives.

Black Swan Events: Recent events in Europe remind us that we can not plan for every eventuality. Thus our key is to have agreed on important goals to guide us,

[FEASIBILITY]

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Let's begin with where our team is at, today.

In addition to studying, acquiring and trading a broad rage of crypto currencies since 2016, our team members have been investors in Cardano since 2018. Hodling since then. One of our team, an active member of Catalyst, convinced us to structure the ShareHodler marketplace to serve creative CNFT artists on Cardano as well as those operating in the mainstream EVM ecosystem. Which brings us to make this proposal as part of The Great Migration (from Ethereum).

Self Funded to Date:

Blockchain Integrations - The ShareHolder platform, began life where the most popular collections of high value, investment grade NFTs are found -> in the EVM ecosystem

Our senior dev has been, and is focused on building the EVM smart contracts that will interact with each other to provide security and functionality. That work will be completed to alpha stage in 12 weeks from now. About the time Voting will have decided to fund our proposal.

Platform Selection - However; having been introduced to the Cardano protocol and Plutus, there may be a design decision made to run the multi-chain protocols from Cardano, instead of the EVM environment. Those decisions will emerge during the initial phase, whilst the fund 8 voting process continues.

Market R&D - A lot of effort has been invested in deciding business model, market rules, governance, commercial strategies, the principles by which the ShareHodler platform will find and take its place within the competitive marketplace. That work continues.

Business Model - Our founders have formulated a business model which will enable sustainability, Of course we continue to refine the business model while we see the NFT market evolving. And as technology matures (such as Fracada v2) and June release of the Cardano protocol Vasil hardfork.

Phase 1:

1. Continue to develop the smart contracts that enable all functionality - ETC (Estimated Time of Completion) Week 0 after funding.
2. Engage with Catalyst Collaborators (see risk section) to determine any partnering arrangements that would maximize efficiency and effectiveness & a possible pivot to host the platform within the Cardano protocol - ETC Week 0 after submitting.
3. Define system interactions with users. - ETC Week 0 after funding
4. Research and decide corporate jurisdiction - ETC Week 0 after funding.

Phase 2:

1. Register corporate entity - ETC week 12 after funding
2. Engage contract developers to Develop UX/UI. Linking to Blockchain smart contract modules. - ETC Week 15 after funding
3. Engage graphic artists. Develop first version web3 site - ETC Week 12 after funding.
4. Engage sales marketing team. Design marketing and sales strategy - ETC week 15 after funding
5. Engage Plutus devs to implement Fracada fractionalisation capability - ETC Week 15 after funding.
6. Refine business model to match technology.- Continuous ETC-18 after funding
7. System security audit - ETC week 21 after funding
8. Seek additional funding
9. Prepare Phase 4 planning.

Phase 3:

Test and demonstrate MVP web3 platform - ETC week 18 after funding.

Implement Phase 4 plans - Review project progress and revise launch schedule. ETC - week 20 after funding.

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Self Funded to Date:

Blockchain Integrations - The ShareHolder platform, began life where the most popular collections of high value, investment grade NFTs are found -> in the EVM ecosystem

WP - 01 Development - Our senior dev has been, and is focused on building the EVM smart contracts that will interact with each other to provide security and functionality. That work will be completed to alpha stage in 12 weeks from now. About the time Voting will have decided to fund our proposal.

WP-02 Design - Having been introduced to the Cardano protocol and Plutus, there may be a design decision made to run the multi-chain protocols from Cardano, instead of the EVM environment. Those decisions will emerge during the initial phase, whilst the fund 8 voting process continues.

WP-03 Market R&D - A lot of effort has been invested in deciding business model, market rules, governance, commercial strategies, the principles by which the ShareHodler platform will find and take its place within the competitive marketplace. That work continues.

WP- 04 Business Model - Our founders have formulated a business model which will enable sustainability, Of course we continue to refine the business model while we see the NFT market evolving. And as technology matures (such as Fracada v2) and June release of the Cardano protocol Vasil hardfork.

Phase 1 WP-01 : $0 - Self Funded

1. Continue to develop the smart contracts that enable all functionality - ETC (Estimated Time of Completion) Week 0 after funding.
2. Engage with Catalyst Collaborators (see risk section) to determine any partnering arrangements that would maximize efficiency and effectiveness & a possible pivot to host the platform within the Cardano protocol - ETC Week 0 after submitting.
3. Define system interactions with users. - ETC Week 0 after funding
4. Research and decide corporate jurisdiction - ETC Week 0 after funding.

External Funding (Catalyst)

Phase 2 WP-02, WP-03, WP-04 : 17 weeks @ average burn rate of $3,000 per week

Budget Breakdown - $51,000 to fund UX.UI Developer + Graphic Artists

1. Register corporate entity - ETC week 12 after funding
2. Engage contract developers to Develop UX/UI. Linking to Blockchain smart contract modules. - ETC Week 15 after funding
3. Engage graphic artists. Develop first version web3 site - ETC Week 12 after funding.
4. Engage sales marketing team. Design marketing and sales strategy - ETC week 15 after funding
5. Engage Plutus devs to implement Fracada fractionalisation capability - ETC Week 15 after funding.
6. Refine business model to match technology.- Continuous ETC-17 weeks after funding
7. Seek additional funding Continuous
8. Prepare Phase 4 planning.

Phase 3 WP-01, WP-03 : 4 weeks @ average burn rate of $6,000 per week

Budget Breakdown - $24,000 to fund audit and revisions

1. System security audit - by subcontract - ETC week 21 after funding
2. Test and demonstrate MVP web3 platform - ETC week 18 after funding.

Phase 4 WP-04 : Continuing

Budget Breakdown: Self funded or alternate source, Perhaps Catalyst Fund 9 Proposal

1. Review project progress and revise launch schedule. ETC - week 20 after funding.

Project Budgeted elements of cost are shown on attached document.

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Technical: Senior Information Security Systems Officer skilled in Cyber Warfare Technology and techniques. Proficient and up to date with the latest cyber-attack trends and defence technologies. Highly driven to defend communications systems against cyber-attacks with military-grade tactics. Continuously seeking to streamline processes and improve overall platform operations. Strong ability to adapt to and overcome any obstacle with out of the box thinking and brainstorming. Strong technical group leader. Able to delegate tasks and responsibilities to accomplish any given project. Strong technical writer. Experience developing several technical manuals to streamline operations and facilitate training. Security Plus and GIAC certified, and holds a current Top Secret Government Clearance.

Tokenomics: Researching, investing, and successfully trading in a wide range of cryptocurrencies since 2015. Lifelong background in performing and creative arts made it easy to understand the potential of creative NFT's very early on in this new wave. Among trading groups, known and respected for ideation.

Business: 30 years experience starting, owning and operating small and medium professional and technical services businesses, employing from 10 - 1200 employees in global markets. Active Catalyst member since 2019. Participating in all aspects of innovation, experimentation and ideation.

Catalyst Community Contributions: 3rd Place winners in 2020 WYOhackathon in UN Sustainable Dev Goals category selected by Charles Hoskinson, IOG CTO Romain Pellerin and UN SDG leaders. Creator of open source Pre-Proposal checklist templates. Two projects funded in F7.

Create Teaming Agreement Templates (open source to be published for use by all funded proposal teams).

Universal Tourism Payment System, a Nation Building initiative.

Marketing: Among our team we have experience and ability to produce youtube promotions. As we move out of the technical phase we will actively seek a Sales and Marketing manger. Once launched early promotional efforts will be via the NFT creative community.

Legal: We are actively investigating the most appropriate jurisdiction to register a legal entity. Cyprus (EU), State of Wyoming (DAOLLC) are under consideration.

Financial: Self funded to date. Hoping to be successful in obtaining Project Catalyst funding to establish on the Cardano blockchain. Once launched, we will be seeking partnering relationships with existing players in the high value, investment grade NFT community/market to help build wide scale public awareness. This includes financial advisory firms already active in the NFT asset class.

Collaboration: This proposal will be a model of collaboration within the Catalyst. We actively seek to collaborate with any and all of the teams proposing NFT related projects, whether funded or not funded. At this time, these Catalyst proposals have posted enough information to show us the potential for collaboration.

• Fund 7 - Fractionalized NFTs v2 - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384625

The first dApp dcSpark wrote is called "Fracada" supports fractionalizing NFTs. Fracada has seen good interest with multiple NFT marketplaces. Of course Fracada is our starting point for all things Cardano in this proposal. Certainly we will seek the assistance and if possible subcontract technical integration work to dcSpark (creators of Fracada)

• Fund 8 - Milkomeda Acceleration program - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/400714

Where companies will be coached. We would be grateful to be selected to join their acceleration program.

• Fund 8 - Attract ETH NFT Projects & Talent - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/400714

This proposal fits perfectly with our initiative.

"How do we get the interest of artists & developers planning to release NFT projects on ETH and onboard them smoothly to Cardano?

A series of comprehensive & appealing guides coupled with one-on-one consultancy & onboarding to released or in-development ETH NFT projects"

• Fund 8 - Project Monarch - Going Up - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/403012

Their experience in the design and development of smart contracts for Crypto artists, having launched several artists led NFT projects makes us a very complementary projects. Whether they are funded or not we will seek opportunities to work together.

[AUDITABILITY]

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Progress reporting will be done using Growthwheel.net - a business start-up and management system created in Denmark, and now used worldwide.

See sample Task Schedule (attached) that mirrors the Work Plan described above. The system provides a 30-6-90 day forward looking list of tasks to be completed.

Budget items are shown on the attached sheet.

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Long Term: Success sees Cardano CNFT creators taking a front row seat in the high value, investment grade NFT market.

Success During the Project Funding Period:

• Launch of ShareHodler platform on the Cardano blockchain
• Fractionalisation of several CNFT's
• Placement of fractionalised shares of high value investment grade NFTs (from the Ethereum blockhain) for sale on the Cardano blockchain via ShareHodler

Longer Term Success in Particular:

• Adoption by the Cardano creative NFT community getting greater exposure to other cryptocurrency investors, yielding higher prices for their creative work.
• Fractionalising potentially high value creative CNFTs to make them affordable to a broader audience of collectors and investors.
• Raising standards within the Cardano creative NFT community by exposure to higher value investment grade NFTs
• Adoption of ADA as a payment currency by industry leading auction houses
• Use of ShareHodler platform by private art galleries
• Expansion of the assets represented by CNFTs from digital art to physical objects, even commodities.

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One team member has collaborated as a team member on seven proposals. Two unfunded Fund 5, two funded (F7), three submitted in Fund 8 (to be decided).

Unfunded:

Fund 6: Growthwheel Business Planning Tool- https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/369491 No Relation to this proposal

Fund 6: FundTrack - Approve Before Spend - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/369893 No Relation to this proposal

Funded:

Fund 7: Miscellaneous Challenge> Create Teaming Agreement Templates - 3 person team. Project complete this month (March 2022) https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384463 No Relation to this proposal

Fund 7: Nation Building Challenge>Universal Tourism Payment System - 4 Team members. Project duration 6 months - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/381841 No Relation to this proposal

In Process:

Fund 8: The Great Migration Challenge> Bring Bored Ape* to Cardano - 3 person team https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398579 This proposal

Fund 8: Onboarding New Members Challenge> Learn 2 Earn CA Can Be a good Job! - 5 person team. https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398356/ No Relation to this proposal

Fund 8: Create Teaming Agreement Templates V2 - 3 person team. No Relation to this proposal