Bonding native assets to NFTs

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

We have built a tool that allows a user to vest any asset in linear fashion to any existing NFT collection. Users can also mint new NFTs with our tool and vest allocations of tokens to those NFTs.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Klaus has 17+ Years programming experience, developing for blockchains since 2017, and has contributed code to Uniswap, Balancer Labs, OpenZeppelin, The Sandbox and others. Kiran has 10+ Years software development experience including a YC company endorsed by Steve Wozniak.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

What will we produce? (i.e. outputs) 

A user facing Dapp that allows any project developer to bond coins to any NFT collection. They can specify balances to bond per NFT or wallet address, and linear vesting parameters that determine how quickly those coins can be claimed.

The key innovation here is that the ownership of bonded tokens transfers with the NFT, meaning vesting tokens or airdrops can be transferable without introducing fungibility.

New NFTs can be minted using the tool or an existing collection can be specified.

NFT vesting is free and permission less, and takes place on non custodial contracts that any other project can build on top of.

We have already built a working implementation of this tool and deployed it to several EVM test networks. We will rewrite our smart contracts and UI for Cardano.

Why is this needed?

Having an NFT that acts as a transferable claim key to a locked asset pool allows for valuable use cases like token vesting, employee equity and decentralised LP token ownership. Importantly, this tool supports linear vesting, which is not possible with our seperate Liquid Vesting Token protocol.

What will happen as a result of this work? (i.e. outcomes)

The Cardano ecosystem will gain a free to use vesting utility. We expect this to make the Cardano ecosystem an even more investor friendly environment, especially for existing NFT projects that may be looking to migrate to Cardano. We hope this contributes to greater network health overall.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Art NFTs were a major narrative in 2021/22. We believe that NFTs with fundamental utility will be the next major market narrative.

We aim to provide a free, composable and interoperable tool that allows all developers on the Cardano network to create utility NFTs on demand.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

We have already deployed our vesting tools on several EVM testnets. The primary risk is that our team does not have as much experience building natively for Cardano.

We will be consulting with experienced Cardano developers to support the porting process and up-skilling our existing team to build more on Cardano in the future.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Project Planning - Q4 2022

Deep research, testing, setting internal milestones, assigning responsibilities.

Development - Q1-Q2 2023

Rewriting solidity contracts in Haskell/Plutus and porting the web app to support Cardano wallets.

Audit, Private & Public Beta - Q2 2023

Robust testing with real and testnet assets. Bug fixes and UX improvements.

1.0 Release - Q3 2023

Release and widespread marketing, user outreach.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

$9000 - Ongoing infrastructure costs, Hosting, network fees, software & services

$6000 - Legal and administration (offline) costs

$8400 - Project management throughout the pre-launch & life cycle of the dApp

$13200 - Research, internal & external testing, QA

$31000 - Engineering hours toward smart contracts implementation and back-end

$9200 - Engineering hours toward UI/UX, front-end

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Kiran Matthews - Protocol Design, Project Management, UX

10+ Years software industry experience. Kiran previously led the Product team at Termius, a Y Combinator startup endorsed by Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple). Other past clients include Apple and MasterCard.

Klaus Vidal - Lead Smart Contract Developer

Highly experienced Smart Contract Developer and blockchain security expert who has authored and audited contracts with billions in volume/TVL. Klaus also develops Prettier - a key tool used by Uniswap, Bancor, Open Zeppelin, Gnosis Protocol, Synthetix, Gelato, The Sandbox, UMA and others.

Alan Soares - Full Stack Developer (Haskell/Functional programming)

14+ Years programming experience. 2 Years experience in blockchain.

Juan Ubinatus - Full Stack & Smart Contract Developer

Sergey Stepanets - Full Stack & Smart Contract Developer

Eli Douglas - Front End Developer

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

We hope to self fund ongoing feature upgrades - we would only return to Catalyst if market conditions stifle protocol revenue.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Delivering a stable and secure Cardano compatible port of NFT Vesting is our initial measure of success. Following that milestone, TVL and user growth will be ongoing indicators of success.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Success looks like TVL and user growth on NFT Vesting growing steadily, providing audited, secure tooling to Cardano native startups.

We will leverage our contacts at partners CardStarter, Spores and GeroWallet to find projects that will benefit from robust vesting infrastructure, or tooling to enhance their NFTs.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This is a new proposal.