Cannabis & Hemp Grading App

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

A Web3 mobile Dapp based cannabis grading tool & quality verification system publishing to the cardano blockchain, will enable development of a global grading network facilitating an efficient market.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

+400,000lbs of graded cannabis. 1000's of farm visits. Contributed to creation of worlds 1st qualitative grading standard. Work in progress of pre-blockchain version of iOS grading app (See attached shots). Contracting w/highly exp Haskell / Plutus / DEX / Djed devs.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Where are we now with our Cannabis Grading Application:

Pre-blockchain iOS mobile app. Field tested and needed blockchain connection, admin panel, and data integration for automatic appraisal.

STEP 1 - Capture Inventory Data

STEP 2 - Grade attributes based on ICHS 100-point scale

STEP 3 - Record Product Defects

STEP 4 - View generated appraisal information

STEP 5 - Access our unique Certificate of Grade & Appraisal Report

What is a Certificate of Grade (COG)? View interactive (+) Certificate

Grading & Agriculture

The practice of grading agricultural commodities ensures the farmer's to adopt the quality specifications for their products, which in turn avoid them being exploited from the traders and obtaining good price for the produce. Since the graded products possess fixed standards there is no scope for cheating consumers. Grading is a standard and foundation in all other global agricultural crops, and is not yet a common practice in the cannabis industry. Our Grading Application solves that.

The Industry

There are four main types of actors in the cannabis and hemp trading industry.

1. Sellers (producers, ie growers, or extractors) of cannabis. Mostly small / medium sized licensed companies growing and or extracting cannabis, domiciled in single states in the US (due to issues with federal regulation), Canada, Europe and a few other countries. Their goal is to sell the largest volume of their products at the highest competitive prices. To do so, they must be able to demonstrate the quality of material they offer.
2. Buyers of cannabis. All types of buyers want to understand the quality of the product they are buying through grading and quality verification avoiding counterfeit / or product mixed with inferior product that is delivered. Whether they are
3. wholesalers, distributors, retail outlets or 
4. large buyers (manufacturers, extractors, or processors) buying bulk for processing into various different forms of THC (branded joints, medicinals, edibles, supplements etc.), 
5. Independent businesses grading cannabis. To be efficient and grade at scale, the grading industry needs a common language to define quality, standards for grading and a tool set that allows them to efficiently and effectively grade cannabis material in the field, at scale.
6. Independent Marketplaces and Brokers. Marketplaces like Tamerlane, prefer to represent graded cannabis and hemp material because over the past seven years and 1000’s of transactions 3rd party quality verified material sells faster, with 90% less returns, and upto 60% increased value. Tamerlane Marketplace uses grading to its advantage. This service needs to be available to all buyers and sellers on the open market. Doing so will scale trade, and the industry.

The ICHS approved Big Tree grading system creates business opportunities for independent graders using a standardized grading scheme to assign grades to individual flower lots (+/-5 - 50 pounds in weight). 

User Stories

1. Licensed cannabis operators, producing cannabis, have inventory to sell, quantity and quality varying in time (daily/weekly/monthly). They need ways to communicate the quality of product on offer.
2. Buyers have few industry standards by which they can communicate and no common language to describe cannabis quality.
3. Grading is a difficult process which must be performed in the field at the source of the cannabis products. Until this BigTree grading app, the process involved manual data entry back in the office, to produce paper based grading certificates, easily counterfeited or manipulated. A process that was subject to data manipulation at many points.

System Design

All three user types use mobile and/or web apps to interact with the Grading process of producing International Cannabis & Hemp Standard (ICHS) recognized quality verified certificates on a lot by lot basis.

1. Producers: Select Independent grading specialists to record information about every lot of product that is ready to be offered for sale. 
2. Independent Graders: Visit the farms, inspect the plants, document conditions with standard format color photographs, establish scores according to predefined, commonly understood metrics and upload the data to the grading system - while still in the field. Attach a grade including metadata (details of grading, what grading system was used, who did the grading) to the lot and record it on the blockchain.
3. Producers receive a transaction ID that uniquely identifies the lot. This ID can be turned into a QR code and printed on the packaging for consumers to scan as a Quality Verification.
4. Buyers: Use the transaction ID to look up producer & grader data. Helping them make purchasing and pricing decisions.

All the interactions are realized using Cardano native tokens.

The following components are needed:

• Indexing service - provides info about the grades, lots & NFTs that have been recorded on the chain
• Permissions service - manages permissions, who is allowed to enter data, etc.
• Apps for the three user types will be web apps (including mobile versions for field grading.)

Tokenized Quality Verified Product Sheets

• Optional Tokenized Quality Verified Product Sheets
• Cardano Native Tokens (CNFT’s) verify the authenticity of the ICHS certificate for the product listed
• Members are able to “export” ICHS certificates as a Cardano Native Token (CNFT represented by a QR code) on websites or collaborating blockchains (a technology dependent feature).

Why is a Grading Application needed?

• Growers need to bring visibility to their products.
• The industry is having a difficult time valuing and differentiating products.
• Everyone is demanding better data: consumers, the regulators, the researchers.
• Trust in this easily counterfeited, high value product category is low.
• Regulators have an interest in the product quality (THC content). 
• No one else does this at this time.
• Big Tree Grading App provides a standardized way to capture meaningful product data at the source.
• Distributors and listing agents can manage the quality of their clients’ inventory.

Three ways to Grade

The Big Tree Grading App has an opportunity to become the “Uber” of Cannabis data documentation, enabling the smallest producers to document their product in a standardized manner. 

The application can be accessed by:

• Online Form hosted for CLS member clients
• Backend API with licensed access by CLS members from their own IT systems
• Use of the grading app by 3rd party ICHS trained, independent grading specialists. 

All Quality Verification certificates (QVC) produced using the Big Tree system will be registered on the Cardano blockchain. 

• Big Tree grading certificates produced by independent grading specialists will be registered and identified as ICHS compliant certificates. 
• Big Tree certificates created by producer members will be identified as Unverified Certificates (UVC). 

Only certificates produced by 3rd party independent grading specialists will be identified as Quality Verified grading certificates.

Big Tree welcomes the development of other tools and integration of our data with other systems. More demand for data is what brings exponential growth opportunities for our data.

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

The challenge establishes the need for proposals with these qualities.

“Cardano needs a thriving ecosystem of different Dapps, products and integrations for the community to use that increasingly become the better alternatives over current centralized providers.

The more interesting and useful the products and integrations are that can be built in the ecosystem the more reasons people have to interact with the Cardano blockchain that can help further drive more adoption, feedback, growth and even more innovations.”

It is doubtless that the Big Tree Grading app and associated listing service and marketplace will be among the most interesting and useful products for a broad range of age groups & particularly interesting to many Cardano and other cryptocurrency community members - globally!

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

Cost overruns : A risk that all projects face. In the case of Aperon group of companies, a well established, revenue generating company, we have the ability to supplement catalyst funding owing to cost overruns.

Technology complications : As of the time of submitting this proposal, the Cardano protocol is ready to launch a new version “Vasil” which seems to have all the features that are required for a listing service and simple market place. Contracting with highly experienced Haskell devs, experienced in Plutus, and past experience with stable coins and IOG suggests that unexpected technology complications can be resolved.

Unavailability of Key Persons : Any juristic person (registered company) faces the risk of losing a Key Person. IN the case of Aperon, as the founder, the CEO is unlikely to leave. In the case of unexpected events, within the corporate realm, the company has a succession plan for key persons. In as much as blockchain development is contracted to an individual, system architecture and specifications will be the earliest deliverables. Allowing another dev to continue the work, in case of unavailability. Worst case would be delay in delivering while we found a suitably qualified replacement developer.

Market Uptake : Many Catalyst proposers are creating innovative, new products and services for which actual market demand has not been demonstrated. New systems always face the risk that market demand would not be as great as required to be sustainable. In the case of a commodity listing service, Aperon is developing the listing service in response to the demands of hundreds of customers built around our 7 years of experience in the legal cannabis market..

Inadequate Business experience : Many Catalyst proposers building new products and services within a technology ecosystem do not have business experience. Start-ups often find success depends on non-technical issues such as HR, marketing, accounting, regulatory compliance, banking relationships and others. With 25 years experience in the global commodities environments, Aperon’s systems, procedures, network of customers and service suppliers prepares us for expanding our business in this dimension.

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

The overall Cannabis & Hemp Grading App project is planned to be completed in 8 months after final funding decision (which for Fund 9 is scheduled to be Sept 2022).

Aperon Group will have three proposals underway at the same time (If all are funded).

Global Cannabis Listing Platform - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/419950

Cannabis & Hemp Grading App - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/420210

Supply Chain for Cannabis & Hemp https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/420833

We will contract with two experienced development resources

Jann Muller - Developing all blockchain related technology

Veridica - An Aperon Group captive web developer will be responsible for all aspects of UI & Web2 customer facing websites & mobile apps.

We include the same basic plan in each proposal. 

There are six components to each of the three Aperon Group proposals submitted for funding by the community.

Work Items

The work on each of them can be broken down into several parts. All estimates of time define 

Minimum time to complete (5% certainty)

Maximum Time to Complete (95% certainty)

1. Specification: Describing exactly what the service should do, how it will be used, and how it interacts with other services - 

Estimate of Developers Time Required Min 1 days / Max 5 days

With Coordination (Review and Approve and Rework) Min 5 days / Max 10 days

2. Writing on-chain code: Building the Plutus smart contracts that govern the creation of tokens, recording of data on-chain, etc.

Estimate of Developers Time Required Min 1 days / Max 3 days

With Coordination (Review and Approve and Rework) Min 2 days / Max 4 days

3. Off-chain code, indexing: The code that reads events from the blockchain and aggregates the relevant data (for example, keeping track of all new listings that were posted)

Estimate of Developers Time Required Min 2 days / Max 4 days

With Coordination (Review and Approve and Rework) Min 2 days / Max 4 days

4. Off-chain code, transaction building: Code that generates new transactions based on user input and the current state of the app from the indexing service (for example, this function could take the data for a new listing, and then produce the transaction that records this listing, and also post the data to IPFS and the local database)

Estimate of Developers Time Required Min 1 days / Max 5 days

With Coordination (Review and Approve and Rework) Min 2 days / Max 4 days

5. Testing

Estimate of Developers Time Required Min 2 days / Max 6 days

With Coordination (Review and Approve and Rework) Min 2 days / Max 4 days

6. Web app. User-facing part of the application. It talks to the back-end components (indexing / transaction building service).

Estimate of Developers Time Required Min 5 days / Max 12 days

With Coordination (Review and Approve and Rework) Min 2 days / Max 4 days

7. The RBAC component needs to be built first, regardless of which proposals are accepted, because it is required for all of the other ones. So it’s like a piece of infrastructure upon which we will build the other pieces.

Estimate of Developers Time Required Min 13 days / Max 38 days (ALL PROPOSALS)

With Coordination (Review and Approve and Rework) Min 5 days / Max 10 day

Work Plan - Incremental Approach

Within each component we will aim to finish the "specification" task as quickly as possible and then work on the other tasks incrementally. So when the specification is done we will select a single feature and build the on-chain code, off-chain code and UI for it, and then test the feature. This approach will enable us to catch any mistakes in our planning early, and to gather user feedback as quickly as possible. It also gives us some leeway with the scope - if the work takes a lot longer than expected, we can reduce the scope and still have a useful product to show for the Catalyst money

Time & Effort

Estimation for the tasks are broken down by component. This is based on a more detailed plan that considers the dependencies between tasks. All numbers are working days (8h).

RBAC = Role Based Access System (Applies to each proposal

CLS = Cannabis Listing Service Proposal

GS = Grading System proposal

SC = Supply Chain Proposal

CO = Coordination, Review, Rework

PM = Project Management

TM = Technical Management

AS = Administrative Support (Interfacing with Project Catalyst & Reporting)

Key Milestones

Following the Incremental work plan concept it is difficult to publish event-oriented Milestones. Instead we will publish a progress video every month which discusses and demos progress. 

We allow 2 weeks for our own team coordination after final funding decision and Challenge Team kick off meetings.

These key milestones are based on the time estimated to achieve 95% certainty.

1). Within each component we will aim to finish the "specification" task as quickly as possible and then work on the other tasks incrementally. 

Specification - ETC 4-6 weeks after Challenge Team kick off meeting

2). When the specification is done we will select a single feature (such as “enter a new listing”) and build the on-chain code, off-chain code and UI for it, and then test the feature. 

On-chain code, Off-chain code, Indexing, Txn Building, Testing - 20 weeks after specification agreed

3). Web User Interface - ETC 31 weeks after specification agreed.

4). Final wrap-up corrections, user feedback - ETC 33 weeks after Specification agreed.

5). Closeout report - ETC 35 weeks after Specifications agreed

This approach will enable us to catch any mistakes in our planning early, and to gather user feedback as quickly as possible. It also gives us some leeway with the scope - if the work takes a lot longer than expected, we can reduce the scope and still have a useful product to show for the Catalyst money.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Estimate of cost is based on 

Plutus Developer - $1100 / working day (8 hours) 

UI Developer - $500 / working day (8 hours)

Project Manager - $260 / working day (2 hours)

Technical Manager - $260 / working day (2 hours)

Administrative Support - $400 / working day (8 hours)

This is based on a more detailed plan that considers the dependencies between tasks. All numbers are working days (8h).

RBAC = Role Based Access System (Applies to each proposal

CLS = Cannabis Listing Service Proposal

GS = Grading System proposal

SC = Supply Chain Proposal

CO = Coordination, Review, Rework

PM = Project Management

TM = Technical Management

AS = Administrative Support (Interfacing with Project Catalyst & Reporting)

Thus, Total funding request for this proposal is $110,000 

Developer costs $35k + RBAC $40K

Project Management (PM) = ($42/3 =14)   

Technical Management (TM) = $42/3 = $14)

Admin Support (AS) = $21/3 = $7k

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

LEADERSHIP TEAM

Jhavid Mohseni, 24+ years of business and entrepreneurial experience in global distribution and trade, commodities, supply chain management, cannabis, operations and strategy. As a repeat founder with several successful exits, Jhavid is focused on vision, strategy and team, while supporting mission critical priorities, revenue opportunities and ensuring fiscal responsibility. Jhavid is the overall project director monitoring progress, providing market-interface issues

linkedin.com/in/jhavidmohseni

Christian Saucier, 26+ years of management consulting, technical systems architecture and product development experience. In 2016 he Co-Founded and was the CTO of ripe.io, a food blockchain with data tokenization providing product provenance and quality certification built on utility patents he created. Christian manages the team building our software tools while collaborating on our data strategy. Christian will be the technical point of contact with all Cardano and web developers.

linkedin.com/in/csaucier

Rae Lland, 10+ years experience in the cannabis industry, with a focus on communication, project management and business development. Rae holds the distinction of being Leafly magazine's longest tenured writer and has developed a strong network with professionals in all areas of the industry. Rae is focused on Aperon's business development, presence, strategy, and team productivity. Rae will be the main project coordinator connecting the dots and keeping the pulse on all aspects.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rae-lland/

CONTRACTORS

Blockchain Development: Jann Muller

Blockchain tech led by first Plutus developer. Built initial Plutus use cases prior to Alonzo H/F. Wrote matchmaker for Muesli DEX. Property-based testing of Djed stablecoin. Many years of commercial Haskell / full stack. Jann will develop all blockchain aspects of the CLS.

linkedin.com/in/jann-müller

UX/UI: Scythian LLC dba Verdica

Verdica is a software development company that has been involved in purpose built tools serving the cannabis and hemp industries since 2019. Previous projects include grading app and trading platforms. Verdica, will engage with the blockchain team to create a seamless user experience.

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

The Aperon group of companies has submitted three proposals: 

1. Global Cannabis Listing Service
2. Cannabis Grading App
3. Supply Chain 4 Legal Cannabis & Hemp. 

Each can be completed without either or both of the others. But together they will produce the greatest benefit to the Cardano blockchain community.

Upon completion of this initial scope, we plan to come back for a later round to build out additional feature sets, and versions serving a broader audience and supporting the global cannabis community including and Integrated Training module as well as a planned Consumer Version.

[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?

In addition to internal proposal team communication channels (Slack, Discord, Telegram and Whats App), weekly sprint reviews and monthly progress reports will be required from developers according to plan. We will integrate these updates within Catalyst progress reporting. Links to Test sites can be made available to Challenge team members, as they are ready. We expect to be active in after town hall breakout meetings (main and Pacific) and swarm sessions where we can discuss progress, solicit ideas and answer community questions.

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

A functioning Web3 mobile application, enabling 

1. trained cannabis graders (Cannabis Field-men) to produce reliable, trustworthy ICHS compliant quality verification certificates: Certificate of Grade & Appraisal Reports (as shown elsewhere in the proposal)
2. cannabis material producers to post certificates identifying the quality of their material for buyers
3. buyers to identify the quality of cannabis material they wish to purchase with a very high degree of accuracy
4. posted to the Cardano blockchain as immutable records of product quality available for inspection by all users.

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

Entirely new proposal

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

Though we are a grading, appraisal and 3rd party quality verification company and not cannabis growers, in this modern world those who help farmers be more profitable can claim a small role in the environmental benefits of the industry.