Decentralizing Telco for Cardano

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

We developed and launched an MVP to provide users with a secure number that acts as a digital identity and protects personal phone numbers and privacy on the world's largest social messaging apps.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Aside from our energy and enthusiasm in blockchain, we both have extensive experience within telecommunications. My partner created communication apps in Hong Kong and the US, and I worked for global telecommunication networks. We have combined experience of over 20 years.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Simcrypted's grand vision is to help people regain control of their mobile identity. Our current MVP achieves this by providing users with a secure number that acts as your digital identity and protects your personal phone number and privacy on WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, WeChat, Clubhouse, and more. There are no hardware requirements such as a SIM card, no downloads, and all personal data is 100% innominate.

Our current MVP is live and fully operational, and we have nearly 1,000 users that have signed up so far, which is encouraging, but it's early days. 

We always recognized that our MVP launch fell short of our grand vision but instead served as a fast option to provide a layer of protection for end-users and helped us validate our purpose. Ultimately, our MVP doesn't address some of the core infrastructure concerns tied to network carrier access, which is highly centralized and controlled by a small group of entities. We want to explore and develop on-chain solutions for telecommunications that;

A) add decentralization and open source principles into our global communication infrastructure for the greater good of human society and,

B) enable self-sovereign-identification (SSI) for end-users, protecting and empowering individuals' right to their personal information

To work towards this we will be use Project Catalyst funding to:

1. Fund and resource a research team/s to look at on-chain solutions that aim to deconstruct and open up telecommunication technology
2. Test and push current technology capabilities by including on-chain elements with the end goal being improving or enhancing SSI
3. Socialising research components and small general marketing spend to support and grow viability

Important to note that all research and tech stack findings will be made open source and publicly available.

Our combined experience in communications, blockchain, and tech led us to our current MVP solution, and we want to continue developing a more inclusive and independent range of solutions utilizing Cardano. Now we want to get into the big picture and impact opportunity - and this is where we'd like support from Project Catalyst and the broader community!

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

We believe our proposal addresses the challenge by bringing a unique and viable application to explore development options on top of Cardano by attracting users and utilizing the power of the Cardano blockchain for vital infrastructure needs.

Task 1 will be looking at long-term opportunities that support the two aims (decentralizing and opening technology + SSI). This will be two teams as we will be looking for a level of diverse representation to get a more unified global perspective. We want it to help identify further research or even development avenues. With new technology such as Star Link entering the space, this is a great moment to add open-source framework discussions on how decentralized telecommunication infrastructure could operate based on the Cardano network.

Task 2 allows us to explore current opportunities with what we have today and how we can push the limits of this centralized technology by delivering more privacy value to end-users through on-chain solutions. This will likely provide faster net positive results and be repurposed to support any research output from the first task.

Task 3 permits socialising these new concepts and marketing outreach to highlight a) the problems with our current communications infrastructure and b) create a new audience to Cardano and Project Catalyst

The Dapps, Products & Integrations challenge framework and parameters and suitably broad to cater for a wide range of ideas and solutions addressing multiple verticals and domains. Simcrypted, we feel, sits here unique in its maturity as a fully-operational MVP and positioned well to tackle the infrastructure ambitions we have for the greater good of the Cardano community and chain itself.

[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 feel the risks to delivery are very low given our current experience and understanding of the project and the actions that lay ahead. There will be negligible blockers that would prevent the work from taking place, and being delivered successfully.

The only small risk worth mentioning is potentially with the roadmap. Sometimes research elements can creep out of scope or take a little longer to complete, although we have baked in fat to the milestones to accommodate this risk.

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

Roadmap for completion will be over a 3-6 month period depending on resourcing timings and deliverables. We predict a longer time arc (closer to six months) in the research element, with the testing element faster (within three months). 

Task 1 - Research

Month 1

• Research and open up tenders for research team/s 

Month 2

• Finalize recruitment and scope of work for research team/s

Month 3

• Early hypothesis and progress check-in (weekly calls)

Month 4

• Progress check-in and report (to be published via blog)

Month 5

• Draft view on findings and any feedback or direction steering

Month 6

• Completed report, collated and proofed by a technical writer

Task 2 - Testing currently available tech stacks

Month 1

• Create test cases and desired outcomes to support identifying current technology
• Begin testing solutions
• Source smart contract dev resource

Month 2

• Begin access discussions with identified tech
• Consultation with smart contract dev
• Start to test cases with partners

Month 3

• Early health check to tests
• Progress report
• New partners/tech identified

Month 4

• Report and findings published with smart contract dev input for sharing on github.

Task 3 - Socialising and marketing budget (most budget to be spent later in project timeline)

Month 1

• Launch small awareness campaign of Catalyst funding and objectives for project

Month 2/3/4

• News and features media releases highlighting research teams current findings
• Social media awareness campaign and content of why telecommunications needs to be decentralized

Month 5/6

• Media campaign on research output

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

For our three work-streams, we have budgeted the combined work at $35,500. 

Task 1 (research) - budget circa $15,000 depending on team/s hired and related expenses

• Research recruitment and consultation on best approach - $800
• Research team 1 - $5,000
• Research team 2 - $5,000
• Team expenditure, access to technology solutions and other industry/enterprise infrastructure -$2,200
• Project Manager - $2,000

Task 2 (testing) - overall budget $9,500

• Plutus dev - $6,500 (part-time 3 month contract)
• Access to test environments, integrations and partners - $3,000

Task 3 (socialising and marketing) - Overall budget $11,000

• Content writer - $3,000
• PR agency - $4,000
• Ad-spend/distribution - $2,500
• Creative assets / supporting content - $1,500

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

My partner and I are very excited about the possibilities that could exist in a more decentralized world. I'm an early holder of ETH and also early investor in Cardano (like many here) and my partner has recently been developing a unique NFT project that hasn't been seen yet! Aside from our energy and enthusiasm in the blockchain space, we both have extensive experience within telecommunications. My partner created communication apps in Hong Kong and the US (with successful exits), and I worked for the largest telecommunication networks in the world. We recognized last year how lacking privacy measures are within social messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and even Signal.

Consequently, we started Simcrypted late last year between the two of us, and we engaged a couple of developers to help us get it off the ground - all bootstrapped from our funds. 

We have built a fully functioning MVP but we are now excited to expand into deeper and greater impact avenues - using Cardano as the foundation tech layer.

We will be recruiting a number of people to join the project (as detailed earlier).

• Plutus developer
• Research teams
• Content writer
• Project Manager
• Marketing and PR agencies where relevant

[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 return to Project Catalyst if we see a viable option that could use Catalyst funding in a positive and impactful way. It's too early to say a definite yes to this, however we are optimistic with our plan in this proposal that we will have new avenues opened up where we can explore scaling and other opportunities subject to challenge areas and of course community consent!

[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?

We will be measuring progress tightly and will report back regularly on the following metrics:

• PR outreach metrics
• Impressions
• Engagement (shares, likes etc)
• Interviews and published links
• Content
• Youtube impressions and engagement
• Twitter and Medium engagement for blogs and content
• Research
• Outputs are slower or less obvious to measure here naturally, however we will be tracking and reporting findings as the research teams share
• Testing tech stacks
• Test cases run with failed/success values
• Smart contracts or code published

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

As privacy advocates, a core tenet for us is the increasingly worrying dominance of platforms that exert colossal control over society. It is such a common condition of modern life that roughly six-in-ten adults say they do not think it is possible to go through daily life without having data collected about them by companies or the government.

Individuals and companies that promote centralization with closed-source technology and algorithms and enjoy influential political sway for personal gain have a little-to-no part to play in the future design and ownership of core technology.

Our project focuses squarely on the rights and privacy of the end-user and a more extensive, more impactful study on how core communication technology can be decentralized using blockchain for more equitable access. Success hones in on this, by the end of the project we'd love to see:

1. Comprehensive research that triggers conversations, ideas and even ultimately new initiatives
2. Fast integration of current possibilities with our MVP and additional capabilities on the Cardano network

[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 one

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Reduced inequalities