Scoring Social/Environmental Impact

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

 94% of young people want to use their skills for good, but only 10% are able to do so. This is because it’s difficult to visualize their impact and get rewarded for their contributions. Socious leverages Atala PRISM to attribute social & environmental impact to individuals/organizations and provides rewards in crypto tokens based on their impact score. 

We use blockchain technology to provide trust, transparency, and decentralization. First, we plan to leverage Atala PRISM to allow our users to become the owner of their digital identity and personal data. Atala PRISM facilitates KYC compliance, impact score certification, and asset transaction with trust and transparency. We can guarantee the traceability and transparency of transactions/impact scores by using blockchain technology. Blockchain technology also allows the community to own and run the platform without a third party and share the profits of the platform with the community members through tokens. By becoming a decentralized autonomous organization, the platform can continue to create social and environmental impact on a permanent basis. 

1. Decentralized Identity: In order to attribute “Impact Score” to each individual and organization, decentralized digital identity is essential.  
2. Impact Score: Our objective is to develop an algorithm that will recognize the good deeds of our users and make a record of them on the blockchain, motivating people to fulfill their positive impact potential. Our proprietary algorithm tracks and monitors a wide range of behaviors to generate an Impact Score for each user. This rating will inform the decisions of our users, offsetting the risk associated with engaging in business activities with other netizens and effectively increasing trust and the availability of resources in our impact ecosystem. Users will be incentivized to build their Impact Score with tangible rewards, such as period airdrops of THANK tokens and access to exclusive economic opportunities such as financial products and discounted ethical goods.
3. Decentralization: Socious uses our proprietary impact credentials “Socious Deeds” for governance purposes. Through on-chain governance processes, Socious Deed holders are able to vote on various aspects of organizational operations, allowing community-wide decision-making. Decisions on allocating funding, building new partnerships, verification of impact organizations, reviewing reported organizations/users/content, dispute resolution, and developing the platform can all be executed through this decentralized process. Socious Deeds are verifiable credentials, and therefore non-transferrable, in order to ensure that governance power is widely distributed and is in the hands of informed decision-makers. Only those who have an impact score above 700 are issued these verifiable credentials. Each Deed contains information on the user’s interests/expertise on specific social/environmental issues based on their behaviors on the Socious app. The voting power is proportional to their interests/expertise on the topic that is being voted on. For example, if the topic is about allocating funding to an environmental project, the votes of the users who have contributed their time/money to environmental projects and have posted/commented on content related to environmental issues will be weighed accordingly. 

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

The proposed solution addresses the challenge in the following ways:

The overall question to be addressed by the challenge is “How could the Cardano technology be leveraged to build new solutions for positive impact valuation and monetization?”

Socious’ Impact Score algorithmically measures users’ social and environmental impact based on how they contribute their time to impact projects. Socious’ rewards those with high impact score with its THANK tokens (impact monetization). This new solution for positive impact valuation and monetization will significantly increase the utility & adoption of Cardano. 

This projects is highly relevant to the success of this challenge:

• Discovers innovative ways for impact-oriented projects to create financial value out of their impact generation, notably by issuing impact tokens. For impact-oriented projects, Socious’ Impact Score allows them to create financial value by leveraging volunteers/freelancers to work on their projects without too much financial burden.  
• Increases transparency and traceability on the impact generated by a specific project. Socious’ Impact Score increases transparency and traceability of how people are contributing to impact projects as well as the impact generated by impact projects.

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

Possible challenges or risks to delivering this project successfully include:

Risk: Building Impacrt Score smart contracts to an existing mobile app rather than a web app. 

Strategy to mitigate: We will mitigate this challenge by learning and getting support from the Cardano and Gimbalabs communities.

Risk: Time allocation; we may face challenges in allocating sufficient time to dliver this project in time. 

Strategy to mitigate: We have been carefully planning resource allocation among different projects. In addition to careful planning, we can mitigate the risk by leveraging our freelance resources; we’ve worked with 20 freelancers in the past who can contribute to the project if necessary.

Risk: Credibility of Socious’ Impact Score 

Strategy to mitigate: We will mitigate this challenge by partnering with academics and experts on impact measurement. We will also make the algorithm public so that people can scrutinize how Impact Score is calculated. 

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

We expect that the proposed project can be brought to market within three months of approval of funding – no later than the end of 2022. We will be monitoring the results of the project for three months after the launch. We will submit the final report in the sixth month.

Target Milestones & Deliverables

September 2022

- Project approved by Catalyst voters

- Technical and market analysis of the project

- FInalize workflow

- Ideate and Create Prototypes for User Rsearch

- Conduct User Research using the Prototypes

- Compile and Analyse the findings

- Finalize the UI/UX Design/Technical Architecture 

October 2022

- Start Running Development Sprints

- Unit Testing 

- Integration Testing 

- System Testing

November 2022

- User Acceptance Testing 

- Final Adjustments

- Deployment

- Marketing

December 2022 - February 2023

- Monitor KPIs

- Prepare technical documentation

- Deliver the final report 

Deliverables

1. The code of the Impact Score Calculator deployed and fully functional
2. Functioning flow for verifying Impact Organizations
3. Fully operational workflow of the two functions.

Technical Aspects (architecture, language, technologies):

Blockchain: Cardano/Milkomeda

Smart Contracts: Solidity/EVM

Frontend Mobile App: Typescript React Native

Frontend Web App: Typescript NextJS

Backend: PHP Laravel/Typescript Node.js

Database: MySQL

DevOps: AWS

Machine Learning: Azure

Agile tools: GitHub/Trello

Design Tools: Figma/Miro/Canva

Managing the workload of this and other proposals:

Here is a link explaining workload management.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xOIocF5W9Njsu60e5-aoWzVLpplktzvu3CA881n4kWE/edit?usp=sharing

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

The budget is segmented according to the identifiable items below at a ratio of $100/hr.

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

Socious is an impact gig marketplace powered by blockchain and AI. We are building an ecosystem to help socially conscious individuals contribute to social/environmental impact by visualizing and rewarding their efforts.

The Socious Team working on this project:

Founder and CEO:

Name: Seira Yun

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seirayun/

Position: Founder & CEO

Bio: Seira Yun is a serial social entrepreneur and an impact angel investor. He has worked in the impact sector since 2008 in the Middle East, Africa and Asia leading teams within the ICRC, UNHCR, and social ventures. He founded Discover Deep Japan Inc. in 2019, a social venture that focused on diversity and inclusion, which was acquired in 2021. Seira is a full-stack developer and holds a Master in Social Innovation degree from the University of Cambridge. His lived experience as both a migrant and a pansexual queer drives Seira’s passion for social change. Atala PRISM Pioneer Program participant

Name: Jayson Ilagan

Location: Manila, Philippines 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayson-ilagan/

Position: Senior Developer

Bio: 

Jayson is a web and mobile app developer with over 12 years of experience. He earned his degree in Computer Science from the Lyceum of the Philippines-Laguna. He accepted his school invitation to work for them after graduation to build systems and worked on developing a faculty performance evaluation system.

After spending six years working at Ivoclar Vivadent Inc. as an IT Global Software Developer, where his primary focus was project creation, he decided to move to Singapore for two years to join Direct Asia Management Services Pte. Ltd. As a web developer, he enhanced the Quote and Buy journey of the company portal that caters to motorcycles and travel insurance. He hopes to build an application for kids with curable diseases who don't have the means to pay for medications to help them access proper medical treatment. Atala PRISM Pioneer Program participant.

Name: Cristhian Tejada

Location, San Salvador, El Salvador

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristhian-tejada-a73844174/

Position: Blockchain Developer - freelancer

Bio: A blockchain developer/data scientist with 9 years of experience. Cristhian strongly believes that artificial intelligence and blockchain will play an essential role in sustainable development and social good in the coming years. He currently stands out as a data scientist and blockchain developer in several social impact projects using the technology as a main tool. He also works in the Open Bank Project developing blockchain-based solutions for the financial and banking sector. He has studied business and economics but the need to create tools that improve living conditions and solve environmental problems has driven me to develop skills in computer science. 

In the next few years, he plans to continue his doctoral studies investigating new economic models using Web3 technologies. Atala PRISM Pioneer Program participant.

Name: Raphael Hode

Location: Tokyo, Japan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphaelhode/

Position: Design Advisor - freelancer

Bio: Raphael is a Strategic Designer with a passion for social innovation and sustainability. After a few years in advertising agencies in Paris, Raphael moved to Tokyo in 2015 and joined Designit, a global strategic design firm. At Designit Raphael worked on growing a team and helping some of Japan’s most ambitious companies make innovation happen, leading him to endorse a variety of roles across UX design, service design, business design, and strategy.

In parallel, he has been passionately engaging in activities related to sustainability and social innovation: giving talks and workshops, mentoring early-stage social founders, and eventually co-founding a social venture. Today, he spends most of his time working with incredible social entrepreneurs to help them define, design, and launch visionary products that contribute to creating a more sustainable society.

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

Socious is planning to become a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) by 2026. In order to achieve this goal, we need to build an ecosystem that people love to be a part of in the long term. We will return to Catalyst to build necessary features that allow the core Socious team to gradually step out of the decision-making process and achieve a truly decentralized and fully autonomous organization. 

[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?

This project has three clear deliverables that will act as proofs of completion:

• The code of the Impact Score Calculator deployed and fully functional
• Functioning flow for verifying Impact Organizations
• THANK Tokens deployed and fully functional. 

Our key metrics/ KPIs for this project will be:

a) the number of transactions that affect the impact score recorded to the Cardano blockchain: 6,000 - 12,000

a) the number of users receiving THANK tokens: 2,000 - 4,000; 

In addition, we will measure project progression against the Milestones & Deliverables plan above. Our progress will be reported in the monthly reporting for Catalyst and in the final project report. We may also present at Townhall and other community meetings on an ad hoc basis.

Furthermore, the team adopts Agile methodology based on the tools provided by Trello and GitHub. Besides the monthly progress reports, the progress will be tracked by Trello Kanban Board, Github issues, and commits. Intermediate progress will be reported as Sprint Burndown, a KPI metric that shows the progress in the percentage of each development sprint.

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

The success of the project would involve:

• The Impact Score Calculator is developed and deployed so that users can start measuring their social and environmental impact;
• Users are able to receive rewards in THANK tokens proportional to their impact score. 

[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

Socious brings more financial and human resources to impact organizations to accelerate social and environmental impact. While SDGs’ Indicator 17.17.1 “Amount of United States dollars committed to public-private and civil society partnerships” may be close to what we use, we specifically use the following indicators: a) the amount of money donated to impact organizations; b) the number of impact organizations that received donations; c) the number of organizations that received time/skills contributions; d) the number of hours that were contributed to impact organizations; e) the number of people who contributed their time/skills to impact organizations

Socious also seeks to create a virtuous circle of giving, giving back, and pay forward through THANK tokens. While it is difficult to measure the impact of showing gratitude, we believe it brings joy and happiness to both the giver and the recipient. The indicators we follow include a) the number of times users thanked other users for their acts of kindness and b) the amount of THANK transferred as a sign of gratitude.   

Our long-term vision is to build an impact ecosystem that can transform the world. If we successfully implement our project, more people will contribute their time and money to social causes, which will accelerate social and environmental impact.