littlefish - Ocean Technologies

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

We are the Littlefish Foundation (LFF), a decentralized, global organization, building technologies that align individual actions towards common goals, enabling collective intelligences.

We use blockchain technology to redefine earning relationships between people, work, and organizations, enabling a new model of operation that grants more freedom to participants, while making sure that freedom results in progress towards the goals of the whole. 

Our proposals are best experienced in the Littlefish Vault. There will be multiple links to it throughout the proposal with background information necessary to fully understand the concepts.

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PAs, you will need this information to understand LFF. This is a standalone proposal, but these are recommended reading to understand LFF. 

• The Bleeding Edge of Organizations and the Big Problem
• The Basics - littlefish, colonies and Action
• The Big Picture
• Littlefish Action Model

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Ocean: The realm of all blockchains, their communities, where all the fish swim.

Note: This proposal has a twin, focusing on the organizations of the cross-chain. They were originally thought as a single proposal, but split to mitigate funding risk. See it here.

The Problem

The speed of technological progress in the space is blindingly fast. New dApp use cases are emerging everyday, unlocking new valleys of thought. Novel collaboration tools are enabling new methods of work. Cross-chain technologies are being built to create the multi-chain future.

It is crucial for builders to know what’s going on in the space. Any piece of information can provide the needed eureka moment, unlocking the previously unthought, clearing the way from an unsolved problem, finding the collaboration necessary to materialize the future. 

Keeping up with the state of technology is becoming increasingly difficult. Visibility is a crucial need for everyone in the space. Without it, developments in one edge of blockspace go unheard in another, opportunities to collaborate never materialize, bridges don’t get built. Visibility is the first problem to solve. Barriers to entry must be lowered.

What is needed?

The blockspace offers many opportunities to collaborate for builders, finding them is the challenge. There is so much information available, yet no one has the time to sift through it. A dedicated team with technical knowledge and practical skills of communicating technical information is necessary to find technological developments in the space, understand them, communicate it with others, and build systems that allow others to easily find them. 

What’s needed is a gateway to up-to-date, in-depth information.

Our Approach

At LFF we are a digital community of 100+ with 15+ core team members from around the globe. Our general approach to problem solving in this space is experimentation and solving our own problems first. 

We have been feeling the problem of visibility while building our organization. We researched other DAOs and how they tackled organizational building challenges. Information was hard to reach, often hidden on a Notion page, or a Medium article deep within the bowels of a DAO. Google searches found outdated information and was more often than not useless. 

This is a general problem in the blockchain space. Finding places that aggregate good, in-depth research is difficult. This is why we’re building our knowledge base with a holistic vision, solving problems we face while building this decentralized organization, and creating common knowledge so others may have an easier time solving similar problems. 

Understanding the space is critical to be successful in it. This is why research is a fundamental business function at LFF. This is why we have the Tech Help Collective (THC), which provides research into the tech and makes that knowledge as approachable to non-tech persons as possible. This is why one of Organization Labs’ main functions is conducting research. 

Our Solution

At LFF we have a diverse group of technologists, secure systems experts, organization and governance geeks. Today, we are operating mostly in the DAO enabling tools space. We are mapping the Cardano ecosystem, learning the solutions, and producing expert knowledge. 

With this and its twin proposal, we are building the gateway into the Ocean of blockchains. In this proposal, the focus is the technology:

• Gathering and curating technical knowledge from the Ocean on our knowledge base,
• Creating ADA vs. The Ocean Map, matching existing/building solutions on ADA to what exists on the Ocean, identifying potential areas of collaboration.
• Communicating findings with ADA builders and the rest of the Ocean through communication channels, meetings, workshops, etc.

Our Outputs

The outputs of the proposal will be documentation curating resources by other organizations and original research about these areas:

• Cross-chain enabling technologies.
• Blockchain based solutions for decentralized organizations. 
• Non blockchain-tools that enable decentralized collaboration. What tools are organizations using to solve problems? What tools are they building?
• Innovation: What innovation is taking place in these organizations? State of technology, analysis of the success of approaches.
• Token Engineering: What token engineering approaches are being taken? What standards are forming? 
• Other technical topics: Security, privacy, …

We’re building The Ocean Map: collecting information on how projects in the space approach problems, providing others the communication links to contact and begin collaboration. 

These outputs will be evolving over time to reflect developments. Learn more about evolving documentation on LFF here.

We will also share our findings in community meetings and in other Catalyst communities, raising the awareness of our work.

Who will benefit?

There are many problems that need to be understood: organizational structure, governance, collaboration, decision-making, … Our guide on what we tackle is our own learning needs at LFF. So the primary beneficiary is us, we solve our own problems. 

Yet, the problems we face are experienced by all decentralized organizations. We will share all of our findings with others, enabling communities in Catalyst, the Cardano space, and the rest of the blockchain Ocean. Specifically, we will publish our findings and market it in other communities we operate in the Catalyst space. They will be a beneficiary of our work, learning about the Ocean and finding possible partners.

We will find collaboration opportunities between builders in the ADA space and in the Ocean. We will contact them and let them know of our findings. When potential collaboration turns into real collaboration, these groups will benefit greatly. This is the overarching goal of the proposal, to catalyze connections, allowing bridges to be built where there was none.

Outcome

The outcome of our work is greater visibility into the Ocean of blockchains. We imagine our knowledge base will serve as a gateway for ADA builders to find others who are solving similar problems. We will use Obsidian to group similar ideas, make it as easy as possible to identify and make connections with others. Builders will simply explore on our platform and find others to learn from and to collaborate with. 

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

Alignment with the Challenge

The challenge states:

We need initiatives to increase communication, coordination and collaboration between chains. 

We have common challenges. Let’s solve those together.

Before communication, coordination, and collaboration can happen, one must know where to look. Without visibility, there is no communication, there’s no solving problems together. 

Without knowing where to look, potential opportunities disappear. Knowledge from one part of the Ocean stays there. Innovations stay local. Common challenges are needlessly solved again and again.

As such, this proposal deals with the first part of the challenge question: “how might we create new connections between blockchain communities?” We create it by providing a curated experience to find these communities.

Key Metrics

The proposal primarily improves these challenge Key Metrics:

• Ideas from other chains implemented by Catalyst
• By knowing where to look, ideas from other chains will make their way into Catalyst, blossoming into existing projects, turning into new organizational structures, new experiments to try in Catalyst.
• Projects and dApps from other chains implemented on Cardano
• Connections with other chains will draw others to Catalyst, starting new projects and dApps with original ideas implemented elsewhere.
• Collaboration with others will lead to new cross-chain Integrations
• Catalyst-created solutions adopted by other chains/communities
• Just as ideas flow into Catalyst, they will flow out of it into other communities.
• Number of permanent initiatives with cross-chain teams (members from different blockchain communities together)
• Better visibility will lead to new connections, which will open the way for new initiatives between newly connected cross-chain teams.

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

LFF General - Funding

Littlefish Foundation is a complex organization driven by individual efforts. It only moves forward if individuals drive it forward. The single biggest risk in front of that is financial. A large percentage of the team is based in Turkey, which has been experiencing hyperinflation for the past year. 

Funding is the number one challenge we face. With funding we can pay the team to work on Littlefish Foundation and make their financial burden lighter. This all puts us closer to achieving the LFF vision. We are a global community with contributors from all over the world. Without funding, we will still build the LFF, but it will be more challenging and slower. 

We are mitigating risk through diversification in multiple proposals, increasing the chance of receiving funding. We’re also budgeting for the Action Fund, partly to serve as a contingency. 

LFF General - Technology Risk

LFF is developing a strong infrastructure to be able to scale, for that we need the support of a strong development community. The current team is very strong on tech development, with extensive experience, and we are welcoming more developers to join. We are already engaged with the Gimbalabs development community and have their support. 

This proposal - Marketing 

The success of the proposal depends highly on the spread of the information generated. If we don’t take this into account, all this proposal will accomplish is a better informed LFF and a few other communities. Information will diffuse through word of mouth activities but this will be slow and ineffective in capturing the attention of the larger community, if we don’t make additional efforts.

That’s why we’ll be undertaking additional marketing activities to spread the information we generate. We will share this information in other communities' communication channels. We’ll join meetings and talk about our work and how it can benefit others. We’ll also reach out to Cardano builders who we think will benefit from the work we do, so that they can easily connect with communities from the other side of the blockchain Ocean. 

We’re also growing the team at Love House, the LFF working group in charge of marketing, community building, and engagement. In time, we’ll have a strong team of content producers and storytellers who will create videos, short explainers, and talk to others about LFF and what we’re doing.

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

Workload Management at LFF

How we make work visible - LFF Modules 

Proposal-wide milestones and expected deliveries

Original docs may be any research, report, or study we conduct at LFF. Curated resources are articles, videos, research, reports, etc. done by others, categorized and listed on our knowledge base.

• September
• 3 original docs 
• 25 curated resources 
• December
• 10 original docs
• 100 curated resources
• February
• 25 original docs
• 250 curated resources 

Module 1: Ocenfaring Technology (Cross-Chain on Cardano)

Stakeholders: LFF, Catalyst and Cardano community, Blockchain communities

Primary Work Group: Tech Help Collective

Duration: September - February

Resources: 200 hrs of work + module operations budget 

This module looks at blockchain based technologies that enable inter-chain operations, like Milkomeda. State of technology, effectiveness of solutions, and the level of innovation are the key questions. 

Research Areas: Smart contracts, products, platforms, security, privacy. 

Activities:

• Finding cross-chain technologies.
• Finding original research, resources by others.
• Categorizing resources according to purpose, tagging, and curating knowledge on the LFF knowledge base.
• Meta studies that aggregate knowledge.
• Communicating findings through workshops, in LFF and other Catalyst communities.

Key milestones and expected deliveries:

• February
• Cardano Cross-Chain Report

Cardano Cross-Chain Report: A deep dive into what solutions are available to enable the cross-chain for Cardano. What stage the technologies are at, how to find out more, and similar questions.

Module 2: Technology of the Ocean

Stakeholders: LFF, Catalyst and Cardano community, Blockchain communities

Primary Work Group: Tech Help Collective

Duration: September - February

Resources: 250 hrs of work + module operations budget 

This module looks at the technology, blockchain based or not. State of technology, effectiveness of solutions, and the level of innovation are the key questions.

Research Topics: Software tools that enable decentralized organizations, DAO tools, governance modules, token engineering, security, privacy.

Activities:

• Finding DAO tools, other technologies that enable decentralized organizations.
• Finding original research, resources by others.
• Categorizing resources according to purpose, tagging, and curating knowledge on the LFF knowledge base.
• Meta studies that aggregate knowledge.
• Communicating findings through workshops, in LFF and other Catalyst communities.

Key milestones and expected deliveries:

• October
• Tools of Catalyst Report
• February
• Tools of the Ocean Report

Tools of Catalyst Report: Meta study of the tools enabling Catalyst today. 

Tools of the Ocean Report: Meta study of tools used by the blockchain community.

Module 3: Marketing

Stakeholders: LFF, Catalyst and Cardano community

Primary Work Group: Love House

Duration: August - February

Resources: 60hrs of work + module operations budget

Marketing is a general module, shared by many LFF proposals. Its aim is to broadcast the knowledge generated in other modules far and wide. 

Activities:

• Creating Twitter posts, 
• Tracking engagement on Twitter and Obsidian (through google analytics), 
• Spreading information in LFF and other community meetings. 

Key Milestones and expected deliveries:

• December
• 2500 unique visitors on The Vault
• 10000 Tweet impressions (as of June 15th it is at 718) for LFF account
• February
• 10000 unique visitors on The Vault
• 1000 monthly visitors on The Vault
• 50000 Tweet impressions

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

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All LFF proposals follow the same budget structure. They are made up of the module budgets and the Action Fund allocation.

Module budgets

Each proposal is made up of modules. Each module has a specified budget. The sum of module budgets makes up the first part of the overall budget.

1 - Personnel budget

Each module has a personnel budget and an operations budget. The personnel budget is the total estimated hours * the hourly rate for the module.

The base hourly rate for LFF proposals is 50 USD. This is a living wage in most parts of the world. It will bring financial stability to participants.

The hourly rate for a module may change from this default, based on the expertise needed. 

2- Module operations budget

Each module is allocated an extra budget sized at 1/5th of the personnel budget to enable operations.

This budget is a pooled organization wide resource used to cover expenses. It will be used to purchase digital work tools like Zoom to be used by all members of LFF.

A part of it will be spent with the discretion of the module team. For example, it can be used to pay for transportation, buy personal digital tools, purchase other teams’ Actions, etc.

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LFF Action Fund

LFF Action Fund has two purposes.

1 - Contingency

Proposals may not be funded. The activities in the proposals will still take place if we can account for this with additional funding. Action Fund will provide that funding if and when it is necessary.

The Action Fund can be used to extend a module budget, fund an unfunded proposals’ module, or fund new modules as need arises.

2 - Incentivizing further Action

We are creating a new economy. LFF is the first colony in this economy. Its members are producing Actions, the supply. But who will buy them?

There is a need for stable demand for Actions to bootstrap this new digital economy. Action Fund provides this stable demand.

3 - Admin and other work

There is a lot of unmentioned work that goes into building the Littlefish Foundation. This includes general admin work like setting up meetings, scheduling, scribework, as well as other activities like community building.

The Action Fund will prioritize buying those Actions that aren’t covered by the proposals.

Action Fund Sizing

The Action Fund allocation is sized at 1/4th of the total budget. This is common across all LFF proposals to provide financial safety to the project for the next 12 months, allowing us a healthy runway to create the new earning economy.

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All modules in this proposal have an hourly personnel rate of 50 USD/hr. Module operations budgets are 1/5th the personnel budgets.

• Module 1: Ocenfaring Technology (Cross-Chain on Cardano)
• Personnel Budget: 7500 USD
• 50 USD/hr * 150 hrs
• 100 hrs: Exploration & Curation
• 40 hrs: Meta studies
• 10 hrs: Workshops
• Operations Budget: 1500 USD
• Total: 9000 USD
• 
  
• Module 2: Technology of the Ocean
• Personnel Budget: 15000 USD
• 50 USD/hr * 300 hrs
• 220 hrs: Exploration & Curation
• 60 hrs: Meta studies
• 20 hrs: Workshops
• Operations Budget: 3000 USD
• Total: 18000 USD

• Module 3: Marketing
• Personnel Budget: 3000 USD
• 50 USD/hr * 60 hrs
• 60 hrs: Marketing Activities 
• Operations Budget: 600 USD
• Total: 3600 USD

Module Total = 30600 USD

Action Fund Total = 10200 USD

Total = 40800 USD

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

This proposal is primarily run by the THC work group of LFF. THC is a community of expert googlers, technology experts, and quick learners. Its objective is to lower the barriers to technology.

THC’s responsibilities are:

THC is a growing community of Tech Help enthusiasts. You can find more about us and our recent work here.

THC Team

The job profile for each THC member is the same: research, test, and document technologies. 

Murat Kasar - 5 years of experience as a System Administrator, mainly in PCI DSS and high security environments. Fan of maps, thanks to my background in geology and GIS. Interested in technical aspects of Blockchain technologies. Constantly searching for a subject to focus with passion.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/murat-kasar-8b4157163

Emre Kurt - B.Sc. in Geological Engineering with 4 years job experience in the field. Working as a System Administrator for the last 3 years and Sales Director for the last 1.5 years. Very good knowledge of Linux based systems and Network Security. In the process of excelling in the blockchain technology and currently focusing on organization and community building, marketing strategies. Also using AI tools to create art pieces to be minted as NFTs.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emre-kurt-617272bb/

https://creator.nightcafe.studio/u/Nautilus

Berk Atalay - 1.5 years of system and network experience. Experienced in computer systems and system administration. Graduated from management and am enthusiastic about graphical design. Learning about blockchain and Cardano Ecosystem for a while. Current focus on researching cardano tools, marketing, advertising and community development.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/berk-atalay-gd28/

Gurcan Citil - 2,5+ years of experience as a System Administrator. Constructing, building and maintaining VmWare, Proxmox, AWS virtualization. Specializing on systems and network security solutions. Geological Engineering Major. Learning within the Catalyst/Cardano ecosystem for 2+ months. Focusing on wallets, DAPP, DeFi, NFT concepts along with gamify, voting and delegation.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/g%C3%BCrcan-%C3%A7itil-996101193/

Engin Gunay - 3+ years experience as a Systems Administrator / Cloud Engineer. Working in cloud orchestration security. Skilled in R language, Ansible and Linux. Enthusiast of emerging technologies and tools in blockchain. Former engineer in Computational Hydrogeology. Littlefish Foundation Tech researcher.

Ural Yalcin - Former Offshore Engineer, current System Administrator. 8 years of total experience in the industry.

As System Administrator: skilled in preventive maintenance, secure network and virtualization architecture both in Unix and Windows systems.

As Littlefish: Research enthusiast, Blockchain technology documentor, community member.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ural-yalcin/

Getting involved with Littlefish Foundation

LFF is an open community. We accept community members who show initiative to join us in delivering these proposals. The only condition is curiosity. If you find something you like, let us know on our Discord server, join our community meetings, and ask questions. 

But first, it’s good to learn.

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

Yes, we will return to Catalyst for further funding, until we build sustainable business models around Action. Catalyst allows us to take our time, engineer systems well without rushing to market, potentially risking an event similar to what happened to Luna.

We are an evolving decentralized organization. We expect solid community and contributor growth in the near future. These individuals, along with existing ones who have time from existing commitments, will be starting new initiatives. Until we get to a sustainable business model using Actions, Catalyst will be the place where we come for funding. This allows us to experiment until we can figure our way. Thanks Catalyst!

We aim to become sustainable with the launch of our token on mainnet, which we tentatively aim to deliver by Q3 2023. 

Meanwhile, we will be providing Catalyst and the broader community with ongoing services. We will be publishing all our research (DAOs, governance, economic, technology, tools, ...) on the Littlefish Vault. These will be made sustainable through experiments in Action, in due time.

[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?

Where to check our progress?

At Littlefish Foundation, everything we do is public, and we like documentation. We will publish major progress updates on Obsidian, sharing our learning with the Catalyst community. Our Miro boards are open to the community, there they can see our progress, comment, and contribute. Discord will be the best place to find daily updates, and Actions.

All LFF proposals produce Action, work done by individuals to achieve a goal. Until we have a working system with NFTs, we will use Discord to broadcast our Actions. There are many examples already on the #action channel, showing our early work. As our community grows, it will contain Actions taken by many different littlefish who are building the LFF.

We will track these posts specifically and incentivize team members and contributors to share their Actions, preparing them for Actions on the mainnet.

LFF General - Community Tracking

The general success of LFF is dependent on a strong community. We will track it from several sources:

• on Obsidian using Google Analytics: number of visitors, average time spent, and multiple other metrics
• by activity on Discord using server statistics bot: number of members, unique posters on discord per month, Action per month, Action per unique user

We’ll review this data monthly and share updates through our communication channels.

This Proposal - Docs and Curations

It’s all about generating knowledge with this proposal. That means lots of docs and lots of links. We will publish them on our knowledge base. We will track the number of docs and curations generated per module and publish monthly updates through our communication channels.

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

LFF General - Solving our own problems through experimentation, building applications the community loves

Our approach to problem solving in this space is experimentation. Trying out new methods of doing business, creating new processes fit for a decentralized organization built from the ground floor.

One example is our Ikigai onboarding model. The bubbles at the top represent work groups and business functions. We walk through the bubbles with newcomers, discussing what they mean in Littlefish Foundation, and ask them to fill their Ikigai board with them. The result is a fun learning experience for everyone.

We create such systems with the aim of turning them into software. First we practice with existing tools, learn, iterate, and experiment, then we'll build it into software that others can use. See our Ikigai proposal here.

Some other experiments relating to publishing Actions by:

• Financial tracking of rewards
• Actions published on #action Discord channel,
• Older Actions published on the Adventures of Littlefish

Success means these experiments turn into learning which turn into applications loved by the community.

LFF General - A strong community of creators and builders

We are a growing community of 100+. Yet pure numbers aren't enough. Growing the number of meaningful contributors is the key to long term success. Since the F8 proposal, the number of consistent contributors has grown from 2 to 10+ and growing fast. Newcomer numbers are also ticking up. Maintaining a sustainable, healthy growth in these numbers is critical.

LFF General - Littlefish Vault is the knowledge hub for decentralized organizations in the Cardano Space

Building a decentralized organization is tough. There are so many moving pieces, and time goes by quickly. By making our learning public we aim to make it easier for others to build decentralized organizations. A successful LFF means our knowledge base has become a popular place for others who are building decentralized organizations. Our target is 10000 unique and 1000 monthly visitors by the end of February 2023.

THC - A technologically able organization: LFF

The success of this proposal is primarily determined by how effective LFF as an organization has become in using digital work and blockchain tools. We need to solve our problems first, so that we can solve others’.

With success, team members feel comfortable using the tools of the work, using Obsidian and Miro extensively to collaborate and communicate. The organization has adopted multi-signature wallets to more effectively control funds. Littlefish feel safe when using their wallets.   

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

Littlefish Foundation Kiva-like DAO - Unfunded F7 Proposal

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384063

Littlefish Foundation was born with this proposal from the Cardano4Climate community [2]. The aim was to create a DAO and build a Kiva like product that would allow the funding of on the ground SDG activities. 

The proposal wasn’t funded, but we kept working. We held weekly meetings, brought in experts for discussions, and worked hard to understand the domain of problems. Through that we’ve developed the idea further and generalized it to what it is today.

Littlefish: Coordinating Action - Funded F8 Proposal

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/404668

In F8 we came up with a new vision for the Littlefish Foundation: littlefish, colonies and Actions. We got to work before it was even funded.

We were relatively new to developing on Cardano and found a steep learning curve. Weak documentation slowed development down, and we realized there was more to building a successful Littlefish Foundation. 

During this time we have completed many important steps:

• Finished the whitepaper
• Built a strong core of contributors from our community
• Created an organizational model to fit our needs
• A Radical Method of Organization
• Why Cardano > Proposals Experiments and Teams
• Formed work groups and started to produce on all of them. See these on the Action Board
• Tech Help Collective - Working on wallet research&documentation, preliminary DAO tools research on Ethereum and Cardano, reworking Littlefish Discord
• Love House - the littlefish AI art collection
• Organization Labs - Research on Teal organizations, determined necessary business functions, created organizational model
• The Forge - Tested out serialization library, lucid, and multiplatform library, created early UI/UX designs
• Dream Engine - Created Littlefish Action Model, User Flow Models, Detailed Action Flow, Organization Funding Model, and more

Here's a shot of that board as of the 10th June:

Our proposals in Fund 9 aim to supercharge this holistic vision of the Littlefish Foundation.