Clarity DAO Incubator

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

To deliver on this proposal we will continue to build a community of Cardano DAO projects and enthusiasts and create a cohort of 10 DAOs wanting to put their operation on chain.

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We will provide the following services to all incubator members to help them grow and establish their community.

1. NFT Minting service:

Use our CNFT generation bot to randomize layered artwork based on a predetermined rarity chart.

Upload CNFTs to the Cardano Blockchain.

Mint your CNFTs from any website.

1. Clarity DAO Bot:

Verify ownership of any Cardano native token by Policy ID.

Verify delegation to specific Stake Pool by Pool ID.

Add/remove roles based on CNFT delegation status.

Provide exclusive access to content based on role managed by Clarity bot.

Create and manage proposals (votes).

Vote on proposals with proportional voting power.

1. Clarity Protocol (6-12 month timeline)

Create and manage DAOs without writing any code

Establish governance rules

execute proposals and votes on-chain

Manage treasury funds

Stake to DAOs

While we provide primitive DAO tooling to these communities and gather their feedback to create a tight feedback loop to iterate on the both the on and off chain DAO tooling we are building.

As our on-chain DAO tooling is released we will give these tools to incubator participants to test.

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We will host biweekly incubator calls with industry experts for knowledge sharing and questions on relevant topics to DAOs. The topics are as follows:

• Week 1: Vision and Mission Workshop
• Week 2: Community Building
• Week 3: Ideation and Market problem
• Week 4: Using social media to build web3 communities
• Week 5: DAO tokenomics
• Week 6: Building and managing a distributed team
• Week 7: DAOs as legal entities
• Week 8: Knowledge sharing between projects

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We will host DAO pitch competitions for incubator participants and others wanting to pitch their ideas for DAOs. In order to govern the pitch competition and choose who wins the competition and cash prize, we will release a governance NFT where the holders of the NFT get access to vote on who wins the competition. To carry out this voting we will use the Clarity DAO discord bot.

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

This incubator will increase the number of communities engaged in collaboration using Cardano DAO tools.

This incubator will increase the amount of ADA coming from DAOs transaction fees.

This incubator will increase number of DAOs that use Cardano as a governance/management chain.

This Incubator will increase the number of DAO toolsets and frameworks that are available when choosing DAO ops on Cardano.

By creating a highly collaborative community surrounding the development of our DAO infrastructure we will be able to ensure we are building products that each community can use to flourish and grow. We want to enable creators and communities on Cardano to build new, viable on chain DAOs. We want to lower the barrier to entry for people to create, manage, and interact with DAOs on Cardano.

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

Our ability to find enough creators and communities that want to become DAOs on Cardano. To mitigate this risk we will continue to increase our presence in the community to share what we are providing/building. We will also financially incentivize creators/communities on the assumption we are successful with this proposal.

Delayed development timelines, due to technical bottlenecks surrounding the on chain infrastructure.

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

Month 1:

• Source and onboard 10 existing Cardano projects wanting to become DAOs that operate on chain.
• Launch Clarity landing page

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Months 2 to 5:

• Start weekly incubator calls on specific topics bringing in Industry professionals to educate. We are looking for people in the Cardano community knowledgable in these areas to come help educate early DAOs on relevant topics.
• Week 1: Vision and Mission Workshop
• Week 2: Community Building
• Week 3: Ideation and Market problem
• Week 4: Using social media to build web3 communities
• Week 5: DAO tokenomics
• Week 6: Building and managing a distributed team
• Week 7: DAOs as legal entities
• Week 8: Knowledge sharing between projects
• Deliverables at end of 8 weeks for DAO incubator participants: Project roadmap, Incubator funding spend plan. The incubator funding spend plan will be public to the community.

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Months 3 to 5:

• Launch Clarity Community NFT to enable community members to vote on who wins the pitch competition
• Begin biweekly DAO pitch competitions, allowing both incubator participants and outside participants to pitch
• Host 5 DAO pitch competitions with ADA prize $ as the reward for who wins the community vote

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Months 5+: On-board incubator participant project/communities on to Clarity DAO Infrastructure.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

$20,000.00

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Equally distributed to incubation participants to further their progress. We plan to cap the incubator at 10. The Clarity Community will strategically grant each incubator participant about 2,000 dollars. The spending plan for each of these grants will be public to the community.

$20,000.00:

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Incubator operations. Incubator specific work includes:

• Sourcing and recruiting DAO projects
• Planning educational content, sourcing guest speakers
• Scheduling and logistics
• Primitive DAO tooling product iterations based of incubator participant feedback

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$10,000.00

Clarity DAO incubator pitch competitions. 100% of this funding will be given to the DAO projects who win the most votes from the Clarity Community after the pitch competition is completed.

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

Logan Panchot (https://www.linkedin.com/in/logan-panchot/) and Justin Schreiner (https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinschreiner/) will be the touch points for all incubator participants. Logan and Justin will work directly with incubator participants to provide them with primitive DAO tooling and gather feedback/insights.

Logan Panchot: Logan is a recent graduate at Stanford University and has been part of the Catalyst community since fund4. Logan is a deep believer in the potential of decentralized organizations to create a better world. For the incubator, Logan is responsible for operations, community growth, sourcing incubator incubator participants, and sourcing industry experts for the biweekly incubator calls.

Justin Schreiner: Justin has a background in Computer Science and is a Plutus Pioneer. For the incubator, Justin is responsible for business operations, talking with cohort members to gather feedback, and implementing improvements to the platform.

Ben Hart: Ben Hart has been working across the software industry for 10 years as a manager and developer, and is the Director of Cardano Operations at MLabs. His past work has included bringing many software projects to market. He has worked across multiple blockchains, as well as in traditional finance applications.

Jack Hodgkinson: Jack is a software engineer with previous experience in the credit sector. He is delighted to be able to work with Haskell professionally and is excited to help contribute to the future of decentralized organizations through Clarity by extending his work on Agora which he has been a core developer of.

Shannon Wu: Shannon is an investor and entrepreneur in the blockchain space. I love working with and investing in transformative technologies in Defi, Big Data, Blockchain, Automation and AI. She was an early team member of MakerDAO and part of the founding team for Bloom Protocol. For Clarity, Shannon advises on go to market strategy, fundraising, and strategic decision making. Shannon will provide valuable mentorship to DAOs in the incubator.

Ben Cross: Ben is a software engineer and haskell enthusiast. He has a particular interest in languages and enjoys learning both spoken and programming languages. Ben has worked on a number of widely varied projects with the common goal of innovation.

Mark Florrison: Mark is an entrepreneur and computer scientist. Mark dropped out of his PhD at Cambridge to form a series of startups until eventually founding MLabs, a Cardano and blockchain consulting company, which now has over 135 employees in over 30 countries. Mark has a background in compilers and is a Haskell enthusiast.

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

We would like to make this a recurring incubator to help future DAOs on Cardano get started. We plan on taking feedback from participants this round, and implementing that feedback towards improving future iterations.

[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?

• KPIs:
• Incubator Participants: For this KPI we will measure the progress and development of the project based off the amount of incubator participants onboarded.
• Industry Experts Scheduled: For this KPI we will measure the progress and development of the project based off the amount of industry experts we schedule for the biweekly incubator calls.
• NFT holders: For this KPI we will measure the progress and development of the project based off the amount of people that hold the DAO pitch competition governance NFT.
• Active voters: For this KPI we will measure the progress and development of the project based off the amount of active voters we have participate in the DAO pitch competition votes.
• DAO pitch competition contestants: For this KPI we will measure the progress and development of the project based off the amount of contestants that pitch their ideas in the DAO pitch competitions.
• DAO pitch competitions carried out: For this KPI we will measure the progress and development of the project based off the amount of DAO pitch competitions we host.
• Incubator cohort members using Clarity DAO infrastructure: For this KPI we will measure the progress and development of the project based off the projects that utilize Clarity DAO infrastructure at the end of the incubation period.

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

1 month:

KPI: Incubator participants

• Goal: 10 Incubator Participants

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Months 2 to 5 of the incubator:

KPI: Industry experts scheduled for Incubator calls

• Goal: 7 industry experts scheduled

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Months 3 to 5 of the incubator:

KPIs: NFT holders, Active voters, DAO pitch competition contestants, DAO pitch competitions carried out

• Goal: 500 NFT holders
• Goal: 100 active voters
• Goal: 20 DAO pitch competition contestants
• Goal: 5 DAO pitch competitions carried out

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5 months: On-board incubator participant project/communities on to Clarity DAO Infrastructure. See technical roadmap for on chain DAO infrastructure below.

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From a high level perspective, success for this proposal is creating a light incubator framework that increases collaboration, growth, and knowledge for all incubator participants.

[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 continuation of two previously funded proposals:

MLabs DDAO: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384243

Clear Contracts, no code, audited smart contracts: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/382311

We believe that the technology and infrastructure we are building will help the Cardano DAO ecosystem explode and this proposal helps to share the tools we are building with the communities that can benefit from them most.