Clarity DAO Infrastructure

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The Clarity Protocol is a library of smart contracts that focuses on creating optimal conditions and incentives to enable decentralized and fair economic growth. At its core, Clarity is an ecosystem where organizations, communities, entrepreneurs, and investors can pool, manage, and govern capital securely, efficiently, and in a decentralized manner.

By allowing democratized access to a library of audited smart contracts serving as DAO infrastructure, organizations and communities can organize, govern and manage themselves in a novel and innovative way.

Clarity is a protocol built to be user friendly, allowing even non technical DAO communities and members to be able to participate in on-chain DAO interactions. This protocol aims to lower the barrier to entry so that anyone can create, manage, and participate in DAOs that operate on-chain.

Join the Clarity community on Discord: https://discord.gg/RfWatM3N

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

This infrastructure will increase the number of communities engaged in collaboration using Cardano DAO tools, the amount of ADA generated from DAOs’ transaction fees, and the number of DAOs that use Cardano as a governance/management chain.

This infrastructure will increase the number of DAO toolsets and frameworks that are available when choosing DAO ops on Cardano by creating a Cardano competitor to DAO roll up and management platforms that operate on Ethereum and other chains currently.

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

Technical challenges involving reward calculations/distributions and concurrent voting.

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

Milestones:

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Milestone 0: Project set up

Complete.

Estimated Completion date: N/A

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Milestone 1: Governor initialization

When this milestone is completed, we will have written the requisite smart contracts be able to create an Agora 'Governor' component.

Estimated Development time to complete: 1 week

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Milestone 2: DAO creation

When this milestone is completed, we will have written the requisite smart contracts be able to create a DAO with basic customizable governance rules.

Estimated Development time to complete: 2 weeks

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Milestone 3: Stake Creation

Once this milestone is completed, one will be able 'lock' some amount of GT behind a 'Stake'.

Estimated Development time to complete: 1 week

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Milestone 4: Proposal creation

Once this milestone is completed, one will be able to submit simple proposals (i.e. those with no effects) to the Governor component.

Estimated Development time to complete: 2 weeks

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Milestone 5: Proposal Advancement

Once this milestone is created, one will be able to progress a proposal from the draft phase, to the voting phase.

Estimated Development time to complete: 1 week

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Milestone 6: Voting

Once this milestone is completed, one will be able to use a smart contract to register their vote on a proposal.

Estimated Development time to complete: 1 week

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Milestone 7: Stake rewards and distribution

Once this milestone is completed, one will be able to use a smart contract to stake/unstake and obtain rewards derived from the rules of the protocol the user is staked in.

Estimated Development time to complete: 1 week

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Milestone 9: Front-end

This milestone will be completed, when there is a simple React/TypeScript webpage, from which we can "call" our various smart contracts.

Estimated Development time to complete: 1 week

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Development: 1240 Hours

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90 Governor initialization

200 DAO creation

150 Stake creation

100 Proposal Creation

150 Proposal Advancement

200 Voting

200 Stake rewards and distribution

150 Front end

1250 hours total

$99,200.00

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TOTAL Budget: $99,200

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

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. Ben does not have a linkedIn but here is a interview he had:

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. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackhodgkinson/)

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. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-florisson-742a0175/)

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. At Clarity, Logan is responsible for business operations, community growth, and client adoption. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/logan-panchot/)

Justin Schreiner: Justin has a background in Computer Science and is a Plutus Pioneer. At Clarity, Justin is responsible for business operations, talking with users, and implementing improvements to the platform. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinschreiner/)

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. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannonwu/)

[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 in a later round as this proposal is funding the development of the core infrastructure, but submit other proposals in the future to add features to the core infrastructure.

[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?

Prior to launch:

• We will measure progress by tracking milestone completion rate regarding the above milestones. To communicate milestone progress to the community we will provide weekly development updates.
• We will measure the amount of DAOs, the amount of proposals, and the amount of votes executed using the Clarity DAO discord bot.
• We will measure the size of the Clarity Community.
• We will measure the # of twitter spaces hosted

Post Launch:

We will actively measure, track, and communicate these KPIs for each DAO using Clarity Infrastructure:

• Total Assets under management
• Governance token holders
• Active voters and proposal makers
• Decisions
• Votes

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

Pre Launch KPIs:

• Timely milestone Completion
• DAOs using Clarity Discord Bot: 10
• Proposals executed using Clarity Discord Bot: 30
• Votes carried out using Clarity discord bot: 100
• Build a community of >300 people who see the potential of DAOs.
• Host 20 twitter spaces to update on our project, talk about DAOs, showcase DAO projects in Cardano.
• Launch Clarity community website. (within 1 month)

Post Launch KPIs

3 month KPIs:

5 DAOs using Clarity

• Total Assets under Management: 5M
• Governance Token holders: 500
• Active voters and proposal makers: 100
• Decisions: 30
• Votes: 1500

6 month KPIs:

20 DAOs using Clarity

• Total Assets under Management: 20M
• Governance Token holders: 2000
• Active voters and proposal makers: 400
• Decisions: 100
• Votes: 6000
• TVL: 30M

12 month KPI:

50 DAOs using Clarity

• Total Assets under Management: 50M
• Governance Token holders: 5000
• Active voters and proposal makers: 1000
• Decisions: 400
• Votes: 15000
• TVL: 60M

We want this infrastructure to be an enabler for anyone that wants to create, manage, and/or participate in decentralized organizations on Cardano. Not only do we want to provide these tools to the existing Cardano ecosystem, but we want to bring more people, organizations, and users to Cardano by providing robust DAO infrastructure.

[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