Adaglass Platform: Deep Dives

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Adaglass is an ambitious, community-driven and unified solution that continuously observes, enriches, presents and shares data in relation to the Cardano ecosystem. It uniquely brings data, views and analytics' tools in an intuitive and engaging user experience that enables Cardano stakeholders to gain end-to-end visibility, instant insights and actionable intelligence.

The platform combines modern, enterprise-grade and open source telemetry, search and machine-learning technologies to provide the community with unparalleled transparency of the Cardano ecosystem, helping everyone tracks, learns from and reports on key events, actors, assets and performance indicators.

Adaglass aims to improve trust to the Cardano blockchain – creating, through data, a community-driven, transparent, and sustainable foundation for developers, operators, investors, partners and users to visualize the performance, growth and opportunities of the Cardano ecosystem.

The heart of the Adaglass platform is the Cardano Search & Analytics (CSA) service, a fast and scalable search and analytics engine, which helps collect, normalize, enrich, aggregate and share data and metrics originating from a large set of data sources. The Cardano Search & Analytics service provides aggregated and structured data to the Cardano Service Intelligence (CSI) application, a web application that, for now, allows users to visualize into one unified view the growth and performance of the Cardano ecosystem.

With this proposal, we are looking at bringing our Operationalization Phase to the next level by building the next iteration on top of our MVP, developing further the Adaglass operations and team, and increasing overall value to end-users with additional free features. Primarily, we will focus on bringing to market an innovative investigative tool (Deep Dive) and enriching our catalog of metrics with additional Tier 1 indicators.

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

By nature and design, the Addaglass platform addresses the challenge in numerous ways.

First, it is a unique platform and set of products built for the Cardano community and ecosystem. The views and tools available are unique in the industry.

Secondly, Adaglass connects to a large span of data sources including on-chain and off-chain data, via the use of cardano-node, db-sync, Oura, static files and multiple Cardano related services and APIs such as IOHK, Blockfrost, Pool.pm, Ada Pools, Cardano Jobs, to name a few.

Finally, Adaglass provides the following key benefits to the community:

• Maximize engagement and growth of the Cardano ecosystem and community with an always-on, one-stop-shop for every Cardano question
• Perpetual increase of the global awareness and credibility of Cardano for developers, investors and influencers with easy access to end-to-end service performance views
• Move towards improving trust to the Cardano blockchain and uncovering new and hidden opportunities with increased transparency and accurate, unbiased, and correlated data
• Expand business to new areas with unique analytics’ tools that provide instant insights and actionable intelligence to make informed decisions on everything 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?

Risk #1: Heavy reliance on third-party data, applications and interfaces

Probability: Low, Impact: Medium

Mitigation Measures:

• Design flexible data source connectors
• Monitor and alert on data source availability and third-party service change

Risk #2: Limitations of third-party charting libraries

Probability: Medium, Impact: Medium

Mitigation Measures:

• Avoid use of small, unknown, opinionated third-party libraries
• Consider premium, lightweight, flexible and customizable libraries
• Diversify library depending on UX/UI needs across the user journey
• Build custom features on top of libraries

Risk #3: Broken mobile experience

Probability: Low, Impact: Low

Mitigation Measures:

• Simplify and adapt UX design for mobile devices
• Reduce feature set of mobile experience

Risk #4: Schedule and cost overrunning

Probability: Medium, Impact: High

Mitigation Measures:

• Plan with contingency
• Establish a strong project governance framework (use existant)
• Lock down the release scope early
• Protect team from distraction and scope creep
• Inject personal funds to support for an extended support period

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

This effort is to design, build, test, and deploy a new and innovative investigative tool for the Cardano Service Intelligence solution. It is estimated to be delivered within 5 months from the date funds are received.

Deliverables

The project is composed of the following main deliverables:

• System and Application Design Documentation
• CSA Back-end Application (Enhancement with more metrics)
• CSI Front-end Application (Enhancement with deep dives capabilities)
• User Guide Documentation (Enhancement)
• Adaglass Front-door Site (Enhancement)

Detailed plan and timeline

The project will be achieved as per the following high-level plan:

Initiate (week 1)

• Review and iterate on initial design
• Develop and load high-level product backlog

CSA Application Enhancement (months 1, 2 and 3)

• Develop High-Level CSA app design
• Build CSA app data connectors
• Build CSA app kpi-based searches
• Build CSA app report-based searches
• Build test plans
• Build automated acceptance / regression test suite

CSI Application Enhancement (months 2, 3 and 4)

• Develop high-level CSI app design
• Build CSI app data-lane UI components
• Build CSI app deep dive UI components
• Build CSI app system deep dives (template)
• Build CSI app deep dive list page
• Build test plans
• Build automated acceptance / regression test suite

Launch (month 5)

• Deploy CSA app live
• Deploy CSI app live
• Execute final E2E test run
• Execute final Performance test run
• Execute final Penetration test run
• Develop and release final hot-fixes
• Document and publish user guides
• Update brand site

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

This proposal is seeking pre-seed funding, covering for up to 5 months and the delivery of the first new feature and operational needs post our MVP effort. The cost-estimate is based on the activity list shown above and related business and infrastructure operations including hires and infrastructure maintenance. Any other incurred costs not listed will be provided as initial investment and effort from the proposer.

Detailed budget breakdown

Project Setup = USD 1,000

Product Design = USD 2,425

Stake Pool Infrastructure Run (5 months) = USD 4,500

CSA Infrastructure Run (5 months) = USD 9,000

CSA + CSI Applications Build (New Metrics & Tool) = USD 12,500

CSA + CSI Applications Run (5 months) = USD 2,500

Content Production = USD 1,000

Site Build (Update) = USD 800

Site Run (5 months) = USD 1,250

FE Developer (5 months) = USD 13,750

BE Developer (5 months) = USD 13,750

Total = USD 62,475

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

We are a small team of 2 engineers combining 20+ years of experience in providing end-to-end IT and digital services across CX, Cloud, Cyber, Data for public and private sector organizations worldwide, working in companies operating across the UK, France and Switzerland.

Together, we will handle a large amount of work across creative, technology, marketing and operations. At this stage, technical leadership and architecture are still key to the success of the project. Project Management also increases in needs. Damien, who is leading this initiative, will provide these capacities.

As part of this proposal, we are also considering growing the team and have budgeted for:

• 1x front-end developer to help support the build and run activities of the Cardano Service Intelligence component of the platform
• 1x back-end developer to help support the build and run activities of the Cardano Search & Analytics component of the platform

Team Lead - Damien Despas

With more than 10 year experience working in the consulting and digital market as CTO of a leading UK service provider, I bridge the gap between theory and pragmatic transformation for global organizations, delivering enterprise-grade digital platforms and solutions across Technology, Customer Experience, Data and Change disciplines.

I bring a blend of management, technical and operational expertise in areas such as business strategy, technical architecture, product design, team management, project management, software development, IT operations, user experience and data engineering. Most recently, I have specialized in technologies covering content management, ecommerce, observability, search and data analytics, and have built platforms that support Executive, Marketing, Security and Network teams operating within the Finance, Telecommunications and Healthcare industries.

My experience and set of transversal skills allow me to lead and respond to the complex needs of creating a new venture within the Cardano ecosystem, from ideation through product launch and to future industrialization.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/despasdamien

IT Operations, Engineering and Cybersecurity - Hugo Allamel

With more than 10 year experience working as an engineer in the French and Switzerland IT service industry, I deliver and operate world-class infrastructure and specialize in domains like Cloud, Network and Security.

My experience and skills allow me to design, build and operate resilient, secure and highly-scalable global infrastructure that never sleeps.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hugo-allamel-571b9526

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

We are still in our genesis and more specifically in our Operationalization phase, focusing on building enough value around our Cardano Service Intelligence solution to attract as much interest as possible with a free base offering.

In later rounds, we are then hoping that the community will continue to support our development, up to a successfull monetization of our platform which we plan to acheive as part of our phase 2. This could however be accelerated post MVP launch in 4 months in the event of a strong interest from the community in our project and unplanned delegation support onto our Stake Pool.

We have a long roadmap ahead of us in order to deliver on our vision and objective to provide a one-stop-shop that helps answer any Cardano questions. This takes the shape of various solutions to offer on top of the Cardano Search & Analytics capabilities, including Cardano Service Intelligence, Cardano Smart Search and Cardano Enterprise API.

The roadmap is organized in 4 phases: (1) Operationalize, (2) Monetize, (3) Industrialize and (4) Decentralized. And access to the service is unlocked via a Stake-to-Subscribe model, for which we anticipate 4 subscription plans: Basic (0+ ADA), Individual (200+ ADA), Professional (5000+ ADA), Enterprise (10000+ ADA). Each plan will be deployed incrementally upon our capacity to release fair value.

Phase 2 focuses on monetizing the platform by offering new plans and starting to propose premium features to more active stakers. Our first paid plan will take benefit of existing features and building blocks offering custom capabilities for our Homeview (F8 proposal) and Deep Dives' (F9 proposal) capabilities. From that point onwards, we anticipate reaching our break-even point to be self-sufficient for future development and growth.

[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 follow an agile approach that uses a combination of Kanban and DevOps practices to enable the design, development and continuous deployment of the service.

On a day-to-day basis, all work is driven by the continuous build, development and management of a product backlog with work items moving across 4 delivery gates (Design, Development, QA, Live).

Work items get grouped by components and when key achievements and/or major milestones are reached a release is created, deployed and a release note gets published to the public as a site 'release type' blog post, a medium article and a notification on telegram and twitter.

Additionally, monthly progress status report gets compiled and published to the public as a site 'fund update type' blog post, a medium article and a notification on telegram and twitter. This includes information such as generic progress updates against the delivery plan, activities completed, top risks, issues and decisions the team has made or encountered, and few words on next steps.

Finally, a project completion report gets put together and published to the public as a site 'fund close type' blog post, a medium article and a notification on telegram and twitter. This includes the output of a retrospective reporting on the positive and the negative of the delivery since funds were received, and calls out a plan for future improvements.

Three core delivery services enable our way of working:

• To help us manage, plan, track and report on progress, we use Jira
• To help us create, collaborate, and organize information and knowledge, we use Confluence
• To help us streamline the build-test-release cycle for reliable and continuous delivery of the service, we use Go CD

Four delivery channels facilitate the communication and notification of progress back to the community:

• The Adaglass site blog
• The Adaglass medium account
• The Adaglass annoucement telegram account
• The Adaglass twitter account

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

Over the course of this initiative, we will produce a set of deliverables that will mark the success of the project and will prove completion of key milestones in the delivery plan. While some of those deliverables will easily be accessible by everyone browsing the site as it represents the online service itself, some others will be made available on dedicated channels such as medium, telegram, twitter and the Adaglass blog.

The main deliverables to keep an eye on include, but are not limited to, the followings:

• A set of 15+ CSA Tier 1 metrics
• A page to list, search and open CSI Deep Dives
• A set of 11 CSI System Deep Dives
• A set of CSA APIs to support for Deep Dives data delivery
• An updated Adaglass front-door site (susbcribe, catalog pages)
• A set of project completion reports (governance)
• A set of test completion reports (quality)
• A set of user documentation (adoption)
• A set of analytics' reports (operational performance)

Additionally and as part of the project scope, we will be validating our delivery by testing that at least the following high-level acceptance criteria are met:

CSI Application Features

• Can explore what features the CSI application offers
• Can explore the catalog of metrics the CSI application supports
• Can see the CSI application deep dives list
• Can see the CSI application deep dives
• Can drilldown from CSI homeview cards to appropriate CSI deep dive

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

This proposal is a continuation of a previously funded proposal from Catalyst Fund 8 which is currently in development. Our current and in-progress F8 effort focuses on the build and launch of the Adaglass Platform minimum viable product (MVP).

This proposal however aims at delivering new components in our roadmap, to enrich the Cardano Service Intelligence solution with Deep Dives, which together with our Homeview capability will provide a unique, compelling and integrated toolset to help detect and investigate performance issues and growth opportunities.

Catalyst Fund 7 proposal link (unfunded): https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/383705

Catalyst Fund 8 proposal link (funded): https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397768