Anonymity & data control w ZEKE (3)

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Existing Catalyst funded projects - Profila has already received funding by the Cardano community for 4 project workstreams (privacy - data sharing via NFTs - digital ID - tokenization/gamification) - during fund 5, 6, 7 and 8 of Project Catalyst. We thank the Cardano community for their trust and support.

All our projects are aimed at giving people back control over their personal data, control over brand content they see, and provide people with compensation for their data and attention. The project workstreams we are developing are the following:

1. Privacy - titled: Control your data - privacy ledger (funds 5 and 8); and Company privacy ledger (GDPR & CCPA)(fund 8)

2. Data sharing via NFT: NFT for customer feedback/content (fund 6); and (d)app to control your data (fund 6)

3. DID - Control your data (vault) via PRISM (funds 6 and 8)

4. Tokenization/Gamification - anonymity and data control with ZKT (funds 7 and 8).

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ZEKE gamification workstream projects

This current proposal under fund 9 called "Profila privacy ledger - 3dP access", is a continuation of the earlier privacy metadata ledger we build and delivered under fund 5, and are further extending under fund 8.

• Fund 7 - anonymity and data control with ZKT - gamification of our self-discovery quizzes where Profila rewards people in ZEKE if they build up accurate data about themselves.
• Fund 8 - anonymity and data control with ZKT (part 2) - gamification of advertising and brand-building content where Profila rewards people in ZEKE if they interact with brand content shared with them.

Now under fund 9, we will implicate brands in the process, by allowing them to purchase ZEKE for sole purpose of rewarding their customers in the app. Today, we only transfer fiat currencies paid by brands to Profila. The 50% revenue share we adopt with our Profila users is paid via Stripe. Via this proposal, we will allow brands to partially pay their customers in ZEKE. If we charge a brand e.g. 100 EUR to access data and advertise to some customers, we will now charge 110%, convert 10% of their fiat payment in ZEKE, and allow brands to choose in what ways their existing customer can earn ZEKE by sharing data or by interacting with content from a specific brand. In a follow up proposal, we will integrate full ZEKE payouts for data and advertising.

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Short summary of the Profila app (as testing ground for our earlier funded projects integrating our ZEKE) - Profila is a platform (mobile IOS/Android application for individuals and a web-based dashboard for companies, organizations, governments and other legal entities, we call "Brands") that enables individuals to communicate with various organizations in their lives, privately, one-to-one, and without supervision or surveillance.

Imagine an app that allows you to regulate all the pipes of information, where you can instruct each brand that has access to your data (i) which channel they can use, (ii) the frequency of the messages they can send, (iii) and the content of such messages / ads. If you accept to see paid content, it will only be from the companies you authorized, according to your instruction (see i-iii). Our revenue model is 50/50 namely we share all advertising revenue with users.

People can manage their digital life in one location via an app that shows which organisations have access to (certain parts of) their personal data. People can sort all their personal information, product preferences and communication preferences and communicate with all the organizations they want to interact with in the same easy way (instead of on each individual organization's platform each time). The entire tool is design for people to (1) gain control over their personal data; (2) choose to ethically share (or not) they personal data with organisations, and (3) get compensated if they do (today only in fiat).

We invite you to read our pitch deck and check out our product demo (both in PDF attached to this proposal), which will show you more details about our product, market, go to market, team, business model, traction, partnership, funds and grants received. Our product demo shows you the app that exists today and explains the most important features.

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Short summary of this proposal - In our follow-up proposal under Catalyst Fund 9, we will present a third use case for our token ZEKE as part of our gamified app experience, linking ZEKE to payouts from brands who access your data (as apart from building up a profile, as explained in use case no. 1).

ZEKE can measure your “interactions” with a Brand within Profila. The XP that you can gain from interactions is linked to:

Brand content and advertising

As a Profila user, you can use the app to view content from Brands (personalized advertising on products and services) and interact with such content by opening the ad, clicking through, or adding a (positive or negative) sentiment to the ad you like or dislike.

The more you interact, the more your XP increases and the more ZEKE you earn.

Consumer content and feedback

Another form of brand interaction where XP can be earned is through Moments, which is consumer-created content directly shared with a brand. If a brand wants to commercially use your content, they can buy it in the form of an NFT.

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Detailed description of this proposal -

1. Profila app … all about improving relationships with brands

The Profila platform is designed to empowering people to have better digital relationships with brands, by giving them the tools to control how brands can communicate to them (in terms of channel, frequency, and content). Because a brand has direct access to this data shared by each individual, a brand can learn more about its customers; respect their (your) privacy settings and communication choices, learn more about the customer’s channel and product preferences.

This data then helps the brand to provide each individual with a personalized experience, ultimately benefitting both you as a customer as well as the brand. Brands can use Profila as a new source of accurate and ethically sourced data, as well as a customer engagement and marketing platform channel that helps the brand provide a personalized experience based on the instructions of each individual and tuned to the digital pace of each individual.

2. Profila agents … consumers, brands, and Profila

a) Consumers

Consumers exist on a spectrum, from one-time purchasers to regular customers, brand loyalists, content creators, superfans, or even brand ambassadors. Some are devout followers of certain brands and want to get closer to them, others only want to receive content from a brand (only) when they require a product or service.

At the same time, regardless of their desired level of engagement, they are all inundated by ads at every single second of the day, walking around town, on Youtube, Instagram, when speaking with other people. Every moment of someone’s life has become adspace and as such we must offer something truly unique for people that are willing to offer us their valuable time.

Via the Profila app’s self-discovery journey, each consumer will be able to choose what Categories they fill in and to what level they go. Based on your engagement with a specific niche (e.g., eco-friendly traveler level 5 + vegan level 3), you can define in detail what kind of consumer you are.

b) Brands

Brands want a stable and consistent revenue source at the end of the day. They want to expose themselves to consumers who are actively searching for them (or their products and services) and then hope to convert said consumers into purchasers of the brands.

As was said above, ads are everywhere and Brands have to find venues where they are able to get their ads in front of consumers who are already suggestive to watching and consuming ads and or wish to become closer to their favourite brands. They have many places to advertise and have to choose specifically where and how based on retention and conversion.

Today if a brand wants to have an online presence, there is no other alternative than using the advertising services that Facebook, Instagram and Google provide, even though your brand is then participating to and even financing this large-scale personal data abuse and is not listening to what people want. Also, online advertising stakeholders still largely fail to show people ads of real interest. The result is that many people consider online ads to be annoying and useless.

Profila provides this new private channel where brands can advertise at the space set by their consumer. In addition, the Categories within Profila will create outputs for brands that will allow them to personalize offers, create micro-segments, and provide them actionable insights to delight customers

c) Profila

Profila has the mission of aligning Consumers, Brands, and Itself via the application. A proper synergy between the three should look like consumers getting access to deals, specials and unique information from their favourite niches and brands, for brands they must have access to high-quality potential consumers that are willing to convert and ideally become long-term consumers at that. Profila must constantly expand its userbase to become attractive for as many brands as possible and build out its own internal application in order to have users view, create and share content (consuming ad content).

But how do you teach people to build that highly accurate set of data, privacy settings, communication preferences, and how do brands use all of this data to personalize their content and provide customers (people) with that personal experience? That is where we created our own token, called Zero Knowlegde Token”, ZEKE (in short) or ZKT, with the ultimate goal to improve relationships and trust between people and brands. ZKT will help us achieve this goal, incentivize good behavior, help avoid any abuse of the platform and tools we make available and will compensate people and brands for taking part in this new engagement and experience model.

3. ZEKE … all about improving experiences and interactions with brands

“ZEKE functions as a marker of progress in the app. It indicates the progress of a person’s self-discovery while he or she builds up the most accurate and authentical set of data about him or herself. It also measures your experience in relation to a specific brand or market. The higher you “level up” in your self-discovery process in the app, the more you will have access to exclusive brand content and experiences. ZKT will be crucial in this customer-to-brand relationship process, as it empowers, rewards and protects people and incentivizes both people and businesses to share better data, act more ethically when using data, and ultimately create a better customer relationship”. - the Profila Team

(a) ZEKE as Experience and Marker of Progress

ZEKE measures an individual user’s progress and “experience” within Profila.

Experience or “XP” (read: $ZEKE) in this form will unlock various features within Profila that further enhance and reveal deeper means of interaction and engagement with brands, but also the user’s own data. This is achieved through a “levelling” based system (within individual Categories and at a profile level), but also through “badges” that are awarded for specific category achievements, as well as the ability to stake XP (explained below). This functionality encapsulates both data management features as well as self-discovery and profile development features.

(i) Self-discovery and Quizzes (fund 7 project subject matter)

The main XP that people can develop is linked to self-discovery via our Category Quizzes. Categories is a new concept from Profila that will empower individuals to create the most authentic, accurate, and valuable asset available anywhere. These interactive quizzes are designed for people to build up an accurate digital profile of themselves.

This digital profile is created as you fill out the personal data section (your email, date of birth, name, picture, languages you speak etc.) as well as complete quizzes within specific categories (such as Food & Drink, Fashion, Travel). These quizzes are an enjoyable and interactive way for you to capture your preferences and thoughts via text or picture-based questionnaires. As you complete more quizzes, you earn XP and level up not only your profile, but the respective categories in which you have completed quizzes.

For example: If you are a big fan of “Outdoor Sports” and the subcategory ”Running”, you might be willing to participate in various forms of advertising within the Outdoor Sports category and the sub-niches of “Trial Running”, “City Running” or even “Triathlon”. By participating in advertising items that are in the general category you gain “experience points” (read: $ZEKE) and more experience points increase your level for a specific category and niche.

(ii) Staking to unlock new Quizzes

ZEKE earned and accumulated (XP) can be used to specifically progress and enhance interactions within specific categories that you are interested in. This will be achieved by initially offering a select curation of categories to the user to delve into, whilst others remain locked until a certain amount of XP (i.e., ZEKE ) has been acquired. The acquired ZEKE needs to be ‘staked’ within the app to unlock these new categories, as well as further levels within individual categories of particular interest and other benefits.

After earning XP in a specific subcategory of “Running” as part of the category like “Outdoor Sports”, a user can go to the next level and stake the earned ZEKE to unlock access to different subniches like “Running clothes” or “Triathlon nutrition” or “Running accessories”. Or you might be interested in men’s fashion. Eventually you complete all unlocked quizzes within Men’s Fashion, and so to unlock the next level of depth (more specific questions, niche preferences) you will have to stake your ZEKE tokens to this category to unlock the further benefits.

When a person fills out a Quiz, the data selected gets added to their Profila and increases the value of the digital profile. This profile can then be shared – by the individual alone – in exchange for a fee from brands they like, and ultimately for more personalized products and services from such brands. The higher a user rises in levels, and the more categories a user gains XP in, the more valuable a user becomes for a brand. This is because brands will use the levels to figure out what content to share with their customer base. Unless you decide to share personal data and category-data with a brand of your choice, your data stays safe inside Profila and is not shared with any brands.

(iii) Achievements & Badges

Additionally, users are rewarded with badges for reaching certain levels within categories, or for taking certain actions in the app, in order to provide a sense of achievement alongside encouraging further self-discovery. Badges are part of the gamification of Profila by providing fun and insights for individuals.

E.g., when you have filled out all levels of the “Running” category, you receive the “Ironman” badge. When you shared customer-created content with at least 10 brands, you earn the “Loyal Customer” badge, or when you exercise a privacy right (e.g., you ask brand to modify your privacy settings and change your email), you get the “privacy wizard” badge”.

These badges, in combination with the levelling score for Categories and XP in ZKT, all serve to create the most accurate representation of yourself that will help brands understand who you are, so they know how to engage with you in a private and personalized manner.

(b) ZKT to improve interactions … and create superfans (or not) (fund 8 project subject matter)

ZKT can also measure an individual user’s “interactions” with a Brand within Profila. The XP that people can gain from interactions is linked to (i) brand content and advertising, and (ii) consumer content and feedback. This is the feature that we will build out under this fund 8 proposal.

(i) Brand content and advertising

People can use the app to view content from Brands (personalized advertising on products and services) and interact with such content by opening the add, clicking through, or adding a (positive or negative) sentiment to the add you like or dislike.

People can earn additional brand-specific XP or content. The more you interact, the more your XP increases and the more ZEKE you collect. As you progress in levels you get more unique ads and personalized content, more unique opportunities, and rewards, you could potentially become a brand ambassador. At this point the interaction is very personal and unique.

This then acts as an amazing selling point towards brands as they can witness how their existing consumers are so involved in specific niches and really build out their own nodes to reward the consumers who are working hard farming and levelling their brand’s node. For smaller brands, this opportunity is truly unique because you gain access to a consumer base that is highly active and marketable to and have the potential to cultivate super fans of your products by really building out nodes that compete with larger brands because you can focus on rewarding people who are really interacting with your ads on the platform.

(ii) Consumer content and feedback

Another form of brand interaction where XP can be earned is through Moments, consumer created content that is directly shared with a brand. If a brand wants to commercially use your content, they can buy it in the form of an NFT. To know more about this, checkout our proposal funded under Project Catalyst fund 6 (link below, together with all other funded proposals).

Now under fund 9, we will implicate brands in the process, by allowing them to purchase ZEKE for sole purpose of rewarding their customers in the app. Today, we only transfer fiat currencies paid by brands to Profila. The 50% revenue share we adopt with our Profila users is paid via Stripe. Via this proposal, we will allow brands to partially pay their customers in ZEKE. If we charge a brand e.g. 100 EUR to access data and advertise to some customers, we will now charge 110%, convert 10% of their fiat payment in ZEKE, and allow brands to choose in what ways their existing customer can earn ZEKE by sharing data or by interacting with content from a specific brand. In a follow up proposal, we will integrate full ZEKE payouts for data and advertising.

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

Answer

The challenge is as follows: ""What dapps, products and integrations can be implemented to bring impactful use cases to Cardano ecosystem that help drive more adoption?""?

We are confident that our proposal addresses this challenge because we are expecting many users onto our platform in the next months, who will benefit from the functionality we develop under this proposal

• We are onboarding 100.000+ users onto the App in the next months, as part of a pilot with a large multinational.
• All of these people will be incentivized to play the gamified self-discovery quizzes in the app, building up an accurate digital profile of themselves. All of these people will be rewarded for interacting with brands (and brand content in the form of adverts) via the ZEKE token we integrate with this proposal.

Profila's ZEKE token will provide the necessary incentives for people in the app to learn how to control their data and interact with brands on their own terms.

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

Challenges

1. Scalability and speed of Cardano blockchain for high volume, low value payouts (we are paying people factions of a dollar for watching ads and interacting with brand content).
2. Cost of high volume transaction ledger/record of all Ads served on Cardano

Risks

1. Cardano blockchain speed and cost might be prohibitive to project success/adoption
2. Integration of our token payout linked to activities into adtech/ad server ecosystems which require high-speed might limit scalability of the solution on Cardano, although the POC will prove viability of the approach

Our “grants and partnerships” slide shows some of the research, institutional and governmental relationships we have build up over the last years. We have the necessary funding and technical partners to successfully manage multiple projects on Cardano, together with our team of almost 20 people. Our development partnership with Mlabs (blockchain) and Steppechange (Adtech/Data) as well as our relationship with IOHK’s professional development team complement our own CTO/dev team in the technical deliverables. Our long term research partnerships with the University of Luzern (privacy - NLP/ML) and University of Madrid (adtech, digital identity, zero knowledge advertising) give us access to 2 teams of +5 experienced professors/researchers who are working on a monthly basis on our projects. Our funding slide in the deck also shows we have obtained sufficient funding – apart from the +1 million USD grants – to survive as a company during these uncertain times in the market. We will definitely be able to make good on our promise to the Cardano community to deliver.

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

The milestones & deliverables for this specific proposal are as follows: (post funding):

• Week 1: project kickoff with COO, internal dev team and external blockchain developer, further discussing technical requirements to be included in the PRD (product requirement document)

• Week 2: submission of the PRD (product requirement document) by business team (start week), with comments of the development team (end week).

• Week 3: final PRD submitted, with project divided in 14 days sprints, with scrum calls and update calls in the calendar of all team members.

• Week 4: first development work starts.

• month 2: designer produces new screens for in the app and the brand dashboard (where ZEKE tokens will be visible for brands who acquired them) in parallel of dev work

• month 3-6: continued development work

• month 7-8: testing

• month 9: finalize project, video and paper reporting

As the voting ends in August and funds are distributed in September, we consider the first week to be somewhere late September, early October 2022 (kick-off meeting).

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

This proposal requires at least a budget of 110.000 USD for a 6-to-9 -month development project, to be allocated as follows:

1. Research and PRD development - USD 15.000

2. Business analysis and UX/UI design work - USD 8.000

10 days of senior designer work @ 700 USD per day (design of extra gamified screens in the app)

3. Project management and reporting overall - USD 15.000

30 days of project management and reporting @ 500 USD per day

4. Development and testing to delivery - USD 72.000

• 32 days of senior blockchain developer @ 1000 USD per day

• 24 days by our game developer @ 1000 CHF (=equal to USD) per day

• 20 days of web/backend developer @ 400 USD per day

• 20 days of app developer @ 400 USD per day

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

Main contact persons:

Profila GmbH

Michiel Van Roey, Co-Founder of Profila and Project Head

See LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/michielvanroey/

Extended Team:

Team – We have a versatile team with experience in blockchain projects that is able and committed to tackle this challenge. Please find below more information on the Profila leadership team:

• Mikko Kotila (CTO) - IT project manager and data analyst with 20+ years’ experience multi-disciplinary technology and software development projects (throughout all phases of implementation with global scope and resource team). See LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikkokotila/. 

• MICHIEL VAN ROEY, (Co-founder, Crypto-legal expert and Chief Legal Officer); Belgian, 10 years XP as EU-qualified business lawyer in international law firms, an international organization (CERN), and a multinational company (Cisco). Specialized in tech & and privacy law; author crypto-asset regulations (see https://thelawreviews.co.uk/title/the-virtual-currency-regulation-review/belgium). See LinkedIn profile of Michiel, https://www.linkedin.com/in/michielvanroey/.

• SHAWN BOONE JENSEN, (Founder & CEO); South African; 20+ years XP in senior management role in ISP's, SI and global Telco organizations, most recently as Head of Product &Head of Customer Presales and Service MEA in Vodafone Global Enterprise (VGE). See LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnj/.

• LUKE BRAGG, (Chief Product Officer); US citizen & Swiss resident; 20 years XP designing creative digital solutions for complex organizations (G7 organization in Russia; digital strategy lead for Akzo Nobel in the Netherlands; Director of Enterprise Architecture for Merck/MSD). See LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucasbragg/.

• IPEK SAHINER, (Chief Operating Officer); Swiss and Turkish citizen, Computer Engineer with 20 years XP as computer engineer and project manager in the telecom sector at Nokia, supporting local Swiss and global network operators. See LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ipeksahinerschlecht/.

• REMY MERCKX (Chief Growth Officer); French; 23 years XP in the Travel & Hospitality Industry,

• CLARA-ANN GORDON, Swiss; partner at Niederer Kraft Frey (NKF; Zürich), legal advisor to Profila. See LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/clara-ann-gordon/.

• ELIE AUVRAY, French; co-Founder of logion (public blockchain network), blockchain advisor to Profila; See LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/elieauvray/.

• MIKKO KOTILA, Finnish, software developer and ad-tech industry expert, technology advisor to Profila; See LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikkokotila/.

• PHILIP LAMS, Belgian, serial entrepreneur & Profila board member, sales & business advisor to Profila; See LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-lams-a9a64215/.

• BULLISH DUMPLING, Cardano Community ambassador and interviewer, with 5000+ highly relevant cardano followers, known for interviewing Cardano Foundation CEO (Frederik Gregaard). See Twitter https://twitter.com/BullishDumpling

• HOSKY, see twitter - https://twitter.com/hoskytoken

• Mitchell Goodie (product analyst) https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchellgoudie/

• Elena Meier (legal intern) https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-meier3/

University of Madrid + IOHK + Mlabs

Our own team will work together with 4 researchers at the University of Madrid under Professor Rumin and our own hired development resources at MLabs and Steppechange.

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

Yes, because we have several workstreams where we are building out many features on Cardano (as shown below). As explained above, there is still the staking option for ZEKE in the app which needs to be developed:

"Staking to unlock new Quizzes"

ZEKE earned and accumulated (XP) can be used to specifically progress and enhance interactions within specific categories that you are interested in. This will be achieved by initially offering a select curation of categories to the user to delve into, whilst others remain locked until a certain amount of XP (i.e., ZEKE ) has been acquired. The acquired ZEKE needs to be ‘staked’ within the app to unlock these new categories, as well as further levels within individual categories of particular interest and other benefits.

We will file for follow up proposals at the appropriate time.

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Existing Catalyst funded projects - Profila has already received funding by the Cardano community for 4 project workstreams (privacy - data sharing via NFTs - digital ID - tokenization/gamification) - during fund 5, 6, 7 and 8 of Project Catalyst. We thank the Cardano community for their trust and support.

All our projects are aimed at giving people back control over their personal data, control over brand content they see, and provide people with compensation for their data and attention. The project workstreams we are developing are the following:

1. Privacy - titled: Control your data - privacy ledger (funds 5 and 8); and Company privacy ledger (GDPR & CCPA)

2. Data sharing via NFT: NFT for customer feedback/content (fund 6); and (d)app to control your data (fund 6)

3. DID - Control your data (vault) via PRISM (funds 6 and 8)

4. Tokenization/Gamification - anonymity and data control with ZKT (funds 7 and 8).

[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?

Profila will provide the community with detailed periodical progress for this proposal (once funded) in the following ways:

1. Github repository updated (1x per month, after the initial scrum sessions for creation of the PRD, product requirement document)

1. Two-weekly updates to other Cardano proposers via the Catalyst coordinator call

1. Two-weekly updates in our "Cardano projects" newsletter (register via our website https://ico.profila.com))

1. Monthly project process and KPI reports submitted to Catalyst teams and available to the public for verification

1. Monthly Swarm session office hour (at end of townhall) for a Question and Answer session about our funded project

1. Periodical AMAs by the Profila founders to talk about our progress

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

Success is the timely development of this additional third aspect of our ZEKE token integration and gamification of our app features, its integration into the Profila platform and testing with our customers. We will include a demonstration of its during the townhall presentation and closeout report.

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

The proposal is a third step (or third use case) of our zero-knowledge token integration into the Profila app. The first 2 cases received funding as part of the following proposal under fund 7 - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/382488 and fund 8 - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397951

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

NA