Cardano Virtual Experiences Toolbox

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Problem area: Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), an area with exponential growth, experienced a growth rate of 5,000% in 2021 and hit $25 billion in sales from $0,5 billion in 2020 (DappRadar). Galaxy of Art (GoA) aims to further extend this area by adding a dimension that is missing from existing NFT marketplaces and represents a niche. GoA will design, and implement a toolkit for the creation of 3D virtual spaces - we refer to such spaces as Virtual Experiences (aka VES). The toolkit will be integrated in GoA’s NFT marketplace (www.galaxyof.art). Existing NFT marketplaces display static information about digital creations and limit the interaction among users. Research demonstrates that people prefer a more interactive and social mode of communication with artists while considering an NFT investment. According to Wunderman Thompson Intelligence (2021), 76% of online users favor a 3D interactivity with other users close to a real world social environment. 

Reasoning: Existing NFT marketplaces lack the potential of exposing NFTs in 3D spaces. Enabling such a dimension is expected to introduce new business models, revenue streams, and enhance social interactions with users - especially for the next generation of Web3 and the Metaverse. The proposed toolkit aims to serve as a standardized base layer for exposing NFTs in 3D virtual spaces. For GoA these 3D virtual spaces will be encapsulated in the form of exhibition/event spaces, social rooms etc. Community users will also be able to publish their own 3D models that could be exposed to other users through the marketplace. The curator feature of the toolkit will enable communities to collaborate towards the co-creation of VES.

VES features and functionality: Our goal is to develop an easy to use, open-source toolkit that enables individual users or communities to create virtual experiences that are captured in 3D spaces. The toolkit will be integrated with our existing NFT marketplace (MVP at www.galaxyof.art) and it will be open-source. Based on their features, VES are classified into four categories:

• VES for free: Some rooms will be available for free to allow users to exhibit their artworks and donate part of their income for social good (e.g., children in need, war refugees, cancer fighters, charity etc.). 
• VES for rent: Artists can rent VES on a daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly basis and use them to interact with their audience. Additionally, artists will be able to choose a rental package.
• VES for sale: Artists may buy VES and use it in a similar way to rentals. In addition, they will have the option to rent their VES to other artists for a specific period of time or resell them. In doing so, they will be able to negotiate the rental or sale price. 
• VES for lease: Users will also have the opportunity to lease VES but will not have the option to rent it to other entities during leasing. At the end of the lease period the user will be able to buy it.

General VES functionality:

• Access VES: access is granted through GoA marketplace (www.galaxyof.art). For this instantiation of the toolkit we are adapting its use to our marketplace. However, and since the toolkit will be open-source other marketplaces can use it for their own purposes or to integrate with GoA (using the GoA Hub).   
• Manage VES: 

1. Setup VES packages and their attributes 
2. Dynamic calculation of price based on a model that takes into consideration demand and supply (applicable for those VES that are not part of a package).
3. Setup online point of VES free/sale/rental/leasing through which artists can make their options
4. Operate online point of VES free/sale/rental/leasing

• Request VES for free: Users can post their intention to use VES for free to organize an event for social good. 
• Vote: GoA users can go through the VES for free proposals and vote/approve the best of them. A minimum amount of ADA will be required to be staked to GoA for enabling the voting options. With this we aim to increase the number of ADA holders for the benefit of the Cardano ecosystem as a whole.  

VES tenant/owner functionality: VES will offer the opportunity to users to enhance their interaction with other users. The idea is to allow users to create their own VES in which they will be able to exhibit their NFTs, announce the launch of new (e.g. unique/rare) NFT, present their new collection, communicate with audience, socializ, facilitate networking, do airdrops, exchange NFTs, run auctions, do training activities etc. In brief, VES aims to enable users to: 

• Create own exhibition to display NFTs in a private space  
• Customize: Tenants or owners will be able to customize their space according to their preferences. This will include the layout of the exhibition/room, background etc. Exhibitors will be able to select an exhibition layout (template) and customize it according to their preferences. 
• Communicate and interact with end user and audience through video and audio
• Use live streaming to increase interaction
• Share pictures, videos, newsletters 
• Organize discussions to explain NFT designs from an artistic point of view. 
• Invite other artists and ask them to comment on the artworks
• Present a new collection or new unique NFTs 
• Enhance collaboration and networking with audience and other artists
• Promote the exhibition through various campaigns 
• Invite people to attend for free
• Sell subscriptions to the potential visitors (the general public should buy a ticket for a small amount in order to participate).   
• Announce the exhibition 
• Offer mystery box(es) 
• Airdrop NFTs 
• Sell NFTs
• Exchange NFTs
• Run NFTs auctions
• Perform education and training activities 
• Digital subscriptions and invitations for an exhibition will be designed by the artists themselves and we will be NFTs. These can be later exchanged or traded by their owners.

Stakeholders: The proposed project will engage the following stakeholders: 

• Galaxy of Art 
• Exhibitors (Artists / Collectors)
• Other users (VES visitors) 
• Other Cardano NFT marketplaces 
• Cardano community 

Implementation

For the implementation of the proposed project we will be adopting the Agile Software Development Life-cycle.

Analysis: During the requirement analysis phase we will be publishing the scope of the project to the community and ask for feedback. The feedback will take the form of a survey. 

Iteration: The implementation of the functionality will be divided into various sprint phases of two weeks each. Each sprint aims towards the development of certain features. At the end of each sprint the goal is to achieve a workable version of the software quickly and make improvements to satisfy additional requirements/features at the next sprint. Each sprint cycle will be driven by the feedback received by the community until the final sprint cycle.

Release: The release version of the VES toolkit will be released after performing quality assurance to ensure that the toolkit is fully functional. At this phase we will be resolving any bugs or defects detected. In addition, we will be inviting the Cardano community to support the project with user testing. Training and access to the toolkit will be provided to users through our NFT marketplace.

Maintenance: Over time, new iterations can take place to improve the usability of the toolkit or expand it with upgraded and additional features. This phase will be mostly facilitated by community contributions over the public repo. As we have already mentioned our toolkit will be provided as open-source code to the Cardano community and aims to contribute a standardized model for building such virtual experiences in 3D space.

Output: This proposal will produce an open-source toolkit that aims to serve as a standardized base layer for exposing NFTs in 3D virtual spaces.

Contribution: Our contribution is threefold since we aim to:

• provide an open-source toolkit for exposing NFTs in virtual spaces. The toolkit can be used by other Cardano based NFT marketplaces or by the Cardano community in general;
• propose a set of standards and good practices for the future implementation of such tools on Cardano;
• incentivize users to become ADA holders since the proposed toolkit aims to leverage on them for providing exclusive access to certain features or functionality that concerns decision-making (e.g., voting on proposals, sales, etc).

Uniqueness and Value: NFT marketplaces are static Web applications that enable users to publish their NFTs and list them for sale. We envision an NFT marketplace that enables artists and individual collectors to create 3D virtual experiences. Furthermore, online communities of collectors would be able to join forces and act as curators to the creation of 3D virtual spaces and share with the world. With this proposal, we seek funding for the creation of an open-source toolkit that will be integrated as a module to our existing NFT marketplace Galaxy of Art. The proposed toolkit will enable users to create (either as individuals or collaboratively) such 3D virtual experiences and publish them directly within the marketplace. To the best of our knowledge the existing NFT marketplaces on Cardano lack such a tool. The proposed toolkit aims to enhance users’ experiences and engagement on further expanding the NFT ecosystem on Cardano. We aim to propose a set of standards and good practices for the future implementation of such tools on Cardano. This will empower the entire Cardano community of developers to clone the source code and further evolve it to other use-cases. For Galaxy of Art we will enable users to provide various templates of 3D spaces that could be used for free for the creation of the various virtual experiences as we discuss further in the proposal. 

Beneficiaries: The proposed toolkit will benefit the following entities: Galaxy of Art, the Catalyst community, and the wider Cardano community as follows. 

• Galaxy of Art will take the opportunity to further develop its own ecosystem and provide enhanced functionality and engagement to its users. In doing so, users will be able to enrich their experiences and interact in a more efficient and effective way with the various artists, collectors and other users. We estimate that the proposed advanced feature will create alternative revenue streams and opportunities for growth. 
• Catalyst community: The open source character of the tool as well as its standardization will enable more ideas and unforeseen use-cases to be implemented. 
• Cardano community: Likewise, the Cardano NFT marketplaces will be able to reuse and customize the proposed open-source code based on their own needs to better serve their clients. 

Impact: Overall, the proposed toolkit for Virtual Experiences (VES) aims to accelerate the standardization processes of such tools. It will serve as the primary based layer for building 3D virtual spaces in the Web3 space for Cardano NFT marketplaces.

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

The proposal is submitted under the F9: DApps and Integrations challenge and seeks to increase the adoption of Cardano. One of the focus areas of the challenge refers to Marketplaces, with our proposal seeking to enrich the functionality of existing NFT marketplaces by developing a toolkit for exposing NFTs in virtual spaces to provide an immersive experience to users, to enhance social interactions and interactivity.

Galaxy of Art launched its NFT marketplace in 2022 and it is suitable for this challenge as it has already developed an MVP in place and a competent team. Our goal is to deliver an impactful use case to the Cardano ecosystem, standardize processes and help drive more adoption. The open-source nature of the toolkit will enable other Cardano NFT marketplaces to use it and customize it based on their own needs. The innovative nature of the toolkit will help us to overcome a significant problem of existing NFT marketplaces (static-nature of interactivity with users and the community of collectors). The proposed proposal will also deliver a set of standards and best practices that can be used by Cardano community and marketplaces and speed up Cardano adoption and usability in the Web3 and the Metaverse space. The end outcome will be increased utility and adoption of Cardano and it is expected to attract users to the platform and significantly increase the number of ADA holders. ADA holders will be incentivized and encouraged to participate in the decision making for the development of new features and/or to unlock any advanced features while interacting with VES.

Our team has excellent knowledge and experience of the blockchain, crypto-assets, NFTs and Metaverse space. For example, one of the team members is Dr. Marwan Al Zarouni, CEO of Dubai blockchain center, who was recently voted as one of the top 100 people in blockchain (https://cointelegraph.com/top-people-in-crypto-and-blockchain-2022/marwan-alzarouni). Another team member is Dr. Maria Papadaki who teaches at Columbia University, New York. There is a nice blend of knowledgeable people that are coming from both academia and the industry. 

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

The biggest challenge is to convince and train artists, collectors and other users to adopt the proposed solution. Firstly, we will need to minimize the knowledge gap that exists with this new technology and incentivize people to leverage on the many opportunities that exist with NFTs. Furthermore, further monetization opportunities exist that should be communicated to these user groups. For example it is often a challenge to persuade these user groups to engage with NFTs. This is reasonable as we are introducing a new concept and there will be therefore increased resistance to change. For such reasons, we are planning to increase awareness and educate our audience through a series of actions that include:

• GoA aims to use free VES to organize events and invite artists and users to attend. During these events we will have airdrops, mystery boxes, present unique NFTs designed for these events, organize thematic NFT exhibitions, invite speakers who explain the importance of VES, facilitate discussions among artists and networking.
• Offer free VES to our artists for a certain period.
• Offer additional training and support to artists on how to run their virtual exhibition
• Increase social media interaction 
• Develop short educational videos 
• Newsletters with relevant material, data from the first VES, best practices, successful VES that took place etc. 
• Issue NFTs to signify the launch of VES and airdrop them through GoA marketplace.

Another risk is related to the implementation time and budget. We will be operating under a strict time-schedule and there is always the risk of missing a deadline. Especially during the implementation phases of the project. To mitigate the risk we will be partially using the funds from this grant to grow our team of developers. In case additional budget is required, the GoA utility token will be used to meet any additional budgetary requirements.

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

Technical Feasibility 

The development of the toolkit will be based on open-source WebGL (Web Graphics Library) and JavaScript libraries (e.g., Three.js) for rendering interactive 3D graphics within a browser environment. We aim to instantiate the toolkit as a module within our existing NFT marketplace GoA. 

Implementation Roadmap

Month 1: VES design

Month 2-4: Implementation and integration

Month 5-6: Testing

End of month 6: Launch VES 

Implementation roadmap is organized as follows:

• VES toolkit design and architecture: 
• Stakeholders: GoA users, Cardano NFT community
• Duration 1 month
• Deliverable: Architectural design
• Backend implementation: implementation of backend components. 
• Stakeholders: GoA users, Cardano NFT community
• Duration 3 months
• Deliverable: Backend code 
• Front end design and development: UI/UX and 3D spaces design and development. 
• Stakeholders: GoA users, Cardano NFT community
• Duration 3 months
• Deliverable: user interface and templates for 3D spaces 
• Integration: Integration the toolkit module with our NFT marketplace (aka Galaxy of Art). 
• Stakeholders: GoA users, Cardano NFT community
• Duration 2 months
• Deliverable integrated software 
• Testing: Testing and Quality Assurance
• Stakeholders: GoA users, Cardano NFT community
• Duration 2 months
• Deliverable: Quality assurance report
• Awareness & Community Building
• Stakeholders: GoA users, Cardano NFT community
• Action Item-01: Development of educational and marketing material. 
• Duration 1 month
• Deliverable: educational videos and marketing material.
• Action Item-02: Publish source-code 
• Duration 0.2 month
• Deliverable: Source code on a public repo

Notes:

• We note that some of the above phases will run in parallel. The overall duration of the project will be 6 calendar months in total. 
• Members of the team assigned the responsibility of executing the grant will not be contributing toward other proposals.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

For the proposed project we will need the following budget

• Designer and system architect (2 x $4000 x 2 months) = $16000
• Front end programmers (2 x $4000 x 3 months) = $24000
• Back end programmer (2 x $4500 x 3 months) = $27000
• Integration (2 x $4500 x 2 months) = $18000
• Testing (1 x $4000 x 2 months) = $8000
• Marketing, awareness and community building (1,4 x $4000 x 6 months)
• Project management (1 x $3850 x 6 months) = $23100
• Total budget = $149700

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

• Christian Schmitt and Andres Felipe Fonseca Duque: VES toolkit design and architecture
• Panayiotis Christodoulou and George Paterakis: Backend implementation of backend components. 
• Andres Felipe Fonseca Duque: Front end design and development: UI/UX and 3D spaces design and development. 
• Panayiotis Christodoulou and George Paterakis: Integration of the toolkit module with our NFT marketplace  
• Maria Papadaki: Testing and Quality Assurance
• Edward Logan, Marwan Alzarouni, Maria Papadaki, Andres Felipe Fonseca Duque, Chistian Schmitt, Irene Pateraki and George Paterakis: Awareness & Community Building
• Christian Schmitt: Project manager
• Maria Papadaki: Risk management officer
• Marwan Alzarouni: Security officer
• Irene Pateraki: Marketing manager
• Additional programmer will assist in front end design and development.

The details of the key team members are reported below:

Dr. Maria Papadaki CEO & Co-Founder is a lecturer at Columbia University, New York and an Associate Professor at the British University in Dubai (BUiD). She is also the Managing Director for the BUiD_Centre for Risk and Innovation (DCRI). She has over ten years of experience in Risk Management from both Academia and Industry, with numerous years in the implementation, development, improvement, and management of risk frameworks, tools, and software’s in the Aerospace Industry. Maria worked previously in Rolls-Royce plc and the University of Manchester, leading different Enterprise Risk Management, Project Management, and Supply chain risk roles. In 2015, She initiated the idea and led the development of the first innovation Hub (H2B) for start-ups in Crete, Greece, on behalf of the Heraklion Chamber of Commerce. In addition, Maria led the development of blockchain digital certificates for BUiD's graduates, making the university 1st in the Middle East and 3rd in the world implementing Blockchain technology in education. Maria is a TEDEX speaker, with a vision to promote accessible education and knowledge transfer through developing a global university fully operated by Blockchain. Finally, Maria is appointed as a Board of Directors for the Institute of Risk Management (IRM) in London since 2018 and holds a position as a visiting lecturer at The University of Manchester. LinkedIn

Dr. Marwan Alzarouni CSO & Co-Founder: is an internationally recognized advisor on blockchain use cases. Dr. Marwan Alzarouni is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cryptocurrencies. He is the CEO of Dubai Blockchain Center and the Director of information Services at Digital Dubai and a member of Dubai Future Council for Blockchain and is the lead for the Digital Asset Task Force (DATF). Dr. Alzarouni is also the Managing Partner at Accelliance Consultancy which regularly conducts research and studies into the applicable use cases for blockchain technology and aids in creating toolkits that can be tested and implemented by various businesses and government entities worldwide. Dr. Alzarouni is also the Co-founder and Advisor to the Galaxy of Arts, a newly established NFT Art Marketplace and social platform based in Dubai and specializing in NFT based Art. He is recently ranked as 84th out of 100 contributors to blockchain (https://cointelegraph.com/top-people-in-crypto-and-blockchain-2022/marwan-alzarouni). LinkedIn

Christian Schmitt CTO & Founder is an entrepreneur from Germany. He studied Industrial Engineering and worked in different fields in IT consulting and project management for companies like Liebherr Aerospace. His obsession with blockchain began in the early years of Bitcoin. Easy to use processes drive him to get the most out of the technologies and he thinks two steps ahead to bring an excellent product to the blockchain community. He enjoys doing new things, loves to innovate. LinkedIn

Edward Logan CEO USA and COO: is a top-performing, solutions-driven senior executive/ director with 18+ years ́experience leading organizations in highly competitive environments through portfolio/program/ project management. Edward Logan is a Senior Executive and Chief Development Officer. He is responsible for leading the business development and capturing execution of the company’s short and long-term marketing strategies and developing strategic partnership with customers. Expertise across full range of Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), Federal Litigation Support, Analytics, Cyber, Digital Forensics, Video & FOIA as a Services, Enterprise Architecture (EA), governance, Quality Management process improvement, strategic project and program management functions securing with over $10 billion-dollar federal contracts working in this public sector arena. His numerous awards and accolades across the federal industry and consistent record of growth, innovation attest to the knowledge, skill, and value he brings to any organization. LinkedIn

Andres Felipe Fonseca Duque is a technology entrepreneur, science enthusiast, economist, and Matrix believer who constantly searching new ways to solve problems with the use of technology and AI. Andres is the CEO and co-founder of Intelligent Trading Machines, a technology company focused on the development of tailor-made projects, with a data driven approach, like AI solutions, Dapps, Smart contracts, and web 3.0 integrations. He has also deep knowledge of Metaverse and he is currently contributing to the development of a metaverse aggregator focused on the development of infrastructure and technology for the deployment of experiences in virtual economies. www.linkedin.com/in/andresfonsecad 

Dr. Panayiotis Christodoulou holds a PhD in Computer Engineering and Informatics from the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT). He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Manchester University, UK (MEng) and the Frederick University, Cyprus (MSc). Panayiotis is a member of the Software Engineering and Intelligent Information Systems Research Lab at the Cyprus University of Technology and has a lot of experience in managing EU projects as a project manager e.g., DOSSIER-Coud, SmartGov, ΕΠΙΡΡΟΗ, INNOLABS. Panayiotis's main research interest is on Blockchains and DTLs, he has a great experience as a Blockchain Architect and smart contracts programming on native tokens and EVMs.

George Paterakis is a computer scientist and blockchain enthusiastic. He is a full stack programmer with extensive knowledge of the blockchain and Cardano ecosystem. George has very excellent knowledge of the blockchain technologies as well as tools for front end development. Giorgos is an experienced software programmer with high analytical and observant skills. An expert problem-solver with a continuous education in the field.

Irene Paterakis is a marketing manager with years of work experience in media organizations (e.g. radio stations). She has run multiple successful marketing campaigns, events and conferences in the music industry. Irene has a track record of engaging with artists and public relations. Irene has experience in creating and maintaining brand promotions, company information, and marketing campaigns for companies across several social media networks. She is an innovative person that is able to push new ideas and formats while measuring how well those ideas perform. Irene is young and enthusiastic with excellent teamwork and leadership skills currently managing a successful marketing department for the metro radio station which is ranked as 14th in Greece. 

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

Catalyst is an excellent initiative that boosts the adoption of Cardano and assists in knowledge transfer and sharing among the Cardano community members. Our team sees ideascale as a significant catalyst for innovation. We will continue to submit our ideas to Catalyst as this is a win-win practice and both GoA and Cardano community are benefited. We share our ideas with the community and we get valuable feedback and in case of success funds for development. In return the community’s and reviewers’ comments help us to improve our solutions. In case we are funded we deliver our products as open-source code to the Cardano community. This allows Cardano community members to speed up their activities and all together increase Cardano adoption.  

[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 will measure the progress of the project against the roadmap given above. From a technical point of view we are going to track the progress as below:

• An agile methodology will be used to monitor the progress  
• The team will have weekly meetings to review the progress of the project and take necessary additional actions if needed.  
• The total number of pull requests in Github (https://gitlab.com/galaxyofx/ui-admin/-/tree/master)
• Total numbers of Github commits 
• Total number of errors fixed.
• Total lines of code for the proposed toolkit
• Number of transactions
• Number of users joining the test phase 

In regard to marketing, awareness and community building we are going to focus on the following metrics: 

• 2 posts per day per social media used (e.g. twitter, discord, tiktok)
• 1 YouTube video per week summarizing the progress of the project
• 2 articles to our newsletter per week
• Daily posts to cardano and GoA community 
• Number of unique visitors to the project web site
• Number of average daily visitors to the project web site
• User engagement (e.g. number of likes, comments and suggestions)

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

We consider success for this project as below:

• Success metric 1: Increase the number of users. At the end of the project (month 6), the team will share the number of users of our NFT marketplace (www.galaxyof.art). We expect to see a 15% increment of this number 3 months after the end of the project. 
• Success metric 2: Increase the volume of NFT transactions. The total number fo transactions of GoA NFT marketplace of month 6 will be released at the end of the project. We consider a success if we reach a 10% increase three months after the end of the project.
• Success metric 3: The project will be successful if after the launch of the toolkit (end of month 6) we achieve the following: 
• 2 VES during the 1st week  
• 12 VES in week 4
• 30 VES in week 8
• Success metric 4: Toolkit adoption by Cardano community. The project will be successful if at least 1 Cardano community member adopts the proposed toolkit and integrates it with its platform.

[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 new proposal