Following & Social Discovery Tool

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

There are many great tools to explore and visualize the blockchain already, e.g. Pool.pm and Cardanoscan. But these tools aren’t focused on social discovery. And you still need to be somewhat of an expert on the eUTXO model to be able to read what’s happening within transactions (for the explorers) and navigate the blockchain, since there can be many inputs and outputs for each transaction on Cardano.

Therefore, you should be able to follow any address, project, or NFT. You should be able to see what (other) addresses they’ve been interacting with (= their network), what they’ve been up to (= their activities), and who follows them or whom they are following.

Facebook is showing a person’s social graph, LinkedIn is showing a person’s network graph and this project will show your crypto graph: your transactions, (translated into) activities, network, and following. The tool will be open and transparent, following the core principles of the blockchain. You will need to connect with your wallet before you can follow others.

With this, we’ll be able to answer questions like this more easily:

• Is there a real person behind this address, or is it connected to scams?
• Are knowledgeable people following this project, or is it a potential rug pull?
• What are the (un)realized profits of a DAO Fund, have they made any profit at all?
• What are the actual moves an influencer is making, is she putting her money where her mouth is?

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

This tool will increase the adoption and growth of the Cardano blockchain since it will be much easier to navigate it based on social discovery. And it will be easier to prevent one from being a victim of rug pulls and scams. The average Jane needs this tool to be able to make (more) sense of what’s happening with every transaction, and who’s performing them. Once she understands that more thoroughly, our persuasion is she will make (much) more use of it.

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

Managing to set up, test, and improve an algorithm that automatically “translates” transactions into activities while being fast enough to keep up with the increasing pace of the Cardano blockchain, is the main difficulty and thus risk of this project. Another risk would be that one of the players that are doing a similar thing - mostly on Ethereum - will adopt Cardano and compete with this platform. We would welcome competition though and don’t see this happening anytime soon for now as these players have just started out on Ethereum.

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

Building the Following and Social Discovery Tool requires these phases that could be delivered within 3-4 months, approximately:

• Phase 1: Following - to be completed by June 2022 (already working on this)
• Phase 2: Translation - to be completed by July 2022 (already working on this)
• Phase 3: Sync - to be completed by August 2022
• Phase 4: Discovery - to be completed by September 2022

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

The budget for this project is made up of 1,200 hours of development, totaling a budget of $72,000 at an hourly rate of $60/hour.

• Phase 1: 300 hours ($18,000)
• Phase 2: 220 hours ($13,200)
• Phase 3: 400 hours ($24,000)
• Phase 4: 280 hours ($16,800)

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

The team behind internet companies Ratecard and WebFeedback will work on this, led by founder and developer Jeroen Sakkers (alias: @victormundi):

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroensakkers/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/webfeedback/people
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/ratecardio/people

We might be looking to work with experts on contracts and minting on Cardano, to make sure we’ll explore all options to really make this Following & Discovery Tool a part of the blockchain.

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

We might participate in future funds, but that’s not a given. There is a lot of room for expanding this project, but first of all, we’ll be focussing on getting this project off the ground and making sure it’s used by many people. This project’s budget should be sufficient to build the platform and get initial traction.

[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’ll keep the community up-to-date through our Discord server (see: https://discord.com/invite/rgArnAzGzd), and will publish weekly updates on our progress. The community will also be able to vote on the implementation of features, the platform’s design, and more.

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

In the end, any address, project, or NFT should be found on the platform, and people should be able to join by connecting with their wallet and following addresses, projects, and NFTs. We’re aiming for 100,000 registered wallets at the end of the year (both current Cardano users as well as users new to Cardano), following at least 10 addresses per account.

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

No.