Handle Personalization | ADA Handle

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

ADA Handle launched its public sale in March 2022 and since then has sold over 120k Handles, with 45k wallets holding at least one Handle. We would now like to go a step further and offer personalization tools that Handle owners can opt into in order to create a customized cross-platform user experience.

Presently, when visitors connect to a DEX or use a wallet, they can only partially personalize their UI experience by choosing a specific Handle or setting the environment to dark or light mode. For example, when visitors connect to SundaeSwap's Exchange (https://exchange.sundaeswap.finance) these are the two available options:

At ADA Handle we believe that as more DApps, games and platforms launch on the Cardano blockchain, there will be an opportunity to augment the Handle Standard to enable Handle owners to choose personalization features, from an array of options, that platforms can then directly parse from the Handle Personalization Standard.

Multiple gaming platforms that we have spoken to have agreed that a personalization feature would increase visitor engagement and improve cross-platform interaction because Handle personalizations and customizations will be made available to all platforms. In other words, the chosen personalizations associated with any given Handle can be simultaneously parsed by any and all platforms. Additionally, when players start interacting with each other on these platforms, certain personalization features, such as profile pictures and social-media accounts, could be used to build rapport between visitors, further improving community engagement with DApps, and consequently with the Cardano blockchain.

A few organizations operating on the Cardano blockchain have also expressed the desire to use Handles to simplify how potential customers find more information about them given that, presently, users have to navigate to off-chain social platforms or utilize search engines in order to find details about projects on their respective websites. Thus, navigating away from the Cardano blockchain. Their request was to make it easier for the information to be made available from within the blockchain.

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

We believe that The Handle Personalization Standard is the solution to this problem as it will allow Handle owners to associate personalization data onto their Handles. Each Handle owner will have this optional personalization feature that Cardano DApps, wallets, platforms and portals can then read data from in order to deliver a customized and personalized user experience to visitors, in addition to enabling visitors to have a homogenous cross-platform experience.

To achieve this, each Handle will be associated with a unique Smart Contract via a pointer record. These Smart Contracts will contain datasets for the Handles that they govern personalization for. DApps, wallets, gaming platforms, portals, etc. will subsequently only need to detect these pointer records and from these records, parse any or all available personalization information for the Handles. These data sets will be IPFS-hosted and JSON-based making it flexible for Handle owners to add, edit, remove information in a decentralized manner. For the IPFS-hosted and JSON-based datasets, ADA Handle has partnered with a prominent community project that will deliver enterprise-class IPFS and CDN endpoints, that we will make available to all portals, wallets, etc. This will be optional, being that IPFS is decentralized but they will provide a fast and cost-free solution for any interested party. These IPFS and CDN endpoints have global presence utilizing a global-accelerator technology to deliver sub-10ms latency (on average), leveraging on multiple edge data centers, spread across all continents. 

As data is associated with Handles, portals such as https://pool.pm and https://cexplorer.io will have the option to detect, index and elect to use some or all datasets, in whichever manner that suits them best. Gaming platforms could, for example, pick up the chosen Profile Picture and display that as feedback to the Handle owner but also display the same Profile Picture to all other players within the platform, improving rapport and engagement. We believe that this feature will allow players to quickly identify and connect with other players. Additionally, as the same Profile Pictures are displayed across multiple gaming apps, players won't need to apply the same setting on every platform that they interact with. However, should they want to have a different Profile Picture for different platforms, they will have options to do so. Either by choosing a different Handle to interact with different games or by adding multiple profile pictures to their personalization Smart Contract, assigning one to gaming apps and another to gambling portals, for example. In other words, the personalization feature is being developed to be flexible and future-proof, allowing us to upgrade the Standard as needed.

Furthermore, certain portals such as Cardano Cube (https://www.cardanocube.io/) could allow organizations to authenticate ownership of a Handle and from that point onwards ingest datasets that they deem important, such as website URLs, email addresses, social-media accounts, project descriptions and summaries. All of this information will be collected directly from the Handle Personalization Standard. We believe that this solution will give project administrators a flexible cross-platform mechanism that will enable them to, from a single reference point, edit their business contents across the entire ecosystem. These datasets could, subsequently, also be used by Cardano-based search engines to index blockchain data.

Wallets will also benefit from this new Personalization Standard as they will have the option to, for example, display recipients' profile pictures as feedback to wallet users who are submitting funds, delivering to senders a higher degree of assurance that they are submitting funds to the correct parties.

As the Personalization Standard evolves, we also plan on allowing customers to store confidential information in an encrypted format. This will allow Handle owners to share the keys to these encrypted datasets with selected platforms. These platforms could then, for example, use this data to produce tax reports for transactions done over a specific timeframe, and outputting a ready-to-file PDF report that would include Social Security Numbers. All of this done without Personally Identifiable Information (PII) ever being stored on-chain.

As part the Personalization Standard, we will enable Handle owners to customize an actual Handle image with their profile pictures, background image, color scheme and contact information. Although this alternative image will not replace the main Handle image (for branding and security reasons), projects can optionally display them instead of the main Handle image. These are a couple of layout examples but the sky will be the limit for what users will be able to craft from this new Standard:

Last but not least, this same personalization technology will enable Handle owners to include payment addresses for Cardano sidechains, such as Mamba and Milkomeda, allowing wallets and other platforms to utilize the information for cross-chain bridge payments utilizing the community-trusted Handle Standard.

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

We believe that the greater risk will be with the adoption curve for the Personalization Standard. Handle owners will need to have enough incentive to use the standard, to add profile pictures, social-media accounts, background images, color schemes, etc. so that platforms also have enough incentive to parse, display and index the information. We believe that if there is adoption for the Standard, then all the other risks listed below are secondary and more easily mitigated.

Another risk that we have assessed is the possibility that users will exploit the Personalization Standard by adding profile pictures that could cause conflict within the community, such as profane or obscene images. For example, if a game player were to join a gaming platform with a profile picture that others consider morally repulsive, there could be community backlash against the Personalization Standard.

A potential solution for this risk will be to only allow profile pictures from (s)elected Policy IDs, from partner NFT collections, and only if the NFT itself were present within the wallet of the Handle owner requesting the personalization. This would limit the attack surface and would prevent profane or obscene images from being used, while also building engagement within the NFT community.

Furthermore, when transferring funds, if profile pictures are being used as feedback on wallets, then these profile pictures could be used on look-alike phishing attacks. For example, someone could purchase the $acme_ Handle, add to it the same profile picture that $acme had assigned, and use this for potential phishing attacks. There will also be solutions for this. For brands and users that elect to go through a verification process with ADA Handle, we will include a "Verified" status on the Personalization Standard, allowing wallets to detect and deliver this "Verified" status feedback to its users.

Finally, this Handle Personalization Standard will also create a directory structure for organizations building on Cardano, on sidechains and on forks, as platforms will be able to, for example, create a Rolodex-like solution, displaying corporate information as business cards to its visitors.

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

Phase 1: Private TestNet

During the first phase, all development will be conducted within a private TestNet in order to allow us to freely create the solution without exposing them on Cardano's public TestNet. This private TestNet will share resources with our other Fund9 proposal: subHandles (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/416678).

• Upgrade infrastructure.
• Deploy cluster and private TestNet.
• Set up wallets and PolicyID.
• Integrate existing ADA Handle minting engine.
• Integrate with wallets via the CIP-30 bridge.
• Authenticate Handle ownership.
• Integrate new IPFS CDN.
• Smart Contract development.
• Personalization data-parsing logic.
• Checkout cart with multiple subHandles.
• Disaster Recovery Plan updates.
• Minting portal UI and UX upgrades.
• Internal security audit.

Phase 2: Public TestNet & Continuous Improvement

The second phase will be dedicated to porting the code, created during phase 1 within the private TestNet, onto the public TestNet in order to grant the Cardano community and developers access to the new personalization standard. During this phase we will ingest all feedback provided by partners, by the community and developers, to improve the solution. We will implement the Continuous Improvement model throughout this entire phase, in order to implement as many of feedback and suggestions as possible. This phase will also provide us with our first security assessment, done with an external security-audit firm.

• Code porting to public TestNet.
• Integration with partner DApps and portals.
• Data-parsing testing with wallets.
• Community access.
• Feedback & continuous improvement.
• Mamba and Milkomeda integration.
• TestNet blockchain load and queue testing.
• External security audit.

Phase 3: Marketing Campaign

During phase 3 our main priority will be to demonstrate to platforms, DApps, wallets and to the community the Personalization Standard, the options available, how to utilize datasets, how to create cross-platform settings, how to set up and use cross-chain payments, how data can be included, edited and removed from Handles. We will focus our undivided attention on providing as much information as possible to the community and developers. We will host Twitter Spaces and YouTube AMAs to gain traction for the new Standard. We will also write the new API documentation with examples on data parsing. We will record integration and use-case videos. All intelligence that we acquire during this marketing phase will also be used to improve the Personalization product prior to MainNet launch.

• API documentation.
• Integration & use-case videos.
• Community engagement
• Adoption efforts.
• Social-media outreach.
• Ask Me Anything Twitter Spaces & YouTube talks.
• Developer and partner support.
• Engagement efforts platforms and portals.
• Dedicated sessions with gaming platforms.
• 1:1 session with wallet developers.
• Roadmap updates.
• Feedback and improvement.

Phase 4: MainNet Launch.

The goal of the 4th and last phase is to get the MainNet infrastructure ready for launch. To achieve this we will stress test the blockchain and our servers. We will also test the queueing mechanism to attest that in the event of demand surges, we can control the number of concurrent personalizations, in order to prevent MainNet congestion. We will use the opportunity to execute an additional pre-launch security audit. This will give us an additional opportunity to implement updates and final changes to the code prior to MainNet launch. We will then provide a launch date to all stakeholders.

• MainNet infrastructure upgrade.
• MainNet blockchain load and queue testing.
• Infrastructure stress testing.
• Maintenance and launch scheduling.
• Final security audit.
• Launch.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

• Infrastructure upgrade: U$8,500 (Split costs with subHandles)
• Development: U$85,200 (710 hours @ U$120)
• Security Audit: U$12,500 (Split costs with subHandles)
• Website UI and UX upgrade: U$28,800 (288 hours @ U$100)
• Marketing & Graphic Design: U$8,000 (80 hours @ U$100)
• Project management: U$12,600 (180 hours @ U$70)

Total (4-5 months): U$155,600

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

PapaGoose – Master Platform Engineer (25+ years experience)

With a wide-ranging career that includes a decade of fintech experience, PapaGoose has become a specialist in enabling developers to self-serve over the entire application lifecycle. Providing workflows, standards, and automations, from concept origin, through application and security design, to infrastructure management, including production deployment and maintenance cycles.

Recently exited TradFi, in favor of blockchain and now guides projects in the Cardano community. Currently holding an executive position at Kora Labs - with the intent to build out a standard for NFT-based digital identity.

Conrad Cordeiro – InfoSec and Infrastructure Engineer (15+ years experience)

Information Security and Infrastructure management are Conrad's expertise. For over 15 years he's been supporting companies from the financial sector and for the last 10 years running his own business in New York. Hedge funds and private-equity firms were his main focus before transitioning to Cardano.

Conrad operates BLADE, a top 10 Cardano stake pool, on MainNet and TestNet, with over 60M ADA staked. Conrad was elected as a SundaeSwap Scooper and selected as a Milkomeda C1 validator. Conrad is a Co-Founder at ADA Handle and works full-time in implementing The Handle Standard.

Goose – Co-Founder @ ADA Handle / CEO @ Kora Labs

With a near decade-long stint in commercial lending in Silicon Valley Goose has sourced, structured, and executed a number of high profile loans to some of the largest tech companies in the world. Managing relationships with financial institutions, credit agencies, and competing financiers in order to provide the most cost-efficient, desirable and prompt loan lifecycles for clients has primed Goose for the fast-paced, community-focused, and technologically cutting-edge product management lifecycle that Web 3 has to offer. 

BigIrishLion – Master Platform Engineer (15+ years experience)

BigIrishLion has over 12 years of experience with web and software development with projects ranging from video game sites to archery training mobile applications.

He is a server-less evangelist and is proficient with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.

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

We do not expect to require additional funding from future Catalyst Funds. ADA Handle's public sale started in March 2022 and although we have been successful in selling over 120k Handles, our entire financial planning was done with $ADA priced at U$1.00. Since then, price of $ADA was cut by half and so was our budget. This is the main reason for us to apply to Project Catalyst on Fund9, in order to allow us to continue to build The Handle Standard. Therefore, although we do not expect to need further funding, should the price of ADA continue to depreciate we might need to. Our team is composed of 4 USA-based full-time engineers, who have migrated to work full-time on Cardano.

[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?

• Our team has over 50 years in combined project-management experience.
• Internal ERPNext Project Management tool.
• Workflow project-management strategy to breakdown the proposal into phases.
• Daily standup meetings to connect with the team, determine what was created and if anyone needs help.
• Weekly project reports showing how each task is progressing.
• Monthly status reports showing phase and proposal progress.
• External audit on all software development.

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

• Gaining community support from day 1 would confirm demand for this new feature.
• Attaining support from the Cardano developer community would also attest the need for the personalization feature.
• Delivering a successful cross-chain integration of The Handle Personalization Standard onto Mamba and Milkomeda.
• Ongoing feedback and feature requests from the community thereby demonstrating interest in the Personalization Standard.
• Community utilization of the cross-chain solution when sending payments and Native Assets.
• Obtaining a pass and high-assurance score on the external security audit.
• Delivering an uneventful launch on MainNet allowing for smooth utilization of the Personalization portal.
• And, the ultimate goal of setting the Personalization Standard on the Cardano blockchain.

[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 not a continuation and was not previously funded by Catalyst. It is an entirely new proposal.