Metera: Impactful Token Portfolios

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

With innovative oracles and smart contracts, Metera allows communities to collectively create impactful portfolios, bringing mindful investing into the crypto space and onto Cardano.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Sustainability-focused and professional entrepreneurs partnered with MLabs, an industry-leading Haskell/Plutus and blockchain consultancy.

[GENERAL] Requested funds in USD.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Our Solution

We are excited to introduce Metera, a protocol that enables users to track and create portfolios of cryptocurrency-only impact-focused assets. Our protocol supports rebalancing, built-in sustainability parameters, and decentralized governance.

Market

Investor activists seeking easy exposure to high-quality initiatives in their crypto portfolio, promising eco-friendly crypto-based projects, and the world writ large.

Problem Space

Increasingly, investors are putting their money to work in environmentally-friendly ways. Their reasons are not difficult to understand:

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regularly reports a ‘code red’ assessment of the human-driven rise of the global temperature [https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/08/1097362]
• Irreversible negative effects from climate change are already apparent in the Maldives and other susceptible regions
• Moral implications as the most vulnerable populations remain the most exposed
• An increasing number of attractive products are available for making an environmental impact

What’s more, governments are adding their voice to the growing chorus calling for mindful, yet impactful, change. European regulations have codified sustainable practices into investment risk assessments [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2019/2088/oj] while the UN has long since prioritized sustainable goals.

Indeed, the trend among policymakers and firms is strong. Socially responsible asset management platforms like OpenInvest have received brand-name investment backings as other similar high-flying startups garnish headline attention. Financial market data provider Refinitiv also warns against ignoring the sector after seeing sustained investment growth throughout several regions.

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

Integrating Sustainability into Cardano

Despite the strong interest, however, impact initiatives in the crypto space remain limited. On the contrary, unfortunately, proof-of-work blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum have spurred backlash from sustainability interests for their outsized footprint. 

Cardano, on the other hand, relies on an environmentally-friendly proof-of-stake consensus mechanism with a markedly reduced consumption of electricity. This contrast positions Cardano to become a leader amongst blockchains with respect to sustainability, a designation that will carry dividends into the future.

Unsurprisingly, some early-mover projects in the space are taking advantage of the situation. Veritree recently partnered with Samsung to leverage on-the-ground data capture [https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-veritree-plant-millions-trees-fight-climate-change/], and RealFi project Empowa enables affordable and greener housing in Africa.

These visible impact-focused projects are, by and large, familiar to ecosystem participants. Yet, the Cardano ecosystem is young. Other equally-reliable innovators have yet to garnish the same level of attention or be fully vetted by the community.

Our Proposal

The Metera project is committed to addressing this shortcoming. Our platform consists of portfolios focused on vetted, high-quality, sustainability projects building on Cardano. Exposure to these portfolios is represented via ETk, impact index tokens. Participating users receive ETk in a pro-rata manner relative to their purchase size, and ETks can be freely redeemed at any time.

More importantly, Metera leverages a robust oracle system to properly vet and rate eco-friendly tokens. This process reduces the burden on individuals. Moreover, it helps users sidestep “greenwashing” wherein firms feign sustainable goals with the hidden interest of promoting their brand. 

Metera relies on a robust and modular architecture:

• Multi-asset Vaults
• Multiple sources for pricing and impact metrics
• Smart contract-mediated rebalancing
• Integrated portfolio management processes
• Sound governance structure

This architecture is covered in detail in our documents included alongside this proposal. A demo video details the current functionality of the project.

Demo video link:

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

Currently, Metera is in an early v0.1 state with development ongoing. This proposal is intended to fund further development and testing as we move briskly towards a mainnet release over the coming months. 

As such, risks preventing delivery are decidedly low. The main development challenge covered in this proposal involves off-chain infrastructure and timely deployment. Potential complications have already been planned for and are accounted for in our funding budget. Our development team can rely on the larger MLabs team—over 100 developers—if unexpected difficulties arise, although this appears highly unlikely.

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

1 Month: Vault Fee Management System developed and integrated, Testing Suite, frontend design, and v0.2 spec underway.

4 Months: Testing, frontend design mostly complete, and deployment underway. Off-chain work started.

8 Months: Full testnet deployment underway with some final improvements and optimizations still ongoing.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Funding:

Engineering hours: 1030

Total Cost $92,700

Breakdown:

Feature                          Total Time

Vault Fee Management System 80

Testing Suite 120

Research and Spec Design v0.2 120

Frontend Design 60

Frontend Deployment 120

Off-chain Infrastructure & tooling 250

Off-chain and Testnet Deployment 150

Ergonomic Improvements and Optimizations 50

Subtotal 950

Change Budget 80

Total Time  1030 hours

Total Cost $92,700

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

Metera

Metera is a protocol for creating sustainable portfolios on DeFi. Built on Cardano, we are crafting the tools to make, measure, and monetize real impact. We are community-focused and actively building an ecosystem of engaged users to govern our protocol as a DAO. Visit our website to join our movement and learn more about our vision.

https://metera.io/

Lead of METERA - Santiago Portela - Chief Impact Officer

Santiago is the Co-founder of the METERA protocol. Santiago worked in sustainable finance and impact related projects giving him the insights of both sides of the industry. From managing the coordination of financing decentralized water infrastructure in marginalized areas to making impact portfolios for high networth individuals, Santiago has gained in depth experience on how the world of sustainable impact can be applied beyond theory.

Thanks to the development of different impact rating mechanisms, the first phase of the project envisioned a simple MVP that could rate Dapps and store them on tokenized portfolios. Santiago has been leading the project with the goal of making this type of tool available to everybody. 

Santiago is in charge of delivering the first fully functional tokenized impact portfolio. He will manage impact and financial ratings as well as strategic partnerships for the development of the METERA’s ecosystem.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiago-portela-4a789099/

MLabs 

MLabs has quickly become one of the premier development firms in the Cardano Ecosystem. They are an IOG Plutus Partner and work regularly with IOG to develop the Cardano blockchain and ecosystem. They employ over 100 developers and have helped build community projects such as:

• Liqwid
• SundaeSwap
• Cardax
• Optim
• Many others

Through their work with early-stage projects, they have one of the largest groups of Haskell/Plutus developers in the community. Moreover, MLabs has the capacity to conceptualize and ship advanced financial applications in Plutus. These products provide the core building blocks of a decentralized financial system.  

Website: https://mlabs.city/

Delivery Manager - George Flerovsky

George Flerovsky:

George manages a portfolio of projects at MLabs including decentralized exchanges, governance, auctions, yield optimization, and on-chain analytics. He completed his Master of Arts degree in Economics in 2017, and has five years of professional experience in data science and engineering. Prior to joining MLabs, George was involved with designing the streaming merge algorithm for concurrency in the Cardax decentralized exchange.

George has developed in and loved Haskell since 2015, and has been involved with Cardano since 2018. He has carefully studied the Cardano research papers and specifications, developing a deep knowledge of the Cardano consensus protocol, smart contract framework, and network stack. He participated in the first cohort of the Plutus Pioneers Program in summer 2021, and actively contributed to the Alonzo Blue, White, and Purple testnets.

GitHub: https://github.com/GeorgeFlerovsky

Project Manager - Vlad Posmangiu

Vlad is a software engineer with expertise in Haskell. At Mlabs, Vlad is working on designing and delivering a diverse range of dApps including DEXes, Oracles, and NFT Marketplaces. In his spare time, he takes a keen interest in researching type and programming language theory. Vlad has been involved in the design of the Metera protocol from its early days, and has bee leading and coordinating the team's the effort ever since.

GitHub: https://github.com/cstml

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

Yes, we believe Project Catalyst will allow us to get in touch with the community and build the tools for them.

[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 have an internal spec and development plan used to guide our goals and timeline. We will measure the number of goals achieved (outlined in the budget) as well as the progress of our deployment to the testnet. We will also measure the number of issues, if any, discovered and resolved throughout these stages.

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

The successful testing of our v0.1 product with the effective integration of our fee management system. A smooth testnet deployment with the necessary infrastructure established and discovered issues, if any, fully resolved.

[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.