NFT Powered Pay-Wall System

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Paywalls are the most popular form of monetizing content on the Internet. Artists, content creators, athletes.etc. have one of the most engaging communities of their loyal fans but there are very few ways to monetize their work/content. A report from a business insider shows that creators earn merely $3-5k per million views on various different platforms. On the other hand, NFT space has a lot of growth potential. NFT industry is expected to touch $85 B mark by 2025. (Source: Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, Make Use Of)

The problem is lying in plain sight. Rarety is aiming to bridge the gap between the creator economy and the NFT ecosystem through a customizable NFT paywall along with a dashboard with NFT-based login for projects/creators enabling them uploading/creating according to their requirements with a single click. 

At rarety.io, we have built a platform that enables multi-signature minting process for NFT projects to launch their collections on our platform easily with a smooth, hassle free minting experience for buyers and sellers both. We are leveraging this same technology to build a paywall system.

The NFT-paywall works like this:

Buyers :-

1. Users can go to the buy page of a particular project on Rarety.io and buy the NFT with their connected wallet.

2. After a successful transaction, users can click on "access here" and the system will authenticate if they hold the NFT. (The system will authenticate by scanning for the policyId of the NFT in the user's connected wallet and authenticate it through JWT tokens.)

Any form of digital content that is associated with that project will be called and rendered in the user's browser upon a successful authentication.

Sellers:-

1. Subscription based model to use the paywall and setup your own project. The subscription model will be based on the size and type of the content with extra features:

(Subscriptions will be monthly/yearly, the system will check the expiry date in the metadata of the NFT)

• Custom paywall (landing page) generator
• Card payments for the paywall
• Support for physical events (Scanning)
• API support

....many more

2. Sellers will be able to login to their personalized dashboard with the "Access Pass" NFT they bought and start using the services. (The dashboard will be deployed on pro.rarety.io)

3. They will have access to wide range services like creating their own project, uploading content behind paywall, interactive statistics, landing page generator, API support, and many more.

Use Cases :

Student filmmakers/artists/musicians learn to monetize their work using NFTs on Rarety (thus on Cardano) – facilitated through our university partnerships. This becomes part of their curriculum – gaining experience with NFTs is a vital tool for any student creator to learn.

Professional creators have a new way to sell premium content (films, music videos, artwork, photography, etc.) behind a trade-able NFT paywall – powered by Rarety. 

College athletic departments sell NFTs to access video archives (e.g. the 1975 Final Four gametape, otherwise shelved away from the public) – which can also be used for tickets to in-person events as well. 

The ideas list goes on and on and on.. And with our direct access to powerful actors in the professional and collegiate sports industries, as well as entertainers & entertainment venues across the United States, our opportunities are endless with this product.

These unique features, along with the ability of the Rarety team to do business with big names throughout the sports, entertainment, and education industries – across the US, and beyond – create a powerful combination of technology and real-world use-cases.

Early Partnerships:

• Rick Carter: (https://twitter.com/rickcarter23)

Partner / Advisor. NCAA Division 1 Basketball coach for 15 years. Founder and CEO of SpotterEDU (a classroom attendance software used at 60+ American universities). Business advisor to NBA player Tyler Herro. Head Coach for Zip ‘Em Up in “The Basketball Tournament” (broadcasted on ESPN) – with whom Rarety is already working on a proof of concept to display potential use-cases of NFTs for sports teams, leagues, and university athletic departments.. 

Rick will help to close deals with sports leagues (TBT) and large universities (athletic departments, film/arts departments, etc.), making Rarety the official NFT and Premium Content distribution providers for well-funded and widely-known entities throughout American athletics and education.

• Warrobit: (https://www.instagram.com/warrobit/)

Up-and-coming Argentine musician committed to distributing his newest, unreleased music videos directly to his fan base, using Rarety.

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

In developing this platform on the Cardano Blockchain, we are able to address the following challenges:-

1. ow can we bring real world NFT use cases into the Cardano ecosyste

2.How can we provide a monetizing platform to the artists, content creators, athletes, etc.

3. How can we make the onboarding, launching, and managing these real world projects seamless powered by cardano NFTs?

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

There is no risk as such which can prevent us from delivering the project but during onboarding the non crypto crowd into Cardano might be tough because they lack the basic knowledge of how wallets, NFTs, blockchain work. We will be tackling this issue by integrating web 2.0 payment methods into the process usinf on and off ramp crypto payment providers and also by conducring workshops, making easy to understand tutorials about basic blockchain concepts.

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

Until Now (Launchpad and Planning):

• Rarety.io (Multi-sig-based NFT launchpad) updated release and onboarded the first major project (Digital Low Lifes).
• Paywall Research and prototyping

August (Building):

• Building Paywall (NFT verification)
• UI development and UX Research
• Support for long-form content (video and audio)
• Support for other popular forms of media (live streaming, image galleries, etc.)

September (Launch and more features): 

• Beta Launch
• Early partnerships with artists, universities, athletes, etc.
• Custom paywall (landing page) generator
• Dashboard development (Paywall Specific)
• Card payments for the paywall

October (Scaling):

• Rarety scanner application (Physical Events)
• API development
• Exploring Djed integration
• E-commerce partnerships (Physical goods, Gift Cards)
• Marketing the platform for adoption.
• Subscription-based white label solution

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Human resources: 3x full-time developers ($15000) 

Server, Software, and Hardware Acquisition costs- ($8000) Community outreach and technical support: ($2000)

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

Advait Joglekar and Adnan Khan - Three time Catalyst winners and developers of Deqree (https://youtu.be/GazDTaRKpjQ), Rarety.io and Cardsec (https://github.com/SkryptLabs/Cardsec) on Cardano.

Sam Jeffery - Plutus Developer at Gimbalabs (Lead SC developer for unsigs marketplace)

Jason Beerman and David Sachs - Head of PR and Marketing

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

Yes if we get funded, we will surely return to catalyst during our scaling phase as we plan to introduce more and more features.

[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?

Completion of development milestones 

Number of projects on boarded 

Number of transactions facilitated 

Number of buyer wallets attached 

Total volume of ADA processed 

Number of visitors and members on discord (https://discord.gg/fqAmCVF29J) 

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

Success for our project would be driving wide spread adoption of our platform which eases the whole process of for people from different industries in web 2.0 to launch on Cardano without any hassle and shift their businesses on Cardano with the help of NFTs.

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

Yes we were funded in fund 7 under Mini/Low-Budget Dapps & Integrations (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384881). The fund was for developing an efficient minting mechanism through smart contracts but our research showed that multi-sig is a far better option to implement so we switched to that as you can see in our development timeline of January and February. This proposal is a continuation of the same project in order to develop more features.

We have successfully completed the project and reported it to Catalyst :)