NFT Swap Infrastructure Templates 2

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

This proposal is for funding the second phase of the project and its delivery. Phase 1 was funded in Fund 8 with the proposal https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397532 

The goal of the project is to create two NFT swapping smart contract based showcase dapps.

These will exemplify what can be created with the open-source swapping smart contract templates and the accompanying matching off-chain code and front-end templates.

One for swapping of specific tokens that can be individually listed, with the option to accept or reject swap offers.

One for random swapping from a community pool.

Brief Description of Swapping Mechanics:

When a swap will be initiated by a user sending a transaction with an NFT to the smart contract address, the contract will randomly return a different NFT from those available in the pool to the sender.

Depending on the needs and make-up of the project, multiple SC and associated pools could be deployed, for instance, each one corresponding to a specific rarity level.

The contents of the community random swapping pool could either be visible to the users or not, depending on the preference and the needs of each project.

The smart contracts will also allow the creators of the project to charge a small fee on each swap, to ensure the sustainability of their swapping service (development, hosting, etc.).

To achieve our goals of creating easy-to-implement open source templates, in addition to the development of the code and the UI templates, we also plan on writing clear and extensive documentation for everything we release.

We also plan to build and deploy the first implementation of the templates into a working NFT swapping dapp.

Besides the immediately visible benefits in providing the Cardano NFT creators community with templates that are easily adaptable to their own projects, the main motivator for us, and what got us working on the swap pools idea in the first place, are the benefits that the NFT space as a whole would get from the encouragement of the idea of swapping.

These include: 

• The fun resulting from engaging with the swap pools (particularly the random one)
• Discovering or rediscovering the joy of collecting
• An easier way to complete collections
• A better appreciation of collections by getting to spend more time with them when looking for NFTs to swap
• Social interactions that can occur between collectors while looking for NFTs to swap
• Offering long term value to collections, beyond the initial hype
• And many more

All of these are meant to grow the collectibles NFT ecosystem beyond its main current drivers: profits and social status.

Most importantly, however, we hope that our efforts will bring about a new way of looking at collectible NFTs. One that will combine all the new value propositions that NFTs and the technology behind them offer, with the value layer that traditional collectibles such as Pokemon cards, basketball cards, stamps, coins etc. bring. All of these rely heavily on the experience of swapping between members of their respective communities, either as a means of completing collections or simply for the joy of collecting.

We see Cardano as a natural fit for this type of experience, as this can only happen on a blockchain with small fees and fast transactions. On top of that, through the power of eUTxO, swaps can be done in a single transaction.

We hope that from everything we have described above you will see the value that our project can bring, and the impact it would have on the Cardano NFT space and the Cardano environment as a whole. After all, the Cardano community prides itself in being motivated by factors other than quick profits and short-term hype.

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

Besides the factors mentioned in the first part of our proposal, our project addresses multiple key points posed by the challenge:

What dapps, products and integrations can be implemented to bring impactful use cases to Cardano ecosystem that help drive more adoption?

We see our project as potentially being a strong driver for adoption of Cardano collectible NFTs, which is by far the largest segment of NFTs overall.

The reasons for this are many, but we are focused primarily on discovering or rediscovering the joy of collecting, a more engaging and efficient way of completing collections, the fun that can result from this, offering long term value to collections, and generally creating a better appreciation of collections.

These will make our project unique in the overall NFT landscape, not just on Cardano, and thus will make the Cardano NFT ecosystem stand out.

This is especially important since NFTs overall represent the largest use-case segment on Cardano, as revealed by IOHK data. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1521076652578639872 

A focus on NFTs as a tool for adoption is especially relevant, not just for Cardano, but for blockchain in general, as they are much more relatable for the general public and offer a valuable path to interacting with and understanding the concept of digital ownership.

Why is this product or integration suitable for execution right now? Are there enough pieces of infrastructure, applications or other integrations available that would be needed for this suggested proposal to have a strong chance of gaining adoption?

By creating and making the smart contract, backend, and frontend templates available to the Cardano NFT creators community as an infrastructure development, any project that wishes to implement the swapping service in the future for their specific communities will be able to do so much more easily, significantly faster, and at a much lower cost compared to having to develop their own solutions from scratch.

We will be looking to collaborate with established developers in the Cardano community. By getting them to work on this open-sourced project, we will ensure that the knowledge they have accumulated is recorded and made freely available for all to draw upon and potentially improve.

In time, as projects start to implement the swap pools feature, we foresee the codebase growing with more and more developers contributing, motivated by wanting to adapt it to their own specific needs.

By creating the swap pool templates, projects that wish to implement the feature would have much smaller up-front development costs.

Funding the project would contribute to getting developers to work on open-source Cardano-specific code, while being compensated fairly to do so.

Projects implementing one or more swap pools could greatly increase their longevity by keeping the community engaged and motivated to collect, thus increasing their long-term sustainability.

Projects could implement a small royalty on swaps (possibly smaller than the one on marketplaces, or a fixed fee) that would further contribute to their sustainability.

[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 that we foresee is the project potentially not having a wide enough adoption.

We plan to address this risk in two ways:

By launching a public facing dapp, as a first implementation of the swapping templates, which will attract end-users and create demand for the service overall.

By engaging the Cardano developer community to interact with the open-source codebase of the templates, leading other creators, collections and possibly collectors to implement their own versions, thus generating organic marketing.

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

We plan to structure the development of the project into two stages, each taking approximately 3 months to complete. As such we have taken the decision of also breaking up the scope of the project into two separate proposals. 

The first phase of the project has been successfully funded in F8 as NFT Swap Infrastructure Templates 1 (link: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397532 ).

We have already started the work of implementing the project and are making good progress towards its implementation, as demonstrated by the links included in the auditability section and the attachments.

This proposal is for funding Phase 2.

In the following sections, we will describe the scope of the entire project and end with a clear description of what will be included in each phase. For simplicity we will be dividing the budget into 2 equal parts.

Implementation plan:

1. Assemble a team of developers (smart-contract, backend, frontend); designers (UX & UI); market research and project management. (Done)
2. Perform detailed market research to better understand the needs of projects. (In Progress)
3. Together with the development team design the swapping Smart Contract blueprint, diagrams, and preliminary UX. (In Progress)
4. Write a first version of the specific token swapping contract.
5. Implement a randomiser engine in the smart contract code using outside data
6. Write a first version of the random swap contract
7. Design the detailed version of the swapping UX
8. Design at least two versions of UI templates
9. Write the off-chain code needed for the backend
10. Build the frontend component of the service
11. Write extensive documentation for each component of the service
12. Create marketing materials
13. Promote the swap pools as open-source resources and get the Cardano NFT community interested in the idea
14. Launch the first version (MVP) of the swap pools dapp

Estimated Launch Date

We expect we would need 5-6 months of development time from the start of the project, so we expect a Q4 2022/ Q1 2023 launch date.

We are the creators of the Trybbles collectible NFT project on Cardano (https://www.trybbles.com) and we plan to use this to our advantage in the development of the swap pools initiative.

We have recently launched a manual version of the Swap Pool for the Trybbles community. The 0.5 version of the Swap Pool is a manual service, meant to set the stage for a potential automated smart contract based solution in the future. We started off by using https://atomic-swap.io for the service.

More details about the initiative can be found in the announcement post ( https://twitter.com/trybbles/status/1495117792651390976 ) or by joining the project’s Discord server ( https://discord.gg/AwEnRpRdcV ).

But we want to take things much further, and rather than creating a proprietary solution we aim to create a suite of open source tools and templates implementable with ease by any Cardano NFT project that wishes to do so.

Deliverables for other Fund 9 and previous funds proposals.

Fund 9:

CENT, the main developer on the project will not be submitting or participating in the development of any proposals in Fund 9.

New Mindflow has submitted the following proposal in Fund 9

Attract ETH NFT Projects & Talent

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/418068

Given the timeframe and the volume of work predicted for the proposal we estimate that an average of 13hrs/week will be required per person to successfully complete the project deliverables if that proposal is funded (420hrs/2 persons/ 16 weeks).

NFT Film Distribution Dapp & Showcase

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/421355

If funded we will take on a project management and oversight role in the initiative and conduct the hiring process.

We estimate a required commitment of 5-7hrs/week/person.

If all the projects that we have applied for in Fund 9 get funded, the timeframes for the other projects will only partially overlap with this project. We estimate the time commitment for the other projects for the periods of overlap to be around 20hrs/week/person, giving us ample time to execute on the deliverables of this project.

Previous Funds:

As core members of the NFT Guild we are involved in finalising the deliverables for the NFT Guild Fund 7 proposal https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/NFT-Alliance/384031-48088 . However this will have very little impact on our ability to deliver on this project, as the scope of the proposal is complete and the only deliverable left is the project close-out report. It should be noted that we have collectively decided to allocate 42.5% of the total proposal budget to the guild treasury for future NFT Guild operations.

The NFT Guild has several standards proposals funded in F8:

NFT-Guild: Standard for verification of NFTs

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398372

NFT-Guild: NFT Royalty Standards

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/400204

NFT-Guild: NFT Verification Tool

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398378

(Only part of our team will be working on this proposal, namely CENT)

Work on these proposals is evenly distributed amongst the members of the guild and the team members of this proposal have a project management/advisory role within the context of these proposals, as such, the time commitment required is of just several hours/week.

All the team members of this proposal are working on delivering the Phase 1 of this project, funded in Catalyst Fund 8 https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397532.

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We hope that the Catalyst and Cardano community sees the value in what we’re building and trying to achieve and enables us to continue and complete our vision for NFT Swap Pool Templates.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Development

1. Smart Contract for swap of specific NFTs - 150 hours
2. Smart Contract for random swap - 100 hours
3. Web front-end, display of swap pool NFT content and possibility to interact with the NFTs and place offers - 100 hours
4. Wallet integration - 50 hours
5. Documentation of contracts and instructions on how to build - 20 hours
6. Documentation of how to build, install and configure web front end - 20 hours

Hourly rate: $120

Total cost for development and documentation: 

440 hours * $120 = $52800

Project Management, Market Research, Marketing, UX, UI

1. Project Management - 8 hours/week x 24 weeks x $95/h = $18240
2. Market Research - 8 hours/week x 24 weeks x $65/h = $12480
3. Testing and code documentation verification - 25 hours x $50/h = $1250
4. UI Design - 80 hours x $75/h = $6000
5. Miscellaneous Expenses (hosting, subscriptions, etc) - $650
6. Marketing - 100 hours x $75/h = $7500

Total: $40720

Overhead 5 % - $4676

Total: $98196

Total per Phase: $98196/2 = $49098

Phase 1: 

Smart contract for random swap

Wallet integration

Documentation ( for random swap contract)

1. Testing and code documentation verification
2. Market Research
3. Marketing

(Funded in F8: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397532)

Phase 2:

Smart contract for specific swap

Web front end

Documentation (Specific swap & web front)

1. Testing and code documentation verification

UI Design

Marketing

Product Launch

(This proposal)

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

Development: CENT

CENT will be responsible for writing the code for smart contract templates, the backend off-chain component, and the front-end templates. In addition, he will make sure the documentation for all components is thorough and easy to follow. 

https://bi.stakepoolcentral.com/ 

CENT ( @cent ) - Graduate of the Plutus Pioneers Program cohort 1, 2021. Stake Pool operator of the pool CENT since December 2019. 20 years of experience in software development. Creator of the community tool Cardano Blockchain Intelligence. Funded Project Catalyst proposer since F6. Core member of the NFT Guild.

Project Management, Market Research, Marketing, UX, UI: New Mindflow

Artists and entrepreneurs, in the CNFT space since day 1, creator of the Trybbles & Icons Cardano NFT projects. Project Catalyst participants since F3; proposers in F4, F5 & F7; CAs in F5, F7 & F8; VCAs in F7. Members in various Catalyst projects, initiatives & communities over more than a year. 

Core members of the NFT Guild.

Anamaria Kövesdi

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anamaria-k%C3%B6vesdi-354649106/ 

Rares Kövesdi

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rares-k%C3%B6vesdi-551260106/ 

Authors of the first NFT to launch on Cardano with a functional, compilable, smart contract in the metadata of the token, completely on-chain, in collaboration with @AncientKraken.

An NFT from the collection was the first one to be sold through a smart contract, minutes after the Alonzo HFC. It also was the first sale through a smart contract on Cardano to pay residuals (i.e. royalties) to artists on resales of their works.

Award-winning filmmakers, film and animation directors, app and game developers.

In January 2021 they moved into the web3 economy granting new life to one of their projects in the form of an NFT collection on Cardano.

This project proposal is submitted under the umbrella of the NFT Guild.

Besides the direct contributors to this project, the rest of the core NFT Guild team are:

Felix Weber ( @felixweber ) - Bridge Builder & Networker, Funded Proposer, CA & Catalyst Circle v1 & v3.2

Peter Wolcott ( @sirwolcott ) - Driving Catalyst, HeartBeat.Team, SWARM Veteran & CC Admin Secretary

Stephen Whitenstall 

( @swhitenstall ) has 30 years' experience in organising academic, community and business projects. He develops, maintains documentation and provides technical project management support for Catalyst Swarm.

In Fund 6 of Project Catalyst, Stephen's organisation QA-DAO https://quality-assurance-dao.github.io was funded on several significant projects, including Distributed Auditability https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Distributed-Auditability/366707-48088 and Oversight of Catalyst Circle https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Oversight-of-Catalyst-Circle/370088-48088, and Stephen was co-proposer on a number of other successful proposals around community engagement, auditability and transparency.

In Catalyst Circle v2, Stephen was the representative for Catalyst Coordinator (Funded Proposers) .

Other NFT Guild Proposals

NFT Community & Ecosystem (Fund10 Challenge Setting)

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/417910

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

This proposal is for the second and final phase of what is currently in the scope of the project. If successfully funded, the budget requested will be enough to develop and deliver the features described, and we will not be asking for any additional funds to complete them.

Our hope is that the Cardano open-source developer community will maintain and update the open-source codebase to be compatible with future changes in the Cardano network stack.

Given the fact that open-source code is not easy to finance we may request additional funding in future Catalyst rounds to maintain the codebase, especially if the project proves to be popular and is in use. But, as stated above our hope is that the community will be invested in the project enough and this won’t be necessary. We foresee this as being a possibility, especially if the project proves to be popular amongst collectors and less technical project creators.

If the community identifies and requests additional major features not currently in the scope of the project, subsequent funding may also be requested for this, however this is highly dependant of the evolution of the project.

[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?

Each deliverable, as detailed above in the implementation plan, will be recorded and submitted via the Catalyst Monthly Reporting form, the first of which we have already submitted for Phase 1 of the project.

Monitoring development of the project deliverables will also be possible on the project’s GitHub.

https://github.com/NFT-Guild/NFT-Swap-Infrastructure-Templates 

Our user stories are available here:

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOvXGmd0=/?share_link_id=16020941631

In addition to recording the deliverables we will measure the success of the project by monitoring and reporting on the following KPIs:

• Number of open source GitHub commits.
• Number of bugs identified in the testing phase.
• Achieve a high level of understandability in the code documentation.
• Number of interactions with the project’s repositories by outside developers.
• Numbers of projects that implement the project in the first month after launch

As this is an NFT Guild development project, all budget transaction are publicly recorded in the NFT Guild discord server for maximum transparency. https://discord.gg/7HCxDryPHk 

We will be assisting the Catalyst community to audit our proposal by providing an easy to read timeline of our progress on the project and its deliverables.

The timeline is available here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vPJJvi-F61nRmD4f370uCgAhxtiTkz-LJyLTcV8H5Fw/edit?usp=sharing 

Major milestones of the projects development will also be reported and made public on the NFT Guild website: https://www.nft-guild.io and on the NFT Guild Gitbook https://nft-guild.gitbook.io/nft-guild/

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

Success after 3 months (underway at the time of submission):

The team needed to successfully complete the project is assembled and work is underway.

Phase 1 of the project is in development and progress will be reported on schedule through our monthly reporting form.

Success after 6 months:

The project’s deliverables, as described above, are executed according to the timeline, without a deviation of more than 20%.

Phase 2 is completed.

The showcase dapp for the project is successfully launched.

Success after 12 months:

Between 3-6 different Cardano NFT projects have implemented their own version of the Swap Pools successfully.

[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 a direct continuation (phase 2) of the NFT Swap Infrastructure Templates 1 proposal funded in F8.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397532

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

SDG subgoals:

8.2 Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus on high-value added and labour-intensive sectors

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

8.2.1 Annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person