OpenSource MetaMask<=>₳ Integration

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

It's time for Cardano dApps and projects to be able to tap into the 300 million crypto users worldwide with a Plug-and-Play Open-Source and a Cross-Chain payment processing that supports over 100 crypto wallets.

The crypto ecosystem is fragmented. Most dApp across chains developers had a hard time reaching mobile users. Users experienced friction every time they wanted to connect to a dApp or sign transactions using both mobile and browser wallets.

WalletConnect is a generalized protocol to facilitate a secure connection between any wallet and any dApp. Under the hood, the protocol facilitates end-to-end encrypted communication between two clients.

With their wallets, users can either scan a QR code on the browser or connect on mobile through deep-linking. WalletConnect generates a key pairing and creates a session between the wallet and the dApp.

Thanks to WalletConnect, users can interact with any dApp using their favorite wallets. Developers can focus on building the best products — whether it be dApps or wallets — without worrying about how one will communicate with the other.

WalletConnect has been and will be an increasingly crucial piece of infrastructure driving Web3 consumer adoption with over 100 wallets for more than 200 dApps today. The 5 most popular crypto wallets on Android and iOS devices alone (Trust, Metamask, Crypto.com, imToken, and bitpay) all integrate WalletConnect and cumulatively have over 55 million monthly active wallets. However, WalletConnet doesn't support or have any Cardano and ₳DA integration.

We are building the Play-and-Play Open-Source integration between MetaMask and Cardano using WalletConnect, Ethereum to Milkomedia bridge with Nomad, Charli3, and a DEX like Blueshift. This Plug-and-Play Open-Source integration will enable wallet, transaction, and payment integration for Cardano dApps from the 100+ crypto wallets especially MetaMask and its 55 million monthly active users via the WalletConnet ecosystem.

We strongly believe in Open-Source work that's been funded by the community to go back to benefit the community.

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

We are clearly addressing the challenge directly:

How can we create a positive developer experience that helps the developer focus on building successful apps? How do we attract developers from outside of our current community to participate in Catalyst? What do developers want, and how do they get it from the Cardano dev ecosystem? What do developers want, and how do they get it from the Cardano dev ecosystem? Cardano wants to attract high-caliber Developers and developers have ample resources to work on platforms that suit their interests.

This proposal directly increases the likelihood that any developer, builder, or dApp building on Cardano has a higher likelihood of success because of an immediate bigger potential user base without the need to onboard to a Cardano wallet first. Thanks to a painless Plug-and-Play integration only using a couple of lines of code in Javascript, iOS/Swift, or Android/Kotlin via WalletConnect developers in and out of Cardano are incentivized to use this tooling to access a broader user base across chains.

Developers want and need programmatic access to the adoption of their projects, dApps, and adoption comes easier when you unlock access to 100x more wallets and 15x more monthly active wallets with a couple of lines of code. This is what creating an awesome developer experience and true incentive means.

Cardano ecosystem would be able to attract a higher caliber of developers and teams by the newfound ability of projects to move to Cardano without losing many users and enjoy the benefits of lower Cardano transaction fees as compared to many EVM-based chains. Of course, when we integrate CIP30 Cardano Wallets to WalletConnect we also enable Cardano wallet holders to interact with the 200+ dApps in the WalletConnect ecosystem increasing the overall utility of Cardano wallets everywhere without much fuss.

Many projects are stuck on EVM-based blockchains like Ethereum and are looking for an escape. Cardano can be faster and cheaper to use. How might we make it easy and fast for dApps and other projects to expand or completely move from Ethereum to Cardano?

We make it easy for dApps and other projects to expand or completely move from Ethereum to Cardano by enabling them to keep 100% of their userbase. We removed this huge barrier to migrating to Cardano seamlessly even to a point that the userbase doesn't have to know anything has changed.

Projects who were either planning to or did launch on an EVM-based blockchain can now deploy in the Cardano ecosystem and can do so easily without the fear of losing interoperability with ETH-based wallets and users.

WalletConnect can be integrated with just a few lines of code. SDKs are available for Javascript, iOS/Swift, and Android/Kotlin. See documentation.

[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 main risks to successfully delivering this project and our risk mitigation strategies are clear and sufficient:

Risk:

• Unforeseen technical blockers on Charli3 Oracle side.

Solution:

• Established technical partnership with Charli3 dev and leadership team.

Risk:

• Unforeseen technical blockers on WalletConnet side.

Solution:

• Established technical partnership with WalletConnect dev team.

Risk:

• Unforeseen technical blockers on Milkomedia side.

Solution:

• Established technical partnership with dcSpark and Milkomedia dev team.

Risk:

• Unforeseen technical blockers on Plutus side.

Solution:

• Pursuing technical partnership with EMURGO, MLabs, Gimbalabs, and other Plutus dev teams.

Risk:

• Tight deadline.

Solution:

• Built-in one-month buffer to deploy the final product in January 2023.
• Hire more experienced devs via Snapbrillia dev bounties, quickly and efficiently as always.

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

Q3 2022 (Already part of our current product timeline)

• July
• Deploy Yoroi, Nami, Eternl CIP30 Cardano Wallet-Snapbrillia integration on Prod
• August
• Implement MetaMask WalletConnect-Snapbrillia integration on Dev
• Implement Charli3-Snapbrillia integration on Dev
• September
• Deploy MetaMask WalletConnect-Snapbrillia integration on Prod
• Deploy Charli3-Snapbrillia integration on Prod

Q4 2022

• October
• Implementing Plug-and-Play Open-Source MetaMask with ETH-to-₳DA integration on Dev
• Implement Milkomedia-DEX-Snapbrillia integration on Dev
• November + December
• Implement Plug-and-Play Open-Source MetaMask with ETH-to-₳DA integration on Staging and Testnet
• Deploy Milkomedia-DEX-Snapbrillia integration on Prod

Q1 2023

• January
• Deploy Plug-and-Play Open-Source MetaMask with ETH-to-₳DA integration on Prod and Mainnet

A full detailed technical plan is available upon further request.

KPIs:

• Number of dApps and Projects using this integration
• Number of wallets connected to this integration
• Number of active wallets using this integration
• Monthly transaction volume flowing through this integration
• Number of EVM-based developers actively building on top of Cardano
• Number of repos on Github using this tooling. (Month over month increase)
• A sense of community and conversations. Having people around to talk with.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Our current full-time dev team consists of:

• 5x Web3 Architects for Smart Contract, EVM-Plutus architecture
• 15x Web3 Developers for Haskell, Plutus, and Solidity development
• 9x Data Scientist and SSI/DID developers
• 27x Full-Stack Developers for front-end, back-end, APIs, and other web2 development

We also have dedicated product, design, and growth teams that manage our product, web design, marketing, and branding. We have a committed team of full-timers who work six days a week, 12 hours a day, the support of other projects that could help us in case of any unforeseen event, and partnerships such as the IOG ATALA Prism, Clear Contracts, ADAO, Mlabs, Charli3, Emurgo, RootsID, GimbaLabs, Yoma Foundation, EBU, SANADA, Phoetrek World, Konma Labz, and HireEZ.

In addition to AWS/GCP cloud hosting fees and Cardano transaction fees, we will need to hire additional senior developers in Vietnam to integrate Wallet Connect to Cardano CIP30 Wallets and Snapbrillia. We also need to hire additional professional Cardano developers to help us build the smart contract and integrate the ETH to Milkomedia bridge via Nomad and swap on a DEX from Wallet Connect ETH wallets. Salaries are market-rate.

• 6x Web2 Developers: $1,500.00/mo x4 months x6 days/week x12 hours/day = $36,000.00
• 3x Web3 Developers: $3,000.00/mo x4 months x6 days/week x12 hours/day = $24,000.00
• Cloud Hosting & ETH and Cardano Transaction Fees: $20,000.00

Total Budget: $92,000.00

With that said, money as a resource without proper execution only goes so far. We are absolutely open to collaboration with other existing projects, teams, and individuals who want to contribute to any aspect of this platform. Together, we can create and share value with everyone.

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

Frank Albanese is the Chief Scientist and Co-founder at Snapbrillia and Y Combinator alumni. He is a Solidity, Rust, and Haskell researcher, Henry Ford Health System alum, and Co-founder of the Ucratic DAO, an organization founded to accelerate the innovation of interoperable Open Metaverse tools, to allow anyone to design, mint, transport, and own virtual space and avatar across multiple Metaverse ecosystems like Cryptovoxels, The Sandbox, Dreams, and Decentraland. Ucratic DAO combined Three.js with web3.js and Hardhat to mint composable ERC-721 NFTs of 3D models in virtual spaces to Polygon and IPFS. With Ucratic, Frank also helped research ways to bring self-hosted virtual spaces to the Internet Computer and Dfinity canisters. Frank admires Gitcoin’s utility in the Web3 space and feels this architecture could thrive in Cardano’s ecosystem along with an eLearning and immutable, composable Practical Resume standard that serves as Proof of Reputation. Frank is also interested in the applicability of zero-knowledge proofs, and their potential role in Proof of Reputation and Proof of Identity solutions. Reach Frank on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-albanese-a8b17885

James Willingham is the CIO and Co-founder of Snapbrillia and TechStars alumni. James brings his vast expertise in UX/UI design and full-stack development to the team. He is a seasoned leader in the startup space working within multiple industries ranging from FinTech, where he designed and built the first true peer-to-peer lending platform on both iOS and Android in hopes to minimize the predatory pay-day loan cycle. In Healthcare, he designed and built a platform that allows doctors, patients, caregivers, and researchers to easily collaborate and work toward better health outcomes for everyone. James thrives on the mission of helping others get the help they need when they need it, life can be hard and challenging so he works to make them easier and more positive for everyone. Reach James on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-willingham-3704b824

Beatrice Thelisma is the CTO and Co-founder at Snapbrillia and TechFuturesGroup alumni. Beatrice has an amazing knack for leading engineering teams to execute web applications whether back-end, front-end, or DevOps. She has vast experience with nonprofits empowering women and children with critical survival funds and education for financial literacy. She is passionate about accelerating diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace and empowering and promoting the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, economic, or another status. Reach Beatrice on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelisma

Ninh Tran is the CEO and Co-founder of Snapbrillia and Google alumni. Ninh brings his expertise in product management, business development, and startup execution. As UC Berkeley alumni, Ninh founded Trucksome to empower emerging local food economies to thrive and create jobs for the previously incarcerated. After joining Google, Ninh co-founded an executive search firm HireTeamMate placing hundreds in a year while building HireEZ (formerly Hiretual), an AI recruiting platform used by Google, Facebook, Amazon, and thousands of others, to hire millions of people every year. Reach Ninh anywhere: https://www.linktr.ee/ninhtran

Other members of our Dev team:

• Cuong Tran - 10+ years Back-End Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trquoccuong
• Four Tran - 10+ years Full-Stack Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/four-tran-59b02310b
• Tasos Valtinos - PPP Grad, 10+ Years Full-Stack Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tasos-v-24572b112
• Curtis Myers - PPP Grad, 10+ years DevOps & IT: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtis-myers-1798239/
• Andy Sizer - 40+ years Functional Programming & DevOps: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-sizer-455467
• Kevin Onalo - 10+ years Full-Stack Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-baraza-onalo-24712018
• Thanh Hoang - 5+ years Full-Stack Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thanhth85
• 80+ more: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?keywords=snapbrillia

We are fellow humans. :) Check our team pictures: https://www.snapbrillia.com/about

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

Unlikely. This is one and done open-source project that will be made available for the whole Cardano community and other dApps and projects in and out of Cardano to be able to accept ETH and receive ₳DA for their MetaMask users using our custom WalletConnect implementation. The only case where we would require additional funding is to provide funding for extra developer maintainers or implement extra features for any future community requests.

[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?

The audibility of project development and impact is clear:

• Objective KPIs to measure its success.

• The project has been separated into stages to make it feasible.

• OpenSource MetaMask<=>₳ Integration will be open-source on Github where everyone can clearly see and measure the progress and development of the project on both WalletConnect and Snapbrillia repositories.

• We use ClickUp for project management but will migrate to Github Issues once this proposal is funded to track and measure this project's progress openly to the public.

We measure progress daily based on:

• Proposal Progress vs. Deliverable Deadline (and delay if any)
• Number of Outstanding Tasks/Story Points
• % of Completed Tasks/Story Points
• Number of Pending Pull Requests
• % of Accepted Pull Requests
• Date of Deployment to Develop (and delay if any)
• Date of Deployment to Staging/Testnet (and delay if any)
• Date of Deployment to Prod/Mainnet
• Date of Beta Release & Launch
• Date of Official Public Launch
• Number of Outstanding Bugs/Blockers

Transparency and community involvement:

• We host a Snapbrillia Demo & Progress After Town Halls at least once to twice a month to let the community get involved and provide feedback on our progress until the proposal closes out.
• We join almost every Catalyst Town Hall where the community can get involved and provide feedback on our progress until the proposal closes out.
• We work closely with other partner teams to provide updates to the community.
• For open-source projects, we invite the community to join our daily open-source scrum meetings Monday through Friday.
• You may also see us working and huddling in voice channels on our Discord server: https://discord.gg/vJuPXu86vS

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

The success of this project is very clear:

• to empower the Cardano dApps and the developer community to convert more ETH into ₳DA by the $$$ millions

• to empower the Cardano dApps and the developer community to access 55+ million monthly active wallets via integration with WalletConnect and gain real adoption and traction

• to lower the barrier for EVM-based developer community and dApps to switch over to Cardano

Snapbrillia's Mission:

Snapbrillia was born over one year ago with the mission to accelerate the world's transition to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce and guarantee fair opportunities for all through the adoption of AI and blockchain technologies globally. Earlier in February after deep research and much deliberation, we decided to work with Cardano then 2,282 Catalyst voters decided to fund Snapbrillia in Fund 8. Ever since we have been hacking away to launch Mentor-Mentee Bounties and OpenSource Quadratic Voting & Funding in beta in July 2022. Funding this proposal will help us launch the Cardano dApps community into the Metamask world and strap Snapbrilllia along for the wild ride to the moon and back.

Snapbrillia's long-term goal is to build a platform that gets one million people who are underrepresented and self-taught into tech that otherwise wouldn’t break into tech at all.

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

This OpenSource ₳<=>MetaMask Integration proposal is an extension of our F8-funded and late July-to-be-delivered proposals for Mentor-mentee Bounties & eLearning (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397419/) and OpenSource Quadratic Voting Funding (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/396834).

Social Networks:

• Join Snapbrillia Discord:
• https://discord.gg/vJuPXu86vS
• Follow Snapbrilia on Github:
• https://github.com/snapbrillia/
• Follow Snapbrillia on LinkedIn:
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/snapbrillia
• Follow Snapbrillia on Twitter:
• https://twitter.com/snapbrillia
• Like Snapbrillia on Facebook:
• https://www.facebook.com/Snapbrillia
• Join Snapbrillia on Reddit:
• https://www.reddit.com/r/snapbrillia/
• Follow Snapbrillia on Medium:
• https://medium.com/@snapbrillia/
• Follow Snapbrillia on AngelList:
• https://angel.co/company/snapbrillia
• Follow Snapbrillia on Instagram:
• https://www.instagram.com/snapbrillia
• Vote for Snapbrillia on Catalyst:
• https://linktr.ee/votesnapbrillia

PA Guideline Help:

We invite all PAs and vPAs to approach any of the social networks or contact us personally by Discord, to resolve any questions about this proposal, please remember that this is possible at the stage of assessments and review. However, we also pitch why we believe this proposal should receive a good rating.

Vote YES for Cardano

Vote YES for Great User & Developer Migration to Cardano

Vote YES for OpenSource MetaMask<=>₳ Integration

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

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

SDG subgoals:

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

8.3 Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services

9.1 Develop quality, reliable, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all

9.5 Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of industrial sectors in all countries, in particular developing countries, including, by 2030, encouraging innovation and substantially increasing the number of research and development workers per 1 million people and public and private research and development spending

9.b Support domestic technology development, research, and innovation in developing countries, including by ensuring a conducive policy environment for, inter alia, industrial diversification and value addition to commodities

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

8.1.1 - Annual growth rate of real GDP per capita

8.2.1 - Annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person

8.3.1 - Proportion of informal employment in total employment, by sector and sex

9.b.1 - Proportion of medium and high-tech industry value added in total value-added

9.5.1 - Research and development expenditure as a proportion of GDP

9.5.2 - Researchers (in full-time equivalent) per million inhabitants