Smart contract enabled fiat-on-ramp

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Problem

Cardano is evolving ecosystem striving for mass adoption, with many smart contract developers who are facing a difficulty of onboarding new users who has to pass a great barrier of acquiring ADA somewhere before they are able to interact with any dApp on Cardano blockchain.

In order to use the dApp - new users first need to leave the dApp to to some exchange, pass a verification there, deposit their money to that exchange, exchange the money to ADA, and then withdraw that money to their wallet. That's a terrible user experience, and it's 99.9% change that this user will get lost while going through this, and will never come back to the dApp.

Solution

This can be solved by a fiat gateway at that dapp, where this user can purchase ADA without leaving. But we decided go one step further. Why ask user to purchase ADA and deposit it to their wallet, then ask them to make an ADA transaction to a smart contract - if this can be done in just one step? User can just make a credit card payment which they are familiar with, and not worry about all the blockchain blockchain stuff - and just receive the result of an on-chain transaction to their wallet.

The way Wert does it - user is just making a fiat payment to Wert (a regulated service that have all the necessary licensing and is compliant with all the necessary regulations), and then Wert makes a transaction to a smart contract of the dApp and then the dApp as the result of this transaction deposits the result of this transaction to user's wallet.

This way everything is kept decentralised - the developer don't need to change their dApp logic and keep everything on-chain, and a user still gets the token/nft/whatever on their non-custodial wallet without the need to get too deep into crypto to achieve this.

Who needs this?

Any dApp developer who wish to onboard users who are not crypto savvy. And any user who wish to interact with any dApp on Cardano blockchain but don't have any ADA.

Primary use-case

NFT marketplaces.

NFT marketplaces are attracting many mainstream customers who don't have any ADA, but they wish to purchase NFTs that are issued on Cardano blockchain. Our solution would give them a change to pay with a credit card to get the NFT easily.

What will be produced?

An integration of a checkout flow for dApps, which will accept a credit card payment from the user and will make a smart contract payment to any dApp.

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

It's a financial service. Wert provides a solution that tackles the problem of accepting fiat from a customer, and then exchanging it into crypto/NFT.

[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 risk we are facing is technical risk, that we won't be able to find a reliable nodes that can be used to provide Enterprise-level SLA.

Ultimately our work would be is connecting our system to a Cardano blockchain.

In order to this we need two things:

• a library which we can use to connect our backend to Cardano node
• a reliable Cardano node which we can use to interact with Cardano blockchain to get information from and broadcast transactions to

The risk there is that there would be no library which we can use, so we will have to create one from scratch. And the other risk is that there would be no reliable node provider we could use, and we will have to rely on a public node which could be good enough, but not reliable enough to provide Enterprise level service.

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

Research stage (~2 weeks)

The goal of this stage is to find all the necessary resources and information, needed for the development. Analyse gathered information, and create decomposed to-do development plan which gonna consist of specific and achievable tasks.

• Access existing libraries to evaluate if they are enough to connect our backend to Cardano blockchain, or we have to create a new one.
• Research nuances with Cardano blockchain transactions and smart contracts operations
• Access if we need to make any changes in our backend logic to align it with how Cardano blockchain operates.
• Access existing node providers for Cardano blockchain and choose which one suites our needs best.
• Analyse gathered information
• Produce decomposed task plan to start the development

Development phase 1 (~2-4 weeks)

The goal of this stage to connect Wert to Cardano blockchain, and the result should be a possibility to make a purchase to just purchase ADA via Wert without interacting with smart contracts.

• Connect libraries to our backend
• Make changes to our backend
• Connect our backend to Cardano blockchain to get information from the blockchain and broadcast transactions
• Produce design for frontend adjustments
• Make adjustments to frontend

Testing v1 (2 weeks)

Put the results of the developments to the test. Make sure that Wert able to produce transactions first on testnet and then on the mainnet. Bugfix if needed.

Release v1

Release the first version.

Development phase 2 (~2-4 weeks)

The goal of this stage to make Wert interact with Cardano smart contracts, and the result should be a possibility to run smart contracts operations upon successful credit card payments to Wert.

• Create test contracts to run smart contract operations
• Connect our backend to Cardano blockchain to get information from the blockchain and broadcast transactions to run smart contract operations
• Produce design for frontend adjustments
• Make adjustments to frontend

Testing v2 (2 weeks)

Put the results of the developments to the test. Make sure that Wert able to produce smart contract operations first on testnet and then on the mainnet. Bugfix if needed.

Release v2

Release the second version.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

To cover the development costs. This task would require the work of at least 3 developers, devops, 2 qa engineers, designer and a project manager. Plus, this is not one time effort - as it would be a feature which Wert gonna add to the system, and will have to maintain it and update it as the system would evolve.

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

Wert team:

George Basiladze - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebasiladze/

Daria Bogatyreva - https://www.linkedin.com/in/daria-bogatyreva-714aa399/

Alexey Tsykunov - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandovalex/

Gamzat Murtazaaliev - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gamzat-murtazaaliev-91418a201/

Konstantin Shalygin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/konstantin-shalygin-668008103/

Leonid Malov - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonid-malov-9a22231a1/

Nikita Nikolenko - https://www.linkedin.com/in/whaleless/

Alexander Kuksa

Nikolay Gaibovich

Darya Kirillochkina

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

It's unlikely that we gonna need additional funding after this round, as the main cost is associated with the initial development which should be covered by this round. All the further updates might only with the update of the Cardano blockchain, but it will be much easier to do once it's already a part of our system.

[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 will measure it by the amount of transactions to Cardano smart contracts coming from Wert. We will measure it by the volume of ADA sold by Wert.

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

A successful transaction coming from Wert to execute an operation smart contract on Cardano blockchain. High ADA sales volume by Wert.

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

It's en entirely new proposal.