Please describe your proposed solution.
The current state of things
Lido Nation’s Catalyst Explorer has become synonymous with Catalyst voting & research, with 2-3 thousand monthly queries (outside of the spike seen during the voting cycle). Current and past proposals are included, and can be searched, sorted, and filtered, far beyond what is available in Ideascale. Dashboard charts and proposers “Report Cards” make it easier to understand the Catalyst landscape. Individual Proposers and Groups can claim their profile to make updates to their listings and contact information. Many people have already created accounts on the tool to “follow” funded proposals or managed their own listings. The Catalyst Explorer already has support to connect to Cardano wallets.
Teams already working on dRep developer tooling
dcSpark was funded in fund 9 to build a software development kit that aims to "update [the] existing Catalyst registration SDK to support dRep registration, add dRep indexing to Carp and implement dRep support inside Flint Wallet."
This sdk reduces the work required to fetch and index dRep data from the blockchain, significantly reducing overall cost of this project!
The Big Idea
We want to build on this foundation and create a module for dReps and their delegators.
Here’s what this includes:
dRep Profiles:
dRep will be able to connect their dRep supported wallet and create a dRep profile, add platform statements and track their delegation.
Profiles will be published to IPFS for use outside of the Catalyst Explorer.
dRep Listings
The big idea is to build a system for the public to browse all active and inactive dRep registrations and dRep voting records.
Interactive dRep profiles will let you see dRep profile details, contact information, platform statements. Users will also see all the related catalyst objects their vote affects: proposals, community members and companies receiving funding as a result of their votes, that we know about.
Delegate to dRep
Once core dRep functionality being worked on by the core catalyst team is delivered, the public will be able to delegate to a dRep directly from the Catalyst Explorer.
dRep Draft Ballot
dRep will need a common canvas for themselves and their delegators that wish to discuss and communicate about the direction they are leaning during voting cycles.
This module will extend the Explorer’s current “Bookmark” feature to an improved tool we are calling a “Draft Ballot.” A Draft Ballot is a way for dReps to stage their votes and note their rationale.
dRep will be able to control if their Draft Ballots are visible to the public, or only to their delegators.
dReps will also be able to decide whether the public can comment on their draft and rationale, or again, make this only available to their delegators.
IPFS storage & API
To encourage further decentralization, dReps platform statements and public draft ballots with rationales will be published to IPFS.
We will also be providing a JSON open-api spec API to allow other use cases for the data.
support for 30+ languages
The Catalyst Explorer already has support for multi-language. The dRep module will allow dReps to choose their primary language for communication. For non-English speaking dReps we will use AI assisted translation to English. Because we use a paid service for the translation, this feature will only be available to logged-in dReps and not the general public. Users will be able to choose whether to read dRep platform statements and Draft Ballot rationale in translated English, or in the original language.
The difference between this proposal and other dRep explorers on the ballot:
- This proposal serves both dReps AND the wider community
This proposal if funded will create a workplace for dRep to do their work. We've already spent a lot of time and energy not just indexing catalyst but also enriching it will off-chain real world data with much more enrichment coming over the next 6 months. Our proposal puts all this data at dReps' fingertips and give them tooling to do their research and build up the ballot in the process. We're the only proposal offering a space for dReps to build their ballot with 2-way communication between them their delegators. The wider community can use the tool to find dReps and interact with their dRep, or do their own research.
- We already have a working product
The catalyst explorer has become a core infrastructure of catalyst with adoption from many stakeholders in the community. We've implement over 50 direct feedbacks from the community in the last 6 months. Our dRep directory is the only proposal on the ballot intending to show more data beyond dRep votes.
- feature rich collaboration, research, communication
Our proposal is the only one on the ballot offering tooling for rich collaboration between dReps and delegators and public.
Our product will go beyond asking dRep questions and let dRep and delegators (or public if the dRep chooses) build their ballot together.
Our product is not just a dashboard but a engine for deep research and already have support for public account creation and bookmarking the things you're researching to share or reference later.
Our proposal is the only one on the ballot that will facility notes and communication:
- privately just for dReps to reference themselves later
- for dRep and just their delegators and not the public
- for dRep and the public.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
The challenge asks us to think about:
1) Content and tooling to "make it easier for the public to consider dReps"
Our dRep listing page and ability to delegate to the dRep directly from the page will do this.
Being able to see dRep platforms, public draft ballots, and voting history (if any), will let the public make informed consideration of dReps.
2) “Tools to make it easier to consider proposals.”
The Catalyst Explorer already provides detailed listings, data and insights for proposals. With this project, we will be bringing that same functionality to the dRep module.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
We will align our measurement to that of the challenge KPIs. Specifically:
(Diversity of dReps) Did it lead to the onboarding of diverse dReps with different languages, national origins, occupations, genders, ages, religions, etc.?
With 30+ native language support, we will be tracking how many non-english native dRep signs on and make use of that feature.
(Number of dReps) How many dReps were onboarded?
We wil track how many dReps sign up using the explorer.
(Number of delegates) How much did it contribute to increasing the number of delegates to dReps?
We will track how many web traffic we get to dRep Profiles
- (Accuracy of delegate decisions) How well did we create content and tools to make it easier to consider dReps?
- We will track via web analytics how many visits we get to dRep listings and click through to voting records
All metrics will be reported in our monthly reports as they become available and final metrics will be included in our closeout report.
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
The result of the project will be a new module on the catalyst explorer for:
- dReps to create profiles
- dReps to create Draft Ballots
- voters to browser dReps and voting history (if any)
- voters to pick dReps