Please describe your proposed solution.

If we look at funding platforms like Kickstarter, there are often multiple tiers to each preorder with (often overlapping) rewards. Trying to handle all this complexity at the NFT sale tool level is not only extremely complicated, it often introduces regulatory issues as most NFT sale platforms do not support purchasing fungible tokens for regulatory reasons.

To solve this, we will leverage Stateful NFTs created by Paima Engine. Notably, Stateful NFTs are NFTs that can evolve overtime based on user actions. We will use this to allow purchasing into preorders to receive a Stateful NFT which can later be redeemed in-game once the game is launched. This allows very flexible pre-order systems as the redemption logic and tokens do not have to be created at the time of sale (similar to Kickstarter)

Notably, the user flow will look at follows:

1. User finds a game doing a pre-order on an NFT platform that they want to participate in
2. They pay with ADA (or any other tokens the site supports) to buy into the pre-order, which uses Milkomeda wrapped smart contracts to credit them a Stateful NFT
3. (optional) if they choose to add more money into the pre-order, their existing Stateful NFT will be updated
4. Once the sale is over, use their Stateful NFT to claim their in-game reward once the game is release

We may work with Plutus Art for the first implementation, but we reserve the right to change partners depending on factors such as their availability

How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

It will simplify the creation of NFT project pre-orders that, instead of simple pictures, could be arbitrary logic complex enough to even be used for funding blockchain games

How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

- The number of projects that do a pre-order through the system

- The total amount of funds handled through the pre-order system

Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

All parts of the project will be open source except for the last part of the project – at least one tool integrating our system (which we can’t guarantee will be open source)

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

dcSpark and Paima Studios are well renowned companies in the Cardano ecosystem that have a long history of delivering on Catalyst proposals. You can find progress on grants we have previously received at https://dcspark.io/grants

What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

Our goal is to make it easier to do regulatory-compliant and flexible pre-orders for onchain games. Members of the team are founders of Paima Engine and so we are confident in the feasibility of this project

Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

1. Smart contract for the pre-order NFT
2. Paima example dApp that integrates the system
3. Update system to allow people to update their pre-orders
4. Wrapped smart contract
5. Open source backend for any platform to use
6. Simple example UI
7. Example sign-verify dApp for handle offchain rewards (ex: trip to dev studio)
8. Integration with an existing NFT marketplace or build an independent implementation

Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

1. Open source contract
2. Open source template
3. Update to the base template
4. Open source library (NPM package)
5. Open source backend
6. Open source website
7. Open source website
8. Live integration with an existing NFT marketplace or build an independent implementation

Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

1. 15k
2. 10k
3. 10k
4. 5k
5. 20k
6. 10k
7. 5k
8. 40k

115K USD total

Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Paima Studios project manager

dcSpark implementer

How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

This will help make Cardano the platform of choice for game developers looking to raise money for their project. This will naturally introduce these developers to the Cardano ecosystem and make it more likely for them to release