Please describe your proposed solution

Whitepaper: https://fx.land/FulaWP

Hardware Teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxNn8oqdRD4

News: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/functionland/signals_and_news

Functionland's Fula platform leverages unused computer resources to provide a decentralized, cost-effective cloud storage solution with full user control and superior functionality. The proposal is to integrate Functionland’s Fula chain with Cardano as its parent chain, to leverage low gas fees and high throughput of Cardano and increase earnings for Fula nodes by saving them the space needed for chain data before submitting it to the parent chain.

Below is a broad category of development activities that will be funded together with the proposal:

• Integration of smart contract with Cardano for faster transaction throughput
• Creation of Fula token on Cardano chain
• Updating and communication of documentation for Functionland’s Fula users who would like to choose Cardano to save more storage space to be used for paid data
• Analysis and report to quantify the increased earnings for users who choose Cardano

Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

Since the start of Functionland project, we have seen vast expansion of user base. We had one of the most successful campaigns on a web2 crowdfunding platform (<https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/box-first-free-forever-cloud-storage-alternative>) and have partnered with Protocol Labs on the protocol side. Furthermore, the hardware has been tested with other protocols, such as RocketPool for Ethereum Staking and Koii for mining. It has grown to more than 1PB of storage that can be used as a decentralized cloud storage solution. However, due to gas fee and submission fees, the transactions are not frequently submitted to the parent chain at the moment which occupies the storage of nodes, and a successful integration can save that space for paid data.

The integration will bring lower cost of submission of chain data to parent chain, hence, the local data on nodes can be erased more frequently which saves space for the nodes on chain data. This space then can be used to store files that are paid for the nodes.

For Cardano ecosystem it brings the below benefits:

• Functionland has 900 nodes, and it increases the transactions for the Cardano
• Functionland has 108K registered waiting list, and 1M followers in its KOL’s social media, the announcements with analysis of increased earnings would increase the awareness for the community and provide exposure. Since Functionland’s audience is a mix of web2 and web3 users, it expands the reach of information about Cardano beyond just crypto-native people
• The FxFotos and later other dApps as we onboard them (like FxFiles) will provide real-world mobile-native applications aside from wallet apps and games to Cardano ecosystem and can be leveraged to expand beyond just crypto users and into web2 use cases

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

Our team's extensive experience and past successful projects ensure high levels of trust and capability. All developments will be transparent, with regular updates to the Cardano community.

Ehsan Shariati has more than 20 years of experience as a full-stack developer, who has created software and hardware solutions for large corporations.

Keyvan Sadeghi has more than 15 years of software development experience and has worked with Ben Goertzel on many AI publications and projects.

Publications:

• Keyvan Mir Mohammad Sadeghi, Ben Goertzel: Uncertain Interval Algebra via fuzzy/probabilistic modeling. FUZZ-IEEE 2014: 591-598
• Ben Goertzel, Shujing Ke, Ruiting Lian, Jade O'Neill, Keyvan Sadeghi, Dingjie Wang, Oliver Watkins, Gino Yu: The cogprime architecture for embodied Artificial General Intelligence. CIHLI 2013: 60-67
• Ruiting Lian, Ben Goertzel, Shujing Ke, Jade O'Neill, Keyvan Sadeghi, Simon C. K. Shiu, Dingjie Wang, Oliver Watkins, Gino Yu: Syntax-Semantic Mapping for General Intelligence: Language Comprehension as Hypergraph Homomorphism, Language Generation as Constraint Satisfaction. AGI 2012: 158-167
• Jade O'Neill, Ben Goertzel, Shujing Ke, Ruiting Lian, Keyvan Sadeghi, Simon C. K. Shiu, Dingjie Wang, Gino Yu: Pattern Mining for General Intelligence: The FISHGRAM Algorithm for Frequent and Interesting Subhypergraph Mining. AGI 2012: 189-198

Ehsan and Keyvan already worked on a government funded project in AI (Mitacs) and completed the work successfully before joining together at Funcitonland, and Functionland was started with grants from Filecoin and ICP with successful completion of milestones before getting funded by VCs.

We have other part-time team members in marketing and BD who would help us in spreading the marketing materials and already have a proven track record in our Indiegogo campaign (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/box-first-free-forever-cloud-storage-alternative).

What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Milestone 1: Milestone 1: Develop Fula on Cardano (3 months)

A: Milestone outputs

• Design and build the code on parent chain architecture.
• Parent chain code should be tested and debugged.
• Create required APIs

B: Acceptance criteria

• Needed APIs should be created with the same input/output as in the current integrations with other chains
• Rest integration is working and stable.

C: Evidence of milestone completion

• Deliverables: A fully functional code on Cardano which can be used with Fula bridge
• Intended outcomes: A set of APIs that would satisfy the needs for transaction submissions from Fula at high speed and low cost by nodes
• Metrics: Delivery of the APIs needed for the integration with Fula chain

Milestone 2: Milestone 2: Create Fula bridge on L3 (3 months)

A: Milestone outputs

• Determine the required bridge APIs.
• Create and maintain the Fula bridge for Cardano.
• Bridge must be tested and debugged.
• Install bridge and connect to parent chain
• Fula Token allocation must be determined for Cardano

B: Acceptance criteria

• Successful bridge creation and deployment.
• Fula tokens exist on Cardano

C: Evidence of milestone completion

• Deliverables include fully functional integration between Fula and Cardano
• Intended outcomes: Lower gas fees and higher throughput, allowing users to interact with on-chain data more readily
• Metrics include the number of transactions that are submitted to the Cardano chain

Milestone 3: Milestone 3:

Milestone 3: Ongoing Development Activities (12 months)

A: Milestone outputs

• Identify new initiatives that have been introduced into the ecosystem.
• Changes for these projects must be developed, tested, and integrated.
• Perform performance testing.
• Coordination and discussion with users and projects are required for successful integration.

B: Acceptance criteria

• Integration of new projects is completed successfully.
• Rest's performance is consistent.

C: Evidence of milestone completion

• Deliverables: APIs are often updated to accommodate new changes in the ecosystem.
• Intended outcomes: APIs will continue to run smoothly, adapting to the changing needs of the Cardano ecosystem.
• Metrics: Catering to various requirements from users, tracked via GitHub projects, also tracking data for existing projects integrated.

Milestone 4: Milestone 4:

Milestone 4: Ongoing Support and Developer Documentation (12 months)

A: Milestone outputs

• Provide assistance for users with proper documentations
• Collect and respond to user/developer input.

B: Acceptance criteria

• The level of assistance supplied.
• Users have provided positive reviews.

C: Evidence of milestone completion

• Deliverables include regular assistance for users and projects, as well as responses to feedback and inquiries.
• Intended outcomes: High user satisfaction, smooth project and tool operation, and continual improvement based on feedback.
• Metrics include the number of support tickets resolved, feedback from users and developers, and improvements made in response to input.

Milestone 5: Milestone 5:

Milestone 5: Project Integration (12 months)

A: Milestone outputs

• Provide assistance for projects with proper documentations
• Collect and respond to project input.

B: Acceptance criteria

• The level of assistance supplied.
• Users have provided positive reviews.

C: Evidence of milestone completion

• Deliverables include regular assistance for users and projects, as well as responses to feedback and inquiries.
• Intended outcomes: High user satisfaction, smooth project and tool operation, and continual improvement based on feedback.
• Metrics include the number of support tickets resolved, feedback from projects, and improvements made in response to input.

Final Milestone: Final Milestone:

During the development success will be measured by delivering the expected outcome from each milestone.

After the completion of development, success will be tracked and reported by the below KPIs:

• The percentage of Functionland nodes who choose Cardano as the parent chain vs total users
• Number of transactions that gets submitted to Cardano from Fula chain each month vs total number of transactions in Cardano as a percentage
• Number of Fula tokens on Cardano being claimed vs total Fula tokens claimed each month

The following data demonstrates the success and adoption of this proposal.

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

Ehsan Shariati

(<https://github.com/ehsan6sha>)

Keyvan Sadeghi

(<https://github.com/keyvan-m-sadeghi>)

The project itself started 2.5 years ago as one of the very early DePIN projects and is already live in testnet, and development has been completed with integration to Polygon and Ethereum. Fula blockchain with 900 dedicated and individually-owned nodes worldwide is one of the largest in terms of size with the below live products:

• 900 dedicated nodes delivered to those who purchased it globally (<https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/box-first-free-forever-cloud-storage-alternative>)
• Project GitHub has 600+ stars which makes it in the top 3% of open source projects on GitHub
• FxFotos app is already live on Google Play as an alternative to Google/Apple Photos (<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=land.fx.fotos>)
• FxBlox app is already live on Google Play and App Store to provide a plug-and-play app for setting up and controlling the dedicated nodes (<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=land.fx.fotos>)
• Dockers are already published (<https://hub.docker.com/u/functionland>)
• Project has been featured by Protocol Labs, Fuse Project, and several Twitter Spaces (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/functionland/signals_and_news)
• Project has reputable partners such as Parity as part of Substrate Builders Program, Protocol Labs, Singularity DAO, Techstars, Outlier Ventures, and Dora Hacks
• Created 1500 downloads of the above dApps in a short period of going live and 100,000 in waiting list as well as $500K+ in annual revenue, and created a KOL partner network with accumulative 1M followers across social media (<https://twitter.com/Eljaboom> &amp; <https://twitter.com/Eunicedwong>)

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

Milestone 1: Develop Fula on Cardano - 200,000 ADA

Milestone 2: Create Fula bridge on L3 - 200,000 ADA

Milestone 3: Ongoing Development Activities Customization - 200,000 ADA

Milestone 4: Ongoing Support and Developer Documentation and Tools - 200,000 ADA

Milestone 5: Project Integration - 100,000 ADA

Milestone 6: KPI Delivery - 100,000 ADA

No Dependency

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

Functionland’s Fula network is currently one of the largest decentralized networks with 900 nodes and 2+PB of storage capacity. It can onboard all NFT and Metaverse projects in no-time as it reduces the cost for those projects by 50% without any development requirements on their end, which greatly expands the reach of Cardano and user base. The integration provides significant value by bringing proven decentralized storage solutions to Cardano, enhancing the ecosystem's capabilities at a competitive cost.

Onboarding of Fula network, as one of the largest decentralized storage networks with real-world apps, on Cardano, can hugely expand the reach of Cardano deep into NFT and Metaverse projects on other chains as well as web2 applications, and increase the transactions on Cardano. A comparison of increase in node earnings on Cardano vs other integrated chains can also give a huge visibility and set an example for other projects for integration with Cardano. The integration not only merges the forces of the Fula ecosystem with Cardano, but also brings mainstream attention to Cardano.

Outputs and results will be documented and shared via GitHub Discussion, social media posts on Twitter and LinkedIn and our KOL network reshares. Regular updates will be provided through social media and Cardano community forums. We leverage the below methods to maximize the effect:

• Open Source: Currently Functionland Github has more than 600 stars and is popular in developer’s community. We will publicly share the results in Cardano and Functionland’s GitHub with benchmarking of the results
• Community: Our KOLs with a total of 800K followers across social media will reshare our social media posts about the benchmark results and increased earning for our nodes after integration with Cardano
• Partnerships: We will partner with other web2 apps and web3 protocols on both hardware and software, and in each partnership, Cardano will be brought up as partner network with the benchmark results vs other chains for Fula nodes, which can expand the user base for Cardano ecosystem

Documentation: We will document the process of adding integration to Cardano for other projects to be able to leverage it as a guide and it will be made available through blog posts and social media posts