Please describe your proposed solution.
<u>Our motivations</u>
Coronavirus disease and the Ukraine war caused a rising number of people to be unable to work or to lose income, and many people find it difficult even to survive. A self-run help network really helps here.
<u>Small business and startup situation</u>
- Lower Consumer Demand: Production might drop by 30%
- Cash Flow Issues: 40% do not have the spare cash flow to survive for more than a month, less likely to see cash inflow in the form of loan
- Workforce Issues: difficult to manage their businesses with less labor.
<u>Charitable giving statistics</u>
- Estimated total of $105.21 billion in 2022
- 31% of donors worldwide give to NGOs, NPOs & charities located outside of their country of residence. This good fit to adopt blockchain as its borderless and non governance by nature.
- 59% of Gen Zs are inspired to donate to charity by a message/image they saw on social media. They are largest crypto holder community.
- Online giving consistent year-on-year growth > 10%
- 54% of donors worldwide prefer to give online with a credit or debit card.
- Many donors still feel pressure on donations because of the limitations of donation methods that lack transparency, are not trackable, and by their nature, offer low levels of trust.
Source: internet
Above data says huge need for a borderless, blockchain-based help network. Such a network would have the following advantages:
- Anyone has permission to post a case to call for help freely and immediately.
- Trust and transparency
- Trackable through transfer transactions
- Decentralized and borderless
- Driven by the user community through a consensus process
The Cardano blockchain, its smart contract and the active community of ADA holders are appropriate to adopt this idea and propagate it worldwide.
<u>How it works</u>
A victim of war in Ukraine they need timely help. They can proceed as below:
- Raise case to helpBlocks to call for help from the community with location pickup through Google map inside the app.
- The community then UPVOTE or DOWNVOTE, with comments, to confirm if the case is validated or not.
- The backend then calculate the VOTEs with wallet vote power and voter location to validate the case.
Once the case is validated, it will be listed for donations, with 2 options:
- Send ADA direct to the recipient’s wallet through helpBlocks web3 function or from its “wallet send” function.
- Send ADA to helpBlocks smart contract address, with designed datum to assign a trusted partner to unlock.
The amounts that are sent to helpBlocks smart contract address then will unlock to the recipient's wallet as soon as it is confirmed from the community, also through a consensus process.
The same process for other they need help in different context e.g to call help to recovery its business, back startup.
Please see how it works with attached screenshoots of demo at next section.
<u>The "decentralized" manner</u>
- All payment transactions are made from user's browser-based wallets.
- helpBlocks backend doesn't involved to transactions process it is user's wallet and Cardano network transaction.
- The backend records only the transaction information for its statistic reports.
The "decentralized" manner is kept.
<u>Service use cases</u>
- Charity donation
- Startup small funds request. though the product name is "help networks" it can be used to fund the business by a group or personally.
- Quick help with small fund amount for urgent situations.
<u>Architecture</u>
The project is designed with following 4 modules:
- Backend APIs to provide REST endpoints for client requests and perform logics.
- Microservices to handle system-specific jobs e.g interacting with Cardano nodes.
- Donate frontend with web3 part to post and vote for a case, and vote to unlock and send ADA to Plutus script address or send ADA direct to recipient’s wallet.
- CMS for admin to manage the platform overall.
<u>AppFlows </u>
Post and vote a case to ask for help
- Someone creates a case that describes a situation that needs help, picking up its location through GOOGLE MAP:
- Describe the situation with the requested budget in ADA and the expected time.
- Pick up the location of the person needing help
- The posted case is then immediately listed on helpBlocks frontend, for the community to vote UP or DOWN to confirm the case in terms of:
- The accuracy of the information
- The reasonableness of the requested help amount
Confirm the case to get donations
The backend microservices will then keep counting the votes in real time to confirm the case:
- Once the case gets enough confirmation by number of UPVOTES, it will put the case into the vault; then immediately list the case, with the recipient’s wallet address, to helpBlocks frontend.
- Donors then can donate to recipient by two methods:
- Give immediate help by sending ADA or Cardano asset to the recipient’s wallet address
- Donate ADA amounts through helpBlocks smart contract address, with a voted trusted partner to unlock by entering their public key hash to datum.
Vote and unlock funds to the recipient, or return to donors
The locked donated amount will be unlocked to the recipient’s wallet address if one of the following conditions meet:
- The case passed the VOTE to unlock validation
- The DOWNVOTEs power percentage is lower 30% and the vote’s duration exceeds a defined lock duration.
If neither of the above conditions is met, the locked funds are returned to the donor's wallet address. This is the second verification step to secure the fund against scammers.
Note:
The lock duration and the required percentage of Upvotes or Downvotes are set by admin, so that we can always adjust to the best levels.
The system records only the transactions that are made through helpBlocks frontend. If donors send direct ada to the recipient’s address, then the transactions are not recorded by helpBlocks
<u>Decision making through consensus process</u>
<u>Calculate vote power</u>
Voting power is calculated in real time with a formula:
- votePower = 0.5 x currentAdaAmounts + donatedAdaAmounts + helpBlocksRewards where:
- currentAdaAmounts: Number of current ADA amount in the voting wallet (the ability to donate).
- donatedAdaAmounts: Number of donated ADA amounts of the vote wallet (the willingness to donate).
- helpBlocksRewards: The number that transforms from the user’s activities on the system, e.g voting on a case, posting a case, donating to a case.
In this way, a wallet with 1k ADA but which has donated 0 ADA will have lower voting power than a wallet with 500 ADA and 1k donated ADA, but higher voting power than a wallet with 500 ADA and 0 donated ADA. And a user who has been active on the platform always has higher voting power than a user with no activity.
<u>Decision making</u>
PASS if:
- At least NW* wallets vote
- Total voting power of upvotes > total voting power of downvotes
Otherwise FAIL
* Where NW is a quorum (a required number of wallet vote campaign, which is defined by admin through CMS)
<u>Functions</u>
- Post a case
- Vote a case
- Donate to a case
- Direct donation by sending Ada to recipient's wallet
- Indirect donation by sending Ada to helpBlocks Plutus script address
- Vote to unlock funds to recipient
- Unlock funds to recipient’s wallet
- Spend locked UTXOs to recipient's wallet
- Track the transaction inside the app
- Multi-level search
- Report
- Posted case report
- Cardano lock and unlock transactions statistics
- Utils and tools
- Track a donation and unlock transaction
- Scam report and filtering
- Dashboard
Post a case
Direct help for a case
Help through smart contract
<u>Features</u>
- Immediate help or through locked smart contract.
- Group the giving donors to focus to a case similar to volunteer group.
- Secured fund process through multi verification steps
- Return to donor if any stage is not confirmed
- Unlock to recipient if all is set
- Realtime freeze votes to the vaults
- Scammer report and filtering
- In-app verify Cardano transaction
- Seamless applications
- Cardano wallet authentication
- Location service to verify the feedback to validate a case.
- Absolutely decentralized.
<u>Users</u>
- Community users (a Cardano web-based wallet is required):
- Raise a case to ask for help
- Vote to verify a case
- Vote to unlock funds to recipient
- Donate to recipient through Plutus or directly send
- Admin users
<u>User acquisition</u>
The user acquisition strategy should clearly target users from two groups within the Cardano community and outside of Cardano at 2 different periods:
At development and trial launch periods
We will firstly target users from existing Cardano communities. We can find them through Cardano community groups on Telegram, Twitter and Discord channels in each country.
The project will keep communicating and welcoming Cardano community users to be involved as contributors and advisors. Community members can always comment, offer feedback for our project, and suggest functions and features they think it should have.
At this stage we aim to have around 50 paid and unpaid members joining the project. These members form an initial community who well understand the project ideas, leading to viral communication strategy in the next stage.
After launch product period
At this stage we will focus on the users from Cardano communities and outside, through user engagement, communication and campaigns.
- User engagement
- Through word of mouth
- Through communication channels, github repo and the product itself
- User acquisition through communication campaigns . The different campaigns are designed separately to solve problems with particular groups of users:
- Users from Cardano communities: these users are friendly to Cardano technologies so the campaigns focus on the product’s features, functions and values
- Crypto users: The campaigns focus on showing the advantages of Cardano and how the product solves problems through Cardano technologies, e.g Plutus versus other chains e.g Ethereum.
- Non- crypto users: the campaign focuses on showing blockchain and crypto’s unique values versus traditional technologies, and aims to address any biases or misinformation these users may have.
Our target is to have around 5,000 users 1 year after the product launch. This includes around 3,000 users from Cardano communities, and 2,000 users from outside.
<u>Business model</u>
helpBlocks is an open-source platform and free services that are fully driven by the community from development until operation stages.
Arrange budget to pay expenses
We request a budget to build and run the app for a year. After that, the product will be maintained by donations from the community and from its core members.
<u>Conclusion</u>
The projects central missions are:
- Connect people who really need help to donors who wish to help timely, clearly and trackable through helpBlocks Cardano smart contracts.
- Solve the limit of current donation and charity methods.
- Getting the world to be altruistic and Humanitarian.
- Adopt Cardano technologies, and apply them to real-life applications.
As helpBlocks runs on the Cardano blockchain network, users are required to have a Cardano wallet in order to have a helpBlocks account. so the success of the project will result in massive new Cardano accounts created on the network, and will propagate Cardano technologies widely, which will benefit the Cardano ecosystem.
<u>Note to PA</u>
Please feel free to contact our telegram to have access to the demo or if there is any question: https://t.me/helpBlocks
hBlocks, helpBlocks or heartBlocks are the same, its is used in different contexts.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
<u>Solving the challenge</u>
<u>Offer a new use-case to Cardano users</u>
- The project offers Cardano users a new altruistic and Humanitarian service which is in everyone's subconscious. This we believe will lead to massive adoption.
- As seen, the world is moving in chaos. Huge numbers of people, families and small business are unprepared. A help network can play a impactful role in connecting a mass of users around the world to help each other, in a borderless and timely way. They are users with a Cardano wallet.
<u>Drive more adoption to Cardano</u>
- Grow the number of wallets created, as users require a wallet to authenticate, vote and donate.
- Increase the number of transactions on Cardano, as donations accept only Cardano assets.
We aim to make helpBlocks the trusted Cardano smart-contract-based help services. Users will be able to raise a case and ask for help from a massive community, in a timely and effective way.
The service being adopted by large numbers of users around the world will lead to huge growth in Cardano wallets and transactions, creating benefits both for users themselves, and for the Cardano ecosystem.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
As this product will be built on top of Cardano network, the success of project will direct and indirect impact to the Cardano’s productivity and growth, in both the short and the long term counted by number of created wallets and transactions. Please refer to how will you validate if your approach is feasible" section for detail.
Measuring the success of product development
The success of the development stage is defined by quality of product outcomes, in the following ways:
- All proposed functions and features are implemented and deployed.
- The simplicity and speed of the product from a user’s perspective meet the defined targets.
- System stability and security meet the defined targets.
Measuring the success of the running product
The success of the running product count by list of key performance indicators:
-
How it helps donation recipients around the world to solve their difficulties:
-
Number of posted cases to helpBlocks to ask for help.
-
Number of people who have received donations through helpBlocks.
-
How it helps to connect donors to people in need around the world:
-
Number of donors, sponsors registered to helpBlocks.
-
Number of donors donating.
-
Total donated amounts.
-
Cardano aspects:
-
Number of helpBlocks users - corresponding to the number of created wallets.
-
Number of donate transactions made through helpBlocks
-
Total ADA and other assets donated through helpBlocks
The project is considered as successful when the above items met the numeric indicators defined in the "how will you validate if your approach is feasible" section.
This measured data will be public on the platform dashboard where everyone can have a look and, feedback to improve. See the demo below:
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
<u>Communicate the project</u>
Our works, problems and outputs are always communicated through a public GitHub repo, staging server, checklist and documents:
- Github commits show our work in term of source code.
- Github problems show community feedback and how developers respond.
- Staging server where we deploy the latest code to test, shows the updated version of the product.
- CheckList shows what we are working on & its status.
- Screenshot folder captures the product screens for each code commit.
- Telegram channel shows real time communication with the community and Catalyst.
The community can track our work, timeline, commitment and try latest functions at below:
- Checklist and tasks: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fWI8C6BGZS_hI20eJaa5OX7Aj-xAUwpfN_9xkepICuM/edit#gid=0
- Project screenShoots: <https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gpJ5cEhICVEjGwYxdRbHwwCkT0GpReTE>
- Source code: <https://github.com/saigonbitmaster/helpBlocks>
- Backend APIs: <https://hblocks.bworks.app/api>
- Web app: <https://hblocks.bworks.app/web>
- CMS app: <https://hblocks.bworks.app/cms>
<u>Feedback from community</u>
Our GitHub is also open for the community to comment, and raise issues about what feature or function they want to add to the product. By getting input from the community we will get the project out from the rut to be from community to community.