Please describe your proposed solution.
Introduction - What is NFTCDN?
NFTCDN is a SaaS provider that was created as a result of Catalyst funding in Fund 8 under the Developer Ecosystem challenge to mitigate the substantial up-front cost and development time/effort required to display NFT media content on websites/apps with the objective of driving adoption of Cardano as the “Blockchain of Choice for NFTs”.
After securing funding in F8, a 6-month development effort was undertaken, successfully launching the NFTCDN service in December-2022 which is presently being used by a number of products (NFT marketplaces, NFT wallets and other bespoke projects) within the Cardano ecosystem.
Our solution has made it possible to display NFT images on websites/apps in a matter of minutes from signing up, resulting in improved productivity of project development teams by enabling them to focus on their core product development and helping them achieve sustainable growth through our consumption-based and discounted tier pricing model, allowing them to scale as their products grow.
The Problem - Financial Uncertainty & Restrictive Budgets for Projects
A vast number of projects in the Cardano ecosystem have expressed interest in integrating NFTCDN within their products and services. And while they have acknowledged the value delivered by us in the form of a high-quality user experience (high-speeds, substantially shorter loading times and high reliability) for their end-users and cost savings for the project on development time (c. 6 - 8 months) of an end-to-end solution to display NFTs media content, development cost (c. $90,000 - $120,000) of a high-performing service and elimination of on-going operational and maintenance expenses (c. $10,000 up to $30,000 per month), 70% of these prospective projects were unable to proceed owing to financial uncertainties and budget constraints resulting in a missed opportunity of productivity improvement and value-add features for the project, a missed opportunity for improved end-user experience and therefore a lost opportunity of value-add products and services to be introduced into the Cardano ecosystem.
The Solution – Make NFTCDN usage free of charge
We seek to secure the support of the community in acquiring Catalyst funds to finance the usage-related costs of NFTCDN services for 12 months, that would otherwise have been borne by projects directly, resulting in a direct benefit to Cardano by increasing throughput and delivery of innovative products and services, paving the way for potential breakthroughs and making Cardano the blockchain of choice for NFTs while also delivering an ROI of c. 20x the project proposal amount.
After securing funding our API endpoints would then be free for all to use for the duration of the proposal’s funding period (12 months) allowing innovators to experiment with their new product ideas and existing products to substantially reduce costs and/or redirect them towards the development of their own products while their end-users benefit from an improved user experience of their products.
NB. We have displayed the 20x return on investment of this proposal (ROI) at the bottom of this proposal in the “Resource & Value For Money” section.
Who the Projects will engage:
Projects who will benefit from our service include our existing customers and developers who have expressed their desire to test/use NFTCDN for their products and services such as:
- pool.pm
- BlockchainArt.Works
- Plutus.Art
- Eternl Wallet
- VESPR Wallet
- The Ape Society
- Levvy Finance
- Hazel
- Buffy Bot
- Trading Tent
- The Art Bank
- Iceberglabs
- eutxo.org
- Venster GenArt
- Venster Publishing
- ChainLobby
- Artifct
- FluidTokens
- Catalin (AI NFT Image Classification Tool)
- Gingerbread Squad
- CNFT Folio
- And many more we have yet to reach out to…
Justification for our approach
NFTCDN is the only provider of NFT media content display capabilities dedicated solely to Cardano. In our previous proposal, we went beyond our designated scope by creating open-access endpoints to NFTCDN’s capabilities for the preview and preprod networks, which we have been able to sustain owing to the relatively low volumes. However, as a commercial entity and in order to remain a financially sustainable business, we are unable to offer free usage to every project within the Cardano ecosystem on the mainnet at our own expense.
Furthermore, asking select projects to approach Catalyst on an individual basis creates a substantial overhead for the project and Catalyst itself, consequently introducing a new barrier - speed to market - which alongside the uncertainty of success, hinders new projects to develop, build and test their products rapidly.
As a result of the above and taking into account the feedback received from 70% of the projects who we have engaged, who were unable to progress owing to financial restrictions, we have opted to finance the infrastructure, operational and support costs of NFTCDN through Catalyst enabling us to open our doors to developers from within and outside the community.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
By funding this proposal;
- We amplify the ecosystem’s capability by equipping developers with an efficient, reliable, high-quality, high-performance enterprise-grade solution for displaying NFT media content on their products and services, making Cardano the blockchain of choice in the application of NFTs for existing and emerging use-case domains.
- We remove barriers to entry by alleviating budget concerns and financial uncertainty by financing the provision of NFTCDN’s services through Catalyst, broadening the accessibility of all of our existing capabilities to developers on Cardano.
- We boost adoption, fuel innovation and drive growth on Cardano by empowering existing and nascent projects with a working solution for the display of NFT media content, eliminating the need for them to build this capability from the ground up, allowing them to focus on their core product’s growth and development.
- We accelerate product development on Cardano with NFTCDN’s easy-to-use plug-and-play solution, facilitating rapid prototyping, iterative development cycles and market feasibility tests for newer products and services, encouraging creativity and experimentation thereby supporting the strategic goal of attracting innovative projects on Cardano from within and outside of the ecosystem.
- We benefit from the network effect from the collaborative efforts of a diverse and extensive community of developers who would contribute valuable feedback to NFTCDN. Any updates and upgrades implemented are then enjoyed collectively through the provision of ubiquitous and free access to NFTCDN.
- We respond to the calls of developers who have shown strong interest in the integration of NFTCDN within their products and services, enabling them to utilise and unlock the potential of native assets in emerging areas such as Decentralised Finance (DeFi), gaming, music and real-world utility tooling applications (e.g. ticketing, Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs), proof-of-asset-ownership and many more)
- We aim to deliver an ROI of c. 20x the proposal budget. More details on this can be found at the bottom of this proposal within the Resource & Value For Money section.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
The proposal will be measured against the following five drivers:
Adoption – Number of projects using NFTCDN Services
This is a quantitative measure of the total number of developers who have signed up to use NFTCDN’s services. A positive trend of this metric would be indicative of an increased need for and highlights the importance of NFT media content delivery services in the ecosystem such as NFTCDN, owing to the value and benefits we offer to their products and services.
Usage – Number of NFT images displayed through NFTCDN
This is a quantitative measure of the number of API endpoint calls made to NFTCDN. A positive trend of this metric would represent an increased usage of our services and would be indicative of the growing use of NFTs in the ecosystem, a growth in the user base of the ecosystem and would consequently also represent a volumetric increase in the number of end-users benefiting from the provision of our services.
Growth – Return on Investment
This is a quantitative measure of the cost benefits achieved by this proposal wherein we compare the cost developers have successfully avoided paying (Cost-to-Make & Cost-to-Use) by virtue of Catalyst financing NFTCDN’s service provision for the duration of 12 months. Furthermore, a positive ROI will successfully show how Catalyst has delivered financial and tangible value to the developer ecosystem by supporting a high-performing end-to-end infrastructure solution that is easy to use and enables adoption, usage and growth of Cardano as the blockchain of choice for NFTs.
Performance - NFTCDN Availability
This is a quantitative measure of the up-time of our service. The provision for operational maintenance within this proposal covers the continued maintenance of our infrastructure to sustain demand and keep our systems up to date. We aim to maintain NFTCDN’s availability at 100%, proving the robustness of our service under extreme network conditions and our capability to serve NFT media content under heavy demand.
Feedback – Developer Testimonials
This will be a qualitative measure wherein we will conduct two surveys over the course of the proposal seeking feedback from NFTCDN’s users on aspects such as performance, ease of use, quality of service and support and also enquire about future feature developments that they would like to see in the NFT content delivery space.
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
We intend to primarily provide two major outputs on the project.
Monthly Project Reporting
- As we have done previously in Fund 8, we will be publicly sharing our end-of-month project reports on our official website for all to see (<https://nftcdn.io/tag/project-reporting>) and also share this information on social media to garner interest towards signing up for NFTCDN for the free-usage period.
- The reports will detail work(s) conducted since the last reporting period, statistics (quantitative success measures) of the present reporting period and any notable achievements.
Survey Feedback
- We intend to conduct two surveys as per our project milestones. The survey would seek to gather feedback from respondents on NFTCDN’s service and also enquire about future developments that they would like to see. These additional features as recommended by the users of NFTCDN may be used to build collaborative proposals with community members to deliver on these requested capabilities.