Please describe your proposed solution.

The concept of refer to earn is a referral system which is used by big and small corporations such as amazon, to leverage to power of marketers to grow sales and increase leads.

We want to implement this great marketing tool to the cardano ecosystem, starting with the stake pools.

As any other business, stake pools need customers (delegators in this case), to survive and be profitable. Our system will be designed to favor a win win solution for both stake pools and marketers. Here we need two parties that need each other but don't have an easy way to interact with each other:

1 - The marketers

The marketers have something that any business need which is the audience. The marketers are be youtubers, blogger or social media influencers. They have the audience and need to monetize their audience.

2- The stake pool operator

The cardano blockchain runs on a proof of stake mechanism, which means that we need stake pools operators to validate transactions and maintain the the security and decentralization of the network.

However, stake pools need to attract delegators to survive, which require marketing skills. Unfortunately, most stake pool operators have only technical skills and need help to attract delegators.

Our solution to this problem

We aim to use smart contrat to facilitate the interaction between the marketers and the stake pools operators. A marketer will be able to send his audience to a stake pool in exchange for a cut on the stake pool revenues. We decided to call this system: Refer to earn.

This system will benefits:

• the stake pool
• the marketers
• the cardano ecosystem
• the whole cardano community.

How our protocol will benefit the cardano ecosystem :

The cardano network is in its scaling phase. It means that more dapps will be deployed which, should bring more users and hence more transactions.

However, for the network to remain decentralized, we will need more stake pool that will validate transactions and secure the network.

Our goal is to help the stake pool operators remain in business by providing a proven and effective marketing system.

Our key metrics:

1. help stake pools get more delegators
2. bring more users to the cardano network
3. increase decentralization and security
4. facilitate adoption

How do we plan to scale:

We do not plan to use catalyst for future fund as this project should be able to sustain itself once it's up an running. We plan to take a service fee which be enough to run the business.

In the future, we will consider applying our protocol to other cardano businesses such as marketplaces.

This is the exact same method used by amazon and major fortune 500 companies, to attract new costumers at scale. Now we have found the opportunity, thanks to cardano smart contract, to implement this system.

Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Our dapp is an interesting add to the cardano ecosystem. There are many marketers out there looking for opportunities to monetize their audiences. Our dapp will help them come to cardano and earn $ada thanks to their audience.

We also plan to develop marketing courses to help new members learn how to build an audience online.

On the other hand, stake pools will benefit from this system by gaining more delegators and minting more blocks. This will help the cardano network to more decentralized and more secure at the same time.

We plan to start with the stake pools but, our system will be applied to other business verticals such as NFT marketplaces and other cardano protocol.

Altogether, we address this challenge by creating a dapp that will add massive value to the cardano network. The dapp will help stake pool operators, marketers and will increase the security of the cardano network.

What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

At the moment, the only risk that we have considered, is not having enough funds to develop our protocol.

In order to mitigate that risk, we have plan to sell NFTs to fund the project.

Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Roadmap

• 1 - 3 Months

• <u>Community building</u>(We will focus on creating and growing twitter and discord followers)

• <u>Proof of concept</u>

• <u>marketing course creation</u>(We will create a course on SEO and social media marketing to onboard new marketers)

• 3 - 6 Months

• <u>MVP</u> (Deploy a minimal value product)

• <u>Community building</u> (Continue growing twitter and discord followers)

• <u>Deploy marketing course</u> (Start onboarding new member to our marketing course)

• <u>Start road to testnet </u>(Start testing)

• <u>Start a stake pool</u> (Starting a stake pool for testing purposes)

• 6 - 9 Months

• NFT mint(early supports)

• Mainnet launch(Ship our protocol to the public)

• Onboard stake pools

• Community building

• 6 - 12 Months

• Team growing

• Community growing

Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

1- Fullstack Developer (12 months): U$ 80,000

2- Course creation(SEO, social media marketing): U$ 8000

2- Marketing : U$ 10,000 (Advertisement facebook ads + google ads)

Total: U$ 98,000

If additional funding is needed, we count on selling NFT to early investors.

Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Elhadji kebe - Expert marketer, CA (fund 6, 7, 8), VCA (fund 7, 8) , Marlowe pionner program (first cohort).

linkedin.com/in/elhadji-makebe-kebe-741b7235

Walker (Full stack developer)- 12 year in software development, 1 year working with haskell, Plutus pionner program.

<https://www.linkedin.com/in/klarkc/>

If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

We do not plan to return to catalyst for future funding for this proposal. If our protocol is successful, we will charge service fees, which should be enough to sustain our future business costs.

Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Roadmap and Timeline

• 1 - 3 Months

• <u>Community building</u>(We will focus on creating and growing twitter and discord followers)

• <u>Proof of concept</u>

• <u>marketing course creation</u>(We will create a course on SEO and social media marketing to onboard new marketers)

• 3 - 6 Months

• <u>MVP</u> (Deploy a minimal value product)

• <u>Community building</u> (Continue growing twitter and discord followers)

• <u>Deploy marketing course</u> (Start onboarding new member to our marketing course)

• <u>Start road to testnet </u>(Start testing)

• <u>Start a stake pool</u> (Starting a stake pool for testing purposes)

• 6 - 9 Months

• NFT mint(early supports)

• Mainnet launch(Ship our protocol to the public)

• Onboard stake pools

• Community building

• 6 - 12 Months

• Team growing

• Community growing

• Scaling to other business verticals(Nft marketplaces)

Key metrics

The success of our platform will depend on the number of competent marketers we will be able to attract.

1) We will measure the number of affiliate marketers who have successfully brought delegators to a stake pool and earn rewards.

This will be part of our inhouse tracking system.

2) We will also track the number of stake pools that will use our platform and have successfully minted blocks.

We plan to share the numbers on our website to make it easy, for the community to follow our progress.

• Tracking the number of marketers using the platform
• Tracking the number of delegators brought by the marketers

We will use google analytics and in house tracking systems to measure these key metrics.

What does success for this project look like?

Our vision is build a sustainable solution where thousands of people can earn money as marketers, and help many great cardano businesses succeed. We will start by targeting stake pools but all businesses that need leads will be able to take advantage of our protocol.

• Small stake pools will have a viable solution to attract delegators by using our platform.
• Marketers will be able to monetize their audience by using our platform.
• More adoption will come to the cardano network thanks to the sharing economy of our platform.

Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

No