Please describe your proposed solution.

We are developing a suite of tools on our Splash platform that effectively enables listed projects to distill their messaging, market their products, and expand their reach thereby increasing customers and sales. To aid with this, we will harness social media incentive mechanisms to onboard collectors, creators, and KOLs on Cardano as well as other blockchains that feature thriving NFT communities. We are making inroads into Polygon, Ethereum, and Solana and these collaborations will boost followings as cross-chain pollination occurs. The ultimate goal is an expansive, cross-chain, ‘living’ directory which not only showcases the games, apps, and tokens of listed projects but also rewards users for interacting with those projects in a meaningful way.

• Interconnected Communities

Splash will support directory listings from multiple blockchains, starting with Cardano. This growing network will not only attract digital traffic from other blockchains but also expose Cardano projects to a larger audience, simulate social growth, and encourage the sharing of information and ideas.

• Proper Representation Of Project And Digital Assets

Splash allows projects to feature their complete bouquet of products and services enabling newcomers to quickly understand the ins and out of each project without the need to wade through multiple Discord servers or read lengthy whitepapers. In addition, Splash equips the newcomer with not just the important links of each project like socials and website, but also preferred marketplaces and exchanges as well as sniping tools where the best NFT deals can be realized.

• User Incentivisation For Interacting With Projects

In order to encourage and incentivize the onboarding of users to the Splash directory, we are building a sophisticated mechanism that will reward users in different ways for interacting with the many listed projects.

• User Profiling And Personalized Incentives

Splash will leverage profiling to understand the preferences and behaviors of its users. Based on these insights, tailor-made recommendations that align with individual interests can be offered, thus connecting projects with their ideal customer base.

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

We have interviewed multiple project creators and the one agreed-upon problem with Cardano is the lack of marketing solutions. We are determined to solve this problem. New projects typically struggle to acquire meaningful social clout because of the difficulty in forging partnerships and managing social media channels.

Unlike NFT ecosystems on Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana, where robust collaborative tools have been developed to assist new projects to solidify social traction, the insular nature of Cardano has meant that many projects fail to make it into the social media limelight even when their infrastructure, resources or tooling could be of great benefit to the space.

Splash boosts projects' social following by attracting look-alike audiences through our improved directory and incentivization model. By helping new projects and creators more easily attract thousands of Twitter, Discord and/or Instagram followers, Cardano will become more of a destination for projects to build on.

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

Splash is determined to have 2,000+ project listings from Cardano and Polygon by the end of Q4, 2023. These listed projects, whether developing or developed, will enjoy increased followings both on Twitter and Discord because of the combined blockchain user base now finally aware of their existence.

The longer-term goal of Splash is to become a sort of ‘Web3 Linkedin’, a veritable web of NFT projects and products which informs creators and collectors and promotes collaboration and growth of projects and their ecosystems.

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

Our progress will be easily trackable on the Splash platform. This will include the number of listed communities and tokens as well as their interlinked assets. Other useful information like growing social followings and NFT sales data will also be featured. Regular updates and feedback will be made via Twitter and Discord.

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

Splash already has a functioning app with hundreds of monthly users that are using our gamified minting solutions, a multi-chain community directory with hundreds of projects listed, and a suite of token utilities.

Our dev team has built robust multisig minting solutions and token conversion tech on Cardano. Our most used product, the NFT Recycler, can receive 24 NFTs and send out 12 FTs all in a single transaction. To date, around a thousand collectors have recycled a whopping 30,000 NFTs using this advanced Web3 tool.

In addition, our operations team has analyzed and classified all 9,000 Cardano NFT policies that have at least 10+ NFTs. This was a Herculean feat that took us over 6 months to complete but it has proved very useful because we have learned much about the types of NFT collections and their utilities.

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

The main goals for Splash are to enhance discoverability, incentivize community participation, personalize the user experience, and ultimately help projects sell their digital assets.

Our team has already conducted extensive market research to understand the needs and preferences of the greater community. To date, our team has analyzed over 1000+ projects on Cardano, Polygon, and other blockchains. Splash was a major contributor to the research that was published in The Monet Society's Gitbook.

Furthermore, Splash is already a working app which is a testament to our ability to develop and deliver a useful product. The foundation is in place but there is so much more to be done. We are requesting funding in order to further build out the tooling and infrastructure required to make Splash truly indispensable to the growth and ultimate success of Web3 projects.

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.

Milestone 1: Profile Management Development (Month 1)

• Commence user login frontend development and testing
• Commence community forms and approval process flows

Milestone 2: Social Media Feed Integration and Incentive Plans (Month 2-3)

• Commence integration of social media integrations
• Configuration of incentive program and development of the incentive ledger

Milestone 3: Cross-Chain Integrations and Community Onboarding (Months 4-5)

• Commence wallet and blockchain feed integrations
• Integrate token market data feeds
• Final phase of community onboarding task starts

Milestone 4: User Profiling & Recommendation Engine Build (Months 6-7)

• User profiling commences using categorizations of collections to understand the types of communities, projects, games, and apps our users prefer
• Build and pilot a recommendation engine based on user preferences to deliver targeted content and ensure a smoother user experience

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

Milestone 1: Profile Management Development

Deliverables: A user can register an account with their email and manage the collections that they own, and the communities that they have created. Collectors will be able to see all the communities that they are a part of and their reward balances for engaging with these communities. Project owners will be able to edit/update the communities they have created, and establish interlinked connections between their services/products and tokens.

Milestone 2: Social Media Feed Integration and Incentive Plans

Deliverables: Users will be able to see key metrics of social media profiles on a community page including a button to follow and share the community. There will also be a Twitter feed that will provide users with a high-level overview of recent Tweets from that community. New users that have just discovered a project will be rewarded in fungible tokens for following and sharing that project’s listing with their own network.

Milestone 3: Cross-Chain Integrations and Community Onboarding

Deliverables: Integration with one additional blockchain including wallet connectors, blockchain data, and pricing feeds. The users will be able to connect their cross-chain wallets and see all projects that they follow/support and/or own digital assets of. Listings of projects on these chains will commence, bringing their communities over to Splash and exposing a new audience of users to them.

Milestone 4: User Profiling & Recommendation Engine Build

Deliverables: By capturing thousands of different projects, along with their categorization tags (metadata) and social followings, we will recommend projects to users on the homepage and other featured sections of the app based on their preferences and the assets held in their wallets.

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

The project will require two developers and an ops team of 2 people to assist. The two developers will be working 100+ hours per month and will charge $5000 per month for 7 months = $70,000.

The ops team will be working to onboard at least 1,000 projects and will try to reach up to 3,000 projects by the end of 7 months. They will be responsible for social media, direct sales and data input. Both ops members will be paid $3,000 per month for 7 months as well = $42,000.

All other members will be providing support to the project, but will not be paid.

This is a grand total of $112,000 (using ADA price of $0.28) = ADA400,000

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

Dee Boshoff - Linkedin

Ops Manager

Dee Boshoff is a digital marketing expert and blockchain enthusiast who spent a decade studying, living and working in Asia with a leading digital marketing agency. He is currently helping to conceptualize, build and market Splash, a gamified NFT minting and data aggregation directory looking to onboard the next wave of Web3 projects and users into the creative ecosystem.

Ramon Vos - Linkedin

Sales

Ramon Vos is a cross-chain NFT degen, crypto trader & Investor since 2021. He has over a decade of experience in the luxury hospitality industry working in Asia, Africa, and Europe. He is Dutch by nationality, multilingual, and currently is based in France. He has a Master's Degree in marketing and finance.

Aaron Arfman - [Linkedin](<https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-arfman-cfa-1209a95/ >)

Product

Aaron Arfman is an entrepreneur with 20 years of operations experience in China and a Cardano supporter since 2018. He is passionate about developing products that make blockchain more accessible to the masses by leveraging his cross-industry experiences from private equity, fintech startups to wine production and distribution.

Jacques Bosch - Linkedin

CTO

Jacques Bosch, a tech entrepreneur from South Africa, loves the way harnessing software can reshape the real world. With a quarter of a century career spanning a diverse range of industries, from Blockchain and Auctioning to Education and Insurance, Jacques has a wealth of experience in implementing successful systems across many countries. For over 18 years, he has led competent teams founded on strong and respect-based relationships. Currently, he is concentrating on developing blockchain products and generative AI solutions for enterprise scenarios, highlighting his love of innovation and progress.

Piro Vorster - Linkedin

Developer

Piro Vorster is a skilled tech professional and founder of 2 successful software startups, Inversion and Pink Fish, with 17 years of experience in technologies like .NET, Azure, C#, and more. He's worked in a broad range of sectors, including Auctioning, Insurance, and Reinsurance, and relishes the thrill of solving complex challenges. Piro's credentials include a BSc (Hons) Computing degree and a wealth of leadership experience. He also boasts an unusual asset — a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, reflecting his commitment to discipline and strategic thinking.

Paul Cowan - Github

Developer

Paul Cowan is a seasoned programmer with over 20 years of experience, largely with C# .NET. He's worked across multiple industries, most notably in online retail, gaming, and now in the emergent fields of blockchain and NFTs. Working in both private and open source spaces, and a keen problem solver, Paul brings a blend of expertise, lateral thinking, and collaborative spirit to every project.

Murray Walker - [Linkedin](<https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-clive-walker-59b9b1174/ >)

Advisor

Murray Walker is a South African NFT art afficionado and curator. After living in China for 10 years, he returned to South Africa where he built small online businesses. He has been involved in Cardano since 2018 and NFT since 2021. He is currently the Operations Guru at The Art Bank and Community Manager at Cur8.

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

We are helping to solve one of Cardano's largest weaknesses…social marketing. Projects usually need dedicated staff and budget to onboard new users through the use of online marketing channels and campaigns. With Splash, we are providing these projects with a one-stop platform that aggregates users from other chains and rewards them for their participation, effectively reducing their customer acquisition costs.

Moreover, we are already using an existing app to build out this functionality and leveraging the reach of social media to acquire these users where they spend time online, significantly reducing the total cost to market.

Lastly, we are working with highly qualified and experienced developers at a fraction of their market value, with the cost per hour coming in at $50.