Please describe your proposed solution.

“ADA Link" will be the first Cardano platform that will connect SPOs with delegation promoters.

SPOs are the pillars of decentralization in Cardano. Currently, 1356 of 3184 pools have less than the 2M ADA in active stake needed to sustain their pools long term. We need the few people that have the know-how to operate pools to have the proper tools to thrive.

We will use NFT’s policy ID to identify the delegation that will come from SPO allies’ promotional efforts. This platform will turn Cardano into the first blockchain to have NFTs with an innate utility: helping promote SPOs and the decentralization of the network while getting rewarded for it.

Think of this platform as an SPO marketplace for promoters. Here are a few use case scenarios:

Scenario 1:

Any NFT Collection project can promote an ally pool by incentivizing their holders with giveaways and other perks.

Scenario 2:

Whales will be able to use their wallet address to sign in. The platform will consider any wallet holding more than 1M ADA a whale. They can use this platform to increase their passive income. To incentivize fair distribution of delegation, 10M ADA per alliance is the maximum amount that can apply for rewards using this platform.

Scenario 3:

In the future many IRL influencers and promoters will be dropping their own NFT collections. They can use this platform to generate additional passive income.

Scenario 4:

Regionally, local businesses and associations can promote delegation to an ally pool by creating NFT collections that offer products and other perks to their clients, members and/or employees.

Platform user experience

• Any SPO, NFT Project and Whale can register their pool, NFT Project or -in case of whales- wallet address and link it to a light wallet.
• SPOs will be able to customize their profile and add custom parameters to the offers they are willing to accept. All registered users can offer/add/edit alliances. And SPOs can have multiple allies.
• After choosing an SPO, any ally can make an offer by submitting the NFT policy ID, the amount of epochs the alliance will last and confirm the wallet address that will receive the rewards.
• Based on the current stake the pool has and the sum of the ADA in the wallets of the ally’s NFT holders, the platform will provide an estimate of the rewards for coming epochs.
• The platform will split the stakepool margin rewards proportionally based on the amount of delegation from each ally. The rewards from the first block of each epoch can't be splitted, it will always go to the SPO, and no blocks equals no rewards.
• The NFT ally can promote delegation to their stakepool in however form they see fit.
• At the end of each epoch, the platform prepares a transaction to be signed by the SPO to distribute the rewards according to the calculated split of each ally. Allies will receive their split of the rewards as soon as the SPO signs.
• SPOs will be provided with all relevant information about their current alliances.
• NFT’s Policy ID can only be in one alliance at a time.
• SPOs, allies and public users can search for a specific pool ID or policy ID to check data associated with it. Such data can contain current stakepool ally, reward status, reward history, etc. This way we keep the information easy to read so the community can keep an eye for bad actors.

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

We believe that this platform will generate interesting promotional dynamics that will benefit Cardano’s ecosystem as a whole by giving everyone the ability to get incentivized for promoting an SPO of their choosing utilizing any NFT’s policy ID as the tool. Ultimately, the more success the SPOs in our ecosystem have and the more the delegation is spread away from multipools the more decentralized Cardano becomes.

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

Risk 1: A team member’s emergency or accident that might impede or postpone the delivery.

Risk 2: Colliding into a critical obstacle that might cause some delay or change in main plans. This is a chance in any R&D project.

Solution: These risks can be mitigated by onboarding a helping hand or by extending the timeline, if needed depending on the scenario.

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

Starting in Q4 2022, milestones will be broken down in monthly basis:

• Month 1: Research & Pre-Production
• Month 2: UI/UX Development
• Month 3: Preparing the database architecture. Developing backend scripts/engines to keep track of all relevant data (registered policy IDs, their holders and relevant stake pools).
• Month 4: Integrating both frontend and backend. Iterating on both ends, i.e. expanding, adding and editing features.
• Month 5: Platform testing and preparing for deployment and platform promotion.
• Month 6: Platform deployment and debugging. SPO and NFT Projects onboarding.
• Month 7: More SPOs and NFT Projects onboarding and more platform debugging.

Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Platform Development: 500 hours, 6 months, part-time = $49,500

Project Management: 480 hours, 6 months, part-time = $25,000

Community Manager: 480 hours, 6 months, part-time = $12,000

First year of Servers/APIs: $1,100 USD

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

Developer: Mahmoud Nimer is a Mechanical Engineer with a Master of Science degree in Control Systems and Robotics (Mechatronics Engineering). Worked in research and development for two years before focusing on industrial automation engineering for more than 5 years. He has been an active builder in the Cardano ecosystem and has been the developer of well known NFT projects such as:

• Zi Project
• Over Exposed
• Ugly Bros S2
• JAR Heads
• Shroom Publishing/ Shroom ATM

<https://twitter.com/MahmoudNimer>

Project Management: With a Bachelor of Science Degree in Film, Natalia Rosa has directed and supervised departments of production of different media projects and has over 10 years of experience working in film, television, and multi-media promotional campaigns.

www.linkedin.com/in/natalia-rosa-film

https://twitter.com/Nat_JSat

Community Manager: Gisela Rosa is a professional musician that works as Social Media Manager for Blockverse Media, Inc. managing La Cryptoría’s account. Known as $Ms.Arcella, she has been a strong supporter of multiple projects building on Cardano since epoch 259, always promoting Cardano’s values in the cardano community.

https://twitter.com/GR_JSAT

<https://twitter.com/LaCryptoria>

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

Yes, we might need to return for further funding. We would like this platform to be trustless in the future. We are currently experimenting with ideas for smart contract implementation to make this possible but this phase of the proposal does not contemplate that work.

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

The roadmap stated above will be the main metric to track the development/state of the project.

What does success for this project look like?

Once we launch the platform we will be able to see how successful the initiative is based on the amount of SPOs and NFT projects that actively use it.

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

This is an entirely new project not a continuation of a previously funded one.