Please describe your proposed solution.

Staking Baskets are a groundbreaking new innovation and schematic for furthering decentralization on the Cardano blockchain. Developed by MLabs, a renowned specialist in Haskell and Rust, Staking Baskets are a smart contract system that allows users to delegate their ADA to a large number of Stake pools in a user-friendly way. Users will also be able to create their own Staking Baskets with their own list of stakepools.

Staking Baskets are smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain that take the user’s ADA and delegate it across multiple pools in the ecosystem. For depositing the ADA, users will receive basket tokens that can be used to withdraw their initial ADA deposit + their rewards. These basket tokens are liquid and can be sent to other wallets. They can also be swapped on a DEX, given that there’s a liquidity pool. Diffusion, our first basket has been built and is now in the later stages of testing and integrating within our front end.

This proposal will see the development of a bot that can rebalance the ADA delegation across any number of stakepools. As new users deposit into the Smart Contract their ADA needs to be assigned to multiple Staking UTXOs to delegate to multiple pools. Without this bot the Basket operator would have to manually assign the ADA each epoch.

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

This bot can be used to automatically balance ADA delegation in any Smart Contract. Developers can repurpose this bot for their own Smart Contracts, or create their own automatically managed Staking Basket.

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

This bot can be used to automatically balance ADA delegation in any Smart Contract. Developers can repurpose this bot for their own Smart Contracts, or create their own automatically managed Staking Basket.

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

Diffusion is our first Staking Basket to be released and will serve as the test bed. A community vote will determine the single SPOs that form its composition.

Diffusion will delegate to 50 different single stakepool operators in the ecosystem, and reward users with their ADA rewards + additional tokens to incentivise Cardano’s decentralisation.

We will test this Staking Basket bot with our own Staking Basket ‘Diffusion’ on Cardano’s preview network. Following that we will release this bot with ‘Diffusion’ on Cardano’s mainnet.

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

Our team has significant experience in all the areas needed to complete staking baskets. MLabs, are one of the most well respected development firms operating in the Cardano ecosystem, and have developed smart contracts for IOG, Sundae Labs, Singularity Net, Liqwid Finance, and many more companies/projects.

Our core team consists of multiple decades of front-end, back-end and full-stack experience, security experts and award winning designers with experience working for some of the largest most recognised brands in the world. Our founder Peyton, is the operator behind Bloom, one of the largest stake pools in the ecosystem responsible for minting the 8th block on the Cardano blockchain. All team members are Cardano community natives, with a love for the community and a united vision in building products that serve the ecosystem.

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

Our main goal for this project is to create a new Staking Ecosystem on Cardano. An ecosystem that allows users to be rewarded more for supporting decentralisation. This ecosystem will also allow any entity to create their own Staking Basket with their own reward incentive.

We’ve validated that this approach is feasible by writing the smart contracts and testing it on Cardano’s preview network. We’ve also shared this idea with the community at a Cardano event we hosted and live streamed in Austin Texas. Since the livestream we’ve had hundreds of supporters championing the idea of Staking Baskets.

When testing our Staking Baskets on Cardano’s preview network it became evident a bot was needed for a improved Basket creator user experience. After investigating the technical capability of the Cardano blockchain we know it’s feasible to deliver this bot.

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.

Production began on this project 2 months ago, milestone 1 will be completed before the funding round begins.

Milestone 1 (month 1):

Staking Basket Bot Design

Milestone 3 (month 3):

Staking Basket Bot Core Code

Staking Basket Bot Integration

Milestone 4 (month 4):

Staking Basket Bot Testnet Release

Milestone 5 (month 5):

Staking Basket Bot Mainnet Release

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

Staking Basket Bot Design

• This milestone will see a full technical design of the Staking Basket Bot implementation completed.

Staking Basket Bot Core Code

• Following the design’s completion, we will write the core code for the Staking Basket Bot. Once this is completed, we’ll have a working Staking Basket Bot to begin testing after integration.

Staking Basket Bot Integration

• After the development of the Staking Basket Bot, it will be integrated with the Smart Contract to allow rebalancing.

Staking Basket Bot Testnet Release

• The Staking Basket Bot will be shipped to Cardano’s preview network integrated with a working Staking Basket to find bugs.

Staking Basket Bot Mainnet Release

• After we squash bugs, and release our bot to Cardano’s preview network, we will release our bot to Cardano’s mainnet. This milestone will mark the completion of the Staking Basket Bot.

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

Staking Basket Bot Code - 50k

• The Staking Basket Bot code will be written by Mlabs and is estimated to cost fifty-thousand dollars. Three developers will be employed full time writing the code for the Staking Baskets Bot.

Staking Basket Bot Integration - 10k

• Our core development team will work with the Mlabs to integrate the Staking Baskets bot into an existing Staking Basket.

Staking Basket Bot Test - 5k

• Mlabs and Atrium will do an internal test of the Staking Basket Bot, following our internal test we’ll release the bot on Cardano’s preview network to allow a greater number of users to test this bot.

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

Peyton: Âtrium Lab - Co-founder

Ben: Âtrium Lab - Co-founder and Creative Director

Brian: Âtrium Lab - Lead Developer

Nick: Âtrium Lab - Backend developer

Angelo: Âtrium Lab - Full Stack Developer

Kyle: Âtrium Lab - Head of security

Tylyn: Âtrium Lab - Social manager

Ben: MLabs - Smart Contract developer

Sahil: MLabs - Smart Contract developer

Alexey: MLabs - Smart Contract developer

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

Smart contract and tooling development can be very costly. We have invested a significant amount of our time and resources in building the underlying contract and it’s bot. It is near completion, and when it is delivered, it will help enhance decentralization and spread stake further across the network. In our opinion, this is an extremely valuable proposition for the Cardano ecosystem.