Please describe your proposed solution

Staking Baskets are a groundbreaking new innovation and schematic for furthering decentralization on the Cardano blockchain.

Staking Baskets are a smart contract on the Cardano blockchain that takes the user’s ADA and delegates 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 Staking Basket has been built and is now in the later stages of testing and integrating without 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.

The smart-contract also uses the datums that are held in the contract. These datums keep track of what the rate of conversion is for Basket tokens based on the total ADA deposited. This bot tells the smart-contract to read the datums in the smart-contract and update it regularly to ensure the exchange rate is correct. This smart-contract will also claim any fees that the Basket operator to claim Basket administration fees.

Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

Staking Baskets incentivize users to delegate to multiple stakepools at the same time. Anyone on Cardano will be able to create their own Basket with their own incentive to support decentralization. This Basket bot will allow Basket admins to better manage their Basket, it’ll make it easier for admins to increase Cardano’s decentralization.

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

Our team has significant experience in all areas needed to complete the Staking Basket bot.

Our core team consists of multiple decades of front-end, back-end, Cardano smart-contract and full-stack experience, security experts and award winning designers with experience working for some of the largest most recognized brands in the world. All team members are Cardano community natives, with a love for the community and a united vision in building products that serve the ecosystem.

We have already delivered a solid prototype with our alpha product, our first testnet saw thousands of users playing with our Staking Basket feature on testnet, and have multiple products in development close to being shipped. In this testnet, we had over 3300 unqiue stake ids complete over 50,000 transactions. You can review the prototype currently live on Cardano's preview network here: https://alpha.atrium.io

What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Milestone 1: In the first milestone we'll deliver the technical specification of the Basket Bot.

Milestone 2: In the second milestone we'll have the MVP implementation code completed, and we’ll write text guides on how you can use this code to implement the Basket bot with the Staking Basket smart-contract.

Milestone 3: On this final milestone we'll run a Staking Basket on Cardano's preview network with the bot integrated that automatically changes the Basket state epoch to epoch based on intentions of the Basket admin.

Milestone 4: On this milestone we'll run a Staking Basket on Cardano's preview network with the bot integrated that automatically changes the Basket state epoch to epoch based on intentions of the Basket admin. The Basket bot will also update the Basket exchange rate based on the total amount of ADA deposited into the smart-contract.

Milestone 5: On this milestone we'll gather feedback from users while running the bot in a testnet environment, and fix any bugs that are found with the bot.

Final Milestone: We will open-source this smart-contract on github with text files that show you how you can use the Basket bot with the Staking Basket smart-contract to rebalance stake, and ensure a correct exchange rate.

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

Preston: Âtrium Lab - Backend developer

Angelo: Âtrium Lab - Full Stack Developer

Riley: - Smart Contract developer

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

150k ADA is the estimated cost to write the Staking Basket bot code.

30k ADA is the estimated cost to integrate the bot with the Staking Basket smart contract, and testing the bot.

20k ADA open-sourcing the contract, and writing text guides on how to use the Basket bot.

No dependancies

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. There’s no risk we won’t ship the Basket bot.