Please describe your proposed solution

Token Allies DAO, the first Decentralized Venture Capital on Cardano, is poised to redefine the venture capital industry. The VC is managed by the Token Allies DAO, this DAO aims to ease capital flow and broaden opportunities by disrupting the traditional VC model and engaging many ecosystem participants. It is especially tailored to fuel the expansion of existing Cardano projects and provide those needed resources for those who have traction and proven business models.

There is nothing wrong with the purpose of the VCs, and it is clear that they have fueled innovation and growth in many areas. Though the centralized way of managing them, is what usually brings all sort of problems and disappointments. Private managed (centralized) VCs work with few "experts"(General Partners) that get to decide what, how and what to do with the Capital raised, leaving the investors (Limited Partners) to sit and wait in hope their funds will be wisely and carefully managed. That old model, produces also a misalignment of interests between these two parties, resulting in loosing impact and opportunities. Our purpose at Token Allies is to solve the bad part of the current VC model, while taking the good ones at higher levels, optimizing the inflows of serious money to impact driven and high growth projects, in a decentralized way, that can give all participants the level of trust, transparency, participation and results they are looking for.

Today, investment in Cardano is limited to starting level investments by Catalyst and some scarce more serious capital from a few investors (mostly coming within the ecosystem itself). Token Allies addresses this imbalance, extending the reach of Cardano's growth and development beyond this limitation, that is hindering great projects with good potential, to be able to reach escape velocity.

In Japan there is a high concentration of Cardano holders, with a good proportion of Cardano whales based there. They are not that actively connected with the rest of the Cardano community overseas and specially because of language and cultural barriers, it is hard for Japanese investors to reach out to other interesting investments opportunities, that can also help the whole Cardano ecosystem to grow, such as investment in Cardano companies.

On the other side in Latin America, the startup ecosystem is booming, with highly talented entrepreneurs, skilled tech professionals, with a cultural fit to many countries, local ecosystems ready for adoption now and resiliency and hunger. Those startups struggle to pass the GAP between initial angel investments, boostrapping or Catalyst, once they have founded traction and a good business model, so their ability to grow and scale is limited.

Acting as a Catalyst natural continuation in the Cardano ecosystem, Token Allies DAO is a community-driven platform that invites a wide range of investors from the Crypto space, to benefit from higher returns with less risk, without leaving the Crypto space, by investing in startups and companies the proper capital they need to reach sustainable businesses. It adds a unique twist to the investment landscape, pairing a unique decentralized funding model based in Cardano's blockchain technology with investors from all over the world. This fusion empowers high potential, high growth, high impact projects to reach their goals, while providing investors an avenue to optimize their capital while actively engaging in the process, without leaving the crypto space.

So our DAO is a natural fit to bridge the GAP between JAPAN and LATAM.

HOW DOES IT WORKS

Token Allies is a DAO that allow its members to become investors in FUNDs that are proposed, reviewed and approved by them. Participation on the FUNDS is optional, but to participate in them, the DAO membership is required.

All the DAO governance are proposed and debated thru our discord channels, while the voting itself will be performed at a DAO platform (1st option is Clarity platform).

The FUNDS once approved by the DAO, are coded via our own template Marlowe Smartcontract that has parameters that are set based on the DAO's decision for the fund (Amount to be raised, type of investment, minimum threshold to collect, timeframes, expected returns, expected duration of investments, requirements for companies applying, etc.) These Smartcontracts will be uploaded, run and instantiated on chain via Demeter.Run platform, which then be integrated to our own Investment Platform via its Marlowe API. Only the platform administrators will have access to this backend. The Smartcontract will be totally autonomous once instantiated in the blockchain and will either be closed once deadline is reached or the amount to be raised, securing investors and DAO valuables.

Our current State

The investment platform exists today as a fully functional MVP with the capabilities to register, assign roles, manage preferences, create Funds entities (by Administrators) and allow users with Investor role to interact with those Fund entities. The platform integrates CIP30 wallets, so users can connect them to the platform, to create investment transactions and receive Tokens and returns.

We have launched our MVP as an Incentivized Testnet in PREPROD Network to test all the functionalities, with almost 400 valid registered people, that are currently testing all the investment platform.

Here are some screenshots of the actual platform that is currently developed in preprod:

With the information and feedback gathered we are preparing ourself for our MAINNET Launch, in order to do that we would like to add all that feedback to the release candidate. We also want to start working in the second part of the process, after the Collecting phase (Crowdfunding of Funds) we need to facilitate the nomination of companies to the funds, the submission of due diligence assessments, the voting from the investors and the vesting to invested companies.

Our MVP can be found here: https://dev.tokenallies.com/

OUR TOKENOMICS

The Token Allies DAO has a three token business model, the DVC, the ALLI and the Investor ID NFT. They work in conjunction, the DVC being the governance utility token to participate in the DAO decision making process (Treasury management, Approval of Fund creation, Oversight of the DAO budget, etc), the ALLI token that works as a dual purpose utility token, first to give investors access to participate in the FUND their invested in decision making (voting which companies receive investment, approval the vesting of funds, approval progress reports from invested companies, etc) and also as a liquidity mechanism if they decide not to participate in the Fund governance, allowing them to sell the token in a secondary market. Finally the Investor ID NFT is the token that gives the investors rights to claim the returns generated by the FUND investments.

The complete details of how this model works can be found in our detailed WhitePaper in https://www.tokenallies.com and some clarifications in our FAQ channel at our Discord: <https://discord.gg/RREfkCdT65>

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

We are building a Business Solution in the Defi space, that could fill a so much needed GAP many projects in Cardano, specially in LATAM are facing, with lack of serious money to reach their potential, specially with no outside VCs interest in our ecosystem. The impact could be huge, aiming directly to the Challenge Why statement: "Cardano needs innovations and solutions that help the ecosystem reach its potential tand help improve the systems we use across the world."

Aiming mainly (nor exclusively) at the Japanese investor community, we will be causing a huge multiplier impact on two high potential regions in the world, key for the Cardano ecosytem to grow.

Our DAO decentralizes decision-making, ensures expert due diligence, and promotes informed choices, fostering a vibrant, inclusive and transparent ecosystem. ALLI Token, minted as a utility token for investors' trust, offers voting rights in the Token Allies' fund they choose to invest in, thus reinforcing participatory decision-making, adding transparency and lowering the barriers for investment and deal flow.

Taking advantage of Cardano's ecosystem cutting edge technologies, such as the Cardano Blockchain, the Marlowe's financial Domain Specific language and infrastructure; Scaling and efficient solutions such as Demeter.run and DAO processes proven platforms such as Clarity we aim to create a unique set of trusted processes, governance rules and Smartcontracts that facilitate and secures the Funding processes needed for our model to work.

Our journey towards this innovative approach has seen countless hours, extensive expertise and immense passion. Our first platform MVP, testifies our commitment to transform investment via blockchain's potential. With Token Allies, investors and companies will have an empowering platform to drive mutual value creation.

During that journey, we have faced hard pivots to found a unique model that can really produce the world-wide impact we set to achieve, that were not easy to do, but the experiences and learnings we have collected allowed us to reach our current state that after almost two years have resulted in this unique model to approach the issues we want o solve by creating this Decentralized VC.

In essence, Token Allies is not just another VC player, but a game-changer aiming to democratize investing, making it more accessible, transparent, and beneficial for the Cardano community.

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?

Both Alex and Lucas are known active members of the Cardano ecosystem with a proven track record generating value and delivering projects, as cofounders of the LATAM Cardano Community helping to building impact in and out of the Latin America region and hosts of the LATAM Townhall and Spaces weekly meetings that aim to lower the barriers for adoption of Cardano in Latin America and organizers of the 13 CIP 1694 Cardano Decentralized Workshops held in LATAM and attendees of the Global CIP 1694 workshop in Edinburgh. With Active participation at Intersect and Leading the promotion and articulation of businesses in Latin America, at many levels.

TokenAllies is a pioneer in adopting and implementing Marlowe SmartContracts Technologies and also serverless infrastructure in Demeter.run (by TXPipe), with a current active relationship with both teams in charge of those technologies.

This is an expansion of our current project, so all the developed functionality can be seen in the current MVP, demonstrating our capabilities to both develop great technology, understand our users needs and integrate with the Cardano ecosystem.

As this is a development project, success will be easily measured by the delivery of its proposed Milestones, with clear and tangible verifiable outputs and evidence.

Our proposed KPIs are divided in two, the first set are there to demonstrate and allow the audit of project deliverables and progress, the second set are there to report and track on Outcomes of the project, once it start to operate with external users, they are:

Validation:

• We will add all the feedback provided by testers of our ITN and confirming the need for them to use it in production to invest in our Funds.
• Project delivery Milestones agreed and documented as our project goals and roadmap, to report on the project progress and delivery on our commitments. (Detailed description in the Roadmap section)

Outcome KPIs - Our Impact:

Short-Medium term

• Number of DAO members: Reaching 250 wallets holding at least 1 DVC tokens each within the first two months of operation.
• A FUND1 approved and voted by the DAO members, with a proposed of 1 M USD equivalent target, created within the first semester of operation (that means the Fund's smartcontracts are ready to be used on the Blockchain, via the platform, allowing us to receive investors money).
• Depending on the KPI above, start of the FUND1 Campaign to attract companies willing to apply to funds, based on the FUND1's approved terms voted by the DAO.
• Number and value of the Tokens minted (DVC and ALLI) thru time.

Medium-Long term

• Number of companies invested by the Token Allies Funds, by type series (series A, series B, etc).
• Number of companies invested, per Fund, that generated a successful Exit (reached the growth and scale purpose).
• Number of companies invested, that are using the Cardano Blockchain.
• Average return ratio to investors per Fund (in X amounts from the invested amount).
• Average holding amount of ALLIs on Fund investors' wallets.
• Average voting power of DVCs on DAO members' wallets.
• Number of Governance Actions performed by the DAO members and the Investors of Funds.
• Average number of voters per Governance Action.

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

Milestone 1: Milestone 1: End of First Month

Objective: Establish User feedback and Fund Interaction on Incentivized Testnet; Present, Discuss and Vote for Fund1

INVESTMENT PLATFORM

Tasks:

• Allow users to continue using the Incentivized Testnet platform.
• Enable users to select roles as Investors or DAO members using tDVC tokens in their connected CIP30 wallets.
• Allow users to submit investments to test Funds and claim their tALLIs when the Funds are fully funded.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) Platform recognizes the tDVC token (Policy ID e1f9c2bf2a1d980cd0319a5966a6649c2d3d769da70d19d038e2e6f9) in the connected wallet when a user wants to get the Investor role.

b) Once the Investor role is granted, users can see available Funds to invest in and invest their TAUSD (Policy ID 16aa7cc0a0e79122e8132fbb2f88f30488a3ef32f9a079b33c621459) in test Funds.

c) Users are able to claim their tstALLI tokens (Policy ID 5413911679525158254c00a953ea98b871b763e697ffcd3cc9b1ede9) after a Fund is fully funded.

GOVERNANCE PLATFORM

Tasks:

• Ensure the platform is accessible to DAO members for registration and recognition by their DVC tokens.
• Create and present a vote on the platform for FUND1 investment thesis.
• Explain FUND1 to DAO members.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) DAO's Governance platform is operational, enabling members to register using their DVC token as proof of membership.

b) FUND1 investment thesis is presented to DAO members in the Discord channel and explained to the DAO to receive feedback.

c) Feedback from DAO members is documented.

Milestone 2: Milestone 2: End of Second Month

Objective: Develop and Validate the Investment Platform for Token Allies DAO

DEMETER PLATFORM

Tasks:

• Validate Marlowe Smartcontract for FUND1 through investor testing.
• Complete the upgrade to Marlowe runtime V1.0.0 and ensure it is functioning as expected.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) Fund Smartcontracts for each investor can be created in Preprod, with predefined Fund parameters.

b) ALLIs tokens can be sent to the contract to instantiate it.

c) Smartcontracts are running with proper parameters and can be verified on-chain in Preprod via our platform and through blockchain scans.

INVESTMENT PLATFORM

Tasks:

• Connect the Token Allies investment platform to the Demeter.run backend.
• Enable registration and connection of the Funds entity to the Smartcontract in Preprod using Marlowe V1.0.0.
• Collect and catalogue feedback from ITN users, prioritize based on importance.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) Token Allies Platform can interact with the Smartcontract via Marlowe runtime REST API running on the Demeter.run node.

b) Platform can display information such as the number of investors, amount invested, percentage of threshold reached, etc.

c) Feedback from ITN users is classified and prioritized accordingly.

GOVERNANCE PLATFORM

Tasks:

• Register, review, and propose FUND1 in the Governance platform.
• Conduct voting by DAO members.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) Proposal and voting of FUND1 successfully performed.

b) Results of the voting are published and accessible to members.

Milestone 3: Milestone 3: End of Fourth Month

Objective: Deploy Investment Platform to Mainnet and Integrate Clarity's API

DEMETER PLATFORM

Tasks:

• Ensure the Mainnet infrastructure for Demeter.run is fully operational.
• Deploy Marlowe Smartcontract for FUND1 on Mainnet.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) All Mainnet nodes are operational and connected.

b) Marlowe Smartcontracts are deployed and validated on Mainnet.

c) Successful interaction and verification of Smartcontracts on the Mainnet.

INVESTMENT PLATFORM

Tasks:

• Establish and configure all Mainnet infrastructure.
• Transition the Token Allies investment platform to production on Mainnet.
• Ensure full operational capabilities and stability on Mainnet.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) Mainnet infrastructure is fully established and configured.

b) Platform is live on Mainnet, accepting registrations and investments.

c) Platform demonstrates stable performance and functionality in a live environment.

GOVERNANCE PLATFORM

Tasks:

• Integrate Clarity's API to display votes on the Token Allies platform.
• Enable real-time voting results visualization on the platform.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) Clarity's API is successfully integrated with the Governance platform.

b) Voting data is accurately displayed in real-time on the Token Allies platform.

c) Users can view and verify voting results directly on the platform.

Milestone 4: Milestone 4: End of Sixth Month

Objective: Launch Fund1 on Platform and Enable Governance Actions

DEMETER PLATFORM

Tasks:

• Deploy Fund1 Smartcontract on Mainnet after DAO approval.
• Start collecting real money investments for Fund1.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) Fund1 Smartcontract is successfully deployed on Mainnet.

b) Real money investments are being collected and recorded on the blockchain.

c) Smartcontract operations are verified and functioning as intended.

INVESTMENT PLATFORM

Tasks:

• Launch Fund1 on the investment platform.
• Enable real-time investment tracking and updates for Fund1.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) Fund1 is live and accessible on the investment platform.

b) Investors can track their investments and see real-time updates.

c) Platform handles transactions and displays accurate investment data.

GOVERNANCE PLATFORM

Tasks:

• Register and approve Fund1 governance actions on the platform.
• Enable investor voting on companies to be selected for investments.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) Fund1 governance actions are registered and approved on the platform.

b) Investors can vote on which companies receive investments.

c) Voting results are accurately recorded and published on the platform.

Final Milestone: Final Milestone: Operate Full Working Platform and Closure Reports

Objective: Managing a fully operational platform for the first Fund's Smartcontracts and investment operations

Tasks:

• Integrated with CIP30 wallet functionality so DAO members can select roles by holding DVC tokens.
• Enable DAO members to vote on governance proposals using the integrated voting platform (Clarity as the first candidate).
• Register and review FUND1.
• Configure the Demeter.Run backend to register and run FUND1 Smartcontract.
• Ensure wallet integration and investment processes work as intended..
• Move to the next stage if fully funded, enabling the company application phase.
• Create the closure report and corresponding video.

Acceptance Criteria:

a) Platform integrates CIP30 wallet and allows role selection based on DVC tokens.

b) DAO members can vote on governance proposals.

c) Investment platform is live and ready to register FUND1, allowing DAO members to review fund details.

d) Demeter.Run backend successfully registers and runs the FUND1 Smartcontract.

e) Smartcontract script verified on-chain, showing status for receiving investments.

f) Investment process works, sending money to the Smartcontract and receiving role tokens.

g) Fund declared fully funded or not funded based on threshold, with appropriate actions (distributing ALLIs or returning investments).

h) If fully funded, funds sent to the Funds Multisig Wallet and process moved to the company application phase.

i) Reports generated from the blockchain and Smartcontract to show fund status.

j) Investment platform updates to reflect the next stage for company applications.

-Closure Report and Video are sent to Catalyst via the POM tool.

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

Our core team, is comprised of 4 partners from Argentina, who are active members in Catalyst and the Cardano ecosystem, looking to leave a footprint in the world. We are passionate about the potential that Cardano can provide to people all over the world.

Lucas Macchiavelli

Lucas started his journey in the traditional stock markets, and quickly made his road into a passion at 19 years old. After advising several clients to traditional investments he turned his sight into Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology, where he recognized it's life changing potential. Thanks to blockchain technology many doors that were previously closed opened, crowdfunding was one of them. After seeing the difficulties with traditional funding methods, he came up with Token Allies. F8 Proposal Assessor &amp; Cardano Ambassador. F9, F10 and F11 proposer and funded.

F7 Funded Proposer (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/382611)

F8 Funded Proposer (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/400427)

F9 Funded Proposer (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/64666)

F10 Funded Proposer (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/107447)

F11 Funded Proposer (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/113748)

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucasmacchiavelli/

Alex Pestchanker

Alex has 24+ years of experience building Digital Products and Companies. He has a dual background, on one side a Solutions Architect and Developer (Cloud, Blockchain, C#, .NET, Java, Angular, DevOps) and on the other side a Company Builder and Advisor, building high-performance teams to deliver products that customers love (Customer Development, Agile, Lean, Design Thinking). Alex is also a professor at ITBA (one of the most prestigious engineering universities in LATAM) and a public speaker, helping to build common knowledge around Digital Transformation, Exponential Organizations, and Abundance.

Within Cardano, Alex is an active community member, performed as Proposal Assessor in F6, F7, F8, F9, F10 and F11 with high ratings on his assessments, and Veteran PA in F7, F8 and F9. He has also been awarded several times for his proposals and successfully completed most of them such as: F6: Proposals Mentors Marketplace ( https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/369749-48088 ), F7: Proposals Mentors Marketplace -cont (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/382926), F8: DCorps - Digital company registry (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/400064), F8:Funding real world Businesses (https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/422489-48088), F9:Bringing Business to Cardano (https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/422416-48088), among others.

F11: (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/113748)

Alex is also a 1st cohort ATALA-Prism Pioneer a 3rd cohort Plutus pioneer and 1st cohort Marlowe's pioneer.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apestchanker/

Facundo Lopez

His entrepreneurial mindset has led him to develop skills and live experiences throughout his company path that were essential when it came to create, design and execute Token Allies. His ambition, passion, perseverance and abilities, combined with all the knowledge acquired during his academic training, are crucial when carrying out and managing the project, especially when taking care of administrative issues.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/facundo-l%C3%B3pez-franceschi-b13814184/

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

The project main costs are developing costs, which are comprised of the following:

1 PM - ADA 9,090 x month = ADA 54,540

1 UX - ADA 6,818,2 x month = ADA 40,909.2

3 DEV - ADA 9,090 x month each (ADA 27,270 per month ) = ADA 163,620

1 Platform ADMIN - ADA 6818,2 x 5 months = ADA 34,091

Platform and infrastructure needed:

Demeter.run = ADA 93,18 x 6 months = ADA 559.08

Governance Platform = ADA 119,32 x 6 months = ADA 715,92

Investment Platform (Netlify+Neo4J DB) = ADA 587,8 x 6 months = ADA 3,526.8

DNS + Hosting for website = ADA 34,96 x 6 months = ADA 209.76

The total of the project is ADA 298,172

We have rounded it up to ADA 300.000

We are integrating different platforms to make our processes work, these are the ones that are relevant in terms of dependencies:

Demeter.run - We are running our Marlowe's Smartcontract, Cardano Node and Marlowe backend in this platform offered by TXPipe. The platform itself runs smooth and it is widely used, even though our first Funds could potentially stress their operating limits. We have also secured a grant by IOG given to us as a number of free DCUs to use in the platform. As our core platform pursue further integration with it, is a key dependency nevertheless.

Clarity platform - We have an agreement with them, to use their platform for our DAO governance, they will provide us with their voting platforms, related to our governance tokens, for both the DAO and the the Funds management, also the Treasury and the Transparency we are seeking to integrate with it. So we will need that it runs smooth and facilitate all the voting and operations.

Marlowe - We depend on the Marlowe's backend and the Marlowe's code evolution by IOG, on our Smartcontracts for the Investment Funds management, specially considering the Crowdfunding type of them, which stress Marlowe to its limits, so the evolution of the language will enable to reach new possibilities on our Funds management. The basic Investment Fund smartcontract though, it is solved and tested that works with the current Marlowe's version.

The approach we manage these dependencies is working very closely with the teams behinds each of them, so we can anticipate any potential disruptions, but also any potential benefit and opportunity. We also help them to tests their ideas, products and services.

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

With the Token Allies model we will be able to close the GAP that projects face after initial funding, when they have proven the business model and are getting traction, but they lack the proper funding to escale and growth (also known as the Death Valley).

This DAO, will prove a very innovative model, that will reshape the concept of a VC, from the standpoint of the investor, providing the investors with the ways, tools and rules to be able to participate on the decision making process of the Funds where they invest. The Cardano community will have the unique opportunity to participate into this process and multiply their assets value without leaving the Cardano blockchain.

We will be minting 3 different tokens, natively in Cardano, so we will be collaborating with increased transaction and fess numbers. Provide the ecosystem with a very innovative way to solve the funding problem and create great value on the ecosystem, that will be probably get noticed by other investors so they can come to the Cardano blockchain.

Our FUND1 will be aimed to fund Cardano Latin American projects with a proven business model that can demonstrate 1 year of paying customers and are ready to scale. This FUND1 fund will be of 1,000,000 USD equiv aimed to be raised at the Japanese Cardano Community, so it will be serious money invested in the Cardano most needed projects that are the ones that can scale and deliver real value.