Please describe your proposed solution.
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<u>Introduction</u>
The ADA Handle community has requested from us a custom marketplace, designed specifically for trading Handles and subHandles, to include custom and easy-to-use search filters, that fully integrates to the new Personalization and subHandle features, while also being ready to evolve along with The Handle Standard. The goal of this proposal is to build the first iteration of The Handle Marketplace.
<u>Custom Search Filters</u>
The purchase of Handles in the secondary market can presently be a daunting task given that existing marketplaces were not designed to allow easy searching of text-based assets. Filtering and searching Handles will be a built-in solution within the Handle Marketplace as it will allow users to find Handles based on their length; determining if they contain numbers, letters and/or special characters (._-); whether they belong to one of the community-led groups (such as the 10k Handle Club and the SubZero Club); and in the future to allow us to create custom filters to integrate to all new features, as we deploy them.
<u>Personalization</u>
With the launch of the Personalization standard, dApps, wallets and other projects can leverage on the information shared by Handle owners such as social-media accounts, contact information, profile pictures, background images, and a lot more. The $handle marketplace will allow us to showcase to the community how to integrate and utilize Personalization data. For example, upon connecting to the marketplace, users will be asked whether they would like to have their Profile Picture (detected from their Handle) shared with other users within the portal, while allowing them to utilize the background image associated with their profile when other visitors access their listings page. Their social-media accounts can optionally also be displayed within their profile page, so that other marketplace users can easily connect with them to simplify trades and other business opportunities. NFT Projects will be able to self-onboard their collections into ADA Handle's Personalization portal and with that have the option to, within the same marketplace, sell PFPs and Backgrounds NFTs. The custom marketplace will also bring additional revenue streams to projects who join the marketplace, as they will be able to sell NFT accessories such as baseball caps, masks, helmets, gloves, and a lot more. As other features are built for the Personalization feature, our marketplace will be the first to showcase them.
<u>subHandles</u>
subHandles will further expand The Handle Standard by allowing the owner of a rootHandle, such as $acme, to mint NFT-based and Virtual subHandles, such as $john@acme and $mary@acme. The Handle Marketplace will create a custom solution to permit the listing of existing minted subHandles. The marketplace will also deliver to rootHandle owners, who wish to monetize on their existing rootHandles, the option to allow the sale and live minting of subHandles. E.g., the owner of $acme could decide to use the marketplace to sell and live mint Virtual and NFT-based subHandles to the community, while choosing the cost that each subHandle would be sold for, allowing them to monetize on their memorable rootHandles.
<u>White Label Marketplace</u>
The development of our dedicated marketplace will pave the way for us to deliver white-label marketplaces for community members who wish to create a unique environment for the sale of their subHandles. For example, the owners of multiple memorable rootHandles could envision a portal their own dedicated for the sale of those subHandles. They could then utilize the technology that we are building to create their own marketplace. The development of our marketplace will create a path for this, since the entire code will be open source.
<u>The Evolution of the Handle Standard</u>
As the Handle Standard evolves, so will our needs with partner marketplaces. Presently, as we build and deliver new features, we depend on said partner marketplaces to update their code in order to accommodate the new features. For example, the Personalization feature is now live on the Preview and PreProd blockchains, and soon will be live on MainNet, but marketplaces have not yet demonstrated their integration to the new standard. Therefore, it could take weeks or months for them to fully adapt the new technology. With the inception of The Handle Marketplace, as we ship new features, we will be able to showcase much more quickly to the community, while also having the certainty that new features will always be integrated.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
The importance of the Products & Integrations Fund 10 challenge is related to funding projects that will help with Cardano's adoption, by creating more reasons for people to interact with the blockchain. Within the types of proposals that the category recommends be included are: Social Media, Marketplaces, Wallets and Business Solutions. The Handle Marketplace checks all these boxes since 1) Handles can–and already are–being used as social-media accounts on the blockchain, 2) given that almost all wallets have already integrated to the Handle Standard, 3) multiple business solutions, that range from tax reporting to airdrops, have developed full integrations to Handles, and 4) we are specifically building a marketplace, which the challenge outlines as one of its key items.
Additionally, the Handle Standard is the leading naming solution for the Cardano blockchain but we presently do not have a marketplace that is dedicated for listing, trading, and communicating about Handles in the secondary market. There are several marketplaces on the Cardano ecosystem, many of which are excellent, but none of them offer a perfect integration to Handles since they were not designed for trading text-based assets, which limits what their platforms can offer.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
Over 221,000 Handles have been minted since our MainNet launch in March 2022. Approximately 33,000 of these Handles are presently listed on the leading NFT marketplace of the Cardano blockchain, and many others across other platforms, including other marketplaces and lending/borrowing dApps. However, presently, it is not a straightforward task to locate, for example, a number-only Handle because existing filters on all platforms do not permit this. Thus, a potential buyer who might be looking for a Handle associated with one of the existing community groups, such as the 10k Handle Club and the Subzero Handle Club, cannot easily locate all the available Handles that match these criteria on the secondary market. This is especially true for the untrained eyes and new blockchain users. Therefore, one of the measurements of the success of this proposal will be the ability to search and filter Handles with ease, whether they contain letters, numbers and/or special characters.
Secondary-market volume will be another Key Performance Indicator (KPI) measuring the success of this proposal. Presently, the secondary market of Handles have processed, on the leading NFT marketplace, 2.92M ADA, spread over the past 22 months. The Handle Marketplace will simplify searching, finding and trading Handles. Thus, a quantifiable KPI will be the month-over-month increase of sales on the secondary market. Our goal is to increase the average monthly sale from the the current baseline of 132K ADA per month (2.92M ADA / 22 months).
One of the features that ADA Handle is presently building, Personalization, will need a platform to showcase all of its potential to other dApps and projects launching on Cardano. The Handle Marketplace is going to be developed to integrate, from day 1, all that Personalization has to offer. This will include clear documentation on how other dApps can integrate to the standard. Therefore, another KPI for this proposal will be to become the User Experience (UX) showcase for Personalization, allowing other platforms to study how data can be integrated to their systems. E.g., the usage of cross-dApp Profile Pictures, background images and color profiles that Handle owners chose. Therefore, verifying that other platforms have successfully integrated to the features that we are building within Personalization will be one of the success metrics.
Enabling owners of rootHandles to live mint subHandles for a profit will be another KPI for the success of The Handle Marketplace. The number of subHandles minted via the live-mint option from the marketplace will be another KPI for this proposal.
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
The Handle Standard presently has over 80,000 followers across all our social-media accounts, including Twitter, Discord, Telegram and founders' accounts. Our entire team is constantly communicating with our community. We are all active, answering questions and developing solutions requested by the community. This can be easily verified by monitoring our social-media accounts (listed above within this proposal) and by joining ADA Handle's Discord: <https://discord.gg/sYkFgRQFwG>. Our Discord includes a dedicated channel for Project Catalyst, wherein we explain all that has been built and delivered, while answering questions along the way.
We are also in constant contact with all of ADA Handle's partners, which include wallets, dApps and other plaftorms. We share with them, on a weekly basis, all that we are building, provide clear documentation on how they can utilize the new features, while answering questions and assisting with integration. An example of this cautious and constant communication was the recent launch of Personalization on PreProd, wherein we created and coordinated a launch campaign with two of the largest wallets: Eternl and Lace, coordinating with them a Public Relations and Marketing campaign. This attracted a considerable amount of attention to all projects, which generated immediate community reaction, including several review videos on YouTube and Twitter, showing to the community how Personalization works. We are going to have similar marketing strategies to communicate the launch of The Handle Marketplace.
ADA Handle's entire team is quite active on social media, constantly communicating with NFT projects, founders of other dApps, in order to remain active and relevant within the community. An example of this marketing awareness was with the onboarding of 3 of the major NFT projects: Clay Nation, GOAT Tribe and Derp Birds. We assisted them with the development of custom background images for the new Personalization feature. This approach helped us spread the word not only within our community but across theirs too, while also gaining traction with other NFT projects, as they too wanted to be part of the launch. This allowed us to create a second cohort for background images and profile pictures. A similar approach will be taken when launching this proposal, creating awareness and interest across the community.