Please describe your proposed solution.

We have built a live, sold-out, web-based survival game and successfully onboarded and provided this gaming utility to 9 NFT projects so far. Based on the success to date, we seek to accelerate bringing gaming utility to additional communities by automating the onboarding process.

This project seeks to create streamlined way to onboard partner NFT projects by building the following tools:

A service that extracts NFT metadata and IPFS images

1. Metadata Processing: Pull the metadata from the on-chain data and put it into a convenient format for processing.
2. IPFS/Arweave Hash Extraction: Identify the primary IPFS or Arweave hash from the given metadata.
3. Download and Optimize: Use a series of IPFS Gateways to attempt to download the images in parallel.

A portal for our partners

1. This would be read-only in this iteration. In subsequent stages of development, partners will be able to upload and edit assets
2. Authentication will be required; this will be done using staking addresses.
3. Fields would include project name, policy ID(s), website URL, sprite, default sprite, predator, predator image, and special item.

Benefits:

Community: Based on the 9 partners we’ve onboarded so far, we have seen both our own community and the community of our partner projects grow. People are discovering new communities and projects that they resonate with, and players overwhelmingly find the game fun.

Project creators: New partner projects will be onboarded more quickly; currently, our partner backlog is 2 months and growing. The ability for project creators to view their content in our game via our portal will add more clarity and transparency and improve their onboarding experience.

Developers: Open sourcing this code will allow other projects to be able to achieve the same functionality without needing the expertise to be able to code this from scratch. This allows teams to innovate instead of reinventing the wheel.

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

Our proposed solution will allow us to bring gaming utility to more projects quickly. Easy access to gaming utility can be particularly advantageous for NFT projects with small teams that lack the development resources to build their own game. This creates:

Community Building Opportunities: Developing a community around an NFT project is crucial for its success. By integrating their NFTs into our gaming utility, projects with small teams can tap into this pre-existing community and benefit from the exposure, feedback, and collaboration opportunities it provides. It enables them to reach a wider audience and build a dedicated following without the need for extensive marketing efforts.

Resource and Cost Savings: Building a game from scratch requires significant development resources, time, and financial investment. By utilizing a shared gaming utility, these NFT projects can avoid the high costs associated with game development. They can allocate their resources to creating high-quality NFT assets and fostering community engagement instead of diverting them towards building and maintaining a game infrastructure.

Focus on NFT Innovation: By relying on a shared gaming utility, NFT projects with small teams can prioritize their core strengths and expertise in NFT creation and innovation. They can invest their time and creativity in developing unique and valuable NFT assets, exploring new concepts, and experimenting with different models to drive adoption and interest.

Accelerated Access to a Gaming Environment: By utilizing a shared gaming utility, NFT projects with limited development resources can quickly access an existing gaming environment by leveraging the infrastructure and technology we’ve already built. This increases the speed in which we can realize the benefits from the community building opportunities, resource and cost savings, and NFT innovation described above for each project and the Cardano community as a whole.

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

Shared gaming utility will foster community growth, encourage collaboration, and allow new NFT projects to gain a foothold in the ecosystem.

Performance can be measured by the following:

1. Number of NFT projects onboarded
2. Number of wallets with Yolo Solos
3. Number of Yolo Solos players
4. Partner testimonials
5. Player testimonials

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

The Yolo Solos team has been providing consistent updates and hosting community events for over a year. We will include updates and outputs of this proposal in our four main communication channels:

1. Summarized development updates posted to Twitter and Discord every Wednesday via our "Tech Trek"
2. Special Twitter and Discord announcements for large updates.
3. Updates posted on our website, yolosolos.io. We will carve out a section specifically for Project Catalyst updates and milestones.
4. Updates during our Twitter spaces.

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

We have been developing our survival game, Yolo Solos, with the purpose of bringing projects and communities together since January 2022. We launched a prototype of our story engine in August 2022 and have released updates every Tuesday ever since. We launched a choose your own adventure style version of the game in December of 2022 rooted in the story engine we had build that added the element of player agency by allowing players to direct their character's daily actions. We added several features including predator battles, map animation, and inventories. We launched a massive update in June 2023 that added a new map, recipes and cooking, crafting and equipping, a complete UI overhaul, and much more. It’s playable at yolosolos.io and has an extensive roadmap we’ve been delivering on consistently for the past year.

We have successfully onboarded 9 partner projects so far. This model has provided value for both the project owners and communities and brings people together, but we need to improve the efficiency to increase the rate that we can onboard new projects. We have far more requests than we can accommodate.

The team members have backgrounds in business, software development, and product and budget management; we are well-equipped to manage budgets for technical projects and communicate product expectations and updates to the community.

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

The ability to accelerate the rate of onboarding with the technology outlined would double the number of partners onboarded per month, bringing us from an average of 4 new partners per month to 8 new partners per month. Further iterations can improve this to an even higher rate.

Our partner dashboard will improve visibility and onboarding experience for our partners. They will be able to view how their assets and project information are displayed in game.

The proof of concept has already been completed; we are confident that this approach is feasible because we have already successfully onboarded 9 partners. Now we need to improve the efficiency at which we can deliver value to additional projects.

This has provided important value to the partners we have onboarded in the following ways:

Expanded user base: Gaming utility can attract a wider audience to the partner NFT project. Gamers who may not have initially been interested in NFTs can be drawn in by the added gaming elements. This expansion of the user base increases exposure, drives community growth, and brings in new potential users and collectors.

Enhanced NFT value: The integration of gaming utility can enhance the value of the NFTs associated with the project. By enabling NFTs to unlock exclusive content, provide special abilities, or offer unique experiences within the game, their desirability and utility increase. This added value can drive demand for the partner project's NFTs.

Community building: Gaming utility fosters community building and interaction among users. A sense of community and shared experiences is created between projects. This community engagement not only increases user loyalty but also promotes word-of-mouth recommendations and a thriving ecosystem around the partner NFT project.

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.

Estimate Delivery: 8-9 Weeks

1. Prototype Development (Estimated: 1 Week)

• Objective: Design, Plan, and Rapid Prototyping of concept
• Deliverables:
• Technical Requirements
• Functional/User Requirements
• Information & Data Architecture
• UI/UX Mockups

2. Development (Estimated: 4 Weeks)

• Objective: Develop Partner Onboarding Tool Minimum Loveable Product
• Deliverables:
• Metadata scraper and image download utility cod.
• Partner portal authentication using staking addresses.
• Partner Portal (including migration of existing partners)

3. QA and Documentation (Estimated: 2 Weeks)

• Objective: Identify and remediate defects, test performance before initial partner testing
• Deliverable:
• Quality Assurance Testing
• Remediation to identified defects
• Test Result Documentation

4. Partner Testing and GitHub Source Release (Estimated: 1-2 Weeks)

• Objective: Live test with partner projects to identify any additional improvements required before continued onboarding. Additionally, we will open source our code for community use and feedback
• Deliverables:
• Publish code
• Complete Initial partner testing
• Remediate critical defects
• Obtain community feedback, partner testimonials, and user testimonials
• Develop action plan for next steps

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

The following is the full list of deliverables and intended output

• Technical Requirements
• Functional/User Requirements
• Information & Data Architecture
• UI/UX Mockups
• Metadata scraper and image download utility code.
• Partner portal authentication using staking addresses.
• Partner Portal (including migration of existing partners)
• Quality Assurance Testing
• Remediation to identified defects
• Test Result Documentation
• Publish code
• Complete Initial partner testing
• Remediate critical defects
• Obtain community feedback, partner testimonials, and user testimonials
• Develop action plan for next steps

We will use JIRA to track the project’s progress and communicate our progress to the community.

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

The funds for this project will be allocated in the following way:

Project Management and Administration (5%) - 3500 ADA: Catalyst compliance, open-source GitHub repo setup, and management, status reports, etc.

Service Development (50%) - 35000 ADA: Coding of the on-chain metadata extraction, metadata parsing, and image download.

Frontend Development (30%) - 21000 ADA: Coding of the read-only partner portal and PFP display component.

Frontend Design and Development (15%) - 10500 ADA: Ensuring that the front-end components connect properly to the back-end and testing.

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

Jennifer Hanson - Co-founder and Community Manager: Jen manages community engagement and communication. She has ample experience in coordination; she managed a team of 20 people across several countries before moving into a senior product management role for several years. She plays a similar role now communicating progress, feedback, and managing expectations. She also has been responsible for managing 8-figure budgets and has been co-founder of a startup since 2015.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hansonjen/

https://twitter.com/JenHansonCO

Kimberly Marcuche - Co-founder and Content Creator - Kim created the structure for the Yolo Solos story generation engine and is the content creator for the text in the game. She also manages the finances for Yolo Solos. In her 15+ years of experience, she has managed large-scale P&Ls for established businesses, as well as managed her own start-up business’s budgets.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmarcuche

https://twitter.com/kmarcuche

Bruno Marcuche - Co-founder and Backend Developer: Bruno manages server infrastructure and develops the backend code logic. He has over 15 years of experience building and managing mission critical production infrastructure in various industries. A lifelong gamer at heart, he's now using his DevOps experience to build a scalable game engine.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruno-marcuche/

Richard Miles - Co-Founder and Frontend Developer: Rich boasts a 20-year track record of technical proficiency and entrepreneurial insight. An inaugural graduate of the Plutus Pioneers program, his expertise stretches from biotech to blockchain. Holding roles ranging from developer to CTO and COO attests to Rich's professional versatility. As a founder of three successful companies, he has a proven ability to effectively bring products to market in various contexts. His blend of technical prowess and business acumen makes him a potent force in driving innovation.

https://github.com/richmiles

https://twitter.com/richmilesxyz

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

Providing shared gaming utility to multiple NFT projects represents value for money for the Cardano ecosystem in several ways:

Expansion of NFT Ecosystem: Providing shared gaming utility facilitates the growth of Cardano's NFT ecosystem. This expansion attracts a wider range of NFT projects, including artists, developers, and collectors, who bring their unique offerings and contribute to the diversity of the ecosystem. A thriving NFT ecosystem built on Cardano can attract attention, adoption, and investment, ultimately strengthening the overall value proposition of the blockchain.

Developer and Entrepreneur Support: Shared gaming utility allows small NFT projects and developers with limited resources to participate in the gaming market without the need to build their own game infrastructure.

Ecosystem Synergies: Shared gaming utility creates opportunities for collaboration and synergies between different NFT projects on Cardano. Cross-promotion, partnerships, and interoperability between projects can enhance the overall value and appeal of the ecosystem. The combined efforts of multiple projects working together within the shared gaming utility can lead to innovation, creativity, and a richer user experience, ultimately benefiting the Cardano blockchain ecosystem.

These benefits contribute to the growth, vibrancy, and sustainability of the Cardano blockchain while creating value for its stakeholders.