[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The problem:

Cardano has a strong community and is poised for exponential growth to become the leading financial operating system of the world. However, there is a lack of innovative products that can not only support the existing community but also attract new members. Despite its technical brilliance, cutting-edge features such as the EUTXO model and being among the most decentralized blockchains, Cardano’s adoption and community expansion requires conscious efforts to achieve their full potential.

The current resources provided by IOHK’s blogs, community projects, and the CF, while informative, primarily consist of non-interactive media.

Our approach:

We envision a transformation in the way individuals explore and comprehend Cardano, making it an engaging and interactive experience. We aim to gamify the learning process and incorporate rewards. This end result should promote an environment that both nurtures the existing community and entices new participants.

Our solution

We propose to implement interactive and gamified online quizzes, specifically tailored to cater to different user categories. These quizzes will be stratified based on the audience’s experience level and preferences, offering options such as difficulty levels or specific topics to cater to individual interests. The content will cater to everyone in the community like general ADA holders, builders, influencers, D-Reps etc. By leveraging an innovative gaming experience the product will help to spread awareness about Cardano

HIghlights of the quiz games:

• Multimedia experience: The gaming content will support a wide range of content formats including text, images, audio, and video. This enriches the questions, prompts, and answers, ensuring an immersive learning experience.
• Interactive and game-like Interface: Users can enjoy power-ups, hints, redemption questions, a live leaderboard, and even express their reactions through emojis. The captivating interface will keep participants actively engaged and help make it a popular product in the ecosystem..
• Answer explanations: During the game play the participants can be provided additional context for the answers using in-depth explanations. This additional context and information not only help users enhance their overall knowledge of Cardano but also act as a subtle nudge to direct the users to the vast ocean of factual information about Cardano like IOHK’s articles, research papers, metrics directly from the blockchain etc.
• Flexible gameplay: Games catering user preferences by supporting both self-paced individual games and live contests. Participants can choose to tackle quizzes at their own pace, typically lasting between 10 to 20 minutes. For a more contest-like experience they can take part in multiplayer events, with shuffled questions and diverse powers ups/lifelines to keep the experience fresh and engaging.

We believe that this solution can revolutionize the way people learn and interact with Cardano for both new and existing community members. To appreciate the user experience this solution will provide, please watch the gameplay recording linked below. This is a promotional recording of the gameplay experience made from an assorted set of quiz questions covering different topics. Actual games will be categorized across general, assorted and technical categories.

Demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTNSLCVmwEYHow will the project function?

The two key components of this project are the project website and the quizzes that get published there.

The website will be one stop place for the quizzes published allowing discovery, search of quizzes. It will provide announcements of upcoming events and reports of past events. The quizzes as such provide the gaming experience.

• A website developed will serve as the main platform for hosting quizzes. It will feature a comprehensive list of quiz games, allowing users to filter them by topic, difficulty level, and game type (individual, tournament, etc.).
• Multiple quiz streams will cover general and technical topics, with quizzes categorized by difficulty. Each game will typically last 15-30 minutes.
• All published quizzes will be available on the ‘cardano quizzes’ website for users to attempt at their own pace and unlimited number of times.
• Live contests or tournaments will occur at a predetermined schedule where up to 1000 registered participants can compete at the same time.
• An announcements section will keep users informed about upcoming quizzes and events. A reporting section will showcase reports on quizzes that have taken place. The reports will also be shared with the fund challenge team and the community during monthly reporting.

The target users group of the platform involve everyone associated with the Cardano ecosystem. General ADA holders can use the games to be better informed about Cardano. Developers can use the technical quizzes to test and improve their technical knowledge. Community can use the live events for fun, engagement or education. Eg: Catalyst town halls and community get together can use live quizzes. Social media influencers and content creators can use the platform to glean facts and help tackle misinformation.

The interactive user experience in this solution can also be leveraged to create effective training programmes. For example, D-Reps can be trained using a series of games designed specifically. Similarly games can be prepared to be used in events associated with CIP-1694 workshops and awareness campaigns. If funded we will be reaching out to IOG, CF and others during the course of this project to offer these services and include it in the future roadmap.

Future scope: We have presented a project scope such that we bring the product to the market with its best features and build a user base within the project duration. Future roadmap may include

• Enhanced gaming experience with more features. Games in team mode, where participants answer individually while their scores are consolidated into a team total.

• Integrated wallet connect library like to sign in with wallets.

• Cross chain contests to further boost adoption.

• Support for dedicated training resources like for D-Reps, workshops or community groups.

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

One of the primary areas of focus for the challenge is creation or improvement of different products that provide value to the Cardano community and ecosystem. Our solution directly addresses this objective by introducing an innovative product that serves multiple purposes: educating, entertaining, and strengthening the community. This solution will not only enrich the existing community experience but also attract a wider audience to the vibrant Cardano ecosystem.

The project aims to offer the following:

1. Engaging gaming experience: The quizzes will provide a fascinating user experience with a video game like user interface, gamification through live scoreboards, timers, bonuses etc as well as subtle playing strategies with power ups. All the while the participant is testing their knowledge about Cardano or getting more informed.
2. Educational resources: This will act a resource for make the ecosystem stronger for community members to become more informed. As described above, all quizzes published will be available on the website as self paced games. It will be useful across the community for general ADA holders, D-Reps, SPOs, developers, technical writers, content creators and social media influencers.
3. Long term asset: With the website hosting all the games, we aim for it to be a popular community resource and see growing number of users month on month. We aim to expand in terms of diversity of content, features of gameplay and community participation in its future roadmap.

The impact this will generate for Cardano are

1. Strengthen and grow the community: The product will strengthen the community by making them more informed. Quizzes are a way to test one’s knowledge as well as gain more. We will cover a wide array of topics across general and technical categories to make sure that there is something for everyone irrespective of their area of interest or amount of experience. Live quiz tournaments with prizes will capture the attention of users outside of the community and incentivise them to play the quizzes for rewards and get acquainted with Cardano.
2. Raise awareness, tackle FUD with facts: These quizzes are one way to spread vital facts about Cardano which goes unnoticed amidst FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) campaigns and information overload in the crypto space. A key feature of the quiz game is the ability to add explanations to answers. This can be used to encourage the participants to visit IOHK blog’s or community resources as a part of their quizzing experience. It will make users aware of such content created for Cardano, like blogs, white papers, stack exchange, SPO guides etc and promote those resources. It can be used as a subtle way to tackle the ‘fud’ that’s otherwise plenty on the internet by directing people’s attention to factual information.
3. Constructive leisure: This will be a fun filled way for some constructive leisure in individual or as groups (with live games). Town Halls and community events can feature quizzes. We expect that gamified and interactive nature of the quizzes will get the users back for more quizzes and make it a long term asset for the ecosystem. By combining enjoyment and knowledge, this product will contribute to the growth and vitality of the community, fostering connections and sparking discussions among participants.

As for quantitative measures, we expect all quiz games to be attempted by more than 1000 users on an average within the span of a year. We expect the product to be popular among the community and its twitter handle to have more than 10K followers in a year’s time.

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

We intend to measure the success of the project by the level of accomplishment of the project goals and intended impact for the Cardano ecosystem.

Educate and strengthen the community

• Monitor participation growth rates across difficulty levels from beginner to expert as an indicator of either new users outside of the community or users within the community who are progressing from being newbies in the ecosystem.
• Use feedback and participation levels across topics to assess relevance of the content created.
• Measure aggregate number of participants for quizzes month to month.

Engagement and leisure

• Collect community feedback about gameplay and interaction.
• Measure social media popularity by followers and tweets/mentions.
• Assess participation levels in live games.

In the short term, this will serve the ecosystem as a tool to enhance knowledge and awareness, entertain and engage.

In the long term, this is intended to be a gaming product focussed solely on Cardano which educates people about Cardano, its design and philosophy, features, elements of its ecosystem and community solutions and achievements. It can act as a unique gateway for a new community member to discover Cardano and gain knowledge through fun-filled games.

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

The project will be spread out over 7 months based on milestones and breakdown of activities. The outputs of each milestone starting from the first milestone is publicly verifiable and usable. Each milestone will output new quiz games. The second milestone will also provide a public website. The outputs will be shared with the community through our twitter handle at each stage. The website will host the reports of game events that have taken place for public access. In addition, the usual Catalyst project reporting will be performed.

With regard to opportunities out of this project, we would like the community groups to host live games in their community meetings or get togethers. We are open to working with other community members who would like to create games that suit their requirements.

At various points in the project timeline we intend to collect user feedback which will be used to adjust the content created for the subsequent milestones. The aggregate insights collected till the end of the project will guide us to finalize the future roadmap of the project in terms of the types of games, topics, difficulty level, periodicity of events and other features.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

I am a professional software engineer with over 8 years of experience and Plutus Pioneer from Cohort-1. I have worked as a freelancer and as a software engineering consultant. For over 2 years, I have been actively involved in the Cardano space. During that time I have worked as content creator for Genius Yield’s Genius Academy, writing specifically on the subjects ‘Cardano’ and ‘Blockchain’.

With a strong technical skill set befitting a senior engineer, I am currently engaged in coordination and project management roles. I lead a small group of developers, coordinating client projects. Leveraging my experience, I will oversee the website development, working closely with a contracted senior web developer or an equivalent team.

We are also experienced with the Catalyst process. Our team has been funded in Fund-9 and the project was closed out without delay. See public project on the public reporting document here : (Project id - 900183)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bfnWFa94Y7Zj0G7dtpo9W1nAYGovJbswipxiHT4UE3g/edit#gid=917336114&range=A188

The implementation plan lays out activities that will be done by the team/myself, what work can be sourced through contract and which software licenses are required. The work that can be sourced from outside is traditional Web 2.0 development which as such does not pose a risk of supply side disruption.

The largest number of man hours for this project will come from myself and I will be able to dedicate 75% of my work time on a daily basis if the project is funded.

• We have divided the deliverable across milestones spanning a period of 7 months. The budget for each milestone and methodology of calculation has been described. The fund requirements are not frontloaded and adhere to each milestone’s estimated cost.

• Total monthly expenses are under 5500 USD consistently. From the very first milestone there is a usable deliverable that the community can use. For example, development of the website will not act as a hindrance for the quiz games to be created. From the first month quizzes will be made and published over social media each month till the third month, at which point the website will be ready.

• As part of monthly reporting we intend to provide usage stats by way of the number of attendees for each quiz game published till then.

  [CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

The main goals of the project are

Goal 1: Act as a platform for fun and informative quizzing experience for Cardano. Act as a repository of learner resources for community existing and new members to use.

Validation:

• Measure usage statistics of quiz games like the number of quiz takers across topics & difficulty levels. Measure relative participation for technical and general quizzes
• Growth in number of participants month on month across topics and difficulty level. It will signify relevance on content.

Goal 2: Be a platform for constructive leisure and community engagement.

Validation:

• Measure the participation level for the live online gaming events where the community can participate and win prizes in ADA.
• Measure participation levels for live games hosted as part of Catalyst town hall or community meet ups.

Goal 3: Become a popular product and a long term asset in the Cardano ecosystem.

Validation:

• Measure the growth of game takers month on month. Measure the following on twitter for the project by way of followers and retweets/mentions. Measure the growth of traffic on the website.
• Assess interest from the community for sustained usage of the games. Assess interest for improvising the product for running training programmes for D-Reps, for promoting community projects etc and even as a fun activity.

Engaging user experience is the key for achieving the above goals and for that we leverage gamified interfaces and interactive features. Additionally we have presented a thorough implementation plan with clear timelines.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] 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.

MIlestone 1: Project initiated with the launch of online quiz games.

Key activities:

• Research content for the first four quiz games. (Completed)
• Subscribe to required third party license.
• Create 4 self paced online quiz games with interactive user experience.
• Create social media handles and publicize the launch.
• Engage a website developer and finalize design for the website.
• Share reports with the community and the challenge team.

Timeline: 4 weeks

Estimated Cost: $ 5135 (17100 ADA)

Success criteria: 25 or more participants play each quiz by the end of month one.

Milestone 2: Developed 12 self paced quiz games across general and technical categories and website launched.

Key activities:

• Research and content creation. Creation of 8 new quiz games.
• Complete development and launch the website.
• Publicize each quiz as well as the website on social media.
• Run reports of user activity across categories and topics. Share it with the community.

Timeline: 8 weeks

Estimated Cost: $ 10570 (35200 ADA)

Success criteria:

20% or more month to month growth in participants for quiz games and in twitter following. More than 100 participants across all quizzes. Website live with published quizzes, announcements and reports.

Milestone 3: Hosted a live gaming event for the community with prizes in ADA. 16 quizzes published in total and available on the website.

Key activities:

• Design the live gaming event. Publicize on social media, coordinate and host the event.
• Research and content creation. Add 4 new quiz games.
• Run reports of user activity across categories and topics. Share it with the community.
• Evaluate statistics of the live gaming event and collect information to be used in selecting topics, level of difficulty gameplay etc for future events.
• Continue promotion on social media.

Timeline: 4 weeks.

Estimated Cost: $ 2255 ( 7500 ADA)

Success criteria:

More than 30 participants for the first live quiz. Website up to date with new quizzes. Analysis of report to guide subsequent content creation.

Milestone 4: Hosted a total of three live gaming events for the community with prizes in ADA. 20 quizzes published in total and available on the website.

Key activities:

• Content creation. Create, coordinate and host two live gaming events.
• Research and content creation. 4 new self paced quiz games.
• Run reports of user activity across categories and topics. Share it with the community.
• Seek community feedback through social media and direct conversations. Present it as part of monthly reporting and use the feedback to tweak further content.
• Continue promotion on social media. Seek if the project can be featured by IOG.
• Reach out to the Catalyst/challenge team to schedule up a live quiz event mid-town hall.
• Reach out to community groups to include a game in their meetup.

Timeline: 8 weeks

Estimated cost: $6160 (20500 ADA)

Success criteria:

All key activities completed

More than 100 participants across all live games.

Positive feedback and suggestions from the community.

Milestone 5: A live quiz event featured in a Catalyst townhall or a community event.

Key activities:

• Create and host a live mid townhall game / community meet up game.
• Publicize on social media.
• Run reports of user activity across categories and topics. Share it with the community.
• Reach out to IOG and other teams to offer the product for training courses or engagement activity. Eg: D-Rep training, Voltaire workshop activity etc. and use the response to plan the future roadmap of the project.

Timeline: 4 weeks

Estimated Cost: $1685 (5600 ADA)

Success criteria: Showcase a live event in the Catalyst townhall or a community meet up. Website shows higher number of hits as per google analytics. >20 % growth in number of quiz takers over pervious month owing to higher visibility through townhall /community meetings.

At the end of Milestone 5, the project complete and all published quizzes available as self paced games. At that time we would announce future roadmap on the website as well as prepare and submit close out report.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

MIlestone 1: Project initiated with the launch of online quiz games.

Deliverables:

• 4 online quiz games to be created.
• Dedicated social media handle.
• Announced the launch.

Outputs:

• 4 online quizzes games in self paced mode with interactive user experience.
• Announcements and promotion on social media.
• Website design ready.

Documentation:

• Usage statistics for the 4 games and the end of 1 month.
• Website design

Intended outcomes:

• More than 50 participants in the first month of the project. Positive feedback on twitter.

We will measure progress through the statistics from the games and the response on twitter by way of likes, retweets and mentions.

Milestone 2: Developed 12 self paced quiz games across general and technical categories and website launched.

Deliverables:

• 8 new paced quiz games.
• Website developed and deployed.

Outputs

• Total of 12 interactive self paced games.
• Announcements and promotion on social media.
• Website showcasing the quiz games.

Documentation

• Reports of quiz games. Total participants, completion rate and accuracy etc.

Intended outcomes:

• 20% month to month growth in participants for quiz games.

• 20% in twitter following

• Community starts accessing the gaming content through the new website.

We will measure progress through the statistics from the quiz games, twitter following and the traffic on the website.

Milestone 3: Hosted a live gaming event for the community with prizes in ADA. 16 quizzes published in total and available on the website.

Deliverables:

• 4 more online quiz games.
• One live gaming event for community

Outputs:

• Website with up to date content.
• Announcements and promotion on social media.

Documentation:

• Reports of quiz events as earlier.
• Feedback from the participants of the live gaming event.

Intended outcomes:

• Growth in participants for quiz games over the past month.
• Growth in twitter following
• Uptick in participation and user activity following the live gaming event.

We will measure progress through the statistics from the quiz games, feedback from the live event, social media sentiment & website traffic.

Milestone 4: Hosted a total of three live gaming events for the community with prizes in ADA. 20 quizzes published in total and available on the website.

Deliverables:

• 4 new online self paced quiz games.
• 2 new live gaming event for community

Outputs:

• Total of 20 games published.
• Announcements and promotion on social media.

Documentation:

• Reports of quiz events as earlier.
• Feedback from the participants of the live gaming event.
• Write up about the learning outcomes from the feedback received after the first live event.

Intended outcomes:

• Growth in the number of participants for the live event compared to the first live event.
• Growth in overall popularity by way of user activity, feedback and following.

We will measure the statistics and feedback from the live events to assess if the adjustments incorporated in content based on previous feedback (collected as a key activity under milestone 3) has had a positive effect. We will measure responses from IOG and others about showcasing the project, from Catalyst and other groups about using live games during their events.

Milestone 5: 20 quizzes published in total and available on the website. A live quiz event featured in a Catalyst townhall or a community event.

Deliverables:

• 4 new online quiz games.
• A live mid townhall game / community meet up game.

Outputs:

• Website complete.
• Announce future activity on the website.

Documentation:

• Consolidated reports of games events held. Overall insights from the project and how user engagement progressed over through the project.
• Close out report.

Intended outcomes:

• Overall reports of user activity and game statistics on track for more than 1000 players for each game within the span of a year since launch. Similarly growth on twitter followers to be on track for more than 10K followers in a year’s time.

We will measure overall user activity on the website and social media following. We will measure interest from IOG and other teams for including the interactive quizzes into their training programs or workshop material.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Research, content creation, project management, 1 head count for 7 months @~1685/month = ~ 11800 // 39300 ADA

Quizizz software license for 2 years at annual subscription rate @ $450 x 2 // 3100 ADA

Website development and hosting

• Senior full stack web developer (on contract) for 3 months @ $3000 x 3 = $9000 // 31000 ADA
• Cloud services (GCP, hosting and GSuite) 2 years: $2000 // 6600 ADA

Prize money for 3 live events, 1900 ADA x 3 // 5700 ADA

Total (rounded off) : 86000 ADA

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

We are a group of experienced Software Engineers/Plutus Pioneers. We have been active in the Cardano space for over two years. The team’s Github repo showcases most of our work on Cardano

Github: https://github.com/lambdacc

Previously completed catalyst project: https://github.com/lambdacc/plutus-rest-wrapper

Team member working on this project:

Reshma Mohan

A professional senior software engineer with over 8 years of experience. Plutus Pioneer from Cohort 1. Prior experience in writing technical articles on the subjects ‘Cardano’ and ‘Blockchain’.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/reshmhn Twitter: https://twitter.com/reshmhn

Responsibilities: Project management, content research and game creation, host live events, Manage social media handle and catalyst / community reporting.

Additional work to be hired on contract basis

1 senior full stack developer or an equivalent contract for 3 months responsible for website design and development. We will source this resource likely from teams/people we have experience in the past for Web2.0 projects depending on the availability and cost.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

The cost of the project is split across content creation/project management, website development, cloud hosting and software licenses.

The costs were calculated as follows.

For project manager and content creator role : The average annual industry wages in my region is approx $25000 for project manager and $20000 for a lead technical writer. I will be splitting my time roughly equally between 2 roles and so an average annual rate is arrived at as ~$22500. I will be dedicating 75% of my time towards this project. A detailed breakdown of hours of effort across different milestones is given above.

We also add in a tax adjustment factor since payment received in ADA attracts a flat 30% tax.

The cost is calculated as given below

75% of 22.5K x 7/12 x 1.2 (factor to reduce burden due to higher flat tax rates for payment received in ADA) = $11800 ~ 39300 ADA

For senior full stack developer:

The market rate of a lead full stack developer on a contract basis is estimated at $30000 p.a. or $2500/month.

The cost for a contract for 3 months is calculated as 2500 x 3 x 1.2 (tax adjustment factor) = $9000 ~ 31000 ADA

Prize money is calculated as a 2000 ADA for each live event (to be split as 1000,600,300 for 1st,2nd & 3rd places) = 3 x 1900 = 5700 ADA

Monthwise breakdown is estimated as shown here: