[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.
The solution proposed by the Coffee DAO project is the creation of an Origin Certificate. An information aggregator that uses NFT technology to gather all the previously scattered data under a single source of truth hosted on-chain.
The Origin Certificate is designed to preserve the quality grade of a specific coffee batch. This grade is provided by professional tasters who analyze the coffee’s chemical composition and then taste it. After successive harvests, a coffee producer can show a record to future buyers, coffee enthusiasts, or even credit providers.
Each specialty coffee comes with unique attributes particular to a region such as aroma, flavor, coffee variety, level of humidity, size of the bean, and others. All these are included in the metadata of the Origin Certificate and become a record of a coffee batch.
In the first version of the Origin Certificate we have detailed the characteristics of the coffee purchased for the upcoming pilot sale:
Initially, the Origin Certificate will be used to commercialize the specialty coffee directly to the public during a pilot sale. The pilot would be conducted on a platform created by the Coffee DAO team, who would bring coffee from Honduras to the U.S. market. The pilot sale is the main stage of the MVP portion of the Coffee DAO project.
For the pilot sale, since it’s aimed at the general public, we would generate images for each Origin Certificate NFT. The images are each different but are generated using the same prompts. A sample of the images for the pilot sale can be found here:
https://softa.direct.quickconnect.to:5001/mo/sharing/oyn8PtXY5#/
The pilot will consist of 5,000 bags of roasted specialty coffee. The bags each would be sold along with an NFT Origin Certificate on Cardano. The NFTs from the pilot will act as discount vouchers for future sales, a token to access special features early, and other marketing promotions.
The pilot would be launched later this year.
[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
The Origin Certificate is a way to tokenize specialty coffee. It is one of the categories of the challenge: "Physical products - Tokenised housing as a Cardano native asset." Additionally, it creates a source of adoption that is outside the traditional blockchain economy. As initially it's aimed at general coffee drinkers.
[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
The metric for the pilot sale is clear, in that case, it would be the 5,000 coffee bags we aim to sell. Second, the impact on the coffee growers in Honduras would be the difference between the market price of coffee compared to what we'll pay them.
By using NFTs to promote the Origin Certificate and by processing payments via Cardano, we aim to save on the cost of marketing a coffee product. The gains in that aspect would go to the producer of the coffee.
In the first pilot sale, we'll work with only one producer and source all the coffee from their farm. On subsequent sales, we'll source coffee from several producers from the same region in Honduras. The aim is to grow the platform until it's sourcing coffee from different countries in Central America.
[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
The core smart contract and off-chain code are ready. We have deployed it to the preproduction network for testing and all works as intended. The next stage for the pilot sale is to deploy the dApp on the main Cardano network. To do so, we'll divide the work into portions:
Update the front for the platform. At the moment we have a designer creating a new landing page for the project. Attached to the application is the Figma demo. We need to connect that new website to the backend and to the smart contract. Once that's live that's the first step towards the launch of the pilot sale.
[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?
We have all the necessary personnel to finish the project. We have 3 blockchain developers and all of them have previously worked on Cardano. Their work is already visible via the GitHub link, where the preproduction version of the platform can be seen.
We have a coffee exporter in Honduras that has connected with local growers. Thanks to him, we've already narrowed our selection for the pilot sale to a single producer and tested their coffee.
The team also has made a deal with an international shipping company, Northstar, who have agreed to move the coffee by sea to a port in Florida. We have a price quote for the shipment of the coffee.
All of the pieces to deliver the final product are set in place.
[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?
The goal of the project at this stage is to launch an MVP for the platform that consists of a pilot sale. This sale will be comprised of 5,000 specialty coffee bags from Honduras sold inside the United States.
Once the first sale is concluded, we'll launch other small sales during the years. The end goal is to have a general sale of 15,000 bags in the U.S. and the same amount in Europe in Q1 of next year. From there, the platform will expand with other services such as on-chain subscriptions for coffee, coffee auctions using Hydra, and start exporting to the Asian market.
The validation for the project is the pilot sale during the MVP. The success will be measured by how well the coffee and the NFTs are received by the general coffee-drinking public.
[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.
Launch of the website The first stage is to update the landing page with the new design. The website will be up on August 22nd.
Launch the smart contract on the main-net at the moment we have the smart contract only on the preproduction network. The launch on main-net will be September 3rd.
Process the coffee the coffee has to be taken from the farm, dried, roasted, and packaged before it's shipped. The coffee is already reserved with the producer, it'll take around 2 months to process it, we believe it'll be ready by the end of August.
Distribute the coffee in the pilot sale, we'll sell the Origin Certificate NFTs ahead of the coffee. By going with this approach we save on warehousing costs and can mail the coffee as soon as it enters the U.S. The sale of the NFTs will start in September.
[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.
Minting smart contract the most important piece is the minting validator deployed on the Cardano network. At the moment it's only online on the preproduction network.
Metadata design part of the Origin Certificate is the information contained in the metadata. For the pilot sale, we have already prototyped version 1 of the information. It's attached above in this submission, initially, it's a CIP-25 token, but as the platform evolves we plan to use aspects of CIP-68 and CIP-86.
Website the landing page is where the buyers will connect a Cardano wallet, select an NFT, mint the token on demand, and input their shipping information. Once the information is collected, we'll ship the coffee to their house. In the pilot, the coffee will be sold only in the continental U.S.
[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.
35,000 ADA is the cost to purchase coffee. (9973.4 USD)
7,100ADA to mill, dry, and wash the coffee. Plus the sanitary registration. (2000 USD)
9,500 ADA is the cost to design the coffee bag and branding guide. (2706 USD)
29,000 ADA cost for a web designer to create a new landing page that follows the branding guide and logo (8263 USD)
3,520 ADA is the cost of 5,000 empty bags for the coffee and having the design printed on them. (1000 USD)
7,050 ADA ADA to roast and bag vacuum seal the coffee. (2000 USD)
32,000 ADA is the cost to ship the coffee from Honduras to Florida. (9120 USD)
[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?
Rich Kopcho has over 25 years of experience in business, including 12 years in international marketing, product management, and business development for Hewlett-Packard. As the managing partner of an international manufacturing consultancy, he advised Fortune 100 clients on strategic planning and operational efficiency for over 10 years. Throughout his career, he has founded or joined 19 startups. In 2013, he obtained his first cryptocurrency and has been actively engaged in the blockchain community over the last 6 years. He currently advises Web3 companies and mentors at Web3 Techstars Accelerators and aspiring college student entrepreneurs.
Eric den Boer’s introduction to the Digital world started in early 1991 while working for Radio Mix Megapol, one of the first and largest digitized commercialized radio stations in Sweden, where he was building and configuring Sweden’s first fully digital radio stations. Eric is a blockchain enthusiast/philosopher/entrepreneur/innovator and created his first Bitcoin wallet in 2010. He is a member of Metaverse Standard Forum (https://metaverse-standards.org/) as well as the Linux Open Metaverse Foundation (https://www.openmv.org/ ) and a core member of Cardano NFT-DAO (https://nft-dao.org/) and member of Cardano Project Catalyst where he also is a stakeholder/voter. Eric is consulting on Biometric voting projects and DID’(s Digital IDs) on multi Blockchain cross-chain platforms. In collaboration with KUAF (an NPR affiliate) and Fayetteville public TV, Eric is making podcasts focusing on Blockchain and its utilities. Eric speaks Swedish and English at a bilingual proficiency, Dutch at professional working proficiency, and limited French. Eric’s favorite quote is: 'The internet brought people together and Blockchain will bring truth to the internet'.
Andrew Thornhill is an American businessman and FinTech pioneer who has created unique payment gateways for several large businesses and banks worldwide. From the late 1990s, Andrew has moved effortlessly through banks, processors, large merchants, and even governments in his bid to provide the most complete, end-to-end financial service to the online industry possible. He has lived and worked on four continents to partner with several of the largest warehouses, ports, gaming companies, and most recently digital currency exchanges that utilize his payment systems. Andrew has been working in the Republic of Georgia since 2007, where more than $1 Billion of payments have transited through the companies, systems, and programs he developed. He has lived in Tbilisi, Georgia since 2016, and has invested in various businesses such as IT Consulting, Solani Creative, Saidanaa, and Baia’s Wine, among others. He is also a co-founder of the Cosmic Crypto Meetup and holds the position of ambassador to the Cardano Blockchain Foundation in Georgia. In February 2021, Andrew was elected to the executive board of the Georgian Baseball and Softball National Federation.
Sebastian Pereira Gutierrez is an Economist from South America. He has worked in many industries, both in the private and public sectors during his career. In 2019 he decided to shift toward the blockchain industry full-time. First as a freelance writer for crypto publications and then in other roles. He joined EMURGO Academy as a learner to learn more about the development side of technology. He has completed an entire program on Cardano development and now focuses on bringing real-world utility to NFT technology.
Juan Pablo Bulnes is physician and professor at the Central American Technological University (UNITEC) in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, since 2018. He coordinates the professional practices of the different programs in the Faculty of Health Sciences. Worked as a technical and administrative consultant at the Honduran Secretary of Health and at the Red Cross´s blood bank, which has allowed him to get to know many people and the territory from a health perspective. He began 2013, his professional career by coordinating two small health centers in rural and coffee-growing areas. Grew up in Comayagua in central Honduras in the 1990s with the rise of the coffee business. He was able to see the effects of the boom and then the coffee crisis on the local economy, in the same way developing a taste for good coffee. Currently developing his interest in Cardano blockchain and a member of the NFT-DAO and collaborating with his brother, in technical assistance with local coffee producers. Comes from a large family, and is a father of four restless.
Ričardas Darkšas hails from Lithuania and carries a lifelong passion for computers and programming, which he first explored at an incredibly young age on a ZX Spectrum using the BASIC language. An experienced developer, he established his software company, Softa, a decade ago. Since its inception, Softa, under Ričardas' leadership, has successfully delivered on a diverse range of projects. These include implementing solutions for the manufacturing and packing industries, programming production line robots, and crafting a custom distribution and sales system for a prominent flower company. Additionally, Ričardas has worked remotely with a marketing agency in the United States. Currently, Softa continues to maintain a management system for a shipping company. In recent years, Ričardas has developed a keen interest in the Cardano blockchain, prompting him to refine his skills and understanding by enrolling in the Emurgo Academy. Motivated by the technology's potential, he decided to pivot his career slightly to concentrate primarily on blockchain solutions. He has since collaborated with this team to develop and deliver projects based on the Cardano platform. As a developer, Ričardas brings a wealth of experience and a unique perspective to the team, promising exciting potential for innovative solutions.
Todd Cleckner has a diverse background spanning entrepreneurship, engineering, international humanitarian work, farming, and contracting, I am a motivated visionary who brings a unique perspective to projects. Over the years, I have successfully planned and executed large-scale endeavors, led teams, and swiftly solved complex problems. My deep-rooted passion for regenerative agriculture began in my childhood, working in my grandfather's Arizona gardens. I have gained extensive experience on farms and plantations across different regions and climates. Additionally, I have spent 27 years running a construction company specializing in sustainable home renovations. As I transition to full-time software engineering, I have expanded my expertise in full-stack development and have been actively involved in the blockchain and Dapp sectors. I am deeply committed to projects that promote self and food sovereignty, healthy ecosystems, and strong communities.
[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?
As the process moves forward, we can show the receipts for the coffee, packaging, and shipment manifesto to show the allocation of funds.