Detailed Plan

Proposal Details

• Challenge: F7: Catalyst - Rapid Funding Mechanisms
• Proposal Title: Fund Builder for DAO's(Adagov/SDA)
• Project title: Voltaire Assistant

TL;DR - Summary for voters. (Full proposal below this one-pager)

In this proposal we are asking for your support to bring the Fund Builder for DAO's to life. Our mission is to speed up and systemize social innovation by doing design research for software that delivers rapid funding mechanisms to the Cardano ecosystem.

Voltaire Assistant provides a Social Appstore, that enables Catalyst stakeholders to deploy side-treasuries pilots with Social apps that chunks governance into pieces. This results in a strategy to transfer governance to the Cardano community. The Voltaire Assistant software can resolve conflicts by providing Catalyst Stakeholders governance tools and Community safety measures; like productivity and sentiment KPI's which enable community monitoring of misbehaving side-treasury pilots.

Having software that enables secure and continuous funding of visionary teams by deploying side-treasury pilots with rapid funding mechanisms, will enable IOG to gracefully transfer governance and ownership to the Cardano Community.

The Social Design Academy design review team has over a 100 years of combined experience from digital product design, machine learning, system design, social science, experience design to meditation and endogenous wisdoms adding an extra vetting layer to the design research of this fund builder software.

FULL PROPOSAL BELOW

Voltaire Assistant - Fund Builder for DAO's

In this proposal we introduce design research by Adagov & Social Design Academy; That is pre-work towards a software system that enables Catalyst Circles, Challenge Teams and external Organisations to set up and govern side-treasuries by using clearly defined proposal templates and Social Apps.

At the moment, writing as well as assessing proposals is a linear process. Breaking down the proposal template into individual modules enables a more connected way to communicate ideas and visions. We´re putting the data flow at the center of the system, which enables us to move 'data-sets' through a before-during-after pipeline. This new approach in data-management gives us better tracking options throughout the proposal lifecycle.

Social apps give people the power to grade, assess, and reduce data in a visual interface while compounding mutual effort in proposal creation. Another great advantage of a new data model, is that we can incentivize the community to do translations for proposals that resonate in certain communities with other languages.

The Catalyst Social Appstore

Another important component of Voltaire Assistant is the Catalyst Social Appstore; by breaking important governance topics down into Social Apps, like Fund builder, Proposal Builder, Incentives Builder, and Assessment Builder, we created a strategy to gradually transfer ownership of decision making to the Cardano community. Each builder has governance parameters.

Social Apps for Blockchain projects

By pushing proposal-data through a circular production pipeline based on the 'Before-During-After' model, we safeguard the scaling and successful ownership transfer of Project Catalyst. See Figure 2 -Visualisation of Data-model.

Where are we now?

Biggest problem is that Catalyst uses too many channels and touchpoints; e-mail, discord, telegram, ideascale, spreadsheets, gitbook, forms, …, this leads to a divergent system that is hard to manage with manual labour, and the primary reason the current Catalyst setup doesn't scale. If we truly want to scale Catalyst a 1000x we need custom software that acts like a communicating vessel; a one channel strategy that uses system thinking and a Social Appstore that can be upgraded with new insights as we embark on the journey to transfer ownership to the Cardano Community.

What holds us back?

Software is commonly designed for the individual, teams are not familiar with building group experiences and engagement in software. We need new ways to design software; meaningful software that assists the community in organising information into novel ideas, without the dominating hierarchy models we have today. We need a new type of Real Social Software (Humanware) that releases our full potential by combining social design and digital product design. Rethinking our approach to interface design is key in this aspect, as you also want to be able to use governance systems on location and in context, not just on the big screen.

Wouldn't it be great if we had..

… A software tool that provides visual building blocks to create, manage, operate and report on workflows, which was powered by a Social Appstore with side-treasuries. A Fund Builder for DAO's that gives circles, teams, and organisations the possibility to build side-treasuries on Cardano. Giving businesses the opportunity to tip their toes into the DAO-water.

Our design research will focus on two funding mechanisms:

1. A linear funding workflow (Current Catalyst + flexibility)
2. A asynchronous rapid funding workflow (Rapid Catalyst Funding)

1 - Linear funding workflow

Linear workflow like we have today in Catalyst, with stages, acts, and specific roles (…/commenter/ca/assess/proper review of assessment/vca/…) to assess proposals in the challenges. Adding flexibility through Social Apps that for instance auto-exclude members from participation if they propose in certain challenges.

In this linear chat-based system we put data management at the center, and time as the guiding and constraining factor. Social Apps assist proposer (teams) in editing and shaping their proposal, until the deadline for the voting round is reached. And the proposals go into a next stage in which we provide a Social App for assessment logic and after that a Social App for the voting logic. After voting we could disperse participation and reputation tokens, but that's out of scope for this proposal. In the current Catalyst, the merit of participation is lost.

2 - Asynchronous rapid funding workflow

Asynchronous means that Funding round participants can start a funding round at any time within the timeframe of a linear fund. This rapid funding track will be time-boxed in stages and acts, but the stages would be weeks, days, or even hours. The end of a rapid funding track is not time, but quality, which means a proposal continues to run through the network until a certain quality level is attained. Think about asynchronous workflows as a funding track with built in voting. By randomly selecting participants and experts from the network, evidence of bias can be flagged, which can trigger a mediation stage with thought leader logic. We labelled this process of progressing through proposals: "Productive gaming."

Who Is This Proposal For?

This proposal is for people who understand that we need to organise ourselves in new ways today to create a brighter future tomorrow, this proposal tailors to audiences inside and outside Catalyst, to keep taps with the real world.

1. Catalyst Projects, that want to help in design research in linear and asynchronous funding tracks, and want support in defining their values and beliefs to attract people to their cause.
2. Catalyst Circles, which want to research new ways to successfully transfer ownership to the Cardano Community.
3. Challenge Teams that want new ways to manage funds, and have a great user experience that results in peace of mind.
4. External Organisations that realise it's DAO or DIE, and a Fund builder gives them the opportunity to tip their toes in the DAO-water.
5. Cardano Angels, people who got in very early and want to have social impact with their funds.
6. Neighbourhoods, self organisation of neighbourhoods needs solid new governance infrastructure with crowd governed fund management at the core.
7. Family and Friends, we must not underestimate the power in people, by bringing back social cohesion using real social finance tools, we can change* the world.

The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world[3]

What does success look like within 3-6 months?

1. We defined a new data-model for blockchain applications that thinks beyond the store/retrieve paradigm. Using the principles: Before→During→After, Data in Motion, Master to Reduce, Data Erosion over Time, Static Data is Evil Data.
2. We found a way to add weights to data with data-types, action labels and privacy labels. Really personal private data doesn't erode, open data does erode more quickly if not turned into value containers. Perhaps Data-langoliers is a good metaphor; low grades data gets eaten.
3. We identified the core product segments of the Fund Builder and created the visual designs for our deliverables that illustrate the linear and asynchronous use case.
4. We visualised a schematic that explains how Virtual Assistants, The Social Appstore and downloading Conversational scripts work as a scalable ecosystem.
5. We successfully created excitement for our visual design research in the community, and this results in people wanting to contribute/participate.
6. We connected the Referral script from the In-wallet onboarding proposal, to the invitation to set up a side-treasury for external organisations using a video presentation.
7. We validated that conversational interaction design is a better approach to digital governance design than page-based design.

This Proposal will improve the following challenge metrics:

-----------------------------------

Increased meaningful participation; By introducing the Social Design Academy we are onboarding and educating change makers in mastering seamless, frictionless and fluid UX for their Catalyst projects using our new Social UX/UI design system.

Improved Funding Speed; We have provided design research that a fund manager using stages, digital conversations, time-boxing, and turn-based incentives that help speed up rapid funding to weeks instead of months.

Improved Scaling; We have successfully proven that a different approach to data-models, downloading Social Apps and (offline) conversational scripts into Virtual Assistants can lead to an enormous scaling improvement.

Iterative & Trustworthy interactive governance; In contrast to page-based software design, digital conversations can be easily iterated, are flexible and can be linked to conditions, we track the efficacy of conversational governance scripts with UX KPI's. [1]

Proof of Inclusion and diversity; We successfully showed that we are able to co-design open-source design research using diverse cognitive design review teams and the catalyst community.

IMPACT - Benefits of Voltaire Assistant are:

With this design research for the Fund Builder for DAO's we provide a design strategy that shows how we can successfully transfer governance from IOG to the Cardano Community in a controlled environment using the Catalyst Social Appstore.

• By offering the setup of side-treasuries and breaking down governance into Social Apps, we provide a design methodology to gradually transfer decision making to the Catalyst Community.
• A visual fund builder gives stakeholders the possibility to experiment with rapid funding mechanisms and configure stages, time-boxes, quality-thresholds, and social apps available in every stage of the process.
• Using the Before-During-After stages it's easier to design and build new Social Apps that track proposals-data from inception to delivery.
• We provide a new and consistent design language that will give Cardano a competitive advantage over other blockchain projects.
• Using (social) UX KPI's we can track the efficacy and sentiment of funding rounds.
• By providing a Voting Center we can involve voters in governance transfer, participants can vote on incentives, rewards and future Social Apps to develop.
• We focus on the proposal template for this fund builder, but many other templates can be imagined for future releases, you can think of mission-, lobby-, disaster-, charity, kickstart or design challenge templates.
• Giving circles access to a Cardano Sub-treasury gives them the opportunity to start using ADA/Tokens with a co-creative mindset.
• Fund builder will enable existing organisations to try new ways of funding their innovation and tip their toes into the DAO-landscape.
• This is a Social Design Academy project, in collaboration with Adagov. By gaining traction and showing design innovation through design research, we strive to invite talent, catalyst teams and digital makers to our open source projects
• By gamifying proposal rounds we are playing with serious impact.

Feasibility - How do we make sure we deliver on intent?

• The Social Design Academy website will be the overarching brand for social design proposals, making it easier to connect with the Cardano/Catalyst and external communities. (Website in iterative design development here)

• We track the realisation of the SDA deliverables, using the following stages:

• Stage 1: Writing Proposal

• Stage 2: Design Research

• Stage 3: Request for co-creation (implementation in collaboration with http://adagov.org))

• Where the Social Design Academy focuses on Design for Good, Adagov.org focuses on Code for good; the implementation of our design research by Adagov will use a (rapid) waterfall process, as being decentralised brings new challenges.

• We have produced the first design research for the In-wallet Onboarding for ADAholders, and can use these insights, learnings and gathered knowledge in the production of the Voltaire Assistant - Fund builder for DAO's.

• By keeping this Fund Builder for DAO's a design research project we are able to show the Cardano/Catalyst community the potential of Digital Conversation design, and starting to onboard other Cardano Catalyst projects in this design methodology.

• Niels is a design and workshop facilitator, and has 15+ experience in digital design, he is on a mission to introduce chat based governance to the Catalyst Ecosystem.

• We'll use motion graphics design software (After Effects) to fine tune timings of functional animations (Motion must feel snappy, concise, and secure.)

• By setting up a design review team with seasoned Catalyst experts, we make the design research process open, transparent and rigorous.

• We'll index experience gaps with Social UX exercises.

• We'll overcome risk by pre-prototyping experience maps.

• Join our Discord to learn more. (//perm link

• We'll democratize and humanize our Cardano Funds by combining utility, education and usability in the Fund Builder.

• By growing our Social Design Academy in discord we build a conversation design movement that mitigates risk by diversifying perspectives.

• We'll review and present progress/design sprints regularly to the community.

• We will present Voltaire Assistant design research to Catalyst Stakeholders.

Project Deliverables & Budget - 37K

Design research for Voltaire Assistant; A Fund Builder with Social Appstore deploying side-treasuries to onboard new teams through fast, linear and asynchronous funding tracks.

Deliverables

1. Design Research and a new Data-model and a pixel perfect UI design for 9 Social Apps; combining core Fund builder components for Catalyst Circle, Challenge Teams and External Organisations - 30K
2. Gitbook documentation showing functional description of Side-treasury configuration, Social apps & Conversational modules. - 7K
3. 20% of funding will be added to a production side-treasury, so we can build up funds for Proof of Concept production - 7.4K (Governed by Adagov/SDA for. See Deliverable 10)

Check deliverables details for description of the Social Apps.

Deliverables Details

1 - Circular Data-model

If we build tools around our data streams we might find a better data-model that is compatible with blockchain. Rethinking our data-model makes it possible to minimise data storage, and 'burn' only outcomes to chains. This would also reduce information overload, and data-clutter. See figure 1. (attached images) for a simplified mockup.

2 - Gravity UI

A visual view of what happens in the network based on energy distribution. We often measure functionally (amount of proposals, votes) but social design focuses on energy in motion; being able to see where the energy goes in your system can help raise the quality of funding rounds, by pushing attention to challenges or proposals that need energy.

3 - Catalyst Social Appstore

This is a simplified appstore like we know from Apple or Google, but Social Apps give access to Social features that enrigh functionality around governance subjects. Social apps are designed for the before, during, after stages in workflows.

4 - Catalyst Fund builder

This is the core of the system, a visual fundbuilder in which you can create linear or asynchronous funding tracks. Visual building blocks help you to create, manage, operate and report your funds and funding rounds. Each end of a funding round gives the stats like the end screen of a (productive) game.

5 - Catalyst Proposal Builder

In this proposal we lock the social template to proposals, because we need one constraint in our design research. To be able to provide as much value as possible we chose the obvious one; a proposal builder using the before-during-after pipeline.

6 - Catalyst Incentives Builder

Incentives are where things get exciting, we will use social research[2] to find what people value, and we will bring the use of ADA into the funding tracks, but we also research non-monetary incentives, as we believe the human aspect in Cardano is just as important.

7 - Catalyst Assessment Builder

This one is important, because our current assessment happens in spreadsheets for the linear funding track. We will provide Social apps to standardise the assessment process and link the assessment to the actual proposal data. This means assessment can also take place in the during and after phases.

8 - Voting centre for Voter Involvement

The voting centre helps us to engage with voters in new ways, not only will we bring the voting into the network, and connect the voting to the actual proposals. We can also involve voters and let them vote on which social apps they would like to see developed. This bridges the current gap between voters and proposers.

9 - Talent Seeker

Design research is the first phase of creating something new, but we need front-end designers, developers and blockchain engineers to make this fund builder a reality, this is where the talent seeker comes in. It's a social app that focuses on a social profile that is built by yourself and others.

10 - Multisig transactions Proof of concept(20% Adagov budget)

• The proof of concept in collaboration with Adagov.org will be a Social App for multisig transactions. (Example Script) In the before stage of this app you setup the used design research and conditions for production (what/when/…).
• In the during phase you set up the transaction logic/smart contract(who, voting method, lazy consent/majority vote etc.), and in the after phase you set up the trigger(e.g. voting threshold met) for the activation(approval of implementation).
• When the social app is triggered it shows you the configured transaction, an overview if conditions are met, it asks invited decision makers to multi-sign the transaction. On consent the traction is carried out. And the (During) Social app, (for example) a user story app is triggered and developers are invited to build the signed off solution.

Limitations

The scope for this project is to rebuild the core of Project Catalyst / funding mechanisms using conversational interaction design as taught by the Social Design Academy. We limit ourselves to a linear and non-linear funding track using a proposal template.

By creating the before-during-after data pipeline, we can extend the Social Appstore with all kinds of fund builder templates. These funding templates are for future design research and implementation.

Other out of scope funder builder template* ideas;

• Mission template
• CIP/Lobby template
• Disaster template
• Charity template
• Kickstarter template
• Design challenge template
• Co-design challenge template
• Co-creation challenge template
• Research template
• Cardano Angels template

* All builder templates use the same before-during-after data-pipeline.

Auditability - How can the community check on progress?

Fund 7 Scope: Two use-cases

We will deliver two use-cases in this design research as pixel perfect design + gitbook documentation; the linear funding track and the asynchronous funding track. We strive to make the design process as transparent as possible by setting up design review teams.

The following list makes it easy to track our progress:

1. [In progress] Indexed human activities & Routines within Project Catalyst
2. [In progress] Index Bad habits & Obstacles within Project Catalyst, a current reality → new reality overview.
3. [In progress] index current experience map for Project Catalyst
4. [In progress] We'll define (Social) UX KPIs so Voltaire Assistant has standardised UX metrics. (3 months)
5. [vote-pending] Rebuild current experience map as social apps with a chat-based approach.
6. [In progress] We'll recruit motion ui artists / motion ui developers in our Github for the production. (6 months)
7. [Vote-pending] We seek collaboration with motion graphic studios. (Interactive Storytelling = Governance)
8. [Vote-pending] We did 4 team review sessions with visual design at the center of these meetings (6 months)
9. [Vote-pending] We index/design the conversational modules needed (6 months)
10. [Vote-pending] We visualised the new conversational onboarding path for project Catalyst, and use this story map as a progression tracker on a Miro board. (6 months)
11. [Vote-pending] We create the pixel perfect social apps for the deliverable list. (6 months)
12. [Vote-pending] We documented the social apps and conversational modules in gitbook, size of the gitbook, amount of pages (6 months)

Real world impact

An open-source fund builder for DAO's supporting linear and asynchronous funding rounds powered by a Social Appstore with side-treasuries.

A fund builder gives Catalyst circles, teams and companies access to side-treasuries, while Social Apps give them the opportunity to start using ADA/Tokens in their business environment.

By providing a strategy and approach we create a lively and safe (sandbox) environment that allows parties to 'flip-the-switch' when their community sentiment is confident. Meaning they can play with serious impact.

Why is Design Research & System Thinking important?

Design research investigates in visual design how we can do things in new ways. By making our thinking visual, the Catalyst community can focus on contributing to a solution, in this way we can solidify our thinking in design.

System Thinking is important, because it's the relation between components where the magic happens. Think of an old pocket watch; the minimal precision of the cogs needed to make the deviation of time as small as possible is why design research is needed. The connection and relation between parts is where the magic happens, not the individual parts. System thinking treats a system like a communicating-vessel.

Challenge selection rationale

We chose the Rapid Funding Mechanisms over the Cardano ♥ DAO challenge because this proposal focuses on treasury management and new types of rapid funding mechanisms in software. We support DAO's and other Organisational structures, the Voltaire Assistant system is not a DAO in itself and will be turned into open-source software after the design research is completed.

Our Team

Social System Engineer / Design research lead.Niels Kijf, sr. Social System Engineer & Design researcher for blockchain based software.

Design Review team

The design review team will vet and review educational materials and design research.

• Ro, sr. Machine Learning (Full Stack)
• Kerstin, phd (des), digital education researcher/ lecturer
• Antoine, co-founder of Suki Editions
• Christopher, co-founder and leads Regenerating Sonora
• René, mechanical engineer
• Timothy, Systems Engineer
• Aharon, Social-tech Entrepreneur Consenz
• Merijn, Music/Brand Director
• Deryck,Risk Manager/Engineer

Full disclose and vision statements sheet available on request [email protected]

Social Design Academy Roadmap

• End Dec-Jan '21-'22: Build SDA website
• 22Q1-Q2: Design research In-wallet Onboarding for ADAholders
• 22Q3-Q4: Design research Voltaire Assistant - Fund builder for DAO's
• 22Q4: Make learning management system operational
• 2022: Vetting Social Design Program
• 2022: Design Review Sessions & Workshops for Catalyst
• 2022: Mentor Onboarding
• 22Q4: Investor Onboarding
• 22Q4-and beyond: Launch of the Social Design Program
• 22Q4-and beyond: Cardano Digital Conversational framework
• 22Q4-and beyond: Catalyst Social Appstore

See visual roadmap in attachments

Good to know

• This project will ramp up throughout 2022.
• This is a collaboration with Adagov.org funded proposals.
• All software will be open-source, no proprietary items.
• The Voltaire Assistant - Fund Builder for DAO's is the follow up proposal of the In-wallet Onboarding for ADAholders.
• Project tracking can be follow-ed on SocialDesignAcademy.io/gitbook (Launch, jan '21).
• Open invite to DAO's to sharpen the vision of flexible funding rounds.
• Voltaire Assistant - Fund Builder for DAO's. Let's play for serious impact.

References & Attachments

[1] UX KPI's
https://app.gitbook.com/o/-MVgm3UR8MvXuxfbAQbX/s/-Mfb2l7BEB_4Idu8B37N/social-ux-toolkit#ux-kpis
[2] 30 Incentive research
<https://hbr.org/2016/09/the-elements-of-value>
[3] 3.5% to change the world

<https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world>

Figure 1 - Visualisation Data model - Rapid Funding Track
Figure 2 - Social Design Academy Roadmap

Proposal Meta-data

• Supported by Adagov and Social Design Academy
• Theme: Productive Gaming
• Category: (Rapid) Fund Mechanisms
• Tags: SDA, Adagov, Design Research, Software Design, Conversational Governance, Visual Fund Builder, Gamification, Social Apps, DAO support, Cooperation & Coordination Support.