“Cardano Developer DAO”: grassroots developer services portal for newly funded and smaller projects

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

Vision for “Catalyst Developer DAO”:

There is currently a lot of informal collaboration between Catalyst projects. On the other hand, well-known companies exist that specialize in Cardano-related development that are used by many new projects and smaller teams and entrepreneurs. By leveraging Decentralized Identity and DAO-tooling that has grown tremendously over the last year, we want to experiment with a decentralized structure to make these exchanges a lot easier, rewarding and transparent.

The process will initially launch as a simple Dework- and Discord-based platform and over its milestones incorporate full DID and gradual smart contract implementation to facilitate relationships between members and projects.

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community.

DAO Challenge Settings have been a stalwart of Catalyst and a lot of useful tooling, from simple plugins to smart contract libraries have been built. We want to put a narrowed focus on Number of Communities engaged in collaboration using Cardano DAO creation tools to help existing tech - both Cardano DAO and legacy decision making software - to bring together what already exists or is currently being finished Open Source as part of Fund-9 and the Atala PRISM Launch Ecosystem, and make as many developers on Cardano part of the DAO journey. Using Catalyst review and assessment - where everyone is a stakeholder - seems ideally placed to bring exponential growth to the use of DAO Tooling on Cardano.

Combining Atala PRISM Verified Credentials and Native CNFT-Gating will allow us to explore new ways of interacting with the Continuous Testnet and Cardano Blockchain. The proposers have recently completed Plutus Pioneers Cohort 4 and Atala PRISM Cohort 2 and will continue to follow the emerging capabilities of the Voltaire and Conway tooling that is being developed. We understand the pioneering nature of trying to “force” Catalyst into a speedy process of decentralization, but feel that these pioneering development risks are exactly what makes the Cardano spirit and frontier ideation of new governance methods.

Decentralized governance prototype for DAOs: Multiple Expert reviewers participate in the evaluation process without being controlled by any groups in particular. Instead, smart contracts will define the conditions for reaching a milestone and handle the assignment of expert reviewers. A reputation system built around decentralized identity will complement the full use of Cardano’s already rich stack for decentralized membership organizations.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

Proposers are Plutus Pioneers (cohorts 3 and 4), Atala PRISM Pioneers (2nd cohort) and Marlowe Pioneers. We will collaborate with impact work network Socious for the escrow and potential gaps in the initial skill pool, and the support of the developer ecosystem for blockchain-related design and testing support. The team covers a broad range of skills from successful startup founders, technical and business backgrounds to community functions including Challenge Teams since Fund-7 (Boosting Cardano’s DeFi) to fund 8,9 (Developer Ecosystem) and current fund 10 (Developer Ecosystem-The Evolution). We have grown the Developer Ecosystem community on telegram channel: <https://t.me/DeveloperEcosystem> (140 members as of 17 July 2023) from Fund-8 until now and would like to add value to the ecosystem by applying our experience and insights which we gained from our participation in the PoA pilot in fund 9 to improve the overall process and form the Catalyst Reward DAO community. The PoA review is the last filter before Cardano Treasury funds get released to the proposers. Hence, it is crucial that the proposals will get flagged if they have not delivered what they promise to the community.

This Catalyst Reward DAO platform would provide a special extra filter in addition to the community reviewer especially for projects which are technical and require expertise of developer reviewers. Our team have always advocated for decentralizing Catalyst. The team have been pioneers in the pilot of PoAs review for Fund-9 and have raised numerous issues with the Catalyst system. We have published extensively about the findings of process and issues in our close-out challenge report from fund 7 to fund 9 here –>

Fund 9: <https://challenge-team-work.gitbook.io/f9-developer-ecosystem/>

Fund 8: <https://challenge-team-work.gitbook.io/f8-developer-ecosystem/>

Fund 7: <https://challenge-team-work.gitbook.io/f7-boosting-cardano-defi/>

We emphatically raise attention to the big budget proposals, the need for PoAs and how we could improve the PoA process. We have worked closely with the Catalyst team and appreciate their continuous support and relentless commitment to improving the process and making the “Experiment” work better for all stakeholders

Our “Developer Ecosystem: The Evolution” Telegram group has been around since Fund-8. We hope that many of the technical proposers and builders will form the backbone of the “Catalyst Reward DAO” and that their collective skillset can be harnessed to provide better assessment and validation of Catalyst proposals and proposers.

With the growing number of proposals entered into Project Catalyst with each successive funding round, it is time that we use the tools already available on Cardano to improve the oversight and funding process. We would like to invite experts from all disciplines to contribute their specific knowledge and earn rewards that are already a part of the Catalyst process while safeguarding the Cardano treasury. By doing this as a DAO and entirely open sourced, we hope to contribute to the dialogue for more accuracy in technical proposals, fairer distributed rewards and transparent PoA revision.