This Fund10 challenge setting is quite exciting and refreshing by not following existing schema like "DeFi" or "Open Source Dev" but creating a novelty mix of disciplines. This is not risk-free, but possible to increase the number of apps, wallets and users on Cardano. After highly theoretical challenges sprearheaded by IOHK to seed DID and SSI proposals in the Fund-8, and nothing identity or web3 related in Fund-9, this idea here could do the trick for Fund-10. As I said, high risk but high impact possible. Maybe a good antidote to DeFi crash and crypto winter? The mentioning of game engines, metaverse and avatars makes me feel good about this challenge, and I bet that Cardano metaverse land sales this summer will be hotter than DEX token sales ;-) If this can be meshed together with idenity - cool! If not - worth a try, probably better than putting 7.5 million dollars into "DApps, Products & Integrations".

The challenge setting "Elevate the Metaverse with RealFi" asks for identity solutions and wallet integrations for things like games, DeFi and social to be integrated into the Cardano ecosystem. This is surely ambitious, but would in my opinion accelerate the growth and evolution of the developer and app ecosystem by drawing in talent from the much broader areas of gaming and user experience to be given incentives to connect to Cardano DID and Cardano in general. As the proposers say "gradual development could be leapfrogged". I find this claim believable and think that this challenge setting presents a creative way of moving beyond the heavily developer-centric focus of Catalyst which is sprinkled by community and NFT proposals low on development savvy. While speculative, this challenge setting has the potential to create more exciting proposals that would not be low on sophistication.

The impact to global society of the coming projects covered in this challenge setting will undoubtedly be high. Metaverse might sound like the Valley or the Street companies overhyped, marketing buzz word right now but we all know that it is all inevitable. Digitalization and virtualization will eat the world. If Cardano wants to be at the forefront of this cutting-edge technology and stays relevant for the following decades, the community must have good answers to this challenges. This is a quite broad challenge that covers DeFi (decentalized finance), NFT (non-fungible token), and DID (decentralized identity) as the solutions wanted to be integrated to create the superstructure of fully functioning and mass-adopted metaverse.

Overall, I can see this challenge setting aligns with strategic goal and critical mission Cardano plans to achieve in Fund 10. The metaverse will attract many users wanting to consume and utilize all the features and benefits from a novel world. The builders, developers, and entrepreneurs will need to come, explore, and realize all these visions of new world. Lastly, functioning metaverse (might) has the solution to real world problems that cannot be solved using traditional method due to physical or other constraints such as distance, disabilities, inequality, etc.

Based on the information in this challenge setting proposal, I believe that this challenge setting firmly addresses all four of the strategic goals for fund 9. It addresses the first strategic goal (prepare a group of people to make contributions to the Cardano ecosystem) because it provides the necessary guidance for future proposers to build their own solutions to current problems using a combination of Decentralized ID (DID), Defi, and the metaverse. The proposers listed some great examples of basic guidance for future proposals, such as the fact that proposals should have some component of identity and an immersive experience (to some degree). Listing this information is very helpful for proposers and it ensures that they will have the proper understanding of the requirements when they make their proposals. The challenge setting encourages people to create solutions for real value, real marketing dollars, and real entertainment while ensuring the individual has the ability to control their own data and identity, with no centralized authority having control over it.

The challenge setting also addresses the second strategic goal (building an open-source ecosystem and attracting developers) by creating a huge opportunity for new projects that developers can take on. The RealFi space (combining Defi and DID) has a huge amount of space to grow in the coming years, so starting with this challenge setting, the community can show developers that they care about this field. Thus, more developers are likely to come to the ecosystem when they see that there is a challenge setting that matches their interests. Additionally, I believe that this challenge setting will encourage open-source development because of the statement “free from centralized or greedy agency” that the proposers used in the proposal. While they did not explicitly say that projects should be open-source, I believe that it is mildly implied in the language of the challenge setting. Additionally, any participating developers who are passionate about RealFi are likely to make their projects open-source since it is a standard for any successful project on the Cardano blockchain. The proposers could have mentioned it explicitly, but I don’t think it is a huge problem in this case.

The challenge setting addresses the third strategic goal (build real-world solutions on Cardano) by building RealFi solutions on the Cardano blockchain. I don’t know how much more obvious real-world solutions can get than that alone. The basic concept of RealFi is to bring real finance to people who need new ways to access finance and create value that Defi often cannot achieve in its current form. An example from IOHK is working with the Ethiopian Ministry to provide DID to many students. This DID would not only allow students to have access to financial opportunities, insurance, education, etc. Ideas like these or even smaller scale projects that the community comes up with for this challenge setting will provide huge real-world benefit to many individuals around the world.

The challenge setting does not explicitly address the fourth strategic goal (support human processes in Catalyst). However, I have been able to find a connection that I think works well. By growing and developing the RealFi ecosystem within the Cardano ecosystem, developers can provide ways for people around the world to get involved with Catalyst. There are many opportunities to onboard new members and further develop the Catalyst mechanism through concepts from this challenge setting, such as DID. I could see DID involved in PA/vPA reputation (a place that could really use DID). There are many good use-cases for DID in Catalyst, so I think the cross-benefit to the human processes of Catalyst is enough to justify a score of 5. (score given: 5)

The ambitious goals of integrating Defi, NFTs and the Metaverse with DiDs generated by Atala Prism aligns this challenge setting perfectly with the strategic goals of this funding round. SSI DiDs will become the cornerstone of individual ownership of one’s own identity. Furthermore, integration of this empowering technology into the activities that people already love to engage in, on chain and off, will drive mass adoption at an accelerated rate. Bringing traditional gamers into the expansive opportunities available in the Metaverse could lead to short term exponential growth. Our community needs this type of forward thinking proposal.

When it comes to driving adoption and expanding influence in the cryptosphere in today's market, RealFi is the way to go. It creates real-world solutions that can be implemented and draw in not only a lot of users, but developers as well. As web3 is slowly seeping in and the first instances of metaverses are being created, it is of great importance for a blockchain to be ready and participate in this early on. Therefore, I strongly agree with devoting a challenge to RealFi next Fund.

This challenge setting argues that as a community, we should allocate resources and efforts to having more successful use cases in RealFi, and that to achieve this, we need to have more success cases in which there is a combination of DID and dApps (DeFi, Metaverse, …). Although I agree with the arguments presented, I also believe that the way this challenge is framed there is a high probability of overlap in topics to be addressed when compared to other challenges in catalyst. Compared with the strategic goals of the next fund, I would like to affirm that the proliferation of real-world use cases is a key strategic goal of the next fund that is directly related to one of the four strategic objectives. I would nevertheless recommend that the authors of the proposal seek alternatives that are aligned with other goals that will be established in subsequent catalyst cycles.

This challenge proposal has the goal of accelerating the transformation of current projects of gaming, DeFi, NFTs and others into their RealFi versions by connection all of this with DIDs and applying business models that really make sense for the everyday life of the population and integrate this with the metaverse for mass adoption. The concept of the challenge is very interesting and very broad. Metaverse itself if a fluid concept and there isn’t a single definition for it: some people say each project will have its own metaverse, but others say there is only one metaverse that connects everything. So, this challenge, as stated, could fit different perspectives about what metaverse is, and the only requirement is that the projects will have to connect DID solutions, such as Atala PRISM, to bring people to the metaverse, and not just avatars that are potentially not unique and not necessarily connected to an individual. The proposer claims that RealFi and metaverse are the future of blockchain and the internet as well, and I believe it will play a central role in the change that is happening today from Web2 to Web3. This challenge proposal is very well connected to building real-world solutions based on Cardano, especially because it positions itself against pointless play-to-earn and the ludicrous APYs offered by some DeFi platforms. The challenge would also allow developers from other blockchains to join Cardano and possibly create their open-source projects here. In general, the alignment of this challenge with Cardano’s mission is very high.

RealFi as the future key differentiator between Cardano and other blockchain platforms, it is one of the critical pieces to achieve Cardano's mission of real financial value for real people. This challenge covers the said goal.

Through new applications for mass adoption, combining DID-solutions and broadening the range from finance, to goods and services, gaming and collecting (Art, NFT), this challenge adds value to the Cardano ecosystem and supports the Catalyst fund9 strategic goals.

DeFi niches still have great limitations due to the need for overcollateralization, this requires users to only be able to borrow if they have a larger amount than they want as a loan. This is a necessary limitation in closed systems where there are no credit scores that can assign different risks to different users/unique wallets. This limitation makes sense from the security point of view of DeFi protocols, but it is a major obstacle for unbanked people who need to use reputation to obtain loans. The RealFi concept will bring possibilities such as undercollateralized loans, something that has great potential in underdeveloped countries and in layers of society where speculation and investment are not a priority.

RealFi is also about accessibility and an example of this is the work done by WorldMobile, a company dedicated to developing mobile communication networks in Africa. This work is essential because access to DeFi also depends on the infrastructure and internet in the locality.

This challenge setting intends to give space to projects and initiatives that make it possible to bridge applications that still focus on communities with greater financial power and bring not only DeFi, but metaverse and NFTs to different communities.

Due to these points, I consider this challenge setting of great importance and critical for mass adoption on the Cardano blockchain.

This challenge setting is in line with items 1 and 3 of the Catalyst Fund9 Challenge Setting Strategic Goals mentioned in the Proposal Assessor Guide.

The metrics presented by this proposed challenge setting seem reasonable, some might be a bit hard to measure - do we know how many Cardano wallets exist? The Challenge Team for this probably will have to do a post-challenge survey of funded proposals to get all this data - but then again, not a bad idea to connect the builders with the auditors. I have no problem with this - we are at the end of the day not here for the beauty of our KPIs but to break free from systems that suck, and sometimes we need to take a leap of faith for that to happen.

As in this Fund challenge setting proposals are now requesting ADA amounts and not USD, I understand why such a high amount has been requested given the current disappointing ADA price. For a challenge setting, the KPI presented and success criteria are sufficiently clear, and I see it as positive that some effort has been made to define which proposals would and would not "qualify" to apply to this challenge. The possible directions and inclusion of DID as a must-have seem to be set correctly and in a way force direction of funding towards the desired objective. The challenge setting would have benefited from more elaboration of possible directions in the concrete, for example by describing some of the projects on other blockchains (i.e. on Polygon? Solana?) that would fit into this category. By providing relevant external references and explicitly asking proposers to be creative, I do not rate this as a negative at this stage though and think this challenge setting could be a risk worth taking.

The metrics are measuring ideal and favorable outcomes I believe Cardano community want to see in general. More seamless interoperability between dApps inside Cardano ecosystem or even outside of Cardano will absolutely be invaluable. DID being implemented in wallet and dApp interface level will make processes quicker, easier, and safer. It is helping that Cardano ecosystem already has few numbers of major and notable metaverse projects such as Pavia, Cornucopias, Drunken Dragons, and the most recent Virtua’s Cardano Island. I have been involved in majority of them and I can say the enthusiasm is above and beyond and it will keep growing in terms of adoption and value. The proving grounds are here with us already and I am excited the coming proposals could realize this challenge setting’s grandiose vision by imparting impactful and significant values upon these metaverses. Lastly, there will also be multiplier bonus such as the accelerated advancement and adoption of the main and supporting tech infrastructures during the progression of resolving this challenge.

Given the information provided in the challenge setting proposal, I think it does a good job of defining some metrics of success for its focus areas. The overarching goal is DID that can be used by a larger demographic “unifying personal finance, goods and services, gaming and collecting.” Some more specific metrics of success include, number of successfully launched projects from this challenge setting, proposal DApps and solutions issued with DID, and total ADA value locked in metaverse, games, and platforms. There were a few more metrics mentioned, but I think overall they are all useful for future proposers when they think about their proposals. There is also a great space for healthy competition between proposals since everyone has the same goal of reaching a working RealFi ecosystem, but there are many different ways to reach that point, so there will be many projects and ideas that contribute to that ideal future. The metrics of success are broad on purpose, which allows future proposers to have flexibility to build whatever solution they feel is necessary for RealFi. (score given: 5)

The KPI metrics listen in this challenge are spot on, and will be easy to verify. The number of DiDs issued and number of successful projects that evolve from this proposal can more than adequately be monitored and evaluated. Determining the increase in ada transactions on related metaverse and game projects may be tricky, but a close estimate should be possible. Similarly, growth in numbers of wallets would be subject to a calculus with a degree of uncertainty but ultimately yielding a ballpark figure. The metric that could most easily be assessed as a measure of success would be the number of DiDs operating on Cardano metaverses. Again I am scoring a 4 when I feel a 4.5 to be more appropriate.

The challenge scope is intentionally broadly defined to leave room for creativeness. Despite that, the KPIs are set clearly for proposers to start working on what hopefully will result in the creation of "killer apps" on Cardano.

As I read the description of the success criteria, it seems as if the focus is on the proliferation of DID solutions, which is confusing when compared with the rest of the sections. This set of metrics is designed as a combination of metrics that could be used to measure the performance of the challenge itself as well as metrics that could be used as a guide for future challenge proposers. Taking a look at the metrics, for example, we have "the number of successful projects that were launched as a result of this challenge", which I consider to be a generic metric and could be applied to just about any challenge. There is another proposed metric which is "Proposal dApp/solution users issued with DID" which, although it could have been better described, I consider it to be a better metric that would better describe the expected impact of this specific challenge. These metrics are wide enough that they could not be construed as restrictive and can serve as a useful point of comparison between projects. I would suggest adding to the challenge setting specifications for proposers an information regarding the need to report not only to IOG but also to the community, as well as the means and frequency of communication.  

The proposers presented 5 KPIs to be used to measure the success of this challenge. I believe they are good, very appropriate, and possible to measure - only the “Growth in total number of Cardano wallets above baseline” that might be more challenging to measure -, but I would like to see as well some KPIs related different areas. For examples, number of projects that are bringing NFT projects to the metaverse, or DeFi, or gaming, to understand the distribution of community interest and focus when it comes to the metaverse. Also, besides launching new projects and linking existing ones, it would be good to measure the number of projects that already exist but were not in the metaverse yet but started their migration because of this challenge. Maybe even measure the number of different DID solutions that are being used by different projects as well. In general, I believe the community and the challenge team won’t have much trouble verifying the success of this challenge.

The first two key metrics are good, and well-defined. They seem to be the two formed to be the measure of the success of the challenge itself.

For the third one, "Proposal dApp/solution users issued with DID"; it appears to me to be a writing error, and if not, then I cannot make sense of it. I guess it is about a proposal with an application or solution, and the metric is to count for account of uses or issued DID's.

"Total $/ada value transacted in Cardano metaverse(s), games, platforms"; Dollar or ADA, or other tokens under Cardano blockchain, my suggestion is to leave the denomination to the project to choose.

The last key metric is not understandable, "Growth in total number of Cardano wallets above baseline". What is the baseline of Cardano wallets? If it is meant as a number of wallets active within the project, then this could be the same problem or the same metric as the metric #3. If DID's are connected to a wallet address, then the number of DID's is the same metric as the number of wallets. Maybe to merge these two metrics into one could be one editing solution for my difficulty of understanding.

The definition of success is appropriate to the context of this challenge setting, but there is no time frame to measure success. It would be important to have a period of time to assess the outcome of this challenge.

The key metrics proposed are relevant, as they allow us to assess the number of apps/solutions with identity integrations and data on volume and transactions related to these solutions. There is no mention of a time period for measuring the metrics.