Fiverr Clone on Cardano

[IMPACT]

Fiverr (<https://www.fiverr.com/>) is a freelancer marketplace for all kinds of remote services: if you need almost any kind of professional for a specific, limited task, that’s a great place to find them. Designers, marketing professionals, writers, translators, video makers and editors, translators, musicians, programmers, the list goes on. Fiverr belongs to the group of very successful Web2 applications that made life of both service providers and their clients much easier.

Although, like many other traditional applications, this kind of platform is subjected to disruption with Web3 and blockchain technology. For many kinds of services, having an intermediary just adds friction and extra costs to the process. A decentralized marketplace built on Cardano would be a better and more cost effective alternative than what is out there.

Here we propose to create the MVP of a Fiverr clone (final name yet to be defined) and build it on Cardano. It will be a permissionless marketplace, where any professional can sign up, create their profile and offer their services. They will build their reputation over time based on their satisfied clients that will positively rate them after the service. They would be able to charge a bit more than in Fiverr and other similar platforms, since the ‘Fiverr-clone’ fee is going to be lower (less than 5% instead of 20%), or decide to keep the same price to attract more customers. On the other hand, customers might also pay less for the same service, or get a better quality service for the same price.

We are proposing to build a decentralized freelancer marketplace. It’s going to be a DApp built on Cardano. We are aligned with the DApps & Integrations Challenge, since we are following the potential direction mentioned in the campaign brief: “Solutions utilizing the power of smart contracts”. We are also going to bring more users to Cardano, since our solution is going to be used not only by people already in our ecosystem, but also from the outside, because we are going to implement FIAT gateways in our platform at the time they become available.

The risks for the development of this project are related mainly to adoption. We have a strong technical team ready to execute the project, but we don’t have a marketing focused person working with us yet. Although this is included in the project budget, there’s a risk that it will take some time to find them and this may delay the adoption, our income relative to the platform and therefore the next steps of its development that are not covered by this proposal.

[FEASIBILITY]

Roadmap

Q3 2022

Requirements research
System architecture
Smart contracts architecture
UX and UI design
Design of visual identity

Q4 2022

Website development
Smart contracts development
Marketing planning

Q1 2023

Launch on testnet
Closed testing
Website and smart contracts updated and improvements, as necessary
Start of marketing

Q2 2023

Launch on mainnet
Incentivized early adoption (services providers and customers)
Intensified marketing to increase adoption

Budget

UX specialist, $4k/month, for 3 months: $12k
Designer, $4k/month, for 3 months: $12k
2 full stack software engineers full time, $6k/month, for 6 months: $72k
1 plutus developer full time, $8k/month, for 6 months: $48k
Marketing and growth specialist part time, $2k/month, for 9 months: $18k
Project manager part time, $6k/month, for 12 months, $72k
Other expenses (e.g. marketing, web services), $16k
Total: $250k

This proposal is going to be executed by Loxe Inc.’s team. The full team can be seen at <https://loxeinc.com>. The leadership team responsible for this project is:

Matthias Sieber

Professional Software Engineer for over 20 years
Worked on Liqwid through MLabs internship
Community-elected Moderator on Cardano Stack Exchange
Plutus and Prism Pioneer
Project Catalyst Community Advisor and Veteran Community Advisor
Catalyst Circle v2 member representing the Cardano Foundation
Cardano Ambassador
Built successful marketplaces, startups, SMBs, and mission-driven teams
Ex-Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member
CEO Loxe Inc.

Eli Selkin, L.C.S.W., M.S

Professional Software Engineer for over 10 years
Plutus Pioneer
Ex-Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member
MS in Computer Science, specializing in Machine Learning
ML architect
CTO Loxe Inc.

Victor Corcino

Energy Industry Engineer for 6 years
Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member
Member of the 1st Catalyst Circle as Community Advisors representative
Catalyst Veteran Community Advisor and Proposal Mentor
Co-creator of AIM Community Tools (CA/vCA Tools, Voter Tool)
BSc Chemical Engineering and MSc Chemical Engineering and Software Development
Specialization in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
PhD candidate, researching the field of Machine Learning applied to Computational Fluid Dynamics
COO Loxe Inc.

Ganesh N

Professional Software Engineer for over 8 years
Plutus and Prism Pioneer (1st cohort)
Ex-Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member
BTech in Electronics and Communication Engineering
Has lead development of large scale applications
Experience in the financial services industry

[AUDITABILITY]

Internally, we will use the Agile methodology to manage and keep track of our progress on this project’s development.

Externally, for audit purposes, we will track the progress according to the delivery of the milestones presented in the roadmap included in the feasibility section of this proposal. This progress report will be done through the monthly meetings with the challenge team and coordinator meetings with the IOG team.

Success for this proposal is a successfully developed platform, with great adoption and usage.

After 3 months: Finished requirements research, system architecture, smart contracts architecture, UX and UI design and design of visual identity.
After 9 months: Launched on testnet, feedback received and platform improved based on feedback.
After 12 months: Launched on mainnet, intensified marketing strategy executed and early adopters incentivised to use the platform.

We will measure success with the following KPIs:

Number of professionals signed up
Number of customers signed up
Number of services provided through the platform
Amount of money transacted through the platform

This is an entirely new proposal.

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