OpenScience Marketplace Scale-up

[IMPACT]

This is a continuation of our successful Fund 6 proposal osNFTs for science popularization and successful Fund 7 proposal OpenScienceNFT Marketplace.

Since Fund 7, we have established contact with Thespian Agency (<https://www.thespian.hr/>) and have been working closely with them on UI/UX and backend development for our OpenScience NFT Marketplace.

We have re-examined our roadmap and came to the conclusion that the features we have listed in Fund 7 will need more funds for successful implementation. As such, this proposal will abstain from proposing newer features to implement as we wish to focus on packaging our first set of features already in the works as our costs exceeded our expectations (we might have been a tad too ambitious with the funds we previously asked for), as you can see below with number of features we wish to implement.

osNFTs

Please note that the model we are describing in this section would require native tokens to function optimally, but for the sake of simplicity, 'token' here refers to ADA.

As mentioned above, we will have on our platform 2 kinds of osNFTs.

1. Non-monetizable osNFTs: Open-access scientific publications, especially those tied to an academic institution, may not, at first, be a source of revenue for authors. However, they will still be mintable and tradable. This sounds paradoxical at first, because why would anyone trade NFTs if they can't get anything in return? The answer is that money is not the only value that can be extracted from such a system. In the academic world, a 'currency' could simply be the scientist or institution's reputation and recognition by their peers. This means that osNFTs can become a way for researchers or labs to endorse and signal what they perceive to be relevant science. Let's also not forget the 'ethos' of academic research: a not-for-profit activity (when talking about individual labs of course; universities, publishing companies and networking platforms are a different story). More on this in the 'NFT staking' section.

2. Monetizable osNFTs: One of the aims of this project is to allow the scientist to monetize their work. Using their published academic article might not always be an option, but there is no problem with monetizing derivatives of the work. For example, authors can create graphical abstracts or summaries of their work, and mint them as osNFTs, which can be bought, traded, and profited from. Additionally, our main focus with monetizable osNFTs would be the creation of frameworks for a modular generation of science-inspired NFTs. The 'osNFT frameworks' section goes into the details of this concept. This framework-centric marketplace can be thought of as a meta-NFT marketplace, or a marketplace for building frameworks for creating NFTs. With time, we can envision a community that will create these generative frameworks but also curate them to ensure scientific rigour. At the initial stages of the project, curation will be performed by us, the founding team. Outsourcing to the community will be a gradual process that will co-evolve with our DAO.

NFT staking

What do we mean by NFT staking in the context of non-monetizable osNFTs ? Instead of buying an NFT, and then selling it expecting a return on investment (ROI), one would simply 'borrow' an NFT. One way to do this would be to stake a certain amount of tokens against an osNFT, such as a peer-reviewed open access academic article, and because the osNFT is borrowed instead of bought, the user can return it to the marketplace, and receive their tokens back. This method also creates massive NFT liquidity, solving a major problem that most new NFT projects face. The only platform that uses this model that we know of is the Arweave protocol's wiki website: arwiki.wiki, where each article is sponsored by a certain address. This 'liquid NFT' model was originally conceived at Arweave (where we will be hosting PubWeave). Lastly, because we are asking users to participate in a system with no ROI, we cannot possibly ask them to pay transaction fees. Enter Ouroborous. Cardano is a beautifully crafted proof-of-stake blockchain, and staking tokens generates rewards. We will focus on taking advantage of this property to offset transaction fees that would otherwise be paid for by users. A lock-up period will be required depending on the amount staked.

osNFT frameworks

A quick illustration of what we mean by osNFT framework: Consider a cell. It can be an animal, plant or bacterial cell. It can also contain many different types of structures. Other characteristics could include the developmental stage, the health of the cell, its size, etc. Our framework would generate a random combination of those features, in a scientifically rigorous way, in addition to text and annotations with the aim of teaching something new to the person who mints or interacts with the NFT.

Another example is the developmental stages of C. elegans. C. elegans has interesting particularities that makes it a great test-case for our framework. Features would include: Sex of the animal (male vs hermaphrodite), cell count dictated by the developmental stage, optional transduction with fluorescent protein to add some color.

The marketplace will be kick-started with the following 2 frameworks, the first of which will coincide with the public launch of the marketplace, and the second following closely:

Framework #1 (which will coincide with the public launch of the marketplace): C. elegans developmental stages.
Framework #2: Modular cell engineering.

In our roadmap, we define long-term goals as having the following set of functionalities:

A DAO-mediated self-governance system.
Creation of rigorous scientific content through peer-reviewed validation.
Compensation of scientific work regardless of a person's socio-economic background.

Cardano's philosophy and roadmap was a perfect fit for our project. Successful implementation of our marketplace would mean an influx of new users to the Cardano ecosystem. Cardano's use case would see greater expansion as a consequence.

Interestingly, successful implementation of our staking model would substantially expand ADA's use-case. Unlocking the potential of staked ADA with our endorsement mechanism would have 2 main benefits: creating additional utility for otherwise locked ADA, and further incentivizing ADA staking, which would enhance network security and might even help reduce price volatility. We are exploring ways of doing this, including the possibility of minting native tokens backed by an amount of ADA that would be staked or unstaked depending on the activity of these native tokens. We are still in the early stages of exploration for this milestone and cannot guarantee its success. Please keep in mind however that failing to implement this feature would not in any way diminish the scope of our project.

For our platform to be successful, we will need a robust user identification strategy that will ideally be managed by a decentralized identity platform, such as Atala Prism, to bridge NFT users to established identifiers in academia such as ORCID and Google Scholar. We note it here because it is an essential part of our platform and DIDs are still in their infancy. Moreover we are currently focused on building the infrastructure and UI/UX, while simultaneously studying the best strategy for DID implementation for a future proposal in future funds. As mentioned at the beginning of this proposal, we will not be applying for an Atala Prism category until we are satisfied with the progress of our current features.

[FEASIBILITY]

1 month

Smart contracts completed
Cross-bridge NFT minting (data+metadata) completed
Framework #1 progressing.

3 months

Public launch of the marketplace
Framework #1 (see osNFT frameworks section) completed
More than 100 minted osNFT from Framework #1
Focus then shifts to non-monetizable osNFTs
Endorsement-based staking is being tested
Ongoing discussions with labs potentially interested.

6 months

More than 50 labs enrolled and interacting with non-monetizable osNFTs
More than 1000 minted osNFT from framework #1
Framework #2 completed as well
Guidelines for the community to build their own frameworks
Gathering feedback and iterating with enhancements.

We have been fairly conservative in previous funds regarding our hourly wages. However, now that we have started collaborating with at least two software development companies we were made a bit more aware of the higher nature of the costs associated with this kind of development. We have thus increased the hourly rate by 10-20 % and reduced the number of weeks of work to keep the funds we ask for reasonable with regard to the challenge's available funds. We always make sure not to exceed 10-12% of the challenge's funds. This number includes all submissions in a single challenge, if applicable.

Smart contract engineering

80$/hour x 40h/week x 10 weeks (2.5 months) = 32,000 $

UI/UX development

50$/hour x 40h/week x 12 weeks (3 months) = 24,000 $

Backend development

50$/hour x 40h/week x 12 weeks (3 months) = 24,000 $

Total = 80,000 $

Core team:

Albert Feghaly: Project leader and blockchain developer (Plutus smart contracts).
Louis Gendron: Web and blockchain developer (Arweave NFT data storage and permaweb hosting).
Jordan Quenneville: Backend developer.
Jack Bauer: Science and art communicator, osNFT and logo design.
Yahya Benslimane: Networking coordinator within the academic world.

Advisors:

Roger Palou: Academic advisor.
Tariq Daouda: Infrastructure and AI expert.
Maude Dumont-Lagacé: Scientific advisor and art/design expert.

More information about the team can be found at <https://intellart.ca/#/team>

As mentioned at the start of this page, we have a new partnership since Fund7 with Thespian Agency who is helping with the frontend and backend of the platform,

[AUDITABILITY]

You can find/reach us at:

https://intellart.ca
<https://github.com/Intellart>
<https://twitter.com/opensciencenft>

As we've said in earlier iterations of this proposal, all of our code will be open-source to favour reusability and collaboration, but also to stay consistent with our philosophy. We stand by it. However, now that we have started collaborating with external agencies, the updates might not happen in real time, but eventually all of the code will become available.

We understand this might not be ideal for some, but we are putting extra effort in ensuring a transparent process by being visible as a team and with the weekly updates that are and will continue to be pushed to <https://intellart.ca/#/weeklyUpdate> in a very succinct manner to allow for fast progress tracking and auditability. Moreover, we have started writing short blog articles on https://intellart.medium.com to let the community in on our successes, struggles and evolution.

All this is in addition to the public KPI reports due every month.

This proposal exists to enable the development and scaling of our OpenScience NFT Marketplace, where content creators (scientists and academics) will be able to share and monetize their work. This will be made possible through NFT technology where perpetual royalties go directly to the authors and fund further science. However, this is not the only product we are building. Apart from this project, we are also working on a decentralized peer-review ecosystem called PubWeave. Eventually, we will be connecting both projects (osNFT Marketplace + PubWeave) to a treasury whose purpose is to ensure perpetual funding for scientists, especially those in unfavourable economic climates. Governance will also be outsourced to the community through a Cardano-based DAO with cross-chain capabilities for NFT management.

This is a continuation of our successful Fund 6 proposal osNFTs for science popularization and successful Fund 7 proposal OpenScienceNFT Marketplace.

As explained above, we require additional funds to pursue our goals. Between the UI/UX, backend, smart contracts for the monetizable and non-monetizable osNFT, NFT staking and the osNFT frameworks, our previously requested funds have had trouble keeping up!

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