DcSpark is in need of capital to continue implementing completed projects and requires expenses for the company. We know dcSpark with the famous project Milkomda has contributed to Cardano in terms of technology, the achievements the companies create is undeniable. Taking out a loan to continue the company's operations with 40 members is appropriate, dcSpark is in need of help from Catalyst, which will contribute to more quality projects for the growing Cardano ecosystem. The company is a tangible asset that can fully guarantee its value. However, loans always have potential risks, the pre-determination of the risks presented by dcSpark is appropriate, there is firm reasoning about the payment of the loan. The return of cardano treasury has made calculations about the solution integrated into the system in the future. I rated: 4

This proposal seeks funding for covering the expenses of the dcSpark company related to the 40 employees staff. The funding is asked as a loan with interest from Project Catalyst. The problem is clearly and honestly presented, in fund 9 there is not sufficient amount of money for developer ecosystem projects. The loan of 400K is asked for two years with the first year as a grace period where no money has to be paid back, and a second year where the loan will be paid back monthly with 6% appreciation for the year in USD terms. The Cardano treasury has no way at the moment to receive payments but the dcSpark have made a proposal to create functionality that will allow The Cardano treasury to receive payments. It has to be pointed out for the voter to know, that the Cardano treasury in the future will finance all development and support of the blockchan. The Project Catalyst treasury is a fractionof the Cardano treasury, therefore there is a risk of the money flowing out trough the Project Catalyst budget, but returning into the Cardano treasury, not into the Project Catalyst budget itself. At present time, this will not be an issue because the Cardano treasury is used only for Project Catalyst. The dcSpark as a company itself is the product of this proposal. This is an unusual proposal, but I believe the point could be made that this proposal aliens with the goals of the Dapps, Products & Integrations challenge. I neither agree nor disagree that this proposal effectively addresses the challenge.

The problem is that dcSpark and related entities currently employ around 40 people. Their size has allowed them to build so many protocols parallelly, but they also require a certain amount of funding each Catalyst round to continue. They are requesting an interest-bearing loan from Catalyst for this round because Catalyst does not have much money for the developer ecosystem this round. The current state of the global economy has had an impact on the cryptocurrency market. Many startups are laying off employees as a cost-cutting measure. Even the ADA's price has dropped significantly. dcSpark, a well-known company in the Cardano ecosystem, has delivered numerous excellent projects. If providing a loan can assist them in continuing to deliver projects, that would be great. If dcSpark continues to deliver new projects, it will benefit the Cardano ecosystem. The proposal includes a detailed explanation of the loan terms as well as the interest payment. This is a one-of-a-kind proposal that can be repeated in future funds to keep good companies afloat that have contributed a lot of projects and will continue to contribute in the future. As a result, the proposal effectively addresses the problem.

The current bear market in crypto is no doubt making situation harder for the companies involved in blockchain industry. We are in no shortage of crypto-related companies filing for bankruptcy these past weeks. Even company as big as Coinbase is reducing their workforce too to save some costs and sustain its survival through this bear market. I think this proposal is dcSpark team being humble and not being shy to tell the members of Cardano community that they need some help financially. I notice that they have been very busy building products and developer tools and infrastructure these past months despite the current economy is not in the greatest shape. They said the best thing to do in a bear market is to build, so you can grow in the bull market. I cannot agree more with that.

This proposal may push the advancement in Cardano treasury system through CIP-0056 which will allow donations to the treasury. Another important feature to point out is the possibility to own other asset than ADA in the treasury. This will minimize the treasury’s risk exposure due to ADA volatility by spreading them through multiple assets that as uncorrelated as possible to ADA. One of the idea is to hold stable assets such as USD in treasury so regular activities and operations such as Project Catalyst can be funded with more stability without the proposer, assessors, and other workers involved worrying too much about volatility of ADA. The fact that value of proposals/projects/efforts in Catalyst is still denominated in USD but paid in ADA put quite a burden to Cardano treasury and receiver of those compensations or rewards in ADA, especially in a bear market like this. This also put some pressure to the value of ADA. Maybe later when Djed stablecoin is already live and fully functioning in the mainnet as the go-to on\off-fiat ramping, this issue and risk will be mitigated and resolved further.

One thing I am concerned about is whether this Dapps, Products, & Integration challenge is the right place to submit this proposal. But then again, maybe this is the only challenge that has large enough funding to submit this proposal and actually be funded rather than only be approved, so yeah kind of understand proposer’s rationale here. The other thing to consider is if this do get funded and the payment starts after the first year of grace period (the 13th month) and monthly after that, there is a possibility that the crypto market is recovering to some extent by the beginning of second year or better, even sooner. This (white swan) event will allow dcSpark to start to pay off this loan sooner or quicker (in shorter term).

I believe that this proposal can set a perilous precedent, and essentially allows the proposer to open a short position on the Cardano treasury. While the team are very important and key contributors to the ecosystem, many projects and community members are making sacrifices in light of current conditions. While I hope it does not come to this for the proposer and their employees, it seems inefficient and duplicative to fund "the team" for employee salaries and benefits, and yet see the proposer request funding for various other proposals that the same team would contribute to.

The problem they present is that this round of Catalyst does not have enough funding for developers. It's a bit of a stretch for me to accept their solution as providing any fruits beyond just their team, and offering a solution that other developers in the same. situation can benefit from. In fact, quite the opposite.

dcSpark, a company that has worked on dozens of Catalyst proposals and delivered multiple tools and platforms, such as Carp, Rust SDKs, Milkomeda, Flint wallet, Fracada etc, has created this proposal to ask for a loan from the Catalyst treasury to fund their activity for the next two years. The impact this would have, is of course, the continued operation of the company and the continued delivery of products which are useful to the ecosystem. The first risk that was outlined is that due to unforeseen events, the company might go bankrupt, which means it would not be able to pay back the loan. The second risk is that currently there is no way to pay money to the Cardano treasury, but as a way to mitigate this, another proposal was created to add this capability. Personally, while I do agree that the continued existence of dcSpark is helpful to the growth of the ecosystem, I am not fully convinced that this proposal effectively addresses the challenge, as the funds that are asked are a very large sum (400k USD), while dcSpark already has 10+ proposals in this fund as well, most of them asking for 20k - 100k. It feels like they should find a funding model that does not require them to take such large loans from Catalyst (in addition to other proposals), or, if this loan will be used to greatly expand the capabilities of the company, that should have been mentioned. Aside from this, Catalyst is specifically designed to fund concrete projects which are very clear in what they aim to do (they have a clear deliverable) and they are auditable (easy to verify that the return on investment is there). This being said, I do not want to discount the possibility that this is a good idea and that large Catalyst loans might be something that happens often in the future. It is up for the community to decide. Score: 3.

dcSpark is a parallel developer of many protocols and tools for project developers on the Cardano ecosystem. Some featured products, including Milkomeda sidechain, Flint wallet, Carp, Fracada, Rust SDKs, and several other tools, have been officially deployed or run testnet. All of these products contribute directly to the development of Cardano. I appreciate the professionalism of this company. dcSpark and related units have about 40 employees; to pay for this number of employees also requires a large amount of money, so they often request funding for each round of Catalyst. In Fund9, the total fund for the ecosystem and developers is not much, which is their main income source. To have enough budget, the proponent asked Catalyst for a loan with interest for 2 years. I consider this an absurd proposition, unsuitable for this challenging requirement. From fund6 up to now, they completed projects are all funded from Catalyst with quite a large amount. In Fund9, in addition to this proposal, They also have 13 proposals for funding with a large amount. If this proposal is approved, They will steal the opportunity of some other developers in this fund and the following funds, affecting the development of the Cardano ecosystem. This proposal is not Dapps, Products & Integrations; it is just a loan agreement. I strongly oppose this proposal.

DcSpark adds immense value to the Cardano eco-system as infrastructure builders. The asking for a loan doesn't specifically align with this challenge although the company to my knowledge specializes in products and integrations.

dcSpark propose for the company to take a loan from Catalyst to execute on development infrastructure work that will benefit the ecosystem. After one year they will start paying 6% APR on that loan as they begin to pay it back. Whether this proposal makes impact or not is fully determined by what dcSpark do with the funding once it is loaned out. dcSpark has a history of delivering open source code and infrastructure that benefits the ecosystem. However in this instance they are not specifying what the funding will be used for. Overall I somewhat agree that this could be an impactful proposal however dcSpark should add more details to highlight where this funding would be explicitly used in the future or share some roadmap of things they are working on.

OK, where do I start. Let’s start with the positives, the dcSpark team is one of the best-known and most competent developer teams in the Cardano ecosystem. We all know Sebastian and Nico from their days at Emurgo and how they helped to create Yoroi. This then translated into Milkomeda and many other integrations with Cardano. Funnily, enough, as strange as this proposal might sound (loan to a company) – it is almost (almost! – but not really) covered by the brief of the challenge “Any other idea, product or integration that someone thinks should be built in the Cardano ecosystem!” – which is a formulation that is as wide as can be. Yet, the dcSpark team failed to state what “should be built in the Cardano ecosystem” during the loan term. The team is directly seeking a loan from Catalyst because Fund 9 does not have sufficient money for the developer ecosystem. Hence, dcSpark wants to receive a loan that would be repaid with interest. The loan will be for 2 years with a first-year grace period where no money has to be paid back and the second year would see dcSpark pay back the loan month-by-month with an apr of 6% in USD terms. Unfortunately, the proposal does not clearly articulate how it will add value to the Cardano ecosystem – except for filling the treasury with interest after two years if dcSpark is still around. There were several ways of improving the impact of this proposal – and a clear one would have been to include a timeline of planned projects that dcSpark intends to deliver to Cardano during this two-year period. Not tied to the loan,– but still – as a sort of a counterweight that makes the loan proposal more palatable. Catalyst is not designed as a lending platform, although – it is an experiment – so even loans can be seen as an experimental function for Catalyst. The team simply states “dcSpark the company is itself the product in this proposal”. I like dcSpark. I like Sebastian – yet the team’s proposals are pushing the envelope in terms of how minimalistic they are. The content of some of their proposals is very bare bones and eventually the Catalyst voters may run out of patience with this approach to Catalyst funding. Fortunately, for dcSpark, I think that my criticism of their proposal-writing skills will fall on deaf ears with voters who value their ability to deliver great products.

The loan is used to pay costs to the company & employees. The money to repay the loan will most likely come from a combination of revenue from dcSpark products, future grants from companies. Projects provided for the ecosystem. The payment of the loan can be determined in 2 years of implementation. We can assess the success of the future projects dcSpark offers Cardano, their value of which may be greater than the amount of $400,000. I rated: 4

Auditability of this project will be only possible in the end of the project itself. There is no sensible way presented by which the community could audit the development of the company and if the chances of achieving a payback are increasing or decreasing. Success metrics are clearly defined but they are due in two years time. I disagree that this proposal provides me with sufficient information to assess the progress in attaining its stated goals.

The loan proposal includes clear loan terms and an explanation of the loan's requirements. The loan will be repaid over a two-year period, with the first year serving as a gap year during which neither principal nor interest will be due. Beginning with the second year, however, the loan will be repaid each month with interest. Thus, the development of the proposal can be easily monitored. Both sustainable development objectives and key performance indicators are not necessary for the proposal. It would have been easier to understand the need for the fund if the proposer had provided a valid fund breakdown of how these funds will be used. Additionally, it should be confirmed that the business generates enough revenue to repay the loan after a year. The proposal's success will be determined by whether or not the borrowed money is repaid with interest, so it is simple to assess. The information offered should be adequate to assess the proposal's success and progress.

The term of the loan is in 2 years where no repayments in first year as grace period and 12 monthly repayments of roughly USD 37,500 each starts in 13th towards 24th month. I think the Catalyst need to have a way to track, monitor, and verify proposal spanning for this long duration. The success of this proposal is simple and outright that the loan is repaid successfully. Maybe I can also suggest adding the success of CIP-0056 implementation and the development of new tool to enable the Cardano treasury receive payments thus enabling new funding models in Catalyst as big and important successes too, with lots of multiplier effect. This way the outcomes (and side effects) from this proposal will actually be beneficial to the greater good of community and somehow ultimately aligning with the challenge in the end. I trust that dcSpark has the best interest of Cardano community in their heart and mind and hopefully our faith in them will be greatly rewarded.

To end this assessment on a positive note, this proposal may seem to be too avant-garde at this moment, but nothing extraordinary will be achieved by only doing ordinary things every time. More of than not we need to step outside of our communal comfort zone then be brave and explore new way of doing things. I pray the best of luck for the dcSpark team voyaging through this difficult time and of course, the best outcome for this proposal.

The proposer explains that there is currently no way to reimburse the Cardano treasury using the distributed ledger system. Therefore, there is no way for the community to track loan and interest payments through transaction history. The proposer offers no alternative method for the community to audit their fidelity, nor their responsibilities in repaying the loans. My ability to audit the payment would depend on the team's CIP gaining traction. Such a CIP may actually serve as a distraction from more impactful development efforts.

My concerns for auditability are linked to what I said above about feasibility. dcSpark mentions that the measure of progress here will be successful payment of the loan, but that is simply not a measure of progress (at most it’s a measure of success, though not even that). A measure of progress would be reports regarding the company’s activity, since the company is the deliverable in this proposal. dcSpark should have committed to being very transparent with its finances and results, in my opinion, for it to be possible for me to give auditability a good score. The stated measure of success is the payment of the loan plus the interest, which is valid, but again, I must mention that we must track other aspects as well (what this money bought the community). As it stands, I can only give a score of 3 to auditability. I must reiterate that this might be a good idea and it might be a valid way of obtaining long term Catalyst funding to grow your business, but for that to be the case, the information provided by the supplicant and their commitments must be on par with what we see in traditional finance.

When dcSpark projects have been deployed on the main network or run testnet, they propose to apply for funding; the funding amount for each project does not disclose detailed usage plans. Once the product is complete, the usage plan and budget allocation are no longer essential and can be ignored. However, the Cardano community always wants to know how that fund is used for each item. Is it reasonable to use it? For example, they proposed #400674 at fund8 with a funding amount of 35000 USD; to fund9 they proposed #419159 further to apply for more funds with an amount of 65000 USD for a product, and without a detailed explanation, no progress reports for the community to check. If they have a plan as well as set specific KPIs for each item, this situation will be somewhat reduced. Before recommending this loan, the proponent should have an estimate of the sales of the deployed products, detailed costs for each item, and salary for each employee, … Because of the above, I rate this proposal as having no clear audits nor transparent spending.

There is no way the community can currently audit how the funds are going to be used, and no detailed roadmap of how long or viable the CIP is to allow payment of the loan back to the treasury. Information given is very opaque and in my opinion wouldn't be comfortable giving a loan of this size until a more detailed breakdown of how funds will be used and a more detailed plan of getting the CIP developed and passed.

Payment of the loan is the way in which this proposal can be tracked that will start happening in one year from voting. dcSpark has provided their website and Github in which you can track how the team is spending their labour resources (which effectively is how the loan is being used). Success for this project is paying back the loan and helping other future projects. It appears likely this project will be auditable however one issue is that it has a long time horizon which has not been the general theme for projects going through Catalyst. Increasing the length of time people can request funding for means high funding requests and less short term development. This is a situation that needs more discussion in the community to determine whether this is a net benefit or problem for the ecosystem if approaches like this are increasingly adopted.

The proposing team given a roadmap for the loan that will involve receiving the loan and paying it back. The second part is currently impossible unless the Cardano Improvement Proposal 56 is approved and implemented, which will make the Treasury capable of receiving funding (which is a welcome change in any case). Fortunately, dcSpark’s Sebastian is one of the editors in the CIP process – so the dcSpark team has what it takes to proceed with that protocol level change. I think that this proposal due to its overall simplicity is only generally auditable, but some key specifics are missing. I would say that two simple modifications to this proposal could have improved its auditability. First, there is no timeline provided for the CIP proposal approval – with a commitment of dcSpark to pursue this implementation with “all it takes”. Second, the team does specify that if the CIP is not approved – “it's possible to have a temporary solution if such a system is not introduced in time”. Why stop there. Describing this temporary solution for repaying the $400,000 loan from Catalyst would probably require a few additional minutes. Hence, I cannot agree that the team has provided a clear understandable and effective solution that addresses the problem. If this proposal is not approved this time around, I would advise the dcSpark team to prepare a more comprehensive proposal that would create, explain and present an air-tight mechanism for repaying the loan.