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TRAJAN Launch, Scaling, & API
APPLICANT
Type: Direct Application
Email:
Discord: Ragnarly#4014
Twitter: ragnarlif
Stacks Forum:
GRANT BASICS
Grant Name: TRAJAN Launch, Scaling, & API
Total Budget: 75,000
Total Duration: 650
Grant Type: Open Source Dev Repeat Grantees
Grant Track: Stacks dApps & Clarity
Grant Goal: Integrate Between Technologies
Grant Audience: End Users (Institutional)
Specific Audience: Both consumer and institutional end users.
Grant Team: @jhammond2012
Previous Grants: Completed two other grants for Trajan.
Ecosystem Programs:
GRANT MISSION, IMPACT, RISKS & REFERENCE
Grant Mission: Trajan creates crypto endorsements to build a comprehensive reputation of merit, which becomes a decentralized identity that generates crypto assets. Trajan captures the best in people and organizations, then turns it into an immutable, public record. This record is a tool to create prosperity and greatness.
The grant will fund us to be able to do the following:
- First, finish a few remaining items to launch the Trajan MVP on mainnet publicly.
Then:
- Enable verifying users.
- Integrate and spread adoption of the .trajan Blockchain Naming System (BNS) handle.
- Enable any Stacks app to display Trajan user info via the Trajan API.
- Perform a rigorous outreach to onboard Stacks organizations, communities, projects, and influential individuals. Then, as we integrate and gain early adoption, we can iterate quickly to optimize Trajan.
To illustrate what this means, consider the following example:
Clarity Universe obtains the BNS handle "clarityu.trajan" and creates an account on Trajan. We verify that the BNS handle belongs to Clarity U. We add a verified badge to the Clarity U profile. Clarity U encourages Clarity Camp graduates to join Trajan. We affirm the identity of those graduates. Clarity U issues NFT credential endorsements (medals) to the Clarity Camp graduates. The graduates ask their fellow students and previous or current employers to endorse them for Clarity development and other notable accomplishments and personal traits.
As a result, the Stacks ecosystem will have Clarity developers whose skill level has been verified. These Clarity developers can leverage their Trajan profile to gain employment, find a startup team, or impress VCs. The developers can also leverage Trajan to mint and sell our "Patron" NFTs to raise funds for open-source development and reward supporters. When the developers log in to various Stacks apps, their endorsement NFTs (medals) will be displayed. If the Stacks app implements our API, the developer's complete profile will be viewable on the app. Additionally, the Clarity developers are building a decentralized identity, which is especially useful if they are pseudonymous. Unfortunately, no good solution exists for pseudonymous individuals to build a robust reputation.
Clarity University will also benefit. By rewarding students with an NFT endorsement, the University's Clarity Camp will attract more and better developers. The Camp will increase its stature as a training program. The Stacks Foundation and other organizations could host events gated to only those with a Clarity U endorsement NFT.
Final Deliverable
- Public launch on mainnet.
- Free NFT to users who complete their profile (username, photo, 20+ word summary, 2+ social links).
- Contract optimizations.
- A key-driven API. We will issue API keys to interested parties for integration. Using the API, integrators will be able to fetch the following information:
- Wallet profile information (if added) including: username, profile image, tagline, and profile description.
- User medal information
- User recommendations
- Work History
- User Verification scheme: social media, txt or CNAME record, organization email.
- Verified User badges.
- Ten verified Stacks organizations/projects/communities.
- .trajan Ryder integrations and setup.
- Work experience expansion:
- Allow organizations to verify employment
- Allowing organizations to invite employees to onboard on Trajan
- Custom onboarding URL/Branding for this organization
- R&D - Gamification prevention system:
- Weighted medals in terms of rank for a specific skill.
- Weighted medals from verified/organization profiles.
- R&D - "Trajan Party" (working title) - (Discord or Twitter Spaces) - A community event that showcases user of the month, send medal, ..more to come
- Activity feed for followed accounts.
- Begin to create utility tools for Patron NFT.
- Add a flag to your posts to enable Patron only or patron early access
- Thirty users (individuals or organizations) with a Trajan profile that uses a .trajan handle.
- Continue community integration outreach implementation.
- Five-minute video walkthrough of Trajan's features and functions.
- Discord bot. For example, users can create a channel open only to people with a certain NFT endorsement, such as Clarity.
Now let's take a step back and review the broader mission of Trajan, which is to:
- Create durable identities that individuals and organizations can use in any Stacks app with a web-wallet login. So, users can be rewarded and recognized for contributions across Stacks applications and communities.
- Help pseudonymous persons create a durable reputation, currently impossible with current solutions.
- Help Clarity and open-source contributors get more funding and recognition by getting community proof of their contributions and education that build their reputation, enabling the developers to mint and sell NFTs to fund their future work.
- Drive adoption of Stacks Blockchain Naming Space (BNS) with .trajan handles. Our handle could add a significant number of users to the Ryder device. And will contribute to making Web 3.0 more social.
- Bring new NFT users to Stacks by sponsoring transactions.
- Build trust across the Stacks ecosystem, such as NFT and Discord communities.
- Enable Stacks users to build up a Web 3.0 reputation, which they can leverage into minting NFTs to sell or give away to supporters of their work.
And finally, here's the one-page summary of Trajan:
Trajan creates crypto endorsement to build a comprehensive reputation of merit, which becomes a decentralized identity that generates crypto assets.
Trajan solves problems of Web 2.0 reputation and identity platforms like LinkedIn and Glassdoor while unlocking powerful new functions using Web 3.0 technology with the Stacks blockchain. Identity, skills, experience, education, and character are one of a kind; they're non-fungible. Trajan enables individuals and organizations to turn these unique traits into crypto credential-based identities and assets using non-fungible tokens (NFTs), cryptographically signed actions, and the blockchain naming system (BNS).
Endorsement NFTs Users can give and receive NFTs called "Medals" that function as skill and character endorsements. Part of a Trajan profile is a gallery of Medals showcasing the user's reputation.
Patron NFTs A user's collection of Trajan Medals displays their value, which they can leverage into Trajan "Patron" NFTs. These are NFTs that users can mint and then sell to raise funds or gift to their supporters. In addition, users can grant holders of their Patron NFTs various perks. The value and utility of Patron NFTs can increase as the user's reputation, and network grow.
Cryptographically Signed Actions Trajan is a native web wallet application. Users validate their identities, mint, send NFTs, and control their data with their crypto wallet. In addition, users can give or receive written recommendations. Unlike LinkedIn, Trajan users cryptographically sign the recommendation using their Stacks wallet.
Blockchain Naming System (BNS) Rather than a username and password on a centralized server, Trajan users' "account" is a wallet they only control. By default, their "username" is an address. Trajan uses the Blockchain Naming System to allow namespaces for its users. We have created and will implement the .trajan namespace in partnership with Ryder. These BNS names are globally unique, human-meaningful, and strongly owned.
Credibility Network and Decentralized Identity of Merit By combining NFTs, cryptographically signed statements, and the BNS, Trajan generates verified credentials. As more users join Trajan and affirm each other's identity and credentials, Trajan becomes a credibility network and platform for decentralized identities of merit. In addition, the Trajan network and identities enable pseudonymous users to build a reputation and identity not possible with LinkedIn or Glassdoor.
Trajan captures the best in people and organizations, then turns it into an immutable, public record. This record is a tool to create prosperity and greatness.
Grant Impact: The number of verified organizations/projects/communities. The number of users (individuals or organizations) with a Trajan profile using a .trajan namespace. Usage of API.
Grant Risks: The API has the highest technical risk, consisting of difficulty coding and integrating users. If we encounter these difficulties and can't solve them ourselves, we will consult with other developers on a solution. The additional risk is the non-adoption of verified users and .trajan handles. However, we think this risk is low because of early enthusiasm from people we've spoken to about these features. But suppose adoption is lower than we currently expect. In that case, we will increase public awareness of the benefits of these features via Twitter Space, Discord communities, a two-minute video, and an NFT giveaway.
Support Link: Trajan White Paper
GRANT ROADMAP & DELIVERABLES
MILESTONE 1:
Deliverable: Public MVP launch
MILESTONE 2:
Deliverable: Verified user components and .trajan BNS outreach
MILESTONE 3:
Deliverable: API (see Grant Mission Statement for details)
FINAL DELIVERABLE
Deliverable: Public launch with deliverables detailed in the grant mission statement.
👋 @RagnarLifthrasir Thanks for your application! We will do a pre-review and let you know if we have any immediate questions. In the mean time please refer to our review schedule here for a detailed timeline and response dates. Best, Will
REVISED MILESTONES:
MILESTONE 1:
Deliverable: Verified user components and .trajan BNS outreach
MILESTONE 2:
Deliverable: API (see Grant Mission Statement for details)
MILESTONE 3:
Deliverable: Public MVP launch
FINAL DELIVERABLE
Deliverable: Public launch with deliverables detailed in the grant mission statement.
This is a great initiative! The combination of deliverables would definitely be useful to the Stacks ecosystem! I support this grant application and would enjoy seeing the completion from this amazing team! @RagnarLifthrasir and @jhammond2012
Hi @RagnarLifthrasir -
Thank you for your application and the revised milestones.
As the Grants Review Committee begins their reviews this week and next, we wanted to reach out and see if there is potential to rescope the size of your grant request. Given the projected outcomes of your project compared to cost and the competitive applications in this review batch, this grant is not likely to get approved at it's current size and deliverables. As of now, we have funding for 40-50% of the applications received. If you would still like to be considered in this round, we recommend rescoping your proposal to a lower amount that closer reflects the industry standard of $75/hr.
Lastly, when we kicked off the review cycle with the Review Committee we brought them up to speed on the top three objectives we are prioritizing for this cohort:
- Support grants that improve Stacks-Bitcoin integration.
- Support grants that improve the Clarity developer experience and attract new Clarity developers to Stacks.
- Support grants that improve the attractiveness of Stacks as a place to build for founders and attract founders to Stacks.
If you could, please comment here if you feel your project is consistent with one or more of these objectives and let us know how and why.
Thanks! Will
Hello @will-at-stacks.
rescope the size of your grant request
We will rescope the size of our grant request.
If you could, please comment here if you feel your project is consistent with one or more of these objectives and let us know how and why.
Our project is consistent with the third objective. Trajan will be Stacks' reputation and decentralized identity infrastructure. Trust and verified identity has been the most difficult problem to solve in Web 3.0 and Trajan solves it.
Founders require a robust reputation and identity for the following reasons:
- Prevent rug pulls
- Reduce fake and impostor profiles
- Grant levels of access and admin powers based on skillset and reputation
- Enable pseudonymous users to build as strong of a reputation and identity as those who use their real-world identity
- Issue credentials (such as Clarity programming ability) to users
Founders don't need to worry about how to build trust and identity in their platform. They just use Trajan.
First, all of the NFT endorsements (medals) a user earns on Trajan will automatically display in other Stacks apps that display the NFTs connected to one's Xverse or Hiro web wallet. So founders don't need to do anything to display Trajan's NFT skill endorsements.
Second, using our API, founders will be able to fetch the following information:
- Wallet profile information (if added) including:
- Username, profile image, tagline, and profile description
- Users' NFT endorsement (medal) information
- Users' written recommendations
- Work History
Attempts to create reputation and identity and their drawbacks include the following:
- Freehold - Development on hold.
- Blockchain Naming System (BNS) - Acts as one identifier and is difficult to connect to third-party endorsements both on-chain and off-chain. BNS doesn't port into Web 2.0 apps such as Discord.
- Discord badges - The badges don't port to other Discord channels or outside of Discord. Isn't a Web 3.0 solution.
- Verified users - The users are verified only for one app. Verification schemes and validity vary widely across apps.
- Holding app tokens - Tokens are only valid for DeFi, and one specific app.
- Holding a community NFT - Many of these NFTs are transferrable; they aren't permanently attached to one wallet address and thus don't contribute to identity or reputation. The NFT is only usable within the specific NFT community.
In contrast to all of these attempts at reputation and identity, Trajan is:
- Portable across all Stacks apps and communities.
- Usable in Discord across all Discord servers.
- The NFT endorsements aren't transferable.
- Connect to the BNS (and the .trajan namespace we've secured).
- Establishes a standard user verification scheme.
- Can be used in both DeFi and NFT applications.
Trajan improves "the attractiveness of Stacks as a place to build for founders and attracts founders to Stacks" by providing robust, cross-functional, cross-platform, and easy-to-use reputation and identity infrastructure.
@will-at-stacks Below is our reduced scope of work.
Total Budget: 46,000
Total Duration: 610
The grant will fund us to be able to do the following: • Enable verifying users. • Integrate and spread adoption of the .trajan Blockchain Naming System (BNS) handle. • Enable any Stacks app to display Trajan user info via the Trajan API. • Public launch the Trajan MVP on mainnet.
Final Deliverable
- Free NFT to users who complete their profile (username, photo, 20+ word summary, 2+ social links).
- Contract optimizations.
- A key-driven API.
- We will issue API keys to interested parties for integration. Using the API, integrators will be able to fetch the following information:
- Wallet profile information (if added) including username, profile image, tagline, and profile description.
- User medal information
- User recommendations
- Work History
- User Verification scheme: social media, txt or CNAME record, organization email.
- Verified User badges.
- Ten verified Stacks organizations/projects/communities.
- .trajan Ryder integrations and setup.
- Improved Work Experience UI.
- Activity feed for followed accounts.
- Public launch on mainnet.
Milestones
MILESTONE 1:
Deliverable:
- Free NFT to users who complete their profile (username, photo, 20+ word summary, 2+ social links).
- Contract optimizations.
- Improved Work Experience UI.
- Activity feed for followed accounts.
- .trajan Ryder integrations and setup.
MILESTONE 2:
Deliverable:
- User Verification scheme: social media, txt or CNAME record, organization email.
- Verified User badges.
- Ten verified Stacks organizations/projects/communities.
MILESTONE 3:
Deliverable:
- API
FINAL DELIVERABLE
Deliverable:
- Public launch on mainnet.
Hi @RagnarLifthrasir thanks very much for the budget consideration and revisions. Best, Will
Hi @RagnarLifthrasir -
Congrats! Your grant application has been approved. We just sent you an invite (to the email the application was submitted with) to an onboarding call on Monday. We will use this call to provide an overview of next steps and expectations for proceeding with the grant.
If you are not able to make the call, don't worry, it will be recorded.
Best, Will Stacks Foundation Grants Program Manager.
Per our conversation today, we have completed milestone 1. Thanks.
Awesome. Thanks @RagnarLifthrasir and @jhammond2012 - this milestone is approved. @shaktistacks can you please disburse payment and post a confirmation here after the fact? Thanks
Per our discussion, we've altered our milestones to the following:
Milestone 2: Researching & Architecting and Protocol / Clarity Engineering Deliverable: Completed and tested smart contracts
Milestone 3: API Engineering and React Engineering Deliverable: Completed and tested API and functional front end
Milestone 4: Test & Deployment Deliverable: Tested and deployed app and API
Final Deliverable remains the alpha public launch on mainnet