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Zero Authority Cerulean Marketplace
APPLICANT
Type: Direct Application
Email: [email protected]
Discord: zero.btc#2752
Twitter: 0ZeroAuthority
Stacks Forum: zeroauthority
GRANT BASICS
Grant Name: Zero Authority Cerulean Marketplace
Total Budget: 65,000
Total Duration: 3,000
Grant Type: Open Source Dev Repeat Grantees
Grant Track: Stacks dApps & Clarity
Grant Goal: Create New Technology
Grant Audience: End Users (Consumer)
Specific Audience: The Cerulean marketplace is a peer-to-peer trustless network to find people
Grant Team: James (hodlstx), Kenny (kenrogers), Mariaverse (proiacm), Algorithm, The-Advisor, Rapha
Previous Grants: https://github.com/stacksgov/Stacks-Grant-Launchpad/issues/264
Ecosystem Programs:
GRANT MISSION, IMPACT, RISKS & REFERENCE
Grant Mission: Zero Authority is a community of people who believe in open source and permissionless systems built on stacks and secured by bitcoin.
Zero Authority was started as a way to educate and encourage people in the transition to a user owned internet, also known as Web3. Since our first video in February 2021, we have had 39,000 views and 1,300 hours watched for our intro to Web3 series, builder series, tutorials, and other Stacks related content.
We are engaged with White Label to build the MVP Web3 version with a Hiro login. We plan to use the funds to build a formal DAO governance via StackerDAO Labs (Orlando and Ryan), integrate secure, decentralized communications via Pravica, and leverage Gamma’s API for NFTs on Stacks for profile photos (eventually web3 profiles down the road).
The funding will help build two versions, 0.2 and 0.3, and people will be able to find creators and make an offer to work with that person. The clarity contracts will custody the funds in a trustless manner to provide an organized way to work in Web3. This will set the foundation for building front-ends where people can integrate a Cerulean marketplace into their website and token gate with NFT or SIP-10 token of choice. There is an opportunity to extract open data from our contracts to build web3 models for what kind of gigs companies/individuals are paying for. There is an opportunity for individuals to build specific skills that the market needs today. With our popular services we will build templates for structured data and create extractable information through our analytics. E.g. service for smart contract audit can use our template where specific risks, controls, threats are documented, and our dashboard can filter on that service to show people specific information to take further action.
With the first grant we set out to stand up the website and the Cerulean Marketplace beta version where people can use their email to sign up and create a profile. In addition to our core audience in the US, we see people coming to the website from Nigeria, South Korea, China, Australia, United Kingdom, India, Togo, France, South Africa, and many more places. When we started building the marketplace we knew there is a need for a decentralized, peer-to-peer marketplace for services, and we continually hear stories of how people plan to use this open-source protocol and build on top of it one day.
During the Blockstack Summit in 2019, Balajis sparked my imagination for the Pseudonymous Economy and what we now call the “Cerulean Marketplace”. He asked, “what if you could earn under one name, speak under another, and use your real name only on official forms?” … we are one step closer to our vision. We are pricing services in Satoshis and USD, and in a future version we will have the ability to use native Bitcoin for payments around the world.
Grant Impact: Zero Authority Cerulean Marketplace transactions and services being provided by people to grow DAOs, protocols, and communities.
Grant Risks: Strategic Risk Strategic risks can occur at any time and we will need to remain steadfast about our mission at Zero Authority: educating, engaging the community, and promoting a user owned internet. We will continue to obtain feedback from our socials and online channels so we know what value we need to deliver to our community and continuously improve over time.
Natural Disaster Risk If the internet connection or living conditions are negatively impacted from a natural disaster, it will adversely impact each person’s ability to have a stable environment in which to work and provide value to the group. Project deliverables regarding weekly updates and builder series would still be on track for expected dates.
Support Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1otPxLuEaAThRI8JmdvEJ9G1okMoBh9Vn?usp=sharing
GRANT ROADMAP & DELIVERABLES
MILESTONE 1:
Deliverable: Cerulean Marketplace Hiro login and find the creators/builders you need to make your project come to life. Earn STX, XBTC, MIA, NYC in a trustless and secure way.
MILESTONE 2:
Deliverable: Cerulean Marketplace clarity contracts & integrate Pravica secure communications
MILESTONE 3:
Deliverable: Cerulean Marketplace has web3 profiles and users own their own work history
MILESTONE 4:
Deliverable: Zero Authority Cerulean Marketplace on testnet and mainnet, open-source code and talent/gig marketplace where people transact trustless and permissionless.
FINAL DELIVERABLE
Deliverable: Zero Authority Cerulean Marketplace
👋 @zeroauthority 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
Can't say enough about Zero Authority DAO and its members and how relevant and active they are in the Stacks Community. Their vision, mission, and goals align with Cerulean Marketplace, a much-needed tool for matchmaking web3 talent and building a platform that can help accelerate product development, build communities and deliver value to our ecosystem.
Have worked with many of the Grant team members, and can only say good things about them. Always showing a desire of getting things done. I have trust in them and their goals.
Love this team and the Cerulean marketplace idea. The pseudonymous creator economy feels like something that will be big in the future. But it comes with a lot of execution risk, The biggest being around DAO's and how to properly set them up for long term success. I don't know if this idea will work but I'm glad teams like this are spending the time working through the issues that DAO's and pseudonymous individuals presents and trying to find solutions.
+1 to this.
One question. Maybe I missed it in the text above. Will payment be handled in this version of the grant? From a regular user perspective, What is the deliverable I'll be able to use and interact with at the end?
Thanks @JakeBlockchain In the first web3 version it will be a basic product where you can find someone and make offer to do some work. You will have to lock STX XBTC in the contract and payment will be released upon confirmation by client. The protocol fee is 2.5% that goes directly to the DAO treasury. if there is a dispute client and creator have the opportunity to come to resolution and if there is no agreement, will be reviewed by Zero DAO core until we build the fully decentralized way to review disputes. when we set up our DAO via StackerDAO we will have the opportunity with the community to create proposals specifically for Cerulean marketplace. Similar to how Arkadiko or ALEX has multiple products and you can vote within the DAO.
Thanks @JakeBlockchain We believe in DAO and think it will be great for communities. What StackerDAO is doing, will probably be impactful positively in the long term and we think experimentation will strengthen the implementation and adoption. I personally think the big issue with DAO is laws to regulate it. And StackerDAO made great steps in this field. So we hope there will be optimistic mechanisms for community to come together on decisions thru forums and smart contracts for decisions confirmation.
This idea has great potential to work with my personal experience and what we have seen with the first version of Cerulean marketplace with some interesting data provided. I received DMs for demand in position in teams building and some builders searching for talented individuals. Now the mechanism to link those 2 parties in the best pseudonymous way is what ZeroAuth is trying to do.
In addition to the @zeroauthority approach, we want to create a p-2-p marketplace where there is no middle party involvement.
I'm so excited for this pseudonymous creator economy and believe greatly in it where individual talents don't have to fully disclose their ids before having to work. This system will lead talents to deliver the best of themselves and create good pseudonymous relation and environment for themselves. Think of Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonymous identity and the best ever economic tool he/she/they created disrupting in every part of our lives today. Bitcoin
Algorithm.btc
This is definitely a very interesting project and certainly takes the idea of decentralized ID to the next level. It will also allow individuals to experiment ideas and concepts without attaching themselves to their legal identity.
Resh
The @zeroauthority team has my full support and recommendation for this grant. The existence of a one-stop shop for strong talent sourcing within the Stacks ecosystem is a must, especially for those who don't have an expansive network within web3. On top of that, I know the individuals at ZeroAuthority DAO and they possess the most important personal traits (team players, intelligent, innovative, resourceful, mission oriented, and committed to excellence) which will almost to guarantee them success. Best of luck!
Zero Authority has played an important role in building awareness and creating connections in the Stacks community. Their dedication to Stacks inspires me!
We need this so badly in the world, love any solutions for interacting with pseudonymous folks. I think I would use this service. I can see reasons to want a side gig to be pseudonymous, but I think doxed folks like me would still have lots of reasons to use this platform .
I love ability to verify some history of knowledge / training when hiring a person, pseudonymous or not. So much need for development in this direction, glad to see someone working on it in stacks.
Best of luck to the Zero Authority crew, always stand up folks.
Hi @will-at-stacks should I set up a meeting to provide you additional info? With the first grant we built the infrastructure and website to put us in a position to build the web3 version. The current site continues to see demand and we are excited to build a trustless and permissionless version (@GAD2511 @HodlSTX)
Hi @zeroauthority -
Thanks for reaching out and thanks for the application! Applications for this cohort close next Friday 11/4 and then the Grants Review Committee will be doing the full review. Currently, I am in the process of doing some pre-review and one of the things I wanted to ask you about is the overall budget for your grant.
Right now and for the next quarter or so, grants are going to be reserved for critical blockchain related work and addressing priorities outlined from community feedback, which you can find here. While this application covers some really interesting territory, we are trying to be cognizant of only funding the portions that are the most high-impact and aligned with those priorities. Additionally, we have been asking applicants to keep their budget in the $75/hr range and your application appears to pencil out to $216/hr. If you could take a close look and try to keep your overall budget around $25k that would be great. You can also refer to the awarded applications from Cohort 18 to see the amount of scope they were able to cover for similar budgets.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best, Will
Thanks @will-at-stacks we can reduce it to 30k and we have a contingency plan to pull in devs from stacks community to build out the lightweight version with clarity contracts. Can we move forward with this new total budget. I think we can still build web3 profiles and integrate pravica peer to peer messaging
James and I completely understand the need to prioritize critical infrastructure during this time. We think this will bring new people into stacks to get work done even on other chains. Similar to BNS emblem DAO, stacks 2.1 bridges can be built for our marketplace
Hi @zeroauthority thanks so much for your consideration on the budget issue! I will note this for the GRC.
Best, Will
Hey Will, we should be able to complete the grant with the reduced budget, thanks for reaching out. We will build it with a group of devs with our management and direct involvement, hope to have a easy to use product that will grow the bitcoin economy, and bring more users to Stacks.
I think you have an interesting project. If you haven't already gone through the Stacks Web3 Startup Lab, I would like to invite you to apply.
Here's a 5-minute read on how we can help you turn your startup idea into an investment-ready startup: www.web3startuplab.io
If you are interested, you can apply through the "Apply Now" button.
Feel free to ping me on email: [email protected]
Thanks @Scarlett-Web3 the Web3 lab with Albert is a phenomenal program and we will look into it. We have the infrastructure in place and now just need to build the rest of the web3 version with Hiro wallet authentication and smart contracts. I’ll reach out. Do you work with Jake and Will?
Hi @will-at-stacks is the the grant cohort 19 closing at the end of the month? Thanks
Hello @zeroauthority
Thank you for the application and for your patience with the grant review process. We did a thorough review of all of the applications (each application received an average of 6 reviews from members of the Grants Review Committee). However, after much consideration, we decided not to fund any of the Cohort 19 grant applications as we did not feel they aligned with critical priorities core to the development of the Stacks blockchain.
We invite you to please read this blog post we authored to help elaborate on the reasoning behind this decision and clarify the current mission of the Grants Program.
Thanks in advance, Will Stacks Foundation Grants Program Manager
Hi @will-at-stacks Thanks for letting us know the grant was denied and priorities are shifting to critical needs at the stacks protocol and infrastructure layer. We appreciate the consideration and will let everyone know the outcome.
Hi @will-at-stacks can you please re-open for Cohort 30 and our request is for $30,000 total.
We have outlined our project for open-source development and so the community can verify
https://github.com/orgs/zeroauthority-dao/projects/1
Hi @xyzerobtc could I ask that instead you submit a new application and just backlink to this one?