Followup Grant Proposal - Dot Marketplace Phase 3: Milestone updates with decentralized court + decentralized storage + advanced search

[Loaki07]

Project Abstract

• Dot Marketplace is a general purpose marketplace for the dotsama ecosystem. In Phase 2 we implemented a basic decentralized court.
• Link to previous approved grant dot_marketplace_phase2
• In the current phase(Phase 3), we are implementing milestone based updates that work with the decentralized court implemented in Phase 2, along with decentralized storage of project materials & advanced search.
• This marks the end of our tech roadmap.

Grant level

• [ ] Level 1: Up to $10,000, 2 approvals
• [x] Level 2: Up to $30,000, 3 approvals
• [ ] Level 3: Unlimited, 5 approvals (for >$100k: Web3 Foundation Council approval)

Application Checklist

• [x] The application template has been copied and aptly renamed (project_name.md).
• [x] I have read the application guidelines.
• [x] A BTC, Ethereum (USDT/USDC/DAI) or Polkadot/Kusama (aUSD) address for the payment of the milestones is provided inside the application.
• [x] The software delivered for this grant will be released under an open-source license specified in the application.
• [x] The initial PR contains only one commit (squash and force-push if needed).
• [x] The grant will only be announced once the first milestone has been accepted (see the announcement guidelines).

[CLAassistant]

All committers have signed the CLA.

[Loaki07]

@Noc2 I've updated the requested details.

To Summarise:

1. Milestone 1 & 2 will be an upgrade to the existing marketplace pallet.
2. Milestone 3 will include a file server, updated search for the marketplace pallet and an updated skeletal UI to showcase all the new features in Phase3

Kindly, check and let us know.

[semuelle]

Hi @Loaki07. Thank you for the application. Until now, I was under the impression that you are building the marketplace to run it yourself. The website suggests that you are merely advertising it for others to use. Is that correct? If so, have you had any success finding users? Do you have a business model behind building the pallets? In other words, are you planning to maintain the project after the grant?

[abeoye]

Hi @Loaki07. Thank you for the application. Until now, I was under the impression that you are building the marketplace to run it yourself. The website suggests that you are merely advertising it for others to use. Is that correct? If so, have you had any success finding users? Do you have a business model behind building the pallets? In other words, are you planning to maintain the project after the grant?

Hello @semuelle, You are right. Initially we were planning to use Dot Marketplace for our own platform - Yoda. But we decommissioned it October last year. Post that Dot Marketplace's utility is primarily to serve other projects in the dotsama ecosystem. We believe it's a powerful tool that many projects could use for bounty management or to create any product or service marketplace within their ecosystem using their token.

We are applying for this Web3 Foundation grant to complete just the v1 tech roadmap.

Post this development phase, we will hand over to our marketing team which will explore adoption with other projects. We have already designed a good looking UI and some other non-core features for taking it to the market, which we would be building at our cost.

[abeoye]

@semuelle @Noc2 I'll be unavailable for a few days, so sharing some more context that could help you take a decision:

1. We confirm that this is the last grant proposal we are creating for Dot Marketplace
2. After the completion of this phase, we would have released a fully functional decentralised marketplace with built in reputation and dispute resolution mechanisms. We believe such a plug-and-play marketplace would be very valuable for the dotsama ecosystem.
3. Our tech and marketing teams are the teams behind Polkadot India - a 19k strong community of Polkadot enthusiasts from the Indian subcontinent. They already have rich relationships with multiple chains like Unique Network, Astar, Acala, Enjin and many others. We have already validated the perceived utility of DotMarketplace with a couple of these chains, and will be proceeding with integrations soon.
4. The actual effort in building this piece is sizeably more than what we have asked in this grant proposal. We have kept the ask below 30k intentionally while absorbing the rest.

[Loaki07]

@semuelle

We have implemented a task based dispute resolution model (described below, there is also a flow chart). However, based on the partners or clients we are open to variations that are preferred/agreed upon.

1. The court caters to the Web3 space and hence by default becomes an autonomous entity run by the people.
2. It is designed in a way which resembles an actual offline court that helps in settling long term or short term disputes.
3. The disputes that we have thought of covering with this court is strictly task based.
4. In the beginning there are 2 entities - a. The Customer b. Worker.
5. The customer is the entity that puts up work on the platform holding a specific amount for the work done as reward.
6. The worker is the entity that takes up the work for the customer in a hope to complete it in a given time frame.
7. When a case is registered for a specific dispute over a task / milestone.
8. Potential Jurors are selected based on their ratings (which it is set to 4.5 and above) and matching task tags. Each of them receive notification to accept/decline jury duty.
9. The decision to be part of the jury is 1 day (1 era) or 14_400 slots i.e. 24 hours.
10. Once the day to become a juror has passed. Its not possible to be part of the jury for any respective case. Instead a Sudo juror is selected from a registered pool/council who are part of the chain.
11. The Sudo juror is selected using the Fischer-Yates modern method & Linear Congruential Generator.
12. The juror is charged a small fee for participation.
13. Once a potential juror accepts the duty of becoming a juror, he / she becomes a final juror that is surely to take part in the case.
14. There is limit set on how many jurors can take part. 5 jurors per case based on first come first serve basis.
15. Once the case begins/accepted, the jurors have 3 eras (3 days) to evaluate the work done & cast their votes to either of the parties i.e. the customer or worker.
16. Once all the votes have been cast by the participating jurors, the winner is decided and the amount is transferred to the winner automatically via the escrow.
17. If the winner is the customer, the customer doesn't have to pay anything to the worker.
18. If the winner is the worker, the reward amount from the escrow goes to the worker.
19. The jurors also get a share (this can be configured) for participating and the jurors who decide for the winning party get a higher payout.
20. If no jurors decide on participating, the process for selection is run for 3 more eras.
21. Even in those 3 eras there is no juror, then a Sudo juror is selected which is part of the ecosystem and his / her decision is not bound by time.

[semuelle]

• Once the case begins/accepted, the jurors have 3 eras (3 days) to evaluate the work done & cast their votes to either of the parties i.e. the customer or worker.

Not a critical issue in the application, but I'd say there should be some official, public way for jurors to ask both parties questions and for customer and worker to reply and possibly submit supplementary material.

• The jurors also get a share (this can be configured) for participating and the jurors who decide for the winning party get a higher payout.

Not an expert, but rewarding jurors to vote with the majority sounds like a gateway for collusion.

Other than the issue raised here, happy to proceed.

[Loaki07]

• Once the case begins/accepted, the jurors have 3 eras (3 days) to evaluate the work done & cast their votes to either of the parties i.e. the customer or worker.

• Not a critical issue in the application, but I'd say there should be some official, public way for jurors to ask both parties questions and for customer and worker to reply and possibly submit supplementary material.

This is a good suggestion, we can provide video conferencing services such as gmeet, zoom, ..etc. that can be integrated. There is already a feature to upload documents for review. To take it a step further we could add a RBAC forum page for the case discussions. However, this is currently out of scope.

• The jurors also get a share (this can be configured) for participating and the jurors who decide for the winning party get a higher payout.

• Not an expert, but rewarding jurors to vote with the majority sounds like a gateway for collusion.

True. It encourages fair judgement & further involvement in future cases by the jurors when they are equally paid.

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