Genesis: Comprehensive NFT Framework Collab Overview
A Catalyst Fund 3 Proposal
Genesis: Comprehensive NFT Framework Collab
Proposed by: Rich Kopcho
Joined By: Finely McIIwaine, Tyler Wales and Troy Egan
Link to Catalyst:
Producing WyoHackathon the past three years has brought me into close relationships with the Cardano, IOHK and Emurgo community and teams. From my history of open-sourcing projects, I noticed a level of professionalism behind the Cardano project that I felt compelled to support more fully at a personal level.
We submitted WyoHackathon’s IOHK challenges Oct. 2020 through the Catalyst program. Since I was producing the hackathon I didn’t propose anything until Fund 3. I wanted to support the model by contributing proposals and learning how the processes and community are operating. I added several items in the F3 Ideas stage and three final proposals. Since this proposal under the dApp Creation category resonates with other NFT proposers and is drawing contributors in to help, I’d like to provide a deeper understanding of what we envision.
Vision
We see the need for a comprehensive framework or scaffolding anyone can build an NFT business opportunity upon. We see Cardano as the rails and we are building a BOXCAR to ride on them that anyone can use to carry their unique product or service (business opportunity) to market.
Construct
The BOXCAR can be likened to Shopify, the basic ecommerce engine anyone can build a storefront upon. In our case, an NFT business model. Our goal is to build a composable software framework. One that considers all the elements needed for a full range of NFT business types and accounts for explicitly evaluating all the fundamental requirements of NFT use cases. No small task, but we will build in stages.
This means looking closely at the 42 Catalyst proposals who mention NFTs and determining what the common features and functions are. It also means we research the dozens of NFT marketplaces, tools and techniques that are operating on other blockchains and determine what are common features and functions in the competitive landscape as well. Gathering all this information is the initial task we will accomplish.
Added to that information, we can include the unique opportunities Cardano technology allows us to do that other blockchains can’t. Combining all of this information into robust requirements will allow us to design an architecture for the BOXCAR that everyone will need to for building NFT businesses on Cardano expeditiously. We’ll have a very good start for a minimum viable product (MVP).
We already understand certain core services or transactions we will need to build, and engineers are already designing user stories, UML flows and wireframes for reviews and sprints to occur in parallel with the research.
Traction
Others are approaching us based on our project description and some have abandoned their proposals and joined us in collaboration.
Tyler set aside CineDAO and we added him as a co-proposer.
Troy had a direct proposal in, and he joined as a co-proposer.
Alessandro had a proposal in the Cardano Forum for a CIP-NFT metadata standard
The SoMint marketing team came over to leverage the collaboration
The Artano proposer reached out to collaborate on the tech to avoid duplication
Wilhelm, a functional programmer who worked on banking SW arrived
Sofi another developer came over
Andrew an artist joined
And the list goes on and on, people see the value of working together
NFT-DAO
As we started to work together several great ideas are emerging amongst the core team of founders. We have a lot of background in social systems, P2P and holonic architectures. It was natural to start thinking about how we are organized. The Decentralized Autonomous Organizational (DAO) structures, while not perfect, were presenting several opportunities.
Catalyst itself is a DAO. Our Collab is meant to gather all the NFT proposals together and save community resources by building the common elements they will all need. Instead of funding every NFT proposal to create the same thing over and over, we felt we could consolidate the efforts to everyone’s benefit. Modeling holonic nested heterarchies, we are creating a focused NFT DAO within the Catalyst DAO. Our hope is the community will see the benefit of building this kind of architecture to focus Cardano NFT efforts and gain explicit experience and speed to market at scale.
Thus, while we accomplish our work at hand to deliver the BOXCAR as our first priority, we are growing an NFT DAO from the ground up, learning and training all who join us in the process. This is not the first our team has experienced implementing this kind of structure. I personally trained thousands of individuals over ten years in holonic systems deployments worldwide. Troy is writing his PhD. thesis on a similar P2P topic. DAOs have their roots in holonics. By modeling these processes, we will in time become a well-oiled DAO focused on NFTs. We will be learning from Catalyst and hopefully Catalyst will be learning from our experiences as well.
How ?
First task is be very clear what our goal is—build the BOXCAR.
A DAO is simply a means of organizing the work (the O in DAO). It’s an organizational model. It provides guidance for who does what, when, how and why through well-established communications and a set of rules or functions. Thus, our very first task was defining the work to be done and assigning owners.
There is more to it, like governance, participation, fair contribution reward dispersal and other items that will be worked out as we move forward. The participation is interesting in a DAO because the A is for autonomous. It is autonomous yet cooperative behavior that defines participants. The D is for Decentralized, or no centralized system of control. We will take the journey together and the DAO will emerge from the work we do. We will build the canon or rules of engagement as we accomplish our core goal of creating the BOXCAR.
Much like IOHK is slowly releasing Cardano so the community can take it over, we will model similar behavior with NFT DAO. Also, Catalyst itself is modeling similar behavior as a means to engage the community in self-governance. It will not succeed if we simply ‘will’ it into existence without guidance, nurturing, educating participants and maturing it to be the community’s responsibility. We have a long-term view of the viability this asset can become for the Cardano community and are wholly committed to seeing it to fruition.
Hopefully this gives you a sense what we aim to accomplish.
Build the BOXCAR, a composable framework for NFT business models
Allow NFT DAO to emerge for our work and guidance
Your participation and feedback are welcome.�
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