Catalyst 2.0 - Statement of work

DRAFT // original document https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZCsFAm2u5Eq2zGsh9MpdlCUx8Z87zXnVM-h2FtG4KR4/edit# //

Introduction

As part of the SVE vote, the community is being asked to vote on a number of options. Option 1 appoints IOG as the Catalyst Operator to deliver services.

This document contains a description of the services that IOG will provide in its role as Catalyst Operator and the fees that IOG will receive as compensation for the delivery of those services. The following scope of services only applies if IOG is appointed as operator under Option 1. If the community approves either Options 2 or 3, IOG will not receive the funding to carry out the duties for delivering day to day operations or continued development of the Project Catalyst technology and tools. For more information about the Special Voting Event and proposal options, please see <LINK TO PROPOSAL>

Catalyst 2.0 proposed Roadmap

During its term as Catalyst Operator under Option 1, alongside delivering the Catalyst funding round campaigns, ongoing operations, project accountability, and treasury management as described above, IOG plans to develop a unified platform for the end-to-end Catalyst program which will be split into two workstreams:

1. Front End modules:

   1. “Proposal submission and Review”

   2. “Integrated Voting (including delegation)”

   3. “Execution”

   4. “Onboarding” (including ProjectCatalyst.io)

1. Back End:

   1. Data architecture

   2. Open source APIs and endpoints

   3. Continuous testnet and sandbox environment

Each of these workstreams have already completed their discovery stages and are now in iterative phases of design preparation and readiness for development.

Reflecting on what has already been accomplished, today Catalyst has the privacy-preserving Catalyst Voting System with open APIs and new endpoints already available for community consumption.

During Fund10, it is the intention of IOG to deliver the ‘Proposal submission and Review” front end functions first to address the limitations of the existing Catalyst capabilities. This will also eliminate most of the use of spreadsheets serving to facilitate key Catalyst protocol functions related to community-contribution processes such as proposal reviews. The back-end redesign of Catalyst architecture will be updated towards becoming an autonomous, distributed peer-to-peer network.

Based on the last two years of learning and iterations, the Catalyst team recognizes the need for an agile roadmap that the community can be confident addresses their needs and easily outlines how they can contribute to the ongoing success and maturation of Cardano’s innovation funding program.

The intention is for Catalyst 2.0 to be community-owned and open source, providing the community with the tools and freedom needed to maintain and improve the platform for themselves. Thus, an appropriate governance structure must be established early on to allay concerns of centralization and unilateral control.

Catalyst was built for the benefit of the Cardano ecosystem and our goal is to encourage continuous innovation and facilitate the successful execution of early-stage projects within the Cardano ecosystem.

Delivery of Catalyst 2.0 - Milestone 1

2023 Q2 will see the beginning of development and testing of unified Catalyst protocol functions. By the launch of Fund 11 the community will be able to use the first new software upgrade instead of using the current Ideascale instance for Catalyst. This will be a key milestone in Catalyst’s community-owned open-source platform. The Catalyst team is focused on developing the Catalyst unified platform front end and back end and will produce key outcomes for each of the deliverables. Monthly development updates will be communicated via Catalyst Town Hall and technical progress can be followed in Catalyst’s open source repositories and Gitbook instance.

Delivering Fund10 :

The workstream will deliver the end-to-end cycle for the tenth iteration of Catalyst funding rounds, including fund launch campaign, proposal submission, community review, voting and tally, funded-project onboarding, rewards distribution, and project accountability management throughout the remainder of 2023. The goal here is to account for and implement community feedback seeking to harden decision making processes and provide more data to voters without priming them so they deeply explore proposals before voting.

Catalyst platform development:

The goal here is to unify the Catalyst user-experience. We’ve received invaluable feedback since the inception of Catalyst and want to focus on addressing UIUX challenges and making Catalyst software open-source so the community can help co-build Catalyst. A series of workshops are planned over the coming months to define the framework for community contribution on Catalyst software.

Project Accountability and Treasury Management for all active projects:

Community-led accountability management is the key enabler here. Community reviewers help the Catalyst team to verify or clarify whether or not funded-projects have delivered on their promises to voters. Based on what we’ve learnt through the milestone-based-funding pilot in Fund9, the MVP user-interface will be implemented to provide an administration tool that can be commonly used by funded-projects, the community reviewers, and Catalyst operations team.

Catalyst Bounties minimum-viable-program:

Catalyst needs help to grow its capabilities. Our community has untapped skills to support ongoing growth objectives. Catalyst Bounties are intended to be for the benefit of Project Catalyst. Where requirements are identified and well-defined in consultation with Catalyst Circle, work can be commissioned to be delivered by the community.

A request for proposal (RFP) process is proposed, where evaluations of proposals will be carried out by Circle representatives and technical review panels made up of relevant subject matter experts (SMEs) appointed by Catalyst Circle. The Catalyst Technical and Product Research budget will compensate SMEs for their time and contributions.

Technical bounties will be issued with clear, actionable development requirements and contribution is expected to be open-source. Some examples envisaged include: ideating on technical requirements and UI design, software feature or API end-point development, interface bug testing, or code reviews. Creative bounties could include designing infographics for Catalyst, producing other marketing assets or localized content for non-english speaking audiences. Additionally, Bounties can be used to reward non-technical community members for participating in Catalyst operations, such as conducting dRep proof of life sessions, verifying proof-of-achievement milestone demonstrations, and participating in or helping facilitate community-workshops. These are just a few examples that will aid the expansion of Catalyst capabilities, further cementing the relationship that the community plays in the future of Catalyst.

Summary of Milestone 1

Initiative	Value target
Launch Fund10	40m ada (max) to deliver Catalyst 2.0 objectives
Community Reviews	More and clearer data provided to voters to support decision-making, diminishing current risks about misuse of assessment stage, more predictable rewards plus Repositioned star rating and user-interface adjustments New incentives structure introducing meritocratic levels
Milestones-based-funding	Increased project accountability and improved user experience with new Milestones module interface implemented
Continuous snapshot	Eliminating voter confusion about registration and snapshot
Voting Center Dapp	Desktop option to vote
Catalyst dReps and delegation	Enabling liquid democracy, allowing voters to leverage voting power without voting directly
Launch Voting Dapp	Wallet connector support with Flint, Eternl, Nufi and others to follow
Technical documentation	Transparency about tally, voting power and voting audit
Bounties program	Community roundtable workshops scheduled during F10, scoping: Bounty Program framework Priorities for Catalyst tooling and non-technical needs Project Accountability Management - Phase 1: involving more Community Reviewers that are experienced with Catalyst

Delivery of Catalyst 2.0 - Milestone 2

Initiative	Value target
Launch Fund11	40m ada (max) fund budget parameter amounts
Catalyst platform development	New functions to submit, review, and comment on ideas and proposals
Continuous ideation, decoupled from fund cycle, with focus on collaboration between community
Web3 profile with permissionless auth and on-chain registration.	Safely store data against a web3 profile keeping all data of the catalyst process saved in a distributed solution
Catalyst Open Source	View, contribute and create with open source code. Community roundtable workshops delivered, scoping: Catalyst technical standards including Registration Formats Private Vote Fragment Formats Private Voting Cryptographic Methods
Catalyst Testnet	Continuous testnet and Sandbox environment available for community builders
Catalyst Parameter Definition	Community roundtable workshops delivered, scoping: Funding categories and subcategories Catalyst non-technical standards including Selection of Tally Committee Proposal and evaluation procedures/policies Rewards Calculations and Payments procedures/policies
Community Services workshops	Community roundtable workshops delivered, scoping: Community Communications Technical Research and Review Catalyst Charter Project Accountability Management - Phase 2: matured processes for onboarding set up and delivery of this accountability function by the community, for the community
Bounties program	Minimum viable program launched and first bounties executed

Delivery of Catalyst 2.0 - Milestone 3

Initiative	Value target
Launch Fund12	Amounts scoped during F11 and agreed through community consent whether that is via CIP-1694, an alternative consent mechanism such as another SVE.
Catalyst platform development	Integrated voting functions in the Catalyst 2.0 interface
Distributed peer to peer networking MVP
Catalyst DIDs	Catalyst DIDs for reputation and identity privacy protection
Design for reputation schema MVP complete, providing alternate and augmented options to ada-linked voting power
By End of F12
Catalyst platform development	Project accountability and support functions integrated in the same Catalyst 2.0 interface, providing full visibility about funded projects and new roles to support their execution.
Complete Catalyst 2.0 with integrated voting functions, Replace Jormungandr with a Web3 voting system for Cardano
Community Services	Targets scoped during previous rounds are ready to begin and continue to devolve operations to community

Budget

It is proposed that IOG will receive ₳10,500,000 over the next 3 funds (₳3,500,000 for Fund10) in compensation for the services described above. Catalyst is requesting 40m ada for each of the next 3 funds to fulfill the above objectives and key deliverables, making more than 36.5 million ada available to the community during Fund10. This upends the current market volatility without stifling or compromising the innovation growth momentum Catalyst aims to maintain. A budget breakdown can be found below.

Budget Breakdown:

The budget can be broken down by staffing and contracting, operation expenditure, community rewards including bounties, and community-determined innovation funding.

Under this proposal the total budget for Option 1 including operating parameters for Fund10 are broken down as follows:

	Fund 10 Parameters
Fund 10 Total		₳40,000,000	$17,642,493
Community Determined Challenges	68.79%	₳27,514,567	$12,135,639
Catalyst Open (Misc)	3.00%	₳1,200,000	$529,275
Voter and Catalyst dRep Rewards	6.25%	₳2,500,000	$1,102,656
Community Reviewers (L0 and L1)	4.00%	₳1,600,000	$705,700
Community Moderators (L2)	1.00%	₳400,000	$176,425
Proof of Achievement Rewards	1.00%	₳400,000	$176,425
Catalyst Operations	8.75%	₳3,500,000	$1,543,718
Catalyst Infrastructure	0.28%	₳113,363	$50,000
Catalyst Circle & Co-Circle Rewards	0.34%	₳136,035	$60,000
Catalyst Research	0.34%	₳136,035	$60,000
Catalyst Community Bounties	6.25%	₳2,500,000	$1,102,656
Allocation Total	100.00%	₳40,000,000	$17,642,493

*ADA/USD values correct as of XX date. They are indicative only - you will be voting on the ada value, not USD. Catalyst Operations

Objectives and Key Results

Key Achievements for the past quarterly period

The following key achievements have been delivered by the Catalyst team in addition to ongoing operations to support and distribute funding to active funded-projects approved by the community.

Initiative	Status	Value target
Catalyst Portal	MVP Launched	ProjectCatalyst.io is live
Milestone module	MVP Ready to deploy	All F9 pilot migrated, ready to scale for all-F10
Voting Centre	MVP Ready for testing	Launch wallets integrated: Flint, Eternl, NuFi
Kubernetes migration	Migration complete	New easy to maintain, persistent environments
Catalyst Voting App	Fund10 release complete	Version 10 for use in Fund10
Catalyst 2.0 Design	Phase 1 design complete	Ideation functions have high-fidelity wireframes and is ready for refinements with the community Voting back-end architecture is ready for development Hydra voting conceptual research with Cardano Foundation is ongoing
Open APIs	Phase 1 complete	Access controlled, published to wallets teams, soon to be published on Catalyst Portal

Scaling Catalyst with community collaboration

Community collaboration is one of Catalyst's core principles, and the project needs to scale to accommodate community growth.

The proposed co-development strategy gives the community control over the platform's direction through a roadmap to co-build Catalyst 2.0. The roadmap leads to a point where the community has all the tools and freedom it needs to run and improve the platform. By adopting an open source approach, the community can independently contribute to advance and maintain the ecosystem.

Beyond open sourcing the software, upcoming workshops and roundtables will identify and enable further scaling opportunities, and help determine the direction of future initiatives. The promise and commitment that the Catalyst team proposes is to work alongside the community to facilitate working groups whose purpose is to produce proposals for the Catalyst Circle to consider. This sets the stage for the community to continue iterating beyond the next few months.

The proposal for Option 1 seeks approval to increase the community-determined challenge budget from 12.75m ada to 27.5m ada, representing an uplift of more than 2X, to maintain the momentum for builders delivering innovative Catalyst funded-projects.

The Catalyst team also proposes to deliver a new community-contribution initiative in the form of the Catalyst Bounties Program. Catalyst Bounties will begin to offer new opportunities for the Cardano community to co-create, maintain, and co-operate Catalyst.

While this is not an exhaustive list, and other priorities and parameters might also be discussed, upcoming roundtables may define requirements for:

• Catalyst Charter: to establish the overarching mission and responsibilities.

• Catalyst technical standards: to establish clarity for builders and technical integrations.

• Catalyst open source infrastructure: to establish procedures to contribute to ongoing technical development and maintenance of Catalyst infrastructure.

• Catalyst research and development: community researchers and IOG Research on new Sybil-resistant applications for Project Catalyst.

• Scoping Catalyst’s future funding focuses: to establish procedures for determining data-driven, evidence-led approaches that shape future priorities.

• Catalyst collaboration frameworks: to establish processes for the bounty program service providers to follow and to determine how decisions are made, such as appointment of subject matter experts for bounty RFP reviews.

• Catalyst community incubation and funded project mentorship: to establish the general objectives for business support providers to follow.

Recognizing the value of community collaboration and participation, budget allocations and bounty programs will compensate people's time for participating in working groups. Many of these proposals are intended to become bounty opportunities for the community to contribute to or fulfill. Once requirements and standards are defined, the community will continue to develop Catalyst features.

Resources

There is much to digest in this proposal and below are relevant links and resources to further inform your decision:

<LINK TO CATALYST PROPOSAL TO THE COMMUNITY> <LINK TO PITCH DECK> <LINK TO BLOG> PROJECT CATALYST GITBOOK

<LINK TO CATALYST FUND10 OPERATING PARAMETERS>

PROJECTCATALYST.IO To stay abreast of community conversations and further presentations by the IOG Catalyst team join: PROJECT CATALYST TOWN HALL PROJECT CATALYST ANNOUNCEMENTS TELEGRAM

PROJECT CATALYST YOUTUBE RECORDINGS