Bounty Cat - Incentivized Promotion and Marketing Platform
Category
Development (DApp)
Description
Summary
Bounty Cat will be a decentralized promotion and marketing platform built on ICON and designed to help businesses and organizations promote their products, services and brands through unique and incentivized digital ad campaigns we call “Bounties”.
This grant application is to help bootstrap the technical implementation and development of the infrastructure and application resources for this project with the intention and goal of this application to begin generating its own revenue at or, soon after, the time of completion & launch.
The Product
Bounty Cat was created to provide businesses and organizations with a transparent, meaningful and desired marketing avenue by leveraging incentivized ad campaigns and viral marketing strategies to promote their products, services and brands. As such Bounty Cat will be a web application composed of several key components all aimed at providing and easy to use experience for both promoters and users (“Bounty Hunters”). Bounty Cat aims to, initially, leverage the “Bridge” project to onboard users as easily as possible and provide an intuitive and easy to use platform that requires little or no understanding of cryptocurrencies or block chain.
Promoters, which are organizations or businesses with a desire to promote, will be provided a specialized web interface for account registration where they can create and manage their “Bounty” ad campaigns, account settings and manage funding.
The core user interface for the application will be the Bounty Cat Marketplace, a web portal which will provide the main touchpoint for any and all Bounty Hunters to search and interact with Bounty promotions, Rewards, user account settings and reward redemptions. This will initially serve as the primary distribution medium for Bounty Campaigns, but additional features will be added in later development cycles.
The Bounty Token will be built using ICON’s Token contract and minting will be concretely bound to promoter “funding” events whereby a BOUNTY token will be issued for each unit of value in USD that the token is intended to be pegged to. As an example, if the BOUNTY token is implemented as having a USD value of $0.05 and a promoter runs a promotion that is valued at 100 USD, 2000 BOUNTY tokens would be minted as a result*. While we cannot control what happens to tokens after they have been minted, however there will be a guaranteed redemption rate backed by a stable coin asset and contract for tokens redeemed through the Bounty Cat marketplace. *This is an example and does not represent the determined rate/value.
*This value is just an example and is subject to change as the process is refined
In addition to Bounty promotions, Promoters may also offer Rewards where they can provide Bounty Hunters with additional promotions or benefits in exchange for BOUNTY tokens thus providing users additional incentive to earn and spend BOUNTY Tokens and promoters a way to recover them and promote their organization.
The Approach
Through Bounty Cat’s unique incentivized marketing approach these ad campaigns will drive interest for promoters in several meaningful ways. First, Bounty Hunters will be incentivized to collect and earn BOUNTY rewards because of their inherent and redeemable monetary value. But as apart of the approach to launching a Bounty ad campaign, the Bounty Cat platform will also incentivize users to promote on the campaign’s behalf, letting them earn tokens not only for participating in the campaign, if applicable, but also for telling others about it. This generates and encourages a “viral marketing” response that helps promoters reach maximum impact for their value.
Finally, while the Bounty Cat Marketplace will service as the initial and core distribution platform for these unique advertisements, plans to expand distribution and access will be implemented in later development cycles. This includes web API interfaces for developer integrations, a web extension, a widget/web component for displaying Bounty Promotions, and an Android and Apple mobile application.
The Value
For ICON:
By providing an intuitive and easy to use interface for businesses and users and a meaningful product and user experience, Bounty Cat will seamlessly onboard users and businesses to the ICON network with very little friction and generate a large number of transactions through Token minting and burning, bounty creations, bounty redemptions, promoter funding events, user redemptions and conversions and more. Additionally as Bounty Hunters will have the option to convert their rewards directly into the ICX token at any time, Bounty Cat will passively draw interest to the ICON network in general.
For Promoters:
By leveraging the inherent power and transparency of blockchain and by providing a “subscriber” approach to marketing, Promoters can be confident that their promotions are legitimately reaching the most impactful and desired audiences while simultaneously providing a mechanism for broad exposure through our viral marketing strategies for their products, services & brands.
For Bounty Hunters:
Bounty Hunters benefit from the added value they can receive by participating in bounty promotions. Not only will they earn BOUNTY tokens that carry a real-world value for their actions and participation, but also for simply helping market or promote as well. Additionally, as Bounty Hunters accumulate tokens, they will have access to specialized rewards and promotions from promoters as well, providing them with discounts or products.
Monetization Strategy
Bounty Cat is being developed as a for-profit software as a service with the intention of being the flagship product for a new business and, as such, will be designed to generate a revenue and become self-sufficient through the sale of its services.
While the approach is subject to change and refinement, Bounty Cat aims to generate revenue for its services through 2 primary methods, by imposing a nominal fee anytime BOUNTY tokens are minted and/or burned.
As an example, if a Promoter wants to run a Bounty promotion valued at 100.00 USD, which would require the minting of 2000 BOUNTY tokens, a 5%* fee would be added as a fee to cover the operational and infrastructure costs associated with Bounty Cat’s service when they fund their account. So, they would still receive their 2000 BOUNTY tokens to fund their promotion, but they would be charged 105.00 USD (or equivalent ICX or other tokens) to do this. *This is an example and does not represent the determined rate/value.
Additionally, if user wants to liquidate the BOUNTY token through the Bounty Cat site for ICX or USD, the BOUNTY tokens will be burned, however nominal fee will be applied against their return similarly, with the difference being returned to Bounty Cat.
All fees will be clearly defined and notated in all applicable places.
Note: Account funding will not be tied directly to each promotion, however, and options for bulk purchasing will likely available for discounted fees or as promotions.
Development Details
Bounty Cat’s development will be broken into at least 2 planned phases. This development grant is only in regards to Phase 1 objectives, but for the sake of brevity and to make clear our vision, details on all current plans are below.
Phase 1 Objectives (ETA: No later than May 31st, 2021)
- Bounty Cat Marketplace Web Site/Application
- Register Users (Bounty Hunters) and create associated accounts through Bridge APIs
- Browse/Search/Filter available Bounties
- Browse/Search/Filter available Promotions
- Redeem Bounty tokens for rewards, ICX or Tokens
- Primary contact point for prospective users and promoters
- Bounty Hunter account management services
- Bounty Promoter Portal
- Register and login for Promoters through Bridge APIs
- Create and manage Bounty promotions
- Create and manage Rewards
- Manage account settings
- Fund account with BOUNTY points through Bridge or ICX
- Bounty Cat Web API
- A RESTful API for accessing bounties and managing accounts
- Core application code, infrastructure and databases
- Microsoft Azure Based SQL Server database for intermediate storage
- .NET application code for Web site and API and SCORE integrations
- Azure Application Fabric for web applications for automated services and web components
Phase 2 Objectives (Planned)
- Expansion of available Bounty promotion types
- Expansion of WebAPI features to support mobile dev
- Creation and launch of widget component for Bounty Promotions
- Creation and launch of mobile app
- Integration with other ICON projects and/or tokens
- There are some possible synergies with Balanced DAO and Stash among others.
Project Duration
6 Months
Project Milestones
This grant request is intended to help bootstrap the development and support of Phase 1 objectives outlined above which include the development of all application user interfaces, web API and the supporting infrastructure (SCORE, application core and databases).
- November 2020
- Finalization of Bounty Cat “White Paper” and reference documentation
- Launch of Bounty Cat promotional website, documentation and user and promoter information.
- December 2020
- Development of core application, databases and basic back-end infrastructure.
- January 2021
- Launch of interactable Bounty Cat Marketplace Test/Demo for Bounty Hunters
- February 2021
- Launch of Bounty Cat Promotion Management Test/Demo Portal for creating and managing Bounties and Rewards
- March 2021
- Launch of Web API Test/Demo
- Refinement of application front ends
- Initial SCORE Development and Testing on TEST Network
- Testable Integrations with “Bridge”
- Launch of “BOUNTY” Token on TEST
- April 2021
- Working TEST integrations with SCORE in Application/API/Front End
- Working TEST Integrations with Bridge
- SCORE Audits and Finalization
- May 2021
- Deployment of LIVE SCORE contracts
- Deployment of LIVE application & databases
- Launch of Bounty Cat Promotional and marketing initiatives to attract promoters and users
Funding Amount Requested
16,300.00 USD
- Provision of resources on Azure for development and hosting: 500.00/month (3000.00)
- Database setup and hosting (Azure SQL Server)
- File storage (Azure blob storage services, Azure on demand streaming services)
- Azure application fabric for automated services and .net web application hosting
- SSL certificates
- Backup and automation storage
- CDN services
- Provision of secondary services for email, SMS: 50.00/month (300.00)
- Front end design and implementation (In house): 40 Hours at 25.00 (1000.00)
- Backend engineering and implementation (In house): 100 Hours at 25.00 (2500.00)
- SCORE Contract development & Testing (Contract): 40 Hours at 100.00 (4000.00)
- User experience & testing (In House): 20 hours at 25.00 (500.00)
- Promotional funding budget to attract initial promoters (free bounty promotions/tokens, trial periods, etc): 5000.00
Note on funding:
As a .net web developer with nearly 15 years of experience designing, building and launching complex data driven web applications and as the primary beneficiary and developer of Foundry Box Media and the potential the Bounty Cat project represents, I am happy to work for a sub-optimal market rate to complete this project without significant funding. I am only requesting market competitive rates for outsourced work. Functionally the requested funds will allow me to bring in contract help as needed and to bootstrap the launch of the finalized product.
Team
Foundry Box Media (hxc5e0b88cb9092bbd8b004a517996139334752f62)
Twitter: @FoundryBoxMedia
Telegram: @FoundryBoxMedia
Edit: Fixed duplicate dates in timetable and updated milestones based on whitepaper.