{"signature": "0xd0b7b7fa159e2b75e611f1df1d971eae47ce36b21a40039365ca1090a8b8b1a42734c99f5ac256d22727ad71245d8aaa0d06126f127586b885b7d82de0a7dd0b1b", "application": {"round": "0x6142eedc06d80f3b362ce43b4ac52fad679dc850", "answers": [{"type": "email", "hidden": true, "question": "Email Address", "questionId": 0, "encryptedAnswer": {"ciphertext": "sbB350XroM/U4J8M86u8zPmQoPsfhaz1EHkqb0t9mTw=", "encryptedSymmetricKey": "fc75b660bc081a55ffd9ed2bc0d5823df1790f1fa2b5d097ba9b74817342c649be0b963412df03afdb3acba0a227c60650df216a74adbe116121e5126952ca2baf9d2bf48e592c6230333a14c4611468a254904650f81b08ab92804ece7d7ca1e35996e21548a81c50bbc4901eec12b60137ccb4486b5dc16ebea066e7e5ef950000000000000020e4428de8d1bb64737f37db55ea2d203965a9a79deb394e481f7c71ac97312d078bf65a534918448ecc95bc006a31a48f"}}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Real-world assets (RWAs) are poised for significant growth within the blockchain ecosystem, especially in DeFi, by introducing new mechanisms for collateralisation, derivatives, stable assets, and yield opportunities. Our proposal focuses on Plain Finance, a protocol designed for the secure, open market engagement in the custodial management of real-estate assets, facilitating the decentralised minting, issuance, and exchange of tokenised real-estate shares. We aim to demonstrate how Arbitrum will be the primary blockchain for asset origination, with Uniswap V4 underpinning the exchange framework.\n\nReal-estate represents the largest global asset class, and its tokenisation promises to unlock liquidity while maintaining stability. The current lack of a protocol for verifying off-chain data and processes risks fragmenting custodians and issuers, sidelining under-capitalised participants due to increased trust requirements and potential for data manipulation. Traditional transparency methods, such as third-party audits and attestations, suffer from bias, bribery, and infrequent updates, leading to vulnerabilities such as stablecoin de-pegging and yield source suspicions.\n\nOur solution encompasses the technical application of our research into verifiable transparency, economic incentive structures, and governance mechanisms. We introduce a zkOracle Framework for creating market-specific zkOracles, starting with Australia, enabling custodians to verify data related to asset custody, valuation, and dividends. This includes zkProofs for reserves, identity, legal structure, etc., all verified on the Arbitrum One blockchain. This technology assures investor capital access after asset custody verification, with blockchain event emissions for public auditing. A dApp will allow investors to view verified data and engage with property governance, crowdfunding, and income withdrawal features. Each property will be paired with a stablecoin like USDC in a custom Uniswap V4 Pool for exchange.\n\nFor a detailed technical overview, please visit our Notion page: https://usherlabs.notion.site/Plain-Finance-Protocol-UAGP-Application-87d2b940fc5840f2bdb862a6e59f9b22", "hidden": false, "question": "Application detail", "questionId": 1}, {"type": "number", "answer": "129000", "hidden": true, "question": "Amount requested (in $)", "questionId": 2}, {"type": "dropdown", "answer": "ARB", "hidden": true, "question": "Payout token", "questionId": 3}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "Calculated to cover the essential development, legal structuring, marketing, and operational costs required to launch and sustain the Plain Finance project, ensuring its strategic milestones are met.", "hidden": true, "question": "How do you account for this fund request?", "questionId": 4}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Plain Finance, with its investor-centric and community-driven focus, necessitates dedicated involvement from our team to advance the technology, brand, and community engagement. Here's an overview of our detailed expenditure plan:\n\nPersonnel Expenses ($98,000): Our core team comprises four full-time members, working over a four-month period to launch an MVP and achieve our initial milestone of tokenising and selling a property. This team includes a Project/Research Lead at $7,500 per month, a Senior Software/Blockchain/ZK Engineer at $6,000 per month, a Frontend Engineer at $4,000 per month, and a Marketing & Community Lead at $7,000 per month.\n\nTechnical Infrastructure ($4,800): This budget covers the costs for both Production and Development environments crucial for our ZK Prover and Transparency Network, alongside AI-powered document data extraction services, with potential candidates being AWS Textract or Google Document AI.\n\nMarketing Initiatives ($20,000): To foster growth and community engagement, we're allocating funds for guerrilla marketing tactics, seeding of discord and social platforms, influencer partnerships, ambassador management, and bounty programs.\n\nLegal Framework ($7,000): Financing new legal documentation is critical for aligning the governance of off-chain custodial entities with on-chain investor engagement. This includes drafting the custodial entity\u2019s constitution and shareholder agreements, ensuring that on-chain governance proposals guide significant decisions.\n\nThe total projected cost stands at $129,800, aimed at setting a solid foundation for Plain Finance to flourish as a key player in real-estate tokenisation on the blockchain.", "hidden": false, "question": "How will you use these funds? Please make a detailed plan for expenditures.", "questionId": 5}, {"type": "dropdown", "answer": "Uniswap on Arbitrum Ecosystem tools or products", "hidden": false, "question": "Which RFP is this project covering? ", "questionId": 6}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "Plain Finance's integration with Uniswap represents a strategic alignment, essential for the liquidity and exchange of tokenised real-world assets (RWAs). Our protocol facilitates the tokenisation of property ownership, allowing investors to acquire digital tokens representing shares in real estate entities. This process transitions ownership verification to the blockchain, enabling the custodian's reimbursement through on-chain transactions.  A critical aspect of tokenisation is providing a mechanism for liquid asset exchange. Uniswap v3, known for its decentralised exchange capabilities, offers a foundational platform for this purpose. However, Uniswap v3 introduces range-based liquidity provision, which, while innovative, presents challenges in pools with lower liquidity \u2014 a common scenario for residential real-estate tokens where each pool's liquidity is inherently limited to approximately twice the property's value. This range restriction necessitates active position management by liquidity providers (LPs), exposing them to an increased risk of impermanent loss in these smaller pools.  Uniswap v4, with its advanced features, particularly the hooks capabilities, emerges as a superior choice for Plain Finance. It allows for the creation of full-range liquidity pools, integrating rental income directly into liquidity providers' positions, thereby enhancing the efficiency and attractiveness of participating in the RWA market. Moreover, Uniswap v4's streamlined swap routing via a single PoolManager.sol Smart Contract optimises transaction efficiency, enabling seamless asset exchanges across properties with minimal fees. This compatibility not only supports liquidation needs but also elevates the potential for RWAs within the Uniswap ecosystem, aligning with our vision for accessible, efficient property investment and exchange on the blockchain.", "hidden": false, "question": "How do you think this project fits in with Uniswap?", "questionId": 7}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Introducing a Real-World Assets (RWA) protocol into the Uniswap ecosystem on Arbitrum marks a significant innovation by democratising access to the minting and issuing of digital assets backed by real estate. Considering the global real estate market's substantial valuation, which is conservatively estimated to exceed $280 trillion\u2014with residential properties accounting for about 75%\u2014even minimal tokenisation efforts could channel over $21 billion in new cryptocurrency liquidity into Uniswap. This influx would markedly enhance exchange volumes and enrich the ecosystem by ensuring robust liquidity for transactions involving property assets.\n\nFor the RWA protocol's success, concentrated liquidity on a primary blockchain capable of efficiently verifying cryptographic proofs related to off-chain data and processes is vital. Arbitrum, renowned for its robust EVM compatibility and the anticipated introduction of Stylus\u2014a Rust-based programming environment promising faster proof processing\u2014perfectly fits these needs. This strategic fit is expected to significantly boost concentrated liquidity flows into Uniswap, invigorating exchange activities within the Arbitrum ecosystem.\n\nWith the ecosystem's evolution, especially with innovations like UniswapX, the scope for cross-chain dynamics of RWA tokens could expand but is only feasible with sufficient liquidity. This liquidity come from tokenising high-value commercial or multi-tenant residential properties, or in features that allow on-chain funds to be collateralised by tokenised properties, further opening up new liquidity and investment channels within Uniswap.", "hidden": false, "question": "What benefits will this project bring to Uniswap in the Arbitrum ecosystem?", "questionId": 8}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "No. A security audit will be conducted after delivery of the MVP, and validation of the protocol.", "hidden": true, "question": "Has this project undergone a security audit? If not, are you planning to undergo it?", "questionId": 9}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "https://github.com/usherlabs/logstore/ , https://github.com/usherlabs/logstore-node/ , Plain Finance Protocol will be open source", "hidden": false, "question": "Is this project open-source? (If yes, share the repository link).", "questionId": 10}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "For this project, we've adopted an agile workflow, leveraging Linear and GitHub for task management and source code versioning, respectively. Regular Zoom meetings and discussion of Slack will keep the team aligned, while community engagement metrics on Discord and Twitter, tracked through their analytics, will guide iterative development from community feedback. The technical stack includes Rust for zero-knowledge circuit development, TypeScript and Rust for our transparency infrastructure, Next.js for the dApp, and Solidity for Smart Contracts, with a commitment to thorough testing and deployment on a testnet for end-to-end verification.", "hidden": true, "question": "What is the workflow chosen for this project? (You can mention development practices, tools, programming languages, etc.)", "questionId": 11}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "No", "hidden": true, "question": "Does this project have a demo? If yes, share a public link.", "questionId": 12}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "Our target audience comprises DeFi investors with a keen interest in tokenised real-estate investments. Our market launch plan includes engaging this audience through various strategies like community building, NFT airdrops to introduce our protocol, bounty programs, and targeted marketing initiatives. The project will kick off with Ryan, leveraging his dual role as project leader and NSW property owner, by listing his property to establish himself as a custodian not only for NSW but potentially for the broader Australian real estate market. This move aims to demonstrate our protocol's effectiveness and the robust security of our technology, thereby attracting global investors to the Australian real estate sector.", "hidden": true, "question": "What is the target audience for this project? (Mention if there is a market launch plan).", "questionId": 13}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "1. Ryan Soury: Project & Research Lead\n2. Victor: Senior DevOps, Infrastructure, Blockchain, and Data Specialist\n3. Alex: Smart Contract Developer and Web3 Expert\n4. Raffael: Full-Stack Developer and DevOps Engineer\n\nOur advisors:\n\n- Bertha Soury Ishak: A leader in green finance products at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, known for significant achievements in lending solutions including collaborations with Tesla.\n- Catherine Higgins: A commercial law expert and solicitor at Lawbase in Sydney, Australia.\n- Mansour Soltani: A director at SorenFinancial, with a strong background in mortgage brokerage exceeding $100m in lending volume.", "hidden": false, "question": "Who are the members of the team?", "questionId": 14}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Our project is led by a skilled and geographically diverse team, primarily based in Australia but with a global reach and impact. Our core team members bring a unique mix of skills and experiences vital for our project's multifaceted requirements:\n\n1. Ryan Soury: Project & Research Lead\n    \n    At the helm of the Transparency Network's evolution, Ryan is a pivotal force in developing our node-to-network infrastructure for real-time cryptographic attestations. His blockchain expertise and track record in project delivery position him as our project's visionary leader and strategist.\n    \n2. Victor: Senior DevOps, Infrastructure, Blockchain, and Data Specialist\n    \n    Victor has transitioned from Web2 to Web3, bringing over two decades of experience. His passion for Rust and its application in Smart Contract development, especially on Solana and Wormhole, underscores his proficiency in infrastructure and data engineering.\n    \n3. Alex: Smart Contract Developer and Web3 Expert\n    \n    Alex\u2019s background in Web3 startups, including Push Protocol, equips him with a deep understanding of Smart Contract development, review, testing, and dApp development, vital for our project's technical delivery.\n    \n4. Raffael: Full-Stack Developer and DevOps Engineer\n    \n    With a solid grasp of application engineering, DevOps, and cloud infrastructure, Raffael\u2019s transition to Web3 technologies and his work on cryptographic schemes at Usher Labs are invaluable to our project's success.\n    \n\nOur team's collective Web3 experience, bolstered by a rich Web2 background, ensures we are well-equipped to navigate our project's complexities. Our expertise spans cryptographically verifiable data engineering to Smart Contract development on EVM and Rust-based chains.\n\nPrimary Marketing & Community Lead Candidates:\n\n- Jose: Founder of GOTN NFT Project and a Blockchain Specialist at Grupo Planeta, with a track record of significant community growth.\n- Christie: Experienced in eCommerce brand growth and digital development, including leadership roles at Web Doodle.", "hidden": true, "question": "Describe team members' experience and current roles for this project.", "questionId": 15}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "The project will be split into a set of deliverables that cover the full scope of the project outlined in this proposal.\n\n1. Brand & Community Establishment:\n    \n    Objective: To build the Plain Finance brand and foster a community by engaging with the blockchain and investor ecosystems about the protocol's value proposition.\n    \n    Tracking: Continuous monitoring of engagement metrics and community growth, adjusting strategies based on feedback and interaction levels. Marketing initiatives will be scaled in alignment with protocol readiness.\n    \n2. Blog Post / Paper on RWA Protocol:\n    \n    Objective: To share comprehensive insights into the protocol, including research on verifiable transparency and legal structuring of custodial entities, fostering trust among investors, auditors, and potential custodians.\n    \n    Tracking: Completion tracked through milestones for research, drafting, consultation with legal counsel, and publication. Feedback and engagement metrics will be evaluated to guide future content and revisions.\n    \n3. RWA Protocol & zkOracle for Australian Market:\n    \n    Objective: Development and deployment of the first zkOracle tailored for the Australian real estate market, alongside Smart Contracts for property listings, crowdfunding, and custodian management.\n    \n    Tracking: Progress tracked through development sprints, with milestones for each key component\u2014data verification, Smart Contract testing, and integration. Regular reviews and testing sessions will ensure adherence to the project timeline and quality standards.\n    \n4. dApp Prototype:\n    \n    Objective: To provide a user-friendly interface for investors to engage with the protocol, including property listings, crowdfunding support, and access to verified data.\n    \n    Tracking: Development progress monitored through agile methodologies, with sprint reviews focusing on UI/UX feedback, functionality testing, and integration with back-end systems. The use of existing UI frameworks and open-source components will be tracked to ensure efficient progress and alignment with project goals.", "hidden": false, "question": "What are the Project Milestones? (Be very specific and write a roadmap highlighting critical deliverables of the project; mention how you will ensure to supervise and track them).", "questionId": 16}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Our strategy for fulfilling these milestones is marked by a blend of sequential progression and parallel initiations. At the core of Plain Finance\u2019s value proposition is its capability to present property investment opportunities to our community. Right from the project's onset, appointing a lead for marketing and community engagement is pivotal. This individual will spearhead efforts to build the Plain Finance brand and nurture a community, with these tasks continuing throughout the project's lifespan and intensifying once the protocol is fully operational and all deliverables are achieved.\n\nTechnically, the project demands an initial phase of research led by our research lead. This phase is crucial for finalising the scope of the RWA protocol and the zkOracle. It encompasses confirming the necessary data sources and legal documentation, alongside structuring the implementation for the Smart Contracts. This will allow for the seamless incorporation of new zkOracles, markets, property listings, and custodians into the protocol. The outcome of this research phase is essential for drafting the public paper.\n\nWith a clear technical scope and access to required services and data sources, the implementation of our third deliverable will proceed in a test-driven manner. Leveraging Usher Labs\u2019 existing research and infrastructure, including zero-knowledge proof systems such as zkLLVM, will significantly expedite the delivery of this milestone. Early initiation in the project timeline allows ample time for meeting all fundamental requirements and thorough testing ahead of a comprehensive peer review by the entire team.\n\nParallel to these technical efforts, legal counsel will examine the structure and agreements necessary for the custodial entity. This examination aims to ensure that token holders are acknowledged as beneficiaries with entitlements to dividends and voting rights executed through the protocol. This legal review is may affect the protocol's final design and the contents of the publicly shared paper.\n\nFollowing the resolution of legal and technical details, the project lead will focus on drafting, refining, and releasing the paper on the protocol.\n\nSubsequently, our development focus will shift towards the dApp, aiming to offer a seamless interface for viewing property listings, crowdfunding support, and comprehensive investor engagement.", "hidden": false, "question": "How do you plan to reach these milestones? (Explain the project feasibility).", "questionId": 17}, {"type": "multiple-choice", "answer": "No", "hidden": true, "question": "Has this project already been funded by other Grant Programs?", "questionId": 18}, {"type": "checkbox", "answer": ["I confirm."], "hidden": true, "question": "I confirm that I have read the Code of Conduct and that I have filled out this form correctly and truthfully.", "questionId": 19}, {"type": "checkbox", "answer": ["I understand."], "hidden": true, "question": "I understand that I will be required to provide KYC information by the UAGP team in case my application is accepted.", "questionId": 20}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "Arbitrum Foundation / Community", "hidden": true, "question": "How did you find out about UAGP?", "questionId": 21}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "N/A", "hidden": true, "question": "Additional information", "questionId": 22}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "N/A", "hidden": true, "question": "Special requests", "questionId": 23}], "project": {"id": "42161:0x73ab205af1476dc22104a6b8b3d4c273b58c6e27:499", "title": "Plain Finance", "logoImg": "bafkreiceculbh7o4ehf7a42ypmwp5i5v3kg4eygh2aqxj47m2cvhtc6zie", "metaPtr": {"pointer": "bafkreibwkvkwga7oz762zlekezeskkms7ngbbfxf4sx3t4wyyncxlhayxe", "protocol": "1"}, "website": "https://www.plain.finance", "createdAt": 1707883129230, "userGithub": "rsoury", "credentials": {}, "description": "Plain Finance is developing a Real-World Assets Protocol that sets itself apart by embedding verifiable transparency into off-chain data and custodial processes using advanced cryptographic enforcement. This initiative directly addresses the prevalent issue in tokenised RWAs: the opacity surrounding the off-chain custody of assets. Despite blockchain's ability to transparently track on-chain asset ownership, off-chain assets are often managed by central entities in opaque, black-box operations, elevating investor concerns due to the increased reliance on trust within the data supply chain.\n\nOriginating from Usher Labs ([https://www.usher.so](https://www.usher.so/)), a firm innovating in verifiable data pipelines and applied zero-knowledge technology, Plain Finance aims to bridge the gap between tangible real-world assets and the blockchain's transparency. By ensuring off-chain asset custody is as transparent as the on-chain environment, we seek to mitigate trust assumptions and bolster investor confidence in the integrity of RWAs.", "lastUpdated": 0, "projectGithub": "usherlabs"}, "recipient": "0xc6D330E5B7Deb31824B837Aa77771178bD8e6713"}}