Profila Gets Funded Through Project Catalyst for the 5th Time!
Another Catalyst fund, another win for Profila - in Fund7 we received a total of 167 million ADA worth of votes.
TL;DR:
🔵 As part of Project Catalyst Fund7, Profila receives backing by 620 Cardano owners good for a total of 167 million ADA (worth close to 150 million EUR at the day of writing this article).
🔵 Under this latest project, we will integrate our own Cardano-native token called “Zero Knowledge Token (ZEKE)” into the Profila app, showing how ZEKE helps you control your data & earn along the way.
🔵 This is the 5th time a Profila project is funded by the Catalyst community for our implementations of Cardano’s native assets, blockchain, smart contracts, decentralized ID (Atala Prism) and other technologies.
Short intro to Profila
Profila is a Decentralized Marketing platform built on blockchain, which enables individuals to communicate with various organizations in their lives - privately, one-to-one, without supervision or surveillance.
It works as:
- a mobile application for individual users (iOS/Android)
- a web-based dashboard for companies, organizations, governments, and other legal entities (which we call “Brands”)
As a Profila user, you can manage all your personal data in one location, through an app that shows which organisations have access to your personal data (or certain parts of it).
As part of IOHK’s Project Catalyst fund, we are integrating the Profila platform with the Cardano blockchain and other Cardano technology (such as the digital ID solution of Atala Prism) to:
- further enhance the app’s privacy-enhancing features for consumers
- increase transparency and auditability of (consensually shared) personal data
Originally built as a centralized platform, Profila is now getting decentralized feature by feature. By doing so, we are building the first decentralized marketing platform (DeMar) on Cardano.
167 million ADA worth of votes in Fund7
Under Project Catalyst’s Fund7 challenge, no less than 620 Cardano owners — good for a total of 167 million ADA (worth close to 150 million EUR at the day of writing this article), voted Profila’s project “Anonymity and data control online with ZEKE” in 3rd place! (Participants could vote between a total of 85 projects submitted, 9 of which received funding).
Under this proposal, we will integrate our own Cardano-native token called “Zero Knowledge Token” (ZEKE) into the Profila app.
How to control your data & earn ZEKE along the way
As part of our Fund7 project, we explain how ZEKE helps you control your data and remain anonymous through gamification.
ZEKE measures your progress and “experience” (XP) within Profila. By gaining experience points, you unlock various features that reveal deeper means of interaction and engagement with brands, but also your own data. Gaining more XP also earns you more ZEKE.
ZEKE equals XP — meaning that the more XP you get, the more ZEKE you earn.
This gamification process in Profila has three main features, which are explained below:
Self-discovery quizzes
The main way of gaining XP and earning ZEKE is through our Category Quizzes. Categories empower you to create the most authentic, accurate, and valuable digital profile of yourself online.
This digital profile is created as you fill out your personal data (email, date of birth, name, picture, languages you speak, etc.), as well as when you complete quizzes within specific categories (such as Food & Drink, Fashion, Travel).
As you complete more quizzes, you earn XP and level up not only your profile, but also unlock more levels in categories where you have completed the quizzes.
An example of how a quiz would work in Profila:
If you are a big fan of “Outdoor Sports” and the subcategory ”Running”, you might be willing to participate in various forms of advertising within the “Outdoor Sports” category and the sub-niches of “Trial Running”, “City Running” or even “Triathlon”.
You gain XP by participating in advertising items that are in the general category. More experience points increase your level for a specific category and niche.
Staking to unlock new Quizzes
The ZEKE you earn and XP you accumulate can be used to specifically progress and enhance interactions within specific categories that you are interested in. You will initially be offer a limited selection of categories, while others remain locked until you acquire a certain amount of XP (i.e., ZEKE).
The acquired ZEKE needs to be ‘staked’ within the app to unlock new categories, as well as to unlock further levels within individual categories of particular interest and other benefits.
Achievements & badges
Additionally, you will be rewarded with badges for reaching certain levels within categories, or for taking certain actions in the app. This provides a sense of achievement alongside encouraging further self-discovery.
These badges, in combination with the levelling score for categories and XP paid out in ZEKE, all serve to create the most accurate representation of yourself online, while also helping brands understand who you are, so they know how to engage with you in a private and personalized manner.
Coming soon in Fund8 — new ways to earn ZEKE
In our follow-up proposal under Catalyst Fund8, we will present a second ZEKE use case, linking ZEKE to XP gained from interacting with brands.
ZEKE can also measure your “interactions” with a Brand within Profila. The XP that you can gain from interactions is linked to:
Brand content and advertising
As a Profila user, you can use the app to view content from Brands (personalized advertising on products and services) and interact with such content by opening the ad, clicking through, or adding a (positive or negative) sentiment to the ad you like or dislike.
The more you interact, the more your XP increases and the more ZEKE you earn.
Consumer content and feedback
Another form of brand interaction where XP can be earned is through Moments, which is consumer-created content directly shared with a brand. If a brand wants to commercially use your content, they can buy it in the form of an NFT.
To learn more about this functionality, you can check out this Medium article about our Fund6 proposal.
When will this project be deployed?
We are preparing for the first sprints focusing on the technical roadmap of each project. We will be setting up a GitHub repository per project in order for the community to follow our progress over the coming 3–6 months.
More details about Profila’s Catalyst projects
Project Catalyst is a community-led experiment organized by IOHK to fund projects and entrepreneurs that build on the Cardano blockchain. It allows the Cardano community to self-determine priorities for growth.
We have already received funding in Project Catalyst’s Fund5 & 6, which you can read more about in these articles:
If you want to know more about the current Cardano projects of Profila, check out the detailed project descriptions below (requires login):
- NFT business models (F6) — NFT for customer feedback/content
- Dapps and Integrations (F6) — Dapp to control/monetize your data
- Atala Prism Adoption (F6) — Control your data (vault) via PRISM
- Metadata (F5) — Control your data — privacy ledger
- Dapps and Integrations (F7) — Anonymity and data control online via ZEKE
