Rules & Guidelines

Welcome to Round 4 Beta (Test Round) of the Deep Funding Grant Program! The main purpose of this test round is to ensure that our brand-new proposal platform is working as expected and to identify issues and improvement options, before launching DFR4. We have whitelisted a small number of proposers (17 in total) who are invited to participate. The round will have shorter timelines than usual, but be real in all other aspects. Real proposals, real rewards, and real feedback and voting. 

Main Rules And Conditions

The two main rules of Deep Funding remain unchanged: 

1. The proposed project should support the growth of the AI platform
2. The proposed project should support the mission and vision of SingularityNET of creating a beneficial singularity.

If you are considering submitting a proposal in this round, please, also read through all the details of existing rules below!

Total Awards: In this Test Round the total awards of the 3 pools is limited to $265,000. 

Currency Threshold: Should the value of AGIX fall below the threshold of USD 0.08, the project’s milestone payments delivered within the lowering period will be calculated and given out based on the fixed rate of USD 0.08 per AGIX, regardless of the actual market value of AGIX at that time. This fixed rate ensures that the Deep Funding treasury won't suffer from the price drop.

Milestone Completion: Payments will be made after teams deliver the agreed milestone outcome. 

Ongoing Contact Requirement: When teams fail to communicate with the Deep Funding staff over 6 months period We will consider them canceled. 

Milestone delivery timelines: When a team fails to deliver the next milestone over a period of 6 months or complete their project within 18 Months, we reserve the right to cancel further milestones of the grant. This is not an automatism but will be decided on a case-by-case situation, depending on the circumstances and communication with the team.

Mandatory Surveys: This is not new, but we would like to emphasize that teams are obliged to respond to the periodic progress surveys. The surveys are really short and require a minimum time investment, and we believe that the teams owe it to the community to keep them informed. We will give increasing exposure to the answers from these surveys on the Deepfunding website, (or the absence of such answers). It is not inconceivable we will take additional (financial) measures if teams are structurally not responding or responding too late to these surveys. It is the responsibility of the teams to monitor their mail inbox or keep us informed of any changes in their email address. 

Early AI Deployment: AI services should be delivered at the earliest stage of the project. As a rule of thumb, the AI services within a combined proposal (AI + Additional features) should be delivered within the first third of the project timeline. Any deviations from this can be discussed on a case-by-case basis. 

Hosting/API Call Usage: As before, 25% of the budget of the awarded amounts should be reserved for hosting or API calls.
This milestone is prefilled in the pool 'New projects' and cannot be changed!
Since we received many requests for using this budget during the development process, we are now adding the additional rule that a maximum of 40% of the total Hosting/API call budget can be utilized during the development phase. The rest needs to be reserved for the production phase. For example: in case of an awarded amount of $10,000, 2,500 must be reserved for API calls or hosting. Max. $1000,- of this can be used during the development process and 1,500 should be reserved for the production phase. 

Community Participation: Implementing Deep Funding’s Vision, the community will be involved in more tasks than commenting and voting, such as Peer Reviews, Eligibility Reviews, Milestones Reviews, and managing the Awarded Teams Surveys.

Pool ‘Request for Proposal’: in this Test Round there are 2 RFPs available for which teams could apply to be whitelisted seperately (submission period is closed)

Deep Funding Is A Community-Driven Program. 

During the submission period, community members offer feedback, and their votes determine which projects will be awarded. To create a compelling proposal, prioritize writing for the community. Present your ideas in a friendly and professional manner, respecting their time by being both detailed and concise. Remember, not all community members may have strong technical knowledge, so explain your project in understandable terms before delving into technicalities.

To enhance readability, use formatting tools such as headers, bulleted lists, and tables. Visual aids, like embedded images, can help explain complex concepts and contribute to a polished presentation.

In essence, demonstrating your commitment and effort in crafting a well-structured proposal will garner greater community interest and support.

The Proposed Project Should Support The Mission And Vision Of SingularityNET. 

The purpose of SingularityNET is to drive the development of benevolent, democratic, inclusive Artificial General Intelligence. This means that all proposals are welcome:

• Deliberately aim for beneficial outcomes, or offer a utility that has the potential to be used for beneficial outcomes.
• Take measures to minimize the chances of detrimental outcomes.

In practice, this means that an AI service such as image optimization will be considered an ethically neutral and positive addition to the platform. However, when offering a service such as Face recognition in a solution, the ethical considerations become more complex. The proposer may be asked to clarify how potential abuse of the service or the solution that uses such a service is being prevented.

Our new portal gives much stronger guardrails for submitting a proposal in terms of required fields and maximum character counts. Shorter proposals will enhance readability and increase the likelihood that community members will read and understand your proposal. The shorter the text the more important the choice of words is. Please take time to explain your proposal as well as possible within the given character constraints. A shorter text may require an equal or even larger amount of time to write than a long winding detailed text, to ensure that the main characteristics of your project are properly communicated!

The BEST proposals have:

• A good value proposition and market fit (convincing market research is a plus)
• Support from a complete and professional team (including all needed roles to develop and roll out)
• Explicit ethical standards and rules
• A business case that has a good prospect of generating high-value / high-quantity API calls

Team Requirements 

Finance and Legal

Note that the funds will be disbursed as AGIX. So the first requirement is to provide a Cardano wallet address for the disbursements. Before any disbursement can be made we will ask you to sign a contract that states the rules and conditions in a legally binding way.  

Community and communication

Being awarded is a beginning rather than an end of the funding process. You will get access to the group of awarded teams on Discord (or Mattermost), which monthly meets online to record short project updates, to update and inspire each other, and to share knowledge and experiences. Just being part of this diverse group of enthusiastic ‘makers’ is already a benefit in itself. Participation in these online meetings is fully voluntary.

We will keep your project page on our portal up to date with the latest milestones and links to public deliverables. Every month we will send out a short survey to report on the project’s progress and proactively check if any support is needed. The results of this survey are shared with the community and a quick return is therefore expected. Participation in these surveys is mandatory as we want to be accountable to the community's wish of awarding your project.

In general, we expect the teams to be cooperative and communicative on their projects toward the SingularityNET community and the Foundation. Likewise, the Deep Funding team will have a constructive and cooperative attitude in guiding the teams, supporting our shared goal of making the project a success and driving utility to the platform.

Deployment efforts and resources

Teams are expected to be self-reliant and independently handle the tasks necessary to complete their milestones. They are responsible for executing and delivering milestones without direct support from SNET or DF personnel resources, unless previously in agreement.

There are 5 individual pools where the proposals can be submitted:

Pool New Projects

By “New Projects” we are referring to existing or to-be-created AI Services, that are not on our platform at this point. Projects in this Pool must comply with one or both of these rules: 

1. The project includes at least the publishing of one service on the platform
2. The project utilizes one or more services that are published on the platform

There are three special conditions:

1. SingularityNET's 'Phase two proposal' for Deep Funding mandates reserving 25% of funding for API calls and hosting costs. For new services onboarded: 
   1. An individual milestone of at least 25% of the total grant, must cover hosting the service and/or API call expenses, including potential customer sponsorships; 
   2. We expect the services to be available on the platform for a minimum of 12 months (but hopefully a lot longer);
   3. During the development phase of your project, up to 40% of the total Hosting/API call budget can be utilized;
   4. To receive the disbursement, teams have to deliver proof of milestone deliverables to the Deep Funding team;
   5. Misusing this 25% solely for cashing out without utility to real or potential customers results in the loss of the remaining amount. 
2. The timely delivery of AI services is essential, and they should be provided at the earliest stage of the project. For combined proposals involving both AI and additional features, the AI service component should be delivered within the initial one-third of the project milestones, however, it can be assessed and allowed on a case-by-case basis.
3. If your project contains an AI service an onboarding milestone is mandatory in Pool New Projects. This is related to the fact the onboarding process consumes resources from the team as the integration still requires interactions with SNET internal team to happen. Each service needs a separate onboarding milestone, comprising at least 10% of the awarded amount.

Pool Ideation

The purpose of this pool is to give people with a good idea the opportunity to:

• Get visibility and feedback on their proposal
• A better understanding of the chances of success for a follow-up proposal
• Some funding to create a good proposal and get some targeted support on needed elements.
• Connect with people with the proper skills and experience needed to complete the team.

Any project posted in Pool Ideation should have the unambiguous goal to submit a proposal to Pool New Services in the next round. While circumstances and results of a Pool Ideation submission may lead to different conclusions, this Pool’s proposal is meant as a step in the direction of a high-quality submission to Pool New Services. This means that the output of it should be a tangible deliverable such as a complete backlog, technical architecture, a click demo, marketing research, etc. The defined project should be aligned with the conditions of Pool New Services, and publish or utilize a service on our platform.

Milestones and budget

Since different ideation projects may have different needs, we leave it up to the proposer to define the milestone deliverables as in the other pools. There is a Max Cap of 5,000 USD per proposal. Due to this amount a single milestone, upon delivery may be enough in some cases. The ideation proposal must define tangible and demonstrable milestone deliverables to be eligible for a voting round.

Pool SNET Request For Proposal

This pool is designed to invite community teams to collaborate on specific features required by the SingularityNET team. 
In general, each RFP will be a stand-alone item that has its own set of requirements. Depending on the RFP the conditionas can be very high level or very detailed.

• Each RFP will have its own maximum awarded amount.
• Some RFPs will require a single outcome, and only the highest-scoring proposal will be awarded in those cases.
• All proposals in this pool have to provide a proposition that offers a solution to the challenges and requirements specified in the RFP. Proposals that are not sufficiently aligned with the goals in the RFP will not be eligible for voting.
• Other RFPs may generate multiple solutions, with the RFP specifying the maximum number of funded proposals. In this case, the highest-scoring ones will be awarded.
• During the Stable period, the SingularityNET tech team will review and recommend proposals they have confidence in.
• As always, the community will have the final say in awarding proposals. The voting thresholds remain the same as in regular proposals

Steps to Participate:

1. For published and available RFPs see http://dqp.yhm.mybluehost.me/Deepfunding/all-rfps/ 
2. During the submission period, anyone can submit their proposal(s) to one or more RFPs.
3. The community can provide feedback, and submitting teams can make improvements based on this feedback.
4. During the Stable period, proposals cannot be changed, and the SNET Tech team will review and make recommendations.
5. The community will cast their votes, and the awarded proposals will be announced, kicking off the development phase.

Generic RFP conditions

Each RFP states a number of conditions that are specific to the RFP. But there are also some conditions that apply to every single RFP-based proposal that we will not repeat in every single RFP, so we can keep them more concise. These are the generic conditions:

• Each RFP proposal has the requirement to be published under an Open Sourced license, which enables future teams to continue to develop the codebase
• The code should be clean and readable by other developers
• The project should have proper functional and technical documentation
• The code and documentation should be accessible through a public GitHub repository

We are continuously enhancing community participation and collaboration in the Deep Funding program. This strongly aligns with the Deep Funding Vision, which aims to increase decentralization. We are empowering more community members to perform activities and take on leadership roles within the operational framework of our initiative. 

As we move forward with Deep Funding, we have identified four processes that we expect to become recurring in all future rounds:

1. Eligibility Reviews

• A selected group of community members will assess project proposals using predefined criteria and objective rules.
• They will have major influence power over proposals that advance to the voting phase.
• This process ensures that only relevant and feasible proposals move forward for consideration.

2. Peer Reviews

• Project proposals will be evaluated by a group of experienced reviewers from previously awarded projects in prior Deep Funding rounds.
• These reviewers have successfully produced high-quality proposals and will play a crucial role in identifying the best proposals from an ecosystem perspective.
• While they won't make final decisions, their insights and assessments will be invaluable in guiding the community's awareness.

3. Milestone Review

• After a project is awarded funding, milestone reviews come into play upon the submission of deliverables by the awarded teams.
• Milestone reviews focus on an analytical assessment of project completion status.
• The reviews determine whether disbursements related to each milestone should be granted or not, ensuring transparency and accountability.

4. Awarded Teams Surveys

• Community members will be in charge of the current process of sending out surveys and collecting and publishing the results
• The surveys will get increasing visibility on our website. The community will be able to review all surveys, assess the progress of the teams, and signal if teams fail to submit their response
• The surveys follow a predefined specific format and will only take a short time to fill and submit and are accompanied by analysis reports prepared by the community members.
• Apart from giving information on the team’s progress, the surveys are also a medium for the teams to reach out and ask for support.  

Stages Per Round 

Deep Funding is organized in rounds. A regular Deep Funding round consists of the following stages:

NB: The timelines are different for Deep Funding round 4-Beta (Test Round)! See http://dqp.yhm.mybluehost.me/Deepfunding/schedule/

• Opening of the round
• Submission period - 4 weeks
  • During this period new proposals can be submitted and the community can already start reading and providing feedback. 
• Stable period - 3 weeks
  • All proposals are added to an ‘under review’ state and making changes is no longer possible
  • The community can review and assess all submitted proposals with some leisure. The community can still discuss and give feedback, but the proposals cannot be changed anymore.  
  • All projects will be filtered on eligibility based on the conditions stated here 
  • Peer reviews are executed and the Depp Funding team recommends projects.
• Voting preparation - 2 weeks
  • An export of all portal interactions is created to calculate reputation ratings
• Voting execution - 1 week
• Result calculation, checking the validity of the votes, adding reputation weights, and publishing the final results. - 1 week

Applying To Multiple Rounds

There are no restrictions on submitting a proposal to multiple rounds. We expect some teams that have completed a first project with a smaller award, to step up their game and define a new scaled-up project to develop a production-ready or more generic version of their initial solution. 

As a guiding principle, each project should only be submitted for voting once. If you have submitted your proposal before but in the meantime have substantially changed it, this can be a valid reason to submit it again to a new round. In this case, to support the community and avoid confusion, please clearly describe the differences with your original proposal. In some cases, we may also invite a project to re-apply. This could be in the case of a high-quality project that was not awarded due to late submission or another unexpected factor.

In general, we will rely on the community to ensure that unwanted, unconstructive behavior is not rewarded such as repeatedly submitting the same proposal or submitting many low-quality proposals in search of good luck. We will take the initiative to ensure that the community is not burdened with unwanted behavior or outright spam and will block any proposals that are deliberately violating our written guidelines and conditions or are not aligned with the spirit of these guidelines or the general mission and vision of SingularityNET. 

Funding Amount

We expect that you know best what you need to deliver a successful project. Unfinished projects are not useful so you will either be awarded the full amount requested or nothing at all. And that decision will be made by our community. Therefore it is important for you to give an accurate breakdown and explanation of the costs involved. If there are parts that are hard to estimate you can ask the community for input. You can still adapt all parts of your proposal until the stable period starts, including the funding amount!

AGIX And Dollar Value

Some of you may not be familiar with blockchain, cryptocurrency, and AGIX. Knowledge or experience in this area is not required to participate. There is not that much you need to know and we will support you in the steps you need to take. 

A Brief Introduction To AGIX

AGIX is the native token of SingularityNET and is the currency that all services on our platform are paid. This blockchain-based payment method enables reliable and fast execution of transactions, a public ledger with all transaction history, and no overhead like the traditional banking world. This way, AGIX will power the decentralized AI economy in ways that would not be possible for any FIAT currency. 

Important for you that, at the time we disburse any amounts in AGIX, we will calculate the amount based on the exchange rate of that moment. You can exchange the AGIX into USD or a so-called 'stable coin' right after you receive it so that your exposure to the volatility of the crypto market is minimal. Of course, you can also decide to hold your AGIX and exchange it at any later moment if you want. 

The only thing you really need is a suitable wallet that will hold your AGIX that is minted on the blockchain 'Cardano'. If you want to trade your AGIX you can do so on a central exchange like Binance.com or on a decentralized exchange such as Uniswap (after bridging your AGIX on Cardano to AGIX on ETH). Note that on the decentralized exchanges, you can only trade for other cryptocurrencies, not against FIAT.

A Minimum Exchange Rate Of AGIX-USD 

As explained above, we award teams in AGIX but based on actual USD value at the moment of disbursing. This way we provide security and facilitate predictable expense planning for the teams. However, by stabilizing the awards in USD, the volatility of the exchange rates will manifest itself in the Deep Funding treasury. The effects of this are spread out over time due to the approach of milestone-based disbursements. Nevertheless, to protect the treasury from extreme, temporary downward volatility we decided to define a minimum AGIX-USD exchange rate. This will enable us to make long-term projections, even while organizing new rounds that will lead to an accumulation of active projects and related disbursements.

The minimum exchange rate defined for round 3 is $0,08.

We hope that we will never have to apply the minimum exchange rate mechanism, but if we have to, and in case this would bring a team into problems, we will address this situation on a case-by-case basis, and try to find an appropriate solution. (By reducing the scope, delaying disbursements until the rates are up again, compensating the loss at a later moment when the exchange rate is up again, or other bespoke measures).

Voluntary Revenue

For larger or high-risk projects, there is the option to share part of the success of your project with SNET/Deep Funding. This is completely voluntary but will have the benefit of motivating the community to vote in favor of your project. Future revenues coming from this source will feed back into the Deep Funding wallet to help sustain or grow the Deep Funding program over time. 

We have developed a few templates for you to use. You can choose the template that best fits your project. We have included the recommended variables on the conditions of the agreement but you are allowed to change them according to your preferences. We expect the community to give the type of agreement and the specific conditions of the model serious weight in their evaluation of your proposal. In practice, we expect that:

• Proposals with low costs and/or a very good business case may not require any revenue sharing.
• Proposals with very high ethical goals but little business value may not need any sharing either.
• High-cost projects or weaker / riskier projects may want to convince the community by offering a higher sharing reward in the case of success. 

These are the 3 'user-friendly' templates for revenue sharing:

The variables within [ ] can be adjusted at will.

1. IP Sharing

We will offer [5]% of all intellectual property of the project presented to Deep Funding in the event of licensing or selling this IP.  

2. Token Allocations

We are planning for a token launch in [Qx 202x]. The tokens represent [short description of your token (type, value, utility)]

If awarded by Deep Funding, we will allocate [5]% of the total token supply to SNET/DeepFunding.

3. API Calls

We will onboard [2] services on the platform. If any of these services crosses the threshold of [$1000,-] revenue per month, [10%] of the additional revenue will be fed back into the SNET/DeepFunding wallets. This condition will remain valid for [10] years after first onboarding the service and will be applicable to this service or any subsequent iteration of this service on the platform.

These 'userfriendly' and standardized texts are meant to inform the community in an easy-to-understand way on the revenue sharing conditions of your proposal.

Developing processes around voting and community contributions in general, is important for Deep Funding but also for the wider SingularityNET ecosystem. Therefore we are giving a lot of attention to experimenting, developing, and improving our governance processes and tooling. 

We’ll list the rules here below, but we are still in the early days of ‘web3 governance’, so these rules are likely to change from one round to the next. 

Voting Process:

Grade voting

• Voting is done on SingularityNET’s Voting Portal. Each project can be assigned a grade between 1 to 10, where 10 is best. 

Weights: 

• The voting process is initially based on the principle of one token - one vote, but further balanced by the method of ‘Quadratic Voting’ meaning that for each wallet the square root of the token balance determines the weight of the vote. The goal of this measure is to reduce the impact of a few very large wallets on the outcomes.
• Additional weight is given to wallets that have a (high) reputation on our portal, providing that the “wallet linking tool ID” that is used for voting is also related to the participant’s profile on the proposal portal. The additional weight of the votes is relative to the reputation rating that is connected to the wallet.

Eligibility Rules

Before voting

• The project should be aligned with the general and Pool specific rules
• The project should be aligned with the mission of SingularityNET of creating a beneficial singularity. 

After voting

• The project has a minimum average grade of 6.5
• The project has been voted upon by at least 1% of all voters.

Engagement Rewards

For the Test Round we do not expect to hand out any engagement rewards. Based on the experiences with DFR3 the topic of engagement rewards is a topic of debate and further exploration.