SMALL Grant: Varsity Fair

VarsityFair - A Decentralized Data Hub And Marketplace for Scholars and Researchers VarsityFair

Name of the organization or individual submitting the proposal

Miracle Egberi

Describe Your Project

Overview

Problem Statement:

The academic and research community faces several critical challenges in the current landscape of centralized platforms for sharing and accessing scholarly materials. These platforms often impose restrictive access controls, limiting the availability of research to those who can afford expensive subscriptions or belong to privileged institutions. Such costs contribute to a significant disparity in access to academic materials.

In low-income countries, up to 75% of researchers report difficulties in accessing the research they need. Even within wealthier nations, independent researchers, small institutions, and students often face barriers to obtaining critical resources, stifling their ability to contribute to their fields.

Moreover, the current academic ecosystem is fragmented, with limited opportunities for cross-institutional collaboration. Students and researchers often struggle to find and share resources across different regions and disciplines, which hampers the development of new ideas and solutions to global challenges. Additionally, there is a significant barrier to entry for monetizing research, as current platforms do not provide adequate mechanisms for scholars to be fairly compensated for their work.

These challenges highlight the need for a decentralized, transparent, and user-owned platform that democratizes access to academic resources, empowers researchers to maintain control over their intellectual property, and fosters global collaboration.

VarsityFair is a decentralized data hub/marketplace designed specifically for researchers, students, and scholars. It allows users to upload, share, or trade research papers and academic materials seamlessly. High school/college students can form local (same institutions) or global research groups to work on topics of interest. Trades are made with credits, crypto and cash. The platform leverages blockchain technology to ensure transparency, security, and fair value for contributors via Smart contracts (zora 1155 contracts) and Sia decentralized storage.

NB: we intend to work on the version of the platform that only supports free sharing of materials for this MVP. Implementing all features within three months won’t be feasible

Sharing/Selling Components and Implementations

Why Zora Contracts?

The 1155 Contracts allow creators to mint semi-fungible tokens with a set of flexible properties, like metadata control, royalties and permissions control. This is Ideal for scholars who intend to sell their research materials

Focus on Creators: Zora is a protocol primarily designed to help creators retain ownership over their work, whether through art, music, or intellectual property.

Gasless Transactions: Zora also allows for the possibility of gasless listings and transactions using meta-transactions. This allows creators to upload without a cost barrier

Token Representation: Each research paper would be minted as an NFT on Zora. This would ensure that every paper has a unique identity on the blockchain, recording ownership and licensing terms.

Dynamic Royalties: Zora supports dynamic royalties, which means researchers get royalties not only from the first sale of their work but from all subsequent resales as well. As a platform focused on academic sharing, this is ideal for VarsityFair as it creates ongoing incentives for researchers.

Account Abstraction: Users gets a non-custodial wallet upon sign-up that would be used for every transaction signing and receiving of tokens.

Interaction with the zora contract would be as seamless as minting an NFT on the zora marketplace, making it easy even for users with no blockchain knowledge

Traditional Payment Gateways

To best support global access, VarsityFair would integrate both crypto payments and traditional payment gateways like Stripe.
VarsityFair would utilize Stripe for processing card payments globally, as well as for Apple Pay and Google Pay transactions.

How would this project help ease the barrier of access to research papers?

According to a 2022 report on arXiv, the survey conducted among 3304 researchers shows that most scientific research is behind paywalls, making it difficult for scholars, especially in lower-income regions, to access critical information which leads to scholarly piracy.

1. Collaborative Research Groups:

VarsityFair allows users, including high school, college, and university students, to form local or global research groups. These groups can work on specific academic topics or research fields with tools for editing, commenting, and version control, similar to platforms like Google Docs, but tailored for academic research. Scholars can invite peers and smart minds from different regions and institutions.

2. Solving the Geographic and Institutional Divide:

One of the largest barriers to accessing research papers is geographic and institutional disparity. Major universities and research institutions in the Global North typically have access to extensive academic databases that are unavailable to smaller or developing institutions.

VarsityFair addresses this by creating a decentralized marketplace where students and researchers from all over the world can upload and access research without being tied to large institutions or expensive databases.

3. Direct Ownership and Open Access:

VarsityFair will enable researchers to directly publish their work on a blockchain-based platform. By allowing authors to share their work under Creative Commons licenses, VarsityFair supports open access and free sharing ensuring that research is more widely available to a global audience, particularly in developing countries where access to academic databases is limited.

4. Decentralization and Lower Transaction Costs:

Blockchain technology, particularly via a platform like VarsityFair, minimizes intermediary fees associated with publishing and accessing research. By cutting out traditional publishers and utilizing smart contracts, the costs of accessing research papers are greatly reduced, or even eliminated in the case of freely shared papers.

At the core of decentralization is a peer-to-peer technology, eliminating the need for a middle man.

VarsityFair as a decentralized platform is no exception, with no sole control or platform fees attached to trades, making papers more accessible and affordable for scholars in developing nations

How does the projected outcome serve the Foundation’s mission of user-owned data?

With Sia’s technology at its core, VarsityFair aims to revolutionize research/academic material ownership by:

  • Letting researchers retain original ownership of their materials after sharing or selling with custom watermarks on materials.

  • Increasing confidence to share findings/research with a decentralized back-end storage far from censorship’s reach.

  • Giving researchers the platform to value their months/years of work.

  • Providing students across colleges globally to share works and findings in similar fields.

  • Enabling access to an ocean of data and information for college students.

  • Creating a platform for potential collaborations amongst students and researchers without a location barrier.

Grant Specifics

We are requesting a budget of $9,400 for a total of three months to deliver the proposed MVP. Funds to be utilized as follows:

  • UI Design & Branding - $2,000

  • Design all necessary interfaces to ease the experience on the platform.

  • Logo/brand design.

  • Development - $6,900

  • Front-end development to provide responsive interfaces.

  • Back-end development.

  • Smart Contract development

  • S5 integration for storage.

  • Contract Auditing - $500

  • we have specified the smart contract type

Milestones Breakdown

  • October - November

  • Completion of the UI design

  • November - December

  • Design Implementation

  • Front-end Development

  • Smart Contract Development

  • December - January

  • Back-end Development

  • S5 Integration

  • Contract Audit

  • Hosting/Testing

What are the goals of this small grant?

  • To build a version of the platform that doesn’t support trades so as to deliver within the timeline. Although we intend to implement the trade feature in later stages of the project.

  • To deliver an MVP on a hub/marketplace for research and academic materials that fosters global collaborations, knowledge sharing, and community building.

  • To integrate Sia Storage via S5.

Potential risks that will affect the outcome of the project:

  • Technical difficulties may arise due to the platform’s reliance on blockchain technology

  • As a platform dealing with valuable academic materials, VarsityFair could be a target for cyberattacks. Breaches could lead to the loss or theft of sensitive data.

  • The three month timeline may not be enough to develop a functioning MVP.

  • Legal issues may arise on content ownership disputes.

Mitigations

  • Users who upload premiums will provide valid proof of ownership of said content, and if found guilty of content theft, a takedown would occur. Additionally, we would provide a robust and clear terms of service and user agreements to our users

  • Implement advanced security measures, such as multi-factor authentication, and regular security audits as the platform grows

  • We are focused on delivering the MVP on time, which also depends on when our proposal gets reviewed.

Development Information

All VarsityFair codes will remain open-source and can be accessed GitHub - E-MATHIAS/VarsityFair

We agree to submit a monthly progress report.

Contact Info

Email: [[email protected]]
Discord: miraclemathias._08868

Hello @steve, we believe the updated proposal answers the committee’s questions and concerns

Thanks for your latest proposal to The Sia Foundation Grants Program. We appreciated the updates to the proposal and your work to address their previous concerns.

After review, the committee has decided to reject your proposal citing the following reasons:

  • The committee isn’t sure how Zora is going to interact with the S5 contract. Without more clarity on this the project is too risky for their taste.
  • The committee doesn’t have a rule against, but typically doesn’t fund NFT-related projects.

We’ll be moving this to the Rejected section of the forum. Thanks again for your proposal, and you’re always welcome to submit new requests if you feel you can address the committee’s concerns.