Grant Category & Funding Request:
| Category | % of Total |
[Unleash Data] - 25%
[Outreach] |- 75%
[Total Funding] - $3,000
##Are you applying for an Earmark ? Pick one.
- New Project
Proposal in 1 Sentence:
Working to onboard a blossoming community of transparent housing data advocates to web3 data marketplaces while developing new methods and applications for collecting accurate and verifiable housing data.
Description, what problem is it meant to solve:
[Unleash Data]
Rent Smart is a community driven website focused on creating a more transparent and equitable renting process through the crowdsourcing of useful information. In today’s market, landlords hold a significant amount of bargaining power over renters, as demand to rent outpaces supply.
This power can be partly attributed to the unaffordability of purchasing a home. “Record price gains and fevered competition are crushing prospects for U.S. homeownership, a key driver of middle-class wealth. First-time buyers accounted for 29% of existing-home sales in August, the lowest share since January 2019 and below the five-year average of 32%, according to the National Association of Realtors. record-low borrowing costs, which should have made housing more affordable for young renters and minority groups historically left out of ownership, instead it drove prices higher and pushed them even further behind.” (Bloomberg). In short this means that more and more of Americans are renting each year, driving demand for accurate and up to date rental information.
A huge opportunity exists using web 3 technologies to galvanize renters to create a more open and transparent rental process. In today’s market, a renters lack of insights compounded with little bargaining power creates an ever worsening situation for renters. Price and supply trends are not available at a granular enough level to assist a family or renters in making an informed decision, giving the leg up to the landlord. Existing rental platforms derive their revenue from landlords and not renters, resulting in a conflict of interest when marketing themselves as trusted resources to renters.
Rent Smart seeks to fill an ever widening gap between supply and demand for accurate rental data. From aggregating pre-existing data to developing novel AI driven solutions to verify self reported data and user reviews. Rent Smart will be an example of how individuals can come together to create a portfolio of data assets that address societal problems. Our data assets will drive an increase to the data consume volume on ocean marketplace.
For more on the size and market value of user reviews and rental data see this report by Apartments.com.
Going forward we are exploring the addition of a number of features the enable users to connect, collaborate, and mutually govern.
[Outreach]
Rent Smart serves to be a fantastic example of a community that onboards new users to web 3 and educates them on data ownership and platforms like Ocean Protocol. Rent Smart also strives to help alleviate a very important issue.
The issue of housing is one we all can relate to, and we have received strong validation through the little outreach that has been conducted. 2 posts sharing the idea have been made in the Denver sub-reddit, resulting in a combined 426 upvotes and 259 comments. Rent Smart has organically grown to 5-10 daily website users with no marketing budget and no real marketing campaigns. Rent Smart also maintains an 80 person mailing list with a 38% open rate on first emails sent. Most of these users are only aware of the symptoms of centralization, and not familiar with it as a root cause of inequity in the current data economy.
Rent Smart will work to introduce web3, data markets, and Ocean Protocol as we continue to grow our community, funneling users to Ocean Academy and helping them to become data providers for a cause.
Grant Deliverables:
[Unleash Data]
- Design a database schema that will be used to generate a data asset and that will power the user experience of the website
- Publish data asset to Ocean Marketplace containing monthly rent prices for 270 buildings (2,000+ living units) in the Denver area.
[Outreach]
- Publish professionally written articles pertaining to the data economy, Ocean Protocol and housing markets each week (4 articles)
- Increase followers across social media platforms to 300
- Onboard 20 new Ocean Academy certified users
Final Product:
Rent Smart will establish itself as the go-to renter intelligence platform governed and owned by its users. The platform will deliver value to its users through sharing unlocked insights around renting in a specific community or location. Through a to-be implemented token economic system, users will be incentivized to share valuable data points with the community which will contribute to a community-owned and governed portfolio of data assets that can serve a variety of stakeholders. These stakeholders include but are not limited to renters, civic organizations, and data aggregators. Rent Smart will onboard new users to web3 and the ocean platform through effective outreach and education around the monetization of personal data.
Value Added:
Rent Smart will onboard new users to web3 and the ocean platform through effective outreach and education around the monetization of personal data, while serving as a platform that assists individuals in the important decision of determining where to live.
Rent Smart is also creating a portfolio of data assets for a strong use case by forming a community in the geographic local Denver area around a major issue in the US. This can be a fantastic use case to show the effect that decentralized data sharing can achieve.
Rent Smart will provide value in these areas:
- Educate users on Web3, data ownership, data monetization, and the Ocean Protocol
- Increase # of data assets and amount of data consume on Ocean
- Assisting renters make a more informed rent decision
- Learn and share onboarding experiences to both Web3 and Ocean Protocol
Metrics:
Assets published
Active users
Wallet Address:
0xC078823B26CeC3b8859311e7E5D952548645e13a
Project Members:
Role: Project Founder
Name: Aaron Bell
Background: Certified Public Accountant, Data Analytics Consultant (EY & Deloitte)
Location: Denver, Colorado United States.
Email: hello@rentsmartdenver.com
Twitter: @aar0ncpa
Role: Member
Name: James Vogenthaler
Background: Software Engineering
Location: Denver, Colorado United States.
Role: Member
Name: Katherine Hambrick
Background: Data Analytics
Location: Denver, Colorado United States
Role: Project Advisor : Data Markets & Technology
Name: Athena LLC : Timothy L Carter,
Background: Campaign Director
Location: Denver, Colorado United States.
Email: info@athenaequity.io
Previous Grants:
We have not received any grants for this project.
Which channels will be used? For how long? E.g. “twitter, for 8 weeks”. Other details?
Platform Weeks Content
Twitter 6+ Snippets of Professional Articles
Medium 6+ Professional Articles
Mirror 6+ Professional Articles
Which Ocean-powered data market will data be published on?
Short Term ( 1- 3 months ):
Rent Smart will publish data assets directly onto the Ocean Marketplace to encourage web3 onboarding among our core community.
Future Goals ( 3-4 months ):
Rent Smart has a growing database of rent prices and is exploring options on creating it’s own rental-driven marketplace places with the help of The Athena Project.
