IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT - We are now an official ISV Partner of Blackbaud, working with them to bring Stellar's technology to their client base of 42,000, read more here https://blog.task.io/blackbaud-blockchain-stellar.

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Thousands of organisations today have social missions where they need to get payments to people in the field, verify the work that's being done and report back to stakeholders. Task connects organisations with remote teams, tracks activity on the Stellar blockchain, processes payments between users and allows the exchange of tokens for locally relevant rewards.

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Client example Smart Agro

1. Smart Agro work with farmers across Cambodia to train, support and reward the transition to regenerative farming.
2. Cambodian farmers track key activities that prove sustainable practises and get AnchorUSD tokens in return.
3. They can make USD payments to other farmers, or send them back to SmartAgro to exchange for key products such as Seed at a 30% discount.

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The Smart Agro team also provide awards to top performing farmers. And all this data is recorded in real-time helping Smart Agro prove to the market the impact of the work they do!

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Launch initiatives fast

Launching initiatives on Task takes minutes, with custom configuration of any activity to be tracked, easy setup of Stellar payments against activities, and Invitation of team members to join your mission. As activities are completed, there’s options for users to send each other awards in the timeline (a bit like Reddit), and Peer to Peer payments are easy.

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By combining activity tracking, payments and award systems, Task uses Stellar to create economic communities.

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A little about us

Steve and Matt are experienced founders who passionately believe in leveraging technology to support organisations that seek positive social change. We also have great investor and advisory teams including track records in the blockchain and sustainability space:

• Both Alan Laubsch and Simran Mulchadani were involved in the setup of Swiss based Lykke AG pioneering blockchain-based forestry and carbon backed tokens amongst other projects.
• Daniel Swid provided tech leadership to Globalmangrove.org, the United Nations Development Programme and blockchain-based carbon and biodiversity registry design for agriculture at the regen.network.

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Customers

Our clients such as EndPandemics, Freeland, ACTAsia, International Cat Care, Smart Agro and Project Rangeet address social issues such as human and wildlife trafficking reduction, provision of remote education in emerging economies and regenerative farming practises which we believe align with the ethos of the Stellar brand.

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This grant will help us grow Task allowing thousands of organisations to gain access to software that accelerates their missions. 2021 is the year we start to scale our proven product in the market, and we’d love for the Stellar Development Foundation to be a part of this journey.

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What Task enable organisations & people to do

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Task is a mobile application with a Stellar wallet embedded providing the ability to track team and community activities with flexible ramp on/off integrations. Let’s dig in to what Task enables organisations and users to do.

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1. Economic communities

Connecting people through economic communities is central to what Task does. Payments can be made when an activity is completed, they can be standard user to user payments, or they can be sent as an “Award” with a message.

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We believe tokens can bring communities together - whether a stablecoin, a traded coin, or a private branded token with non-financial value, these exchanges between users create a place of reward and connectivity.

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2. Token payments in exchange for verified activity

Getting paid when an activity is completed has far reaching ramifications - it allows funds and grants to “drip feed” investment into projects, delivering micro-payments as work is done. Task allows optional verification of activity before payment is released to protect funds.

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3. Blockchain ledger tracking of any event

All the activity gathered using the Task mobile app uses a one way hashing algorithm to represent this data in the Stellar transaction memo field. It means that data gathered via Task cannot be tampered with, and it increases the data veracity of the organisations using Task to gather and prove their impact.

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Let’s look at a use case . Our customer ACTAsia tracks vet activity across China, providing pain-free operations to animals. We can see:

• Vet “weichannge1” https://task.io/weichange1 provided treatment to a female dog https://task.io/actasia/vfc-veterinary-education/t/8df0d494b3357fdcb2c5ae4c3aec00bc
• ACTAsia are using our IMPACT token to track and reward, and here we see the hashed data stored in the Stellar transaction history https://stellar.expert/explorer/public/tx/2adac78b558f1b8bf42406941d8c0d52ad8b7b75c7fe7ef56e7a4aa33ca83ea4

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We use the blockchain to not only provide payments, but also to build out the data story with critical proof points to see that the organisations and communities creating real impact are the ones who shine the most.

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4. Donor visibility into fund usage

We also support the provision of donations to projects - and for donors we use the Blockchain ledger tracking to provide ongoing proof of how their funds are being used. They are able to login to the Desktop version of Task and get a transaction history of how their donation money was utilised.

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5. Crowd voting and awards

Awards were mentioned earlier - but it's worth adding that these subjective Stellar payments against the activities tracked means Task can provide decision mechanisms, letting the community vote with their tokens.

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Why Task is valuable for Stellar?

1. Connecting with emerging economies

As Stellar's makes it possible “to create, send, and trade digital representations of all forms of money”, Task takes these digital representations and gets it into the hands of the end users, the people who really need the money.

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2. Centralised ramp on/off

We localise the ramp on/off with Stellar partners - that means if you’re a farmer working in East Africa, you can join initiatives via Task that allow you to earn the TZS asset from ClickPesa using the Task mobile app, and get funds earned to your local bank fast.

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3. Stellar partners can Airdrop through proof of work

Task allows any organisation leveraging Stellar to distribute their tokens using a proof of work or voting model. It means they can ask the end user to do something useful that connects with their brand, and in exchange the end user receives tokens. It facilitates Airdrops but with an improved and more focussed form of marketing, communicating more effectively the brands reasons for using Stellar.

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4. Stellar wallets for nontechnical users

Task provides both custodial and non-custodial wallets to end users - and with the ability to swap tokens for rewards and/or ramp on/off with other tokens and fiat, means users become part of Stellar's community in a non-technical manner.

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5. Easy user to user payments

The non-technical focus extends to user to user payments, where it’s easy to send tokens to any other user in the Task ecosystem without needing to know about public or private keys. It just works.

Task aims to replicate this with every Stellar asset provider with these types of ramp on/off services, creating communities that experience Stellars vision of a “decentralized system that’s great for trading any kind of money in a transparent and efficient way”.

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How Task uses Stellar

The following is the current development status of how Task uses Stellar, future roadmap details are provided later on. In summary, Task uses Stellar to:

• Payments between different stakeholders in the projects managed within Task such as
• Project manager to the users completing activities
• Sponsors, investors and users providing user to user payments
• Payments sent as “Awards” for activities completed
• Using the Stellar blockchain ledger to store activity related information to create a audit trail of where and why payments where sent
• Tracking the use of donor funds (where appropriate) to provide real time visibility into how their money is being put to use

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Current position & tech stack

During 2019 we used seed funds to build the Task platform before onboarding a number of pilot clients to test the technology and better understand the issues we address as well as which industry verticals we are most likely to have success.

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Customers

We now have over 11 paying customers, including new clients who are referrals from our existing client base, showing proof we are addressing pain points. Existing clients are in the non profit and education sectors.

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Prospects

We have a solid sales pipeline - the majority of prospects are in the non profit and education sectors though we also have a number of for profit prospects who have the same requirements in terms of tracking and reporting on social impact activities - these include Xero, HH Global, and Standard Chartered.

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Partners

We have already completed integration with Klipfolio as a analytics partner, and are in the process of integrating with Blackbaud, the global market leader powering social good. Future growth will come from partner networks including Referral partners who have relationships in the customer verticals we are selling into and also Strategic & Technical partners who use Task to service their own clients - these include some of the big four, specifically KPMG and Deloitte.

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Our tech stack

• Ruby on Rails (auto-scaling) running on AWS for the core backend with Aurora Postgres databases
• AWS services such as Reddis, Lambda supporting the core platform
• React Native for the mobile application running on iOS and Android

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Use cases

We believe Task will be growing into the Fintech space in 2021, and our current customers show a pattern of connecting communities with localized payments and reward systems for social impact outcomes. Some current customer examples:

• SmartAgro (https://task.io/smartagro) in Cambodia - farmers earn AnchorUSD in exchange for proving practise of regenerative farming. The farmers can trade the USD tokens for discounted products such as seeds, send payments between themselves, or take advantage of AnchorUSD saving accounts.
• ACTAsia (https://task.io/actasia) are based in the UK with operations throughout China, using education to reduce animal suffering. They use Task’s IMPACT asset to provide rewards to volunteer vets who are working under the ACTAsia guidelines, as well as teachers promoting the work they do.
• iCatCare (https://task.io/icatcare) are a new customer founded in 1958, and about to release their “CATCOIN” asset via Task. They plan to use Task to scale their education programmes enabling cat centres to be setup and tracked around the world, and they will be offering branded products they manufacture as a reward against the CATCOIN’s earnt by their communities.
• The Rangeet Project (https://task.io/rangeet) promotes empathy through education in India and Bangladesh. They use their assets SPWR tokens to reward teachers who track teaching their programme. The teachers can redeem their tokens for localised rewards such as discounts at local supermarkets.
• The Warm Heart Foundation plan to use Task to promote reduction of smoke pollution in Africa by incentivising the production of biochar. They will use Task to track and provide payments to the farmers using local assets such as the TZS asset making it easy for pollution to be reduced at scale with farmers' lives improved.

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Future development roadmap

• Smart contract Escrow - using Stellar’s escrow functionality to control and manage the release of large funds, allowing voting and tranching to protect funders and investors
• Ramp on/off to fiat - building out the existing mobile wallet to integrate directly with multiple ramp on/off providers to ensure the Stellar assets connect to the outside world
• API verification - connection to AI services that will automate the verification of some activities to remove the need for manual checks, allowing greater scale.
• KYC upgrades to provide necessary legal and financial safeguards as the platform scales
• DEX integration - allowing basic trading and token exchange can performed fron inside the existing Task wallet
• Partner integrations - working with Stellar partners such as AnchorUSD and ClickPesa to bring new communities to their businesses

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About the team

• Steve Walker is CEO/Founder with startup space experience since 2003 including a successful SaaS business he founded in 2007
• Matt Rickard is the COO/co-Founder with 18 years startup and social enterprise experience

We have an experienced investor and advisory teams including Blockchain expertise from Alan Laubsch, Simran Mulchandani and Daniel Swid.

Read more about the team, our investors and advisors here.

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What we plan to do with the funding

1. Complete integrations with Stellar partners (e.g. AnchorUSD, ClickPesa, etc) to support their missions and develop community network effects
2. Invest funds to complete the future development roadmap
3. Invest in marketing to grow our existing client base of 10 early adopters and get Stellar's technology into the hands of large organisations

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Conclusions

Task provides the Stellar Community Fund with an exciting opportunity to support an organisation that propels Stellar's technology into the hands of large organisations and end users. The hard work of initial product development and securing first paying customers has been done, and product market fit has been established.

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We have a strong team, we've built the fundamentals of a great business, and we hope you join us on our journey of scaling Task in 2021.

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Links

Essentials

• Main website: https://task.io
• Meet the team: https://task.io/p/about
• Fintech article: https://blog.task.io/agri-finance

Get to know us more

• Task blog: https://blog.task.io
• Task podcast: https://blog.task.io/podcast
• Fintech summary video: https://youtu.be/AhKCfoLj1cc
• Task explainer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbttlrh7_OA&t
• A draft tokenomic plan for our IMPACT asset: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14AygAaOFJePsVgFABtHWSfmm9NM7Q7-c/view?usp=sharing

Mobile app

• iOS app: https://apps.apple.com/app/taskio/id973884140#?platform=iphone
• Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.taskiomobileapp&hl=en

Social channels:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taskdotio
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/taskdotio
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/taskdotio/
• Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/HV8nuREPTKOXtC-DcCofIw

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