Total to date

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

Additional applicants

Sam Lambert (Co-Founder of zenGate Global)

Darrell O'Donnell (Founder of Continuum Loop)

Joyce Maina (Director of the European Speciality Tea Association)

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.” .

One of our core workstreams is the creation of a global tea working group, made up of the main stakeholders from the industry. Our goal here is to get alignment on standards and tools required to uplift the industry. We are reliant on their involvement, contribution and consensus for the success of the project.

We have already identified who will be on our working group and have secured buy-in from these stakeholders. We are taking adequate steps to prepare for these workshops to mitigate any risks or delays.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

Project will be fully open source

[METADATA] Category of proposal

[METADATA] SDG rating

• Decent Work and Economic Growth (Goal 8) - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
• Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (Goal 9) - Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
• Reduced inequalities (Goal 10) - Reduce inequality within and among countries
• Responsible Consumption and Production (Goal 12) - Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
• Partnership for the Goals (Goal 17) - Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Problem statement: The Need for an Ecosystem Building Blueprint

During Daniel Friedman's long tenure at Input Output Global as the Business Development Manager, he had the opportunity to work on a number of exciting national-level projects in emerging economies. Sometimes, these projects were extremely successful, however, at times there were several hard lessons to be learned.

From our interactions with the community and various projects, it has become very clear that the process of deploying national-level, mass-onboarding solutions feels like an impossible task....or better yet...."Voodoo" as mentioned by some people. However, the reality is that there is a process behind all of this. A very calculated and engineering approach to entering new jurisdictions, engaging a broad set of stakeholders and building a sustainable ecosystem.

This proposal leverages the hard and combined lessons of the teams experience building ecosystems and deploying national-level solutions. The final output is an Ecosystem Building Blueprint to successfully deploy national-level solutions.

The Why?

The ultimate goal is other projects can leverage a systematic playbook to successful roll-out mass-adoption solutions to rapidly onboard the next wave of users on Cardano.

Our solution:

zenGate will develop the Ecosystem Building Blueprint leveraging our on-going work in the Global Tea Sector as the first successful case-study. We will validate the approach by leveraging the roll-out of our flagship product Palmyra, which will onboard the next wave of commodity producers onto Cardano.

Given the relative lack of digitization in our target regions, there is strong interest for SSI and verifiable credentials for purposes such as quality assurance, access to financing, inspection certifications, and regulatory compliance.  We are currently validating our approach with the Sri Lanka Tea sector; through our MOU with the Tea Factory Owners Association. Through workshops and activities conducted to date, we have discovered the need to develop and implement a more robust ecosystem governance strategy. 

In partnership with leading Ecosystem Governance Frameworks experts Continuum Loop, we will be approaching this challenge via 2 workstreams - local and global.

Our first goals is the creation of a decentralized ecosystem which will allow local ecosystems in Sri Lanka to form and benefit from this approach. This is a crucial step to secure buy in first on credentials and tools to leverage from the ATALA suite. We will be working with local producers, buyers, regulators and other stakeholders.

Our next goal is to extend this from Sri Lankan tea, but to the global speciality tea sector ($5bn + market). In order to achieve this, we will run strategic workshops and coordinate stakeholder working groups over a 6 month period with global experts and stakeholders. The outcomes of these working groups and workshops will inform how to best deploy Atala and Palmyra in these multi-billion dollar ecosystems.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

Addressing the Challenge

Our team believes that we are already progressed strongly on the core Challenge question - which is to bring together stakeholders to accelerate adoption and product market fit.

Over the past year, the team has successfully conducted business development within the Sri Lankan markets and other global tea growing regions such as Kenya and Myanmar. This has resulted in endorsement from the Honourable Sri Lankan Plantation Minister and several partnerships signed. These varied partnerships are a testament to zenGate’s strengths in identifying key customer segments, product-market-fit, and ability to garner buy-in from various key stakeholder groups. This will be crucial in setting up a robust framework as we address the challenge.

Further, we have made strong progress connecting and onboarding global experts and stakeholders to our core vision - these carefully selected players will be crucial for the success of the governance framework.

Benefit to the Cardano Ecosystem:

When successful, Palmyra and our ecosystem framework will onboard tens of thousands of producers and businesses from the tea sector. This will be translated in billions of dollars of transactions as well. Real utility and demand to leverage the Cardano blockchain.

As for tangible tools, key learnings, methodologies and frameworks developed through this project will be open-sourced for other RealFi projects to adopt. This will create a playbook for others to leverage when onboarding regulators, businesses and other stakeholders onto Cardano.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

As for the key metrics to track progress and measure success, these include:

• Complete the Ecosystem Building Blueprint and open-source to the Cardano community.
• Completion of 2 on-the-ground workshop in Sri Lanka and accompanying report on the key findings.
• Completion of 6 global expert working groups
• Alignment and buy-in from all experts in the global working group on a governance model and implementation roadmap.
• Onboard 20 new producers and 10 buyers to adopt the new framework within 3 months of finishing the proposal project.
• Deploy the governance framework and blueprint through Palmyra

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

Our approach for sharing outputs and progress is as follows:

• Monthly Twitter AMAs: The zenGate team has a track record of hosting monthly AMAs and updating the community on key milestones.
• Up-to-date open source documentation: Posting blogs and reports on the key findings and frameworks developed from the local and global workshops.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Team and subject matter expertise: We believe our core team is uniquely positioned as global subject matter experts; a requirement for onboarding the tea sector to Cardano.

• Notably, Daniel Friedman, the CEO of zenGate is known for being a early team member of IOG and participated to launch Cardano. As the former Business Develop Manager for IOG, he has spent a number of years developing relationships, entering new jurisdictions and deploying national-level solutions. He is a reputable voice in the Cardano community.

• Sam Lambert, the COO of zenGate has management consulting experience, working with executives from some of the largest global institutions from banks, insurance and telcommunciation companies. His ability to run workshops and manage stakeholders are essential skills to deliver on this project.

• Darrell O'Donnell is also a subject matter expert building governance frameworks and has consulted with IOG in the past. He has extensive experience working with the Atala team and is a credible expert in this industry.

• Joyce Maina, is a global tea expert and has deep experience working with all types of stakeholders in the tea sector. Joyce has created a Speciality Tea Index with the International Trade Centre (UN and WTO backed organisation) - this index will be a crucial framework we look to onboard.

• The core team is supported by the zenGate team of 10+ who are experts across working with regulators, public policy, development institutions and finance.

Demonstrated traction to date with partnerships:

• Over the past year, the zenGate team has demonstrated success in onboarding pioneers and users onto Palmyra. Our team has done the legwork to onboard users and gain traction ahead of this proposal.
• Notably we have signed a MOU with the Sri Lankan Tea Factory Owners Association (the flagship association that represents all tea factory owners in Sri Lanka).
• We have also got endorsement from the Ministry of Plantation and Ministry of Technology for Sri Lanka.
• Further, we have gained momentum to deploy in other tea producing markets such as Myanmar, Kenya and India.

Product readiness and history of delivery:

• The zenGate team have built the Palmyra platform. The core purpose of this proposal is not to build product, but to align stakeholders and build a sustainable governance framework.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

Project goals:

• Bring together the key stakeholders from the speciality tea industry - both local experts in Sri Lanka and global experts
• Align on a governance framework at the global scale to onboard the speciality tea industry
• Build an integration plan to adopt these frameworks

Validation of approach:

• Onboarding tea producers and stakeholders to adopt the ecosystem governance framework. Our goal is to onboard 20 new producers and 10 buyers to adopt the new framework within 3 months of finishing the proposal project.
• Alignment within the global working group for the governance framework and adoption strategy to scale this across multiple regions.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Project milestones by workstream

Workstream 1: Governance framework development and workshop prep | (6 weeks)

• Participate in the ATALA Prism Pioneers program
• Identify and align on required stakeholders for the committee
• Ecosystem and Arena Scan - information gathering
• Prepare all materials and documents required for successful workshops
• Prepare all materials and documents for the global expert working group meetings

Workstream 2: Local workshops in Sri Lanka | (2 weeks)

• Workshop 1: Ecosystem governance frameworks 101 (verifiable credentials, SSI, incentives and value drivers).  
• Workshop 2: Information gathering and alignment on key inputs and outputs, integration requirements and roadmap
• Note: participating stakeholders will be given notice ahead of time to collect any data or documentation in preparation for the workshops.

Workstream 3: Global expert working group and governance committee | (12 weeks)

• Set up regular meeting cadence with stakeholders to monitor progress, product iterations and anticipate future requirements. 
• Align on ecosystem framework & speciality tea index requirements
• Align on global onboarding strategy to deploy at scale across the speciality tea sector

Workstream 4: Report, feedback and integration design | (8 weeks)

• Write up a detailed report on value-add opportunities for Atala PRISM
• Complete a workshop reflection document to feed into future workshops and product iteration
• Write up the roadmap and initial product integration design
• Open-source our Ecosystem Building Blueprint

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

Deliverables by workstream

Workstream 1: Governance framework development and workshop prep

• Development of materials required for the local and global workshops
• Completion of the Atala Pioneers Program
• Align on who is participating in the Sri Lanka workshop
• Align on the key members of the global expert working group
• Dates aligned for the local and global workshops

Workstream 2: Local workshops in Sri Lanka

• Completion of 2 workshops on the ground in Sri Lanka
• Report on Sri Lanka workshop key findings and governance requirements

Workstream 3: Global expert working group and governance committee

• Completion of 6 workshops with the global expert working group
• Meeting minutes and key findings summarised from each workshop

Workstream 4: Report, feedback and integration design

• Completion and development of open-source documentation (Ecosystem Building Blueprint) to support future projects to onboard businesses into Cardano.
• Report for key findings and outputs from the governance framework that is aligned locally and globally
• Development of a technical integration plan

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Budget breakdown by workstream: (Total - 550,000 ADA)

Workstream 1: Workshop Preparation and Ecosystem Framework Development (100,000 ADA)

• This workstream will be led by Darrell O’Donnell (CEO of Continuum Loop), Sam Lambert (COO) and 2 analysts. In preparation for workshops delivered in Sri Lanka as well as the global expert working groups.
• The preparation of the materials will take approximately 6 weeks, in order to create a generalizable framework and documentation set that can be reused for future workshops and stakeholder groups. The zenGate team will open-source select workshop frameworks or takeaways to help future projects on Cardano looking to integrate Atala.

Workstream 2 & 3: Workshop Delivery and governance framework alignment (250,000 ADA)

• Local workshops in Sri Lanka costs: 100,000 ADA: Costs associated to running workshops on the ground - including booking workshop venues and flight expenses for the core team and a global expert to Sri Lanka to conduct workshops. Trust is a key cultural component and in-person workshops are essential in these countries for maximum stakeholder engagement and adoption of Atala PRISM technology.

• Global expert costs- 100,000 ADA: Costs to fly out relevant committees or teams to workshop locations. We also intend to compensate the global experts for the time committed to the working group.

• Project management costs - 50,000 ADA: Stakeholder liaison and operational costs associated with running workshops across the 12 week period (for business analyst and client liaison management team members - both on the ground in Sri Lanka but for the global expert working group).

Workstream 4 (Part A): Post-workshop reporting and generalization of governance framework: (80,000 ADA)

• Develop Ecosystem Building Blueprint: Detailed report and framework covering key takeaways from the workshops. Creating a post-workshop governance framework will be created as well. This will be led by Sam (COO) and 1 business analyst over a 6 week period.

Workstream 4 (Part B): Technical integration design and integration plan (120,000 ADA)

• Detailed technical design document and roadmap of how to best integrate the Atala PRISM suite into the global tea ecosystems.
• This will be led by Dan (CEO), 1 product analyst and 2 developers over a 8 week period. This will be coordinated with the global expert working group.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

Value for money for the Cardano ecosystem

• Open-source frameworks: a key output is sharing the key findings from working with businesses and stakeholders. This will be important documentation that RealFi projects can adopt in the future.
• Onboarding underserved businesses and RealFi Cardano adoption: at scale we will be onboarding tens of thousands of real businesses onto Cardano. Many of which who are underserved both in the access to technology, finance and opportunities. Our platform and framework brings real-utility and opportunities for such businesses, leveraging Cardano technology and the community.

Project costs:

• The project costs are split between the fixed costs of running workshops - these include costs such as flights to Sri Lanka and booking venues, accommodation while we are on the ground.
• The remaining costs are time-related as we consult global experts and build open-source material for the community to leverage for future RealFi projects

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.