Empowering Cardano ecosystem by the communication protocol bridging the global and local Cardano ecosystems

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Junya Yamamoto

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

yama@scalably.com

Additional applicants

• Taichi Yokoyama
• Naoki Kudo

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

8

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

No

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

No

[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.” .

No dependencies

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

No

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

The protocol & infrastructure connecting to Discord is not open source. However, the platform we will set up will be open to any Cardano community to use. The operation will be handled by the Cardano community including me.

Currently, there is no mechanism for the community to have ownership and management operations like DAO, so I will manage it on behalf of the community for now. However, we hope to eventually transfer ownership to the community when it will be appropriate.

[METADATA] Category of proposal

Regional Expansion

[METADATA] SDG rating

This plan could meet these SDGs & sub-goal target indicators below;

Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

• Target 1.4 By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including microfinance
• Target 1.a Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries, in particular least developed countries, to implement programmes and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions

Goals 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

• Target 4.4 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship
• Target 4.7 By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

Goals 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

• Target 5.a Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws
• Target 5.b Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women

Goals 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

• Target 8.2 Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus on high-value added and labour-intensive sectors
• Target 8.3 Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services
• Target 8.5 By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value
• Target 8.8 Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment
• Target 8.9 By 2030, devise and implement policies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products

Goals 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

• Target 9.1 Develop quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all
• Target 9.5 Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of industrial sectors in all countries, in particular developing countries, including, by 2030, encouraging innovation and substantially increasing the number of research and development workers per 1 million people and public and private research and development spending

Goals 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries

• Target 10.2 By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status

Goals 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

• Target 17.3 Mobilize additional financial resources for developing countries from multiple sources
• Target 17.15 Respect each country’s policy space and leadership to establish and implement policies for poverty eradication and sustainable development
• Target 17.16 Enhance the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in all countries, in particular developing countries
• Target 17.17 Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The system solution we create, Ecomedia™ (Ecosystem Media), automates the operation of information distribution by operators to each local community and multi-stakeholder. In other words, communities in each local region will be able to effortlessly catch up with real-time information on projects active around the world.

Ecomedia™ is an information delivery protocol specifically designed for communities and ecosystems to build and sustain communities and even ecosystems.

We are unique in that we help community members discover and keep track of projects in their ecosystems.

We separate the "content delivery work" from human manual work by making it a protocol for distributing the information sent by each project in the ecosystem in each language domain. It automates not only the creation of information pages through online deployment but also the completion of distribution to each community-activity space, such as Discord communities and Telegram.

The protocol works in an ecosystem that delivers content to community space P2P in borderless Web 3.0 communities. No one will be left behind in the global community effort.

We also plan to integrate this system with Discord, the Cardano community in Japan, through this Catalyst initiative. The goal is to provide ongoing communication in a thematic, multi-channel format while covering information from official Cardano organizations.

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

[A Context: the market now]

There are currently more than 600 projects in the Cardano ecosystem, including official organizations, and the products, projects, and DAOs.

They operate projects in the Cardano ecosystem by a lot of marketing efforts by themselves for business growth. The foundation of MARKETING-PR is the dissemination of information. In other words, from a market-side perspective, potential users, customers, and business partners of projects in each local market and local community need to keep up with information about projects in their respective ecosystems that are foreign to them.

This means that a continuous and borderless information distribution mechanism is essential, but it is unrealistic for a start-up company to build a marketing team that serves local markets around the world. However, it is unrealistic for a start-up company to build a marketing team to serve local markets around the world, and local communities who do not speak English have difficulty keeping up with global discussions.

We are working to solve the following problems;

Problem 1. High learning costs and barriers to discover & on-boarding.

• There is a disconnect between projects that provide information after funding is received, long-term relationships are not built, and a bubble market is created.
• Non-English speaking communities drop out of ecosystem discussions and information does not reach them.
• There is a lot of news coming out of the ecosystem, but it only talks about the $ADA price.
• Low diversity.

Problem 2. Ecosystem projects are usually startups in an early stage but need to handle global communication with limited resources

• There is a high cost for startups to access local communities and leaders who can support the project.
• It is very costly for startups to continue to provide broad education.
• This results in concentrated reliance on a few people and limited autonomous decentralization mechanisms.

Problem 3. Mixed tasks between contents delivery and engagement

• The volume of information and speed of delivery is insufficient, and the project must rely on tertiary, quaternary, and other rumor-level information to decide which products to select.
• This project is about more than just delivering information, it is about gaining engagement. Content distribution is an administrative task, but engagement is a PR activity.
• Temporary ambassadors in each country perform both administrative tasks and PR activities manually, which takes time and effort.

Thus, our essential approach by Ecomedia™ , an information delivery protocol specifically targets to resolve those challenges for both startups and their multi-stakeholders, in other words, fun and investors.

We would like to unlock the potential power of Cardano entire ecosystem to seek mass adoption.

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

1.Project operation

• Issue and report monthly progress reports from the project team.
• We will report the activity schedule for the next month.
• After project completion (8th month), report overall project results. In addition, we will propose the following activity goals and aim for the medium- to long-term success of the project.

2.KPIs

• Set KPIs that can measure execution results quantitatively and qualitatively. We propose the following items.

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

1. Publicly launch the systems online for the community.
2. Connect to the Cardano community's Discord to invite the wider web3 community.
3. Be introduced to the community on the topic of "Blockchain x Adaptation to Social Issues and Industry".

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

Regarding the development of the system, we have already made improvements for half a year with our own funds from the MVP version when Fund8's Community Hub was proposed. This time, since it is not just a research budget but an actual system introduction, the output will be a platform that can be clearly used in public.

In addition, I, Yamamoto will bear the budget equivalent to about half of the cost, so that the I will also take risks and aim for commitment.

KPIs for the community are set for community activities. By supporting the achievement of KPIs for this community activity, we have also clearly set quantitative KPIs. Please refer to the KPI section for details.

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

The main goal is to revitalize the entire Cardano ecosystem. Our approach is to introduce infrastructure that connects not only Cardano L1-chain but also various solutions and products developed on Cardano to the industrial community. 

With this output, project teams working on various genres will have direct access to local Japanese companies and expert communities.

This will bring great value not only to the Cardano L1-blockchain, but also to each company in the Cardano ecosystem.

We can also say that this realization is feasible. The system and its value have been demonstrating feasibility since before Fund8.

The feasibility of this unique approach has already been proven, and collaboration between global companies and communities has brought great value to various companies.

In the Cardano ecosystem, jpg.store, which contributed to the Expo, has been deployed in Japan, AtalaPrism has been discovered in Japan, and other leaders have been discovered, leading to acquiring many new users to the Cardano ecosystem launch pad.

The feasibility of the system has also been repeatedly tested in the past. When we introduced the MVP version as a test at Fund8, we successfully operated 20 projects.

After that, I experimented with implementing 600 projects with our own budget, but the system became heavy, so I discussed engineer team to improved the architecture design with my own funds. This time we will introduce an improved version of the system.

Also, the MVP system and ambassador support that we did last time led to various community activities. In this proposal, we will cooperate with the ongoing SPO community and members who want to newly launch the Cardano community in Japan to deliver information on the Cardano ecosystem.

[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.

• Milestone 1(2months: ~e.o.Aug 2023). Launching system infra
• Milestone 2(6months: ~e.o.Feb 2024). Completing setting up community infra + Integrating Ecomedia™
• Milestone 3(6months: ~e.o.Feb 2024). Connecting Global Cardano Ecosystem projects to the community

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

Category of KPI 1. Launching system infra

• KPI: Open the portal
• KPI: 20+ projects we will support to localize news toward the Japanese community

Category of KPI 2. Completing setting up community infra + Integrating EcoMedia™

• KPI: Integrating the system to 1+ Discord of Cardano community 

Category of KPI 3. Connecting Global Cardano Ecosystem projects to the community

• KPI: 2 members assigning community ambassadors from the Japanese market
• KPI: 2+ projects to come & collaborate with the Japan Cardano community
• to deeply & widely discuss 2 different topics among those key topics in the adoption of web3 discussion:
• Options; sustainability, culture, entertainment, startup, marketing
• We will help bridge between the global Cardano ecosystem and Japan, including the Cardano ecosystem, Web3 communities, and local industries so they can acquire more fun & traction.

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

TOTAL: US$35,640

A.System: $30,000

• Ecomedia infrastructure + Connecting Discord: $600 x 6months = $3,600
• Projects that Ecomedia will help IR/PR: $400 x 6 months x 20 = $48,000
• Team: To set up the system covering 8 months of operation by our team: $5,000
• (Yama will cover about 50%) = -$26,600

B.Community ambassador: $2,400

• Ambassador: $400/month x 2 members x 6months = $4,800 
• (Yama will cover the half) = -$2,400

C.Project Management and Audit: $3,240

• 10% of the total budget,$32,400

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

1. Cutting the cost of content dissemination, management, and operation to almost zero
2. Accessing to local community & industrial sectors in Japan from the global market

Each company in the Cardano ecosystem can cover the cost of marketing and PR personnel that must be prepared for Japan with this project.

Originally, each company must build an operation from scratch to transmit information to each local community. However, this requires not only personnel costs but also a large amount of time and effort for the start-up and subsequent continuation.

In this proposal, community support for this operation could be seen as a local PR budget for Scale across the Cardano ecosystem.

“600 companies x Costs” will be a structure of costs for contents disseminating operation/HR/Media channels to Japan, say,  $3,000x600=&1,800,000/month cost for full-time employment, $500x600=300,000/month cost for $500 part-time. takes.

If the introduction of the system goes well, we can realize an environment where all projects can concentrate on the growth of the business without worrying about this cost and operation. This has great contribution value not only for the Cardano blockchain but also for all startups and funds involved in the Cardano ecosystem.

[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.

I Accept