Owning a challenge in a student hackathon about Sustainable Finance to help Cardano ecosystem grow and have new opportunitiesand

[GENERAL] Name and Surname of Main Applicant

Liâm Bodin

[GENERAL] Email address of Main Applicant

liambodin99@gmail.com

Additional Applicants

Benjamin Ben Zvi

[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?

Yes

[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.” .

We absolutely need the collaboration of Open Geneva to be able to hold a challenge in their Hackathon. Luckily, we have already spoken with them, and we are guaranteed to be challenge owner if we get funded.

The organization of this event will start before the result of the votes, as the event is held in the beginning of October 2023.

[GENERAL] Will your project outputs be fully Open Source?

Yes

[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

Events

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The business and finance students have a lack of understanding and exposure to the Blockchain world, even in some of the better universities in the world, which is a real problem for us.

Benjamin, one of the proposers, has already made some educational proposals for fund 9. The experience he got from it helped him understand a lot of details about the behavior of the students with a subject they find complicated to understand.

Most of these students didn’t even want to learn about the subject since they think it is out of their league. Usually, they know a little bit about the subject but have a really hard time to know where to start, what to learn and where to learn, which is in our opinion a problem in modern education.

In order to solve this issue, we want to hold a challenge in an already known event that has united dedicated finance and business students 4 times already.

We thought that a Hackathon is a place where several perons and disciplines meet, and this is a perfect atmosphere to learn. This could make easier the education for the participants, as they were volunteers to participate, and therefore, open to learn and practice actively. The fact that there's a special atmosphere is linking participants with others, in a way that is unique in Hackathons. For us, the idea of creating a team for the next funds in this Hackathon have great chances to lead to a success.

Our challenge will have to match with the main purpose of the Hackathon which is “Linking Sustainability and Finance”. We truly think that this subject is relevant to have some answers to some questions like : 

• How could we make Cardano the to-go blockchain for Green blockchain-related projects 
• How to attract stakeholders on Cardano that is already an eco-friendly blockchain ?
• What type of tools can Cardano implement to enhance its green positive impact ? 

These questions are examples, and still have to be discussed with the event organizer, but we know that we’ll find a question that is fitting both the Cardano interests and the concerns of the Hackathon. The Hackathon is in the beginning of October 2023. 

After the Hackathon, the students are asked to make a follow-up for university as an Institutional work. We want to make this follow-up a real project, and not only an “institutional” work. As the instituional follow-up is still a prototype, we want to go further with the team. We will make this follow-up become a proposal for the next fund, by guiding the involved students by bringing them ideas, feedbacks, resources, and experiences to create a great team and maybe create the next big start-up started thank to Catalyst.

This Hackathon could be an amazing opportunity for the participants to start implementing in the Blockchain world, they will be able to submit some proposals afterwards and they will have some knowledge about Blockchain. In addition to this, we’ll bring a first experience around Cardano to students, which could make them become the Cardano builders of tomorrow. Which is in our opinion a really important aspect for the evolution of the Cardano ecosystem.

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

Our proposed solution is fitting the challenge as its core is about bringing more education around blockchain to students. By doing it through this Hackathon, we’ll be able to present and explain Catalyst and make them start their Cardano journey in an interactive way.

The main concern of our challenge would be to put finance students to think about how Cardano and sustainability can match. This will be a good solution to find innovative ideas not only from technical persons, but also from people that are assumed to be “basic users”. 

Finally, our team during the Hackathon will be able to have support from us to make a proposal to the next fund after this event about the solution they found during this Hackathon, or other ideas if they want to.

Our proposal fits the challenge because it’s about helping students to be more aware of the Blockchain world. It will bring to the Cardano ecosystem a good visibility to people and will allow new proposers to come for the next Funds. It will also be a good way to have great ideas about one of the big purposes of Cardano : Sustainability.

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

We will measure the success of our project with the number of participants in our team. We also want to measure the success of our challenge with its place in the global ranking in the event (how much our found solution pleased the public).

Finally, a good proof of success would be the fact that some ideas are proposed from the participants during next Funds, and see these proposals being funded.

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

To share the outputs of our project, we will share a presentation that will document what happened in this Hackathon, what are the ideas of the participants for the challenge we want to pose, the final pitch presentation…

We will also explain in what way the solution is feasible and in what it could be interesting to propose the solution of our participants to a Catalyst challenge for a next fund. 

Finally, we’ll help the participants to make the proposal to the adapted fund. The existence of this proposal will be a great proof of the result of our project.

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

Our project is using the leverage of a truthful partner that has already done 4 Hackathons about Sustainable Finance, and didn’t stop to grow through these years. Moreover, we had an experience working with the organizers in some moments, which makes our trust in the project stronger. 

For accountability, our measures are not difficult to account for, as it’s only showing how many people have joined our team, and what their solutions are about our challenge. Their future proposal will also be a key metric. 

To finish, we know that access to resources and organization will be easier thanks to the leverage that our partner is bringing.

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

The objectives of this proposal are multiples : 

• Allow persons to actively participate to the blockchain world during 24h of challenge

To verify our approach, we'll use : to have the maximum amount of people in our team

• Bringing visibility to Catalyst initiative through the leverage of visibility that this Hackathon is

To verify our approach, we'll use : feedback of all the hackathon participants about what they understand of Catalyst, and feedback especially from our team of what are their feelings about it

• Have great ideas to enhance the Cardano ecosystem

To verify our approach, we'll use : the fact that a proposal is sent and the fact that it’s getting funded

The final goal is to try to integrate Blockchain into the panel of knowledge and interests of the participating students.

[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.

The organization of this event will start before the result of the votes, as the event is held in the beginning of October 2023. If we are not getting funded, the Hackathon will have another challenger replacing us, but we are sure to be a challenger if we get funded.

Month 1-2 : 

• Start organizing the Hackathon with the people running the event, by finding a common field on the subject of our challenge
• Keep communication and a good relation with them
• Create the needed presentation for the marketing of our challenge and the Hackathon

Month 3 : 

• Contacting some people from the Cardano Foundation that are based in Geneva to try to bring them for a moment in the event, and allow a better connection with the Cardano world 
• Negotiate a partnership with the Foundation to have Cardano goodies and organize the reception of it 
• Pre-contact the participants that registered for our challenge to create some link before the event

Month 4 : 

• Hold the challenge in the Hackathon 
• Collecting feedbacks about Catalyst from participants and our team 
• Start to create the documentation about the running of the Hackathon

Month 5-8 : 

• Make the “institutional” follow-up with the students from our team 
• Explain them how to make a proposal, and accompany them during this journey 
• Make the found solution a proposal in the next fund by making a more complete follow-up of the project and summarize it into a proposal

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

The deliverables of our project are multiple.

The proposal from our team is obviously the key one. 

The feedback of the other participants is an important outcome for us, as we want every finance student to understand what opportunity Catalyst does represent for them. We’ll collect the maximum feedback we can, in a small form, to make people think a little bit about what Catalyst is. 

The fact that the students in our team obtained their Institutional Credits for having participated in this Hackathon is also a good outcome for us, showing that our challenge has been successful for them anyway. 

Being able to distribute Cardano goodies could be a good output too, as it’s bringing visibility to Cardano, which is always good to take.

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

• Participation fees = 28200 ADA (approx. 7K CHF)

• Creation of everything needed to make a good communication of our challenge : 20h x 115 ADA = 2300 ADA

• Bring some Cardano goodies = 800 ADA

• Staying in the place for 24h, keep the team involved and motivated, organize the pitches for the team, moderate the different persons in the team, organize the moments of coming for the Cardano Foundation people : 24h x 115 = 2760 ADA

• Keep in touch with all the participants, help them for their institutional project, help them to get onboarded in the Catalyst project, to write their proposal, to get integrated in the community and to incentivize them to write more proposals : 40h x 115 ADA = 4600 ADA

Total = 38660 ADA

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

For this project, there will be a lot of time dedicated from us, next to our studies, in order to educate people about Catalyst and grow this amazing community that we have. All the time dedicated will in our opinion bring a lot of awareness and will probably lead to really great proposals that might have chances to get funded for fund 11 (or 12 depending on how much time it takes).

In addition, a big part of the budget is going to be the financing of the event participation, which is justified in our opinion by the great leverage it’s bringing to all the challenge owners, even through the years. 

To finish, this project brings new students in the community as well as opportunities for them to create their own projects, which is exactly what this challenge is aiming for.

[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