Community-Building Events and Intersect Educational Content/Experiences in Africa

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Yuval Ardenbaum

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Entity (Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Co proposers and Additional applicants

Devon Krantz

devon@web3sanctuary.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/devon-krantz-642b9495/

Dominic Mostert

dominic@web3sanctuary.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominic-mostert/

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

9

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

No

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

We will organize Cardano community-building events, educational content, meetups and hackathons in African countries in order to promote Cardano and achieve measurable KPIs for ecosystem growth.

[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?

Yes

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

We are producing community events and educational resources which will be available for public/open-source use under fair usage laws.

[METADATA] SDG rating

Goal 4 of SDG - Quality Education (teaching and promoting a well-paying vocation)

Goal 5 of SDG - Gender Equality (promoting female participation and excellence in emerging technology and innovation fields, particularly STEM-related)

Goal 8 of SDG - Decent Work and Economic Growth (Creating employment prospects/opportunities for underserved communities in web3)

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

Our proposal includes a three-tier solution aimed at residents of African countries, with a focus on Sub-Saharan African developer communities and underserved communities:

1. Creation of a video course on the Cardano network, including:
2. History of the network;
3. Unique value proposition;
4. Ethos, focus on academic rigour;
5. Alonzo hard fork - Haskell, Plutus & Marlowe smart contracts on Cardano;
6. Development on Cardano Network using the above languages, with the aim of having devs deploy new and unique smart contracts.
7. Ada and its utility;
8. Hydra EVM-compatible L2;
9. The future of the network, including Voltaire and community governance of treasury.
10. Roadmap for further development of knowledge and skills within the ecosystem, as well as a funnel for promising developers to get their projects into Catalyst or other community-funding initiatives.
11. Hosting of 2 IRL community meetup events per quarter with the goal of onboarding 150 new addresses for users and developers onto Cardano.
12. The primary aim will be to have developers become competent at the Cardano stack & deploy new and unique contracts on-chain.
13. Hosting of one mini-hackathon per quarter (~20 participants, asynchronously working on a problem set with Cardano-based solutions over a month period).

The African continent has billions of potential users and millions of potential developers that could be attracted to enter the Cardano ecosystem, given initiatives hosted by a team with significant hands-on experience in these markets.

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community.

Our project has the following relevant impact on the broader Cardano community:

1. Onboarding significant numbers of active users onto the network from underserved countries and communities in Africa.
2. Broadening Cardano's social impact by using the network as a vehicle to deliver basic services to users in Africa that are in need of these services, e.g. fast remittances, gaining interest on their assets, identity solutions etc.
3. Onboarding a significant number of new, talented developers into the Cardano community with the following effect:
4. A wider pool of devs with Haskell and Plutus skills to place with projects looking to build on Cardano;
5. More contributors to Cardano core protocol and infrastructure;
6. More eyes on project and core protocol code to spot vulnerabilities faster;
7. Reducing the cost and scarcity of talent acquisition within the Cardano developer ecosystem;
8. More devs actively working on projects that will benefit users by providing new dapps to interact with;
9. Increased TVL as a result of more dapps being available for user interaction.

We will assess our impact with the following metrics:

1. Number of unique addresses created by course participants, event attendees, and hackathon participants.
2. Number of unique smart contracts deployed by course participants, event attendees, and hackathon participants.
3. Number of new and innovative projects created by course participants, event attendees, and hackathon participants that can be entered into a grant funding pipeline.
4. Social media sentiments around Cardano in African countries.
5. Number of existing projects adding support for Cardano or switching core infrastructure to Cardano in Africa.
6. Change (reduction) in cost of acquisition of developers in the Cardano ecosystem.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

To date, we received 3500 sign-ups to our platform waitlist from purely organic traffic, with no paid marketing efforts.

We have undergone a beta with 75 highly active and driven beta testers, of whom, 45 have completed developer-oriented courses we have created (e.g. Solidity 101 and Advanced Solidity). Further, the entire cohort of beta testers has completed our Blockchain 101 and Blockchain 102 courses.

We have gained access to an additional audience of 20 000 students as a result of becoming the only approved blockchain education provider for the CSIR (South African Council for Scientific & Industrial Research), a major academic body. Through this partnership, we are producing a Blockchain for Government course that will reach students, researchers, academics and politicians. 

We have a long tail of ~20 000 additional African web3 community members across a number of channels that we operate, including Telegram & Whatsapp groups, Meetup.com groups, Twitter pages and Discord servers. This whole audience can be activated and reached for Cardano events and educational initiatives.

We are a Delaware LLC with appropriate accounting and banking processes in place, and we have previously raised and received both VC funding and token grants from other ecosystems through our financial structures. Hence we have the necessary experience to appropriately manage funds sent to us in the form of tokens.

[Project Milestones] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Completion of Cardano Course for African Communities

Outputs:

1. Fully filmed, edited and published course on the Cardano Network, including introduction and onboarding processes, as well as developer resources.

Acceptance Criteria:

1. The course is complete and provides all necessary resources for new users to onboard and use the network for basic functions like payments, defi, NFTs, identity/SSI (Atala Prism) etc.
2. The course provides all necessary resources for developers to deploy smart contracts on Cardano network.
3. The course is published on the Web3 Sanctuary platform (https://www.web3sanctuary.com/) and available for users.
4. The final assessment and practical exercises along the way are

Completion of On-Chain Gamification Component (Cardano 'Side Quest')

Outputs:

1. A gamified on-chain Cardano 'side quest' that allows users to create a new wallet and interact with the network in basic ways directly through our platform UI.
2. A second gamified on-chain Cardano 'side quest' that has users engaging with defi and deploying a basic smart contract to a Cardano testnet via our platform UI.

Acceptance Criteria:

1. The two Cardano network side quests successfully connect to Cardano testnet, and users are guided through various on-chain activities.
2. All associated quizzes, questions or assessments are technically accurate.

First Cardano Community Event Held

Outputs:

1. New wallets onboarded as an entrance activity;
2. Professional photography and footage of event;
3. Post-event write-ups on relevant channels, e.g. LinkedIn, X etc.
4. Creation of a new Meetup.com and Telegram group with attendees to facilitate future events and community initiatives.

Acceptance Criteria

1. Appropriate venue secured for event;
2. Adequate catering;
3. Speakers with expertise on Cardano network to attend.

First Cardano Africa Micro-Hackathon Held

Outputs:

1. Several unique projects created and deployed on Cardano network;
2. New developers with sufficient skills to develop Cardano smart contracts.

Acceptance Criteria:

1. At least 20 participants, working as individuals or in teams of up to 4.
2. The projects deployed sufficiently address the problem statement or theme of the Hacktahon.
3. Sufficient resources and support are provided to devs in the lead-up to the hackathon and throughout the duration.

6 Events and 3 Micro-Hackathons Hosted Over 9 Month Period

Outputs:

1. 2 Cardano community meetups hosted per quarter active;
2. 1 Cardano online Micro-Hackathon hosted per quarter active.

Acceptance Criteria:

1. All events, IRL and online completed and recorded with photography and footage, as well as social media posts.
2. Community actively managed and engaged during this period.

New Cardano Users & Developers Onboarded

Outputs:

1. 150 developers deployed 1 unique smart contract on Cardano network or testnet each.
2. At least 200 unique attendees across meetups.
3. At least 200 unique new wallets created on Cardano by event attendees (including developers)

Acceptance Criteria:

1. All outputs have been measured and can be verified on-chain.
2. Attendee/participant details have been collected and can be correlated with each address on-chain (i.e. a basic KYC process)

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Yuval Ardenbaum

Event coordination, partnerships, growth marketing, developer evangelist and course instructor/content creator

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuval-ardenbaum/

Devon Krantz

Project Manager & Owner, Event Coordination, Marketing, community leader and course instructor

https://www.linkedin.com/in/devon-krantz-642b9495/

Dominic Mostert

Head of engineering, developer evangelist, technical consultant, marketing

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominic-mostert/

Jonny Durand

Head videographer, filming, post-production, design and animation

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-durand-7a9163272/

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Course creation:

160 hours (1 month capacity) for each project team member

A total of $11 000

Events Hosting:

$1500 to secure team hours and venue costs

Marketing and hosting:

$4600

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

Course Creation:

The cost of course creation is relative to average web3 market-related salaries in South Africa, where our core team are located.

Course creation requires a large number of hours from our technical/engineering lead to consult on research and scripting, our growth/developer relations professional and other instructors to deliver the content, as well as our professional videographer to film, produce and edit the footage, and create/add animations or graphics where relevant.

Our engineering lead, CEO and dev rel/growth salaries are all set to $3000 USD per month to secure the best professionals while ensuring our opex is low relative to our US or EU-based counterparts. Our videographer salary is set to $2000 per month to account for the high volume of hours above ordinary work hours each week that are required to deliver on filming and production timelines in short timeframes.

The average cost of hiring a venue and sourcing catering/drinks for a ~50 person community meetup in South Africa is approximately $750 - $1000 depending on our ability to gain discounts through our extensive network.

As such, each event may cost $1500 to secure facilities and the hours of the team to host and ensure wallet onboarding takes place etc. resulting in $9000 for the 6 events stipulated.

Our course creation process requires slightly over a month worth of hours (160-180) from each of the members of our project team outlined above, at a total cost of $11000.

The remaining funds proposed are used to cover marketing and hosting costs for our platform and effective distribution of our course material, events coverage and so on.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agrees to Fund 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