Uber for Tutoring - Decentralised Tutor’s Marketplace (DirectEd)

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Simon Sällström

[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

John Ndigirigi - Software developer

Edmund Ebiyenrin - Software Engineer

Sherrie Ma - UIX design

Ency Lu - UIX design 

Bart (Haskell.team), dev firm 

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

6

[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)

Decentralized Tutor's Marketplace: Uber for Tutorials. This will empower students to choose tutors, reduce monitoring costs, and ensure fund transparency through blockchain.

[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.”

The dependency is partially on haskell.team's ability to deliver the requisite aspects of the off-chain code for the smart contract. The latter is completed.

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

No

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

The smart contract is open-sourced but part of the platform may not be open-sourced initially.

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

Our proposed solution, the Decentralized Tutor's Marketplace, addresses the problem of high monitoring costs, lack of tutor choice, and funds misuse. We perceive the problem as the high monitoring costs, limited tutor choice, and the risk of funds being misused for non-educational purposes.

We have already built out a prototype smart contract (currently on testnet) and done some initial end-user testing during the 2023 pilot BootCamp in Kenya. However, more work needs to be done to make this useful for users and have it mature to a proof of concept stage.

Here is a video presentation recorded for the Fund 10 (not funded) version of this proposal. It is largely intact, except we have reduced the scope and budget such that it is more suitable for an MVP product.

https://youtu.be/GhKICoEyRl4

Non-technical User Flow Description

1. The Education funder performs vetting (whitelisting) of tutors. They send Tutor NFTs to the Cardano wallet address of the vetted tutor.
2. Tutors put up tutorial session availability ahead of time on the platform with information about content time, place and price (fixed, or using “when2meet” system). 
3. Education funder sends stablecoin to the Tutorial Vouchers (TV) Redemption smart contract and a corresponding amount of TV to students they want to support. 
4. Students show up and pay the tutor before the start of the session. Students may pay with TV or pay using mobile money (MPesa). Tutor holds the session.
5. Tutor sends TV token to the TV Redemption smart contract and receives stablecoin and the Tutor NFT. The Tutor NFTs must be included in the transaction. 

Current (prototype)

DirectEd has taken the role of both “Education funder” and course provider. This may not always be the case. We call our particular TV token the “DirectEd Tutorial Vouchers” (DTV). More generally, each Education funder will have their own Tutorial Vouchers and Tutor NFTs. 

1. Traditional screening and interviewing and interviews with prospective tutor candidates. The DirectEd Tutorial tokens minted using 3rd party 
2. Tutorial sessions posted through WhatsApp (student group) and/or on a Tutorial marketplace Notion page. Tutors created Google form to collect sign-ups
3. We hold the stablecoin in our treasury multi-sig (due to the smart contract off-chain code and frontend integration still undergoing QA). We send the DTV to all students manually using a Cardano wallet. 
4. Students pay tutors by sending DTV and the minADA amount to the tutor. Tutor sends back minADA to the student. 
5. Tutor navigates to teachers.directed.dev/redeem to redeem their DTV for stablecoin (Djed). We recently completed the offchain code and integration so we expect this to have been tested for the first time by the end of July.

This proposal 

Our goal is to build a platform which can accommodate both external funders and students. The following will be the key features of our platform.

1. A user interface where tutors (Veted tutors) list their offerings. Students can book sessions from a variety of tutors.
2. Interface and functionality for education financiers to mint tutor voucher tokens, which they then send to students and students use the tokens to pay tutors.
3. Interface and ability for tutors to redeem the tutor voucher tokens to ADA. The tutors, after vetting, will be awarded an NFT to ensure it’s only vetted tutors who can redeem tutor voucher tokens.
4. Functionality for students to make ratings on tutors to enhance the overall tutor experience and statistics of tutorials being held through the platform and the students' attendance.

HOW THE MARKETPLACE WORKS 

1. Vetted tutors list their offerings on the platform. Students book sessions with the tutors from the platform.
2. Education financiers add liquidity to the tutorial fund pool and receive tokens to send to students they are sponsoring.
3. Students attend sessions and pay with tutor voucher tokens. Tutors(Who hold tutors NFTs), redeem the tokens to receive ADA.

Our approach focuses on leveraging the Cardano blockchain to empower students, tutors, and education financiers. By utilising blockchain technology, we ensure secure and transparent transactions, enabling students to choose tutors based on their preferences, qualifications, and availability. This decentralised approach reduces monitoring costs for educational providers and creates a competitive environment that incentivizes tutors to provide high-quality services.

The project will engage various stakeholders, including students seeking personalised tutoring, tutors looking for flexible work opportunities, and education financiers interested in supporting student education. By providing a decentralised marketplace, we aim to create a thriving ecosystem where students can access quality tutoring, tutors can showcase their expertise, and education financiers can ensure funds are allocated for educational purposes.

To demonstrate impact, we will track key metrics such as the number of students accessing tutoring services, tutor satisfaction ratings, and the amount of stablecoin liquidity provided by education financiers. We will also conduct user surveys and feedback sessions to gather qualitative insights into the improved learning experiences and increased transparency achieved through our solution.

What makes our solution unique is the integration of the Cardano blockchain, which ensures secure and transparent transactions while leveraging the benefits of decentralisation. The use of tutorial vouchers and smart contracts creates a robust and accountable system that aligns the interests of students, tutors, and education financiers. By bringing these advantages to the education sector, our solution contributes to Cardano's vision of fostering transparency, efficiency, and empowerment in various industries.

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

Our proposed solution, the Decentralized Tutor's Marketplace provides value by building a product that directly addresses several problems: Inefficiency in tutor hiring, ie high monitoring costs, lack of tutor choice, and funds misuse.

VALUE TO THE CARDANO ECOSYSTEM

Increased Usage and Transactions: The marketplace will generate a significant number of transactions as students pay for tutoring services using DTV tokens, which are securely transferred on the Cardano blockchain. This increased usage will contribute to the growth of the Cardano network and validate its scalability and efficiency.

Quantified (number from pilot): 

• Around 100 wallets created 
• About 40 active wallets that we’ve sent transactions in the form of prizes or DTV tokens. At the time of writing, there has been 130 transactions involving DTV as can be verified by inspecting the policyID https://cardanoscan.io/tokentransactions?assetId=d365ad6a86fe81ed303eab00fc46031e88879166f7d26a271a553009445456 

We believe that thousands of students can use this technology.

Enhanced Adoption: The Decentralized Tutor's Marketplace will attract students, tutors, and education financiers to the Cardano ecosystem. As users engage with the marketplace and experience the advantages of blockchain-based tutoring, it will create a positive perception of Cardano and encourage further adoption of the platform.

Showcase Cardano's Capabilities: By integrating with the Cardano blockchain, the marketplace serves as a real-world application that demonstrates the practical use of smart contracts, token transfers, and decentralized systems. It showcases Cardano's capabilities and positions it as a leading blockchain platform for educational and other industries.

Strengthened Ecosystem: The Decentralized Tutor's Marketplace contributes to the overall strength and resilience of the Cardano ecosystem. It adds a valuable use case, expands the range of applications built on Cardano, and fosters innovation within the community.

MEASUREMENT

We intend to measure the success of our project through a combination of quantitative and qualitative metrics that reflect the project's benefits for the Cardano ecosystem. These metrics will help us evaluate the impact of the Decentralized Tutor's Marketplace on Cardano's productivity and growth in both the short and long term.

During development KPIs

• Number of milestones attained
• Number of milestones completed per timeline
• Number of milestones completed within 1 month indicated on timeline

Post-launch KPIs 

• Adoption Metrics: Number of students, tutors, and education financiers using the marketplace. 
• Cardano use: Number of wallets created, transactions, transaction volume and TVL in TV Redemption smart contracts. 
• User Feedback: We will gather qualitative feedback from users, including students, tutors and education financiers, through surveys and feedback sessions. This feedback will provide insights into the user experience, satisfaction levels, and the perceived value of using the marketplace.

PROGRESS TRACKING

There will be three primary ways the community can follow our progress

1. Bimonthly newsletter. We will be releasing a bimonthly newsletter with details of our project progress to the community. This is integrated with the general news about DirectEd’s work https://directed.notion.site/Newsletters-34e6bced04534d3981ece8312caea717?pvs=4. 
2. Notion page progress update: continuing on our 1.5 years of continuous monthly updates alongside OKRs, we will too do so for this project. You can see our previously reported progress here: https://directed.notion.site/Progress-Updates-OKRs-81f92ecebefb4f289e80e1703ff73d2a?pvs=4. Going forward, each project stream will have its own sub-section on this page to clearly delineate progress of each of the 4 (if successfully funded) project DirectEd are undertaking. Find links to those here.
3. GitHub repository. The smart contracts are already open-sourced. The community can continue to observe our progress by inspecting commits to our GitHub repo. 

REPORTING

Upon completion of the project

As required, we will be creating a Demo video of how the platform works and seek opportunities to present this during Catalyst ATH breakout rooms. 

We will continuously engage in conversations with existing educational initiatives in the Cardano ecosystem to make sure we are building a product that fits their needs. These include for example Emurgo Academy, Gimbalabs, and e-Learning DAO. 

By sharing the outputs and impact of our project through these channels, we expect to generate awareness and interest among relevant stakeholders. This will create opportunities for knowledge transfer, collaboration, and the exploration of new possibilities in the field of decentralized education.

[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?

Proven track record of delivering

DirectEd has a long-standing history within the Cardano ecosystem and it was born out of a project proposal in Catalyst Fund 6 (proposal). It has since then received funding for two proposals in Fund 8 (dApp & SSI). Closeout video for the F8 dApp proposal here.

To sign up for testnet Alpha testing, go to http://testnet.directed.dev/. We embrace radical transparency, as can be observed through our public Progress & OKR page and by inspection of our wallet transaction metadata ($directed, $simondirected). 

We recently completed our second Fund 8 proposal building an SSI-powered (Atala PRISM) scholarship application and management proposal. It will be possible for Ethiopian students holding an Atala PRISM 2.0 credential with their high school grades to apply via our portal which then automatically verifies the grades and enables the student to fill in a full application form. You may view the proposal close-out here:

https://youtu.be/QhFpbBcFnZc

DirectEd has delivered in several ways. Utilization of the network, open-source code contributions and real-world impact & partnerships. The section below quantifies each of these:

Cardano use

• 120+ wallets created and estimated 250+ transactions (lower end). To illustrate, the Decentralised Tutorial Marketplace pilot has (at the time of writing) generated 130 transactions. You can see it being actively used by inspection of the policyID https://cardanoscan.io/tokentransactions?assetId=d365ad6a86fe81ed303eab00fc46031e88879166f7d26a271a553009445456 
• Salaries have been paid on-chain. Previous treasury address: https://cardanoscan.io/address/0158a6c035359d0c470f790c0eedc10b034bcbefeccf3573b979236358a6f473253923585a4137f57aa71ae386a96ca1f568ffec3c35320910. Current treasury (multi-sig): https://cardanoscan.io/address/31edbbf1a2258c28b4fe58fd29abd38d79cf8b2d576006343de5d83ff8edbbf1a2258c28b4fe58fd29abd38d79cf8b2d576006343de5d83ff8 

Open Source Contributions (repo)

• CIP-30 wallet connection for any NextJS/ReactJS website. Our wallet connect automatically detects which Cardano browser extension wallets are present in your browser and displays a dropdown upon hovering of the ones detected.. 
• NFT-gating. We have written code enabling simple NFT gating for a NextJS/ReactJS website. Users can either choose to gate content by policyID in an array (multiple policyIDs can be added) or by the unique asset ID. This gives website owners a novel method of access control that does not hinge on storing emails and passwords.
• Milestone-based smart contract. This smart contract enables accountability of approved granting of funds in a distributed manner wherein Examiners (human oracles) must issue tokens to grantees before they can redeem each tranche payout. 
• Voucher Redemption Contract. This smart contract enables education funders to restrict the use of stipends for specific uses, in our case students receive tutorial vouchers and only tutors can redeem those for stablecoin. 

Real-world impact and Partnerships 

• 100+ students trained in our 1-week-long Introductory Coding course in Python with some testimonies here. Students received basic blockchain education and testnet wallet onboarding, video recording of the workshop here. 
• 14 Access Scholarships funded through the DirectEd Lions NFT fundraiser. This financed purchase of laptops, WiFi devices and data bundles for students from needy backgrounds, enabling them to partake in the DirectEd Bootcamp. Images here. Sample on-chain transactions for data bundles and tutorial vouchers. Check out our Twitter for some of the testimonials from the students! 
• MOUs with 3 national high schools in Kenya, including most notably Mang’U High - one of the most famous schools in the country, with many eminent alumni including one former president, several vice presidents and a former governor of Central Bank of Kenya. Pictures from the MOU signing here. 
• MOU with Kotebe University of Education in Addis Ababa. This university is dedicated to research and development in education for Ethiopia. 
• In-person Bootcamp launch day at Young African Leaders Initiative East Africa regional center at Kenyatta University (USAID project).
• Sponsorships: [CLOVR] stake pool, [KIND] stake pool, COTI Group
• Internship partnerships with Snapbrillia and Tally 
• Other partnerships: Cardanowarriors, Web3 User Group

Traction 

• In the spring of 2022, DirectEd was admitted to the inaugural Ariob incubator for Catalyst-funded Africa projects. 
• During the Cardano summit, CEO Simon Sällström met with Shahaf Bar-Geffen (CEO of COTI) who generously agreed to provide a sponsorship for the first cohort of DirectEd students. 
• CEO Simon was invited to speak at NFT.NYC on a panel “Why NFTs will revolutionize charitable giving”.

Media and Twitter spaces

Spring 2023

• Learn Cardano - open source milestone based contact & updates from Ethiopia
• Subcritical - DirectEd programme
• Xeberus - transparency and corruption 

Fall/Winter 2022

• Cardano Hotel interview
• Vlog - my personal why
• Cardano over coffee 
• Fire in the whole
• Bullish Dumpling Twitter space

Team

Below is a selection of team members. To see the full team of volunteers and other contributors, head over here. 

Simon Sällström. MPhil in Economics, University of Oxford. Founder and CEO, DirectEd Development Foundation with several open-source contributions to the Cardano ecosystem including NFT gating, wallet-connect and two general-purpose smart contract primitives. PA and vPA in Catalyst F6-F9. Chair, Cardano RealFi Consortium Spring 2023. Workstream lead, Oxford Blockchain Society. Founder, Cardano Student Hub Oxford. Speaker at NFT.NYC, Cardano Summit 2023. 5 completed Catalyst proposals, 3 pending completion (2 for CardanOx). LinkedIn

Rohan Mitta. Smart Contract Lead. MAst in Pure Mathematics, University of Cambridge; MSc Foundations of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Oxford. Plutus Pioneer 2022. Atala PRISM Pioneer 2022. LinkedIn

Christime Karimi. Chief Examiner. Senior Tutor, Moringa School. BSc of Education from University of Nairobi. Christine has trained 200+ junior developers over the past 5 years. Full stack web developer. LinkedIn

Edmund Ebiyenrin. Front-End. BSc in Computer Science, Federal University Makurdi, Google Student Developer Club regional lead. LinkedIn

John Ndigirigi. Atala PRISM engineer. BSc Computer Science, Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, Software developer, community builder, Atala PRISM pioneer. LinkedIn

Sherrie Ma. UIX design. MSc International Management, Certification in UX/UI Design, BSc in Coastal Environmental Studies, Experiences in UIX design, Business Management, and Retail and Customer Service .  LinkedIn 

Ency Lu. UIX design. BFA in Studio Fine Arts Queens College…Fashion Design Parsons the new school. UIUX Springboard. LinkedIn 

Victoria Essien. UIX Designer. BSc in Computer Science, Bingham University. Former Google Developer Student Clubs (GDSC) Lead. LinkedIn

Financial Management and Transparency

We have implemented robust financial management processes, leveraging cardano blockchain technology for transparency, accountability, and responsible use of funds. All transactions contain metadata and can be tracked on the Cardano blockchain through ADAhandle $directeddev on Cardanoscan. We maintain accurate records, conduct regular audits, and provide transparent financial statements to relevant parties, promoting transparency and accountability in our financial management practices.

To this end, we have implemented the following policies for our treasury management. 

1. Catalyst funds received in the main multi-sig with 5 signatories, with 3/5 signatures required for any transaction. 
2. ADA funds received are immediately converted to stablecoins to avoid volatility
3. No more than ½ of on-chain assets will be held in any one given stablecoin in order to reduce risk. 
4. All transactions contain metadata regarding its intended use. 
5. All DirectEd-controlled wallets will contain ADAhandles indicating its purpose and controller. 

Project Governance and Reporting

Building upon our previous project experience, we have established a robust project governance structure that emphasizes transparency and accountability. Regular reporting and monitoring mechanisms are in place to track progress and ensure adherence to project milestones and targets. You can inspect our public Progress reporting and OKR page here. 

As part of our commitment to transparency, we implemented a progress page for donors to track the performance of students, providing updates on their achievements, which can be observed by donors (NFT gated) here. This reporting framework enables stakeholders to stay informed about project status, outcomes, and financial performance, fostering transparency and accountability throughout the project lifecycle.

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

We will follow a lean development process

Activities

• Prepare a theory of change: a list of assumptions of how a user thinks so we can test these.
• Create mock-ups and high-fidelity figma designs for user testing - both students and tutors, testing different assumptions.
• Decide on architecture and user flow

Acceptance criteria

• A fully responsive high-fidelity MVP Figma designs
• Document with the assumptions we want to test during user testing
• The architecture and intended user flow of the app completed

Activities

• Conduct user interviews with the product to test out functionalities
• Further redesign and implementation
• Develop frontend and backend

Acceptance criteria

• Summary of insights from 10 user interiews
• Deployed MVP web app (front and backend, non-web3)

Activities

• Integrate Web3 components
• Further UI/UX development
• Further frontend and backend
• User testing

Acceptance criteria

• Deployed application on testnet such that
• students can connect a wallet, see amount of tutorial vouchers they have, see a list of tutors, leave a review for a tutor
• tutors can connect wallet, see amount of tutorial vouchers they have and interact with smart contract to withdraw the funds
• admin can whitelist stake addresses as tutors, mint tutorial vouchers, send tutorial vouchers

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

Simon Sällström

Role: Overall project management, coordination, and communication

Experience: 5+ years of project management experience. CEO, DirectEd Development Foundation. Founder of Cardano Student Hub Oxford. Cardano RealFi Consortium chair Mar-June 2023. Previously funded in Catalyst fund 6, fund 8. Veteran Proposal Assessor since Catalyst fund 7.

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-s%C3%A4llstr%C3%B6m-3659b616b/

John Ndigirigi- Software Developer.

Bsc. Computer Science. Atala Prism Pioneer. Fund 9 Atala PRISM Catalyst solution contributor, Software Developer DirecteEd Development Foundation. 

LinkedIn

Github

Edmun Ebiyenrin

Role: Software engineer.

Experience: Software Engineering, Cardano code, Lucid and Mesh frameworks for off-chain, BSc.Computer Science.

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-ebiyenrin-305196192/

Ency Lu. UIX design. BFA in Studio Fine Arts Queens College… Fashion Design Parsons the new school. UIUX Springboard

LinkedIn

Sherrie Ma

Role: UI/UX Designer

Experience: UI/UX Designer, Business Administration, Retail and Customer Service, MSc International Management, BSc Coastal Environmental Studies, Certification in UX/UI design. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sma9/ 

Victoria Essien. UIX Designer. BSc in Computer Science, Bingham University. Former Google Developer Student Clubs (GDSC) Lead

LinkedIn

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

Milestone 1

UI/UX design and user testing/incentives. 3000 ADA

Milestone 2

UI/UX design and user testing/incentives. 3000 ADA

Front and backend development. 2000 ADA

Milestone 3

UI/UX design and user testing/incentives. 3000 ADA

Front and backend development. 2000 ADA

Blockchain integrations. 10000 ADA

QA/testing. 2000 ADA

General

Project management, reporting and admin. 10000 ADA

TOTAL= 35,000 ADA

Budgeting assuming USD-ADA of 0.35

35,000*0.35 = ~$12.25k

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

Real-world applications

We provide a real-world application for the Cardano community. We build it because we, DirectEd, need it ourselves, but it is something that a wider range of users could use.

Number of users

We believe that this become a widely useable application for education financiers who want to reduce overhead all across the world.

Cost

Our development costs are relatively low due to the low cost-basis of the African-based developers and designers (partly). Only management and blockchain development part will be relatively costly, but even those costs are kept low since our smart contract and blockchain aspects are relatively minor.

Simon's project management cost is assuming a standard London salary assuming an average of 2h/week over the entire period (6m).

[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