Marlowe PBL 2025

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Gimbalabs

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

Entity (Incorporated)

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

12

[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)

Gimbalabs will collaborate with the Marlowe core team of maintainers to create a PBL learning experience that prioritizes skills-building, using the Andamio platform (powered by Gimbalabs).

[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

The whole course building process would be on (an) open source Github repo(s) with Apache-2.0 license.

[METADATA] SDG rating

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

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

SDG Subgoals

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

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

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

Bullet Points:

• As Marlowe is transitioning from an IOG-managed solution to a fully open source, community-maintained project (https://marlowe.iohk.io/blog/the-past-present-and-future-of-marlowe-a-journey-of-innovation-and-community-empowerment), the project's interactions with the community become a driving factor: its future is 100% in the community's hands.

• The next coming months will be busy for the core team of Marlowe maintainers. They will focus on optimizing and extending Marlowe's capabilities to make it the first choice for Cardano DApps builders: developers, infrastructure providers and Stake Pool operators. Next stop: small and medium-sized businesses (merchants, lawyers, traders, financial institutions, etc).

• The most effective way to capture the imagination of this wide range of users, pushing them to integrate Marlowe into their services, goes beyond outreach and community awareness. It is Education. But not just any kind of Education: one that has a track record of instilling skills in students, moving them to use those skills to collaborate and contribute using, in this case, Marlowe. That's where Gimbalabs comes in.

• Gimbalabs has created learning experiences based on its curated Project-Based Learning (PBL) methodology for the following languages:

• Plutus PBL
• Mesh PBL
• Aiken PBL
• Cardano Golang PBL

• Of special mention is the Plutus PBL, considered among the Cardano development community as a cutting-edge tool for introducing new developers to the fundamentals of building on top of the Cardano blockchain. 

• The infrastructure that efficiently supports such experiences is the Andamio platform (powered by Gimbalabs): each of them is an instance of Andamio. More about Andamio: https://www.andamio.io/about 

• After getting to know each other, the Marlowe team, led by Professor Simon Thompson, one of the main creators of Marlowe, and the Gimbalabs team, led by James Dunseith, Gimbalabs co-founder, have concluded that a collaboration can benefit both the Marlowe project itself and its goals, as well as the community.

• “They build, we teach”, will be the premise that we will honor with this proposal and put at the service of the community, to contribute significantly to the adoption of Cardano by the real economy.

Technical Implementation:

• To streamline our process of building the Marlowe Project-Based Learning with the Marlowe Roadmap development activity defined by the Marlowe core maintainers. An Andamio platform instance will be assigned for the building of the Marlowe PBL experience. 

• This proposal is closely related to the implementation of the “Marlowe 2025” proposal: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/122392. So, our proposal will follow the “Marlowe 2025” roadmap defined by the Marlowe project.

• Example of the final product to be delivered: https://plutuspbl.io/

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

• The onboarding process becomes practical and efficient.

• Substantial improvement in the dialogue between the Marlowe project and the community.

• A community with more agency in the development and growth of Marlowe as a technology and as a community project.

• A community with greater agency improves the quality of its participation in structured environments such as the Marlowe Special Interest Group, a new members-based, non-profit organization, which the project plans to create to coordinate community activities. https://marlowe.iohk.io/blog/the-past-present-and-future-of-marlowe-a-journey-of-innovation-and-community-empowerment

• Finally, there is an increased adoption rate of Marlowe, not as a goal, but as a consequence.

[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?

At Gimbalabs, we have built one of the best technical learning technologies in the Cardano ecosystem, with the ability to extract the fundamentals of complex topics (protocols, tooling, infrastructure, design patterns, etc) and package them into skills. That is our know-how.

Trust and accountability:

• Talented developers, today founders of renowned Cardano startups (JPG store, MeshJS, Cardano Name Service (CNS), Gods of Blocks, Loxe inc, Ekival, others), trusted us to take their first steps in the ecosystem: to know everything they needed to know, without restrictions, and from there, build their own path. We did not let them down.

• Gimbalabs is an infrastructure builder: Dandelion, Andamio.

• Gimbalabs is consulting: Joey's Hot Sauce, challenge "Spend ADA in your local community!", OneUpOneDown, Oxford University, Handshake, Blink Labs, CNS, MeshJS, SingularityNET, and others.

Approach validation:

• Gimbalabs started with this successful Fund2 Proposal: https://gimbalabs.com/fund2.pdf (and scored the leading vote tally in Fund1 - before there was real funding)

• Has delivered 4 iterations of Plutus PBL Course, with 5th iteration, Plutus PBL 2024, launching now, in May 2024

• Host of weekly Playground sessions for 3+ years

• Host of twice-weekly (and now more!) Live Coding sessions for 2+ years

• Gimbalabs YouTube is a helpful archive.

Feasibility of implementation:

• Talents: Gimbalabs consists of a group of educators and diverse professionals. The budget would be easily justified by the collective professional hours contributed to deliver one of the best courses on the Cardano ecosystem we strive to be.

• Approach: With the 4+ iterations of Plutus PBL Course, Gimbalabs is proven the expert of delivering such education materials.

• Platform: Gimbalabs founds Andamio, which is a highly effective education platform built on Cardano, natively as the best platform of delivering Cardano education materials.

• Know-how: Gimbalabs gathers a group of expert software engineer with extremely deep knowledge in the course content to be produced.

References:

• Messari's "State of Cardano" report (discussed each quarter by C. Hoskinson) highlighted the role of Gimbalabs every quarter of 2023 as community-run project for education and developer tools, in the section "Community".

• Gimbalabs is part of the CBIA alliance (Cardano Blockchain Infrastructure Alliance) along with recognized names in the ecosystem: Maestro, TxPipe, Koios, Blink Labs, among others.

• Gimbalabs is part of the Certification working group coordinated by Intersect. An example of Gimbalabs' contribution is the document "CTI-2023-ADA-11-04: Multiple Satisfaction" authored by Professor M. Ali Modiri, Gimbalabs instructor and recognized ecosystem developer.

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

Title: Preparation and Organization Setup (1 Month)

Objective: Establish a solid foundation for the proposal by setting up the necessary infrastructure, assembling the team, and defining project management practices.

Milestone Outputs:

• Confirm core team members.

• Establish project management tools.

• Course outline formulation: Modules, Student Learning Targets (SLTs), Lessons, and assignments.

• Allocation and setup of the Andamio instance to the Marlowe project.

Acceptance Criteria:

• Project management tools and systems set up.

• Outline in JSON format, structured in Modules, SLTs, Lessons, and assignments.

• Lessons assigned to team members, with their respective role assignment for content creation

• Andamio instance ready to start creating and uploading content.

Evidence of milestone completion:

• Outline in JSON format

• Miro board with assignment of lessons and roles.

• Images and/or videos of the Andamio instance allocated to the Marlowe project.

Title: Content Creation, topic “Micropayments (through Signed Inputs)” (2 Months).

Objective: Create the content of the module Micropayments (see the “Marlowe 2025” roadmap, above in the “Solution” section). Note: In general, each module is released to the community as its creation is completed.

Milestone Outputs:

• Deliver Micropayments module content, including:
• Write up lessons to guide students through all SLTs involved for this module
• Video explanation covering all SLTs
• Assignment for consolidating learning outcomes for students

Acceptance Criteria:

• The Micropayments module is complete, following the structure stipulated in the outline elaborated in milestone 1.

Evidence of milestone completion:

• Access to the Andamio instance allocated to the Marlowe project, for content verification, accessibility, and general navigation of the module.

Title: Content Creation, topic “Contract Execution Optimization (minimizing the number of Transactions)” (3 Months). 

Objective: Create the content of the module Contract Execution Optimization.

Milestone Outputs:

• Deliver Contract Execution Optimization module content, including:
• Write up lessons to guide students through all SLTs involved for this module
• Video explanation covering all SLTs
• Assignment for consolidating learning outcomes for students

Acceptance Criteria:

• The Contract Execution Optimization module is complete, following the structure stipulated in the outline elaborated in milestone 1.

Evidence of milestone completion:

• Access to the Andamio instance allocated to the Marlowe project, for content verification, accessibility, and general navigation of the module.

Title: Content Creation, topic “Seamless DApp Integration of Deep Contracts (Merkleized Contracts)” (3 Months). 

Objective: Create the content of the module Seamless DApp Integration of Deep Contracts.

Milestone Outputs:

• Deliver Seamless DApp Integration of Deep Contracts module content, including:
• Write up lessons to guide students through all SLTs involved for this module
• Video explanation covering all SLTs
• Assignment for consolidating learning outcomes for students

Acceptance Criteria:

• The Seamless DApp Integration of Deep Contracts module is complete, following the structure stipulated in the outline elaborated in milestone 1.

Evidence of milestone completion:

• Access to the Andamio instance allocated to the Marlowe project, for content verification, accessibility, and general navigation of the module.

Title: Content Creation, topic “Marlowe Oracle Protocol Improvements and Specification” (1 Month). 

Objective: Create the content of the module Marlowe Oracle Protocol Improvements and Specification.

Milestone Outputs:

• Deliver Marlowe Oracle Protocol Improvements and Specification module content, including:
• Write up lessons to guide students through all SLTs involved for this module
• Video explanation covering all SLTs
• Assignment for consolidating learning outcomes for students

Acceptance Criteria:

• The Marlowe Oracle Protocol Improvements and Specification module is complete, following the structure stipulated in the outline elaborated in milestone 1.

Evidence of milestone completion:

• Access to the Andamio instance allocated to the Marlowe project, for content verification, accessibility, and general navigation of the module.

Title: Content Creation, topic “Runtime Monetization”. Project Close-out Report and Video (2 month)

Objective: Create the content of the module Runtime Monetization. Prepare the Close-out Report and Video.

Milestone outputs:

-Deliver Runtime Monetization module content, including:

• Write up lessons to guide students through all SLTs involved for this module
• Video explanation covering all SLTs
• Assignment for consolidating learning outcomes for students

• Deliver a complete Marlowe course, hosted in a functional Andamio instance, accessible to the community and public in general.

• Prepare and share the final report.

-Prepare and share the video report.

Acceptance criteria:

-The Runtime Monetization module is complete, following the structure stipulated in the outline elaborated in milestone 1.

• Access to the Andamio instance assigned to the Marlowe project, for verification of course content.

• Final report providing a comprehensive overview of project achievements and insights.

• Video summarizing the entire project, highlighting key achievements and milestones, and offering a visual recap of the project's journey.

Evidence of milestone completion:

• Access to the Andamio instance assigned to the Marlowe project, for verification of course content.

• Final report

• Closing video

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

James Dunseith - Educator, Cardano Developer

• Co-founder of Gimbalabs
• Co-founder of Andamio
• Advisor and teacher for Cardano developers
• Prior Experience
• Master Teacher & Coach at BetterLesson
• Teacher Educator at Mind Research Institute
• Master Teacher at Math for America
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-dunseith-0135651/
• Github: https://github.com/workshop-maybe
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamesdunseith

Sebastian Pabon - Educator, Facilitator.

• Project Manager, Educator and Facilitator at Gimbalabs
• Co-founder at Andamio
• Consultant at Emurgo Academy, European Business University of Luxembourg
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seb-pabon/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SebastianPabonB

Gimbalabs Community - Course Content Writer(s) / Editor(s)

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

Milestone 1: Preparation and Organization Setup (1 Month)

Activities Budget:

• ADA 2,000 - Establish project management tools.

• ADA 2,000 - Course outline formulation: Modules, Student Learning Targets (SLTs), Lessons, and assignments.

• ADA 26,000 - Allocation and setup of the Andamio instance to the Marlowe project.

Total Budget: ADA 30,000

Milestone 2: Content Creation, topic “Micropayments (through Signed Inputs)” (2 Months).

Activities Budget:

• Deliver Micropayments module content, including:
• ADA 10,000 - Write up lessons to guide students through all SLTs involved for this module
• ADA 10,000 - Video explanation covering all SLTs
• ADA 10,000 - Assignment for consolidating learning outcomes for students

Total Budget: ADA 30,000

Milestone 3: Content Creation, topic “Contract Execution Optimization (minimizing the number of Transactions)” (3 Months). 

Activities Budget:

• Deliver Contract Execution Optimization module content, including:
• ADA 10,000 - Write up lessons to guide students through all SLTs involved for this module
• ADA 10,000 - Video explanation covering all SLTs
• ADA 10,000 - Assignment for consolidating learning outcomes for students

Total Budget: ADA 30,000

Milestone 4: Content Creation, topic “Seamless DApp Integration of Deep Contracts (Merkleized Contracts)” (3 Months). 

Activities Budget:

• Deliver Seamless DApp Integration of Deep Contracts module content, including:
• ADA 10,000 - Write up lessons to guide students through all SLTs involved for this module
• ADA 10,000 - Video explanation covering all SLTs
• ADA 10,000 - Assignment for consolidating learning outcomes for students

Total Budget: ADA 30,000

Milestone 5: Content Creation, topic “Marlowe Oracle Protocol Improvements and Specification” (1 Month). 

Activities Budget:

• Deliver Marlowe Oracle Protocol Improvements and Specification module content, including:
• ADA 10,000 - Write up lessons to guide students through all SLTs involved for this module
• ADA 10,000 - Video explanation covering all SLTs
• ADA 10,000 - Assignment for consolidating learning outcomes for students

Total Budget: ADA 30,000

Final milestone: Content Creation, topic “Runtime Monetization”. Project Close-out Report and Video (2 month)

Activities Budget:

-Deliver Runtime Monetization module content, including:

• ADA 10,000 - Write up lessons to guide students through all SLTs involved for this module
• ADA 10,000 - Video explanation covering all SLTs
• ADA 10,000 - Assignment for consolidating learning outcomes for students

• ADA 10,000 - Prepare and share the final report.

ADA 10,000 - Prepare and share the video report.

Total Budget: ADA 50,000

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

ADA reference: 0.4 USD

1.Andamio instance license: 26000 ADA ---> 10400USD

The price of the license is aligned with the price of software of that kind in the market but, without the blockchain capabilities of Andamio. The Andamio blockchain capabilities increase the value of the license. So it's at a discount price.

2.Marlowe is a key technology for Cardano. At Gimbalabs, we have built one of the best technical learning technologies in the Cardano ecosystem, with the ability to extract the fundamentals of complex topics (protocols, tooling, infrastructure, design patterns, etc) and package them into skills. That is our know-how. 

With our technology, we will build Marlowe skills in developers, infrastructure providers, Stake Pool Operators, and small and medium-sized businesses.

3.Since this proposal is linked to the development of the roadmap to be executed by Marlowe's core team of maintainers over a 12-month period, this proposal will be extended for the same period. Consequently, the budget for each month of work is

200,000 - 26000 = 174000 ADA

174000 ADA / 12 months = 14500 ADA ---> 5800 USD / month

an amount for creation of specialized content (including code development) of high efficiency, below market prices.