Aiken Alive: A Living Guide to Aiken Smart Contract Development

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Chadi Nassar

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

Entity (Not Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Co-proposers and additional applicants

Fahim Ahamed

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

7

[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)

Create an interactive 'living guide' that clarifies existing docs, shares real-world learnings from our team's Aiken devs experience, provides building blocks for a community platform to collaborate.

[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 ongoing development of the Aiken language is a key dependency. While unlikely, if development of Aiken were to cease, it would significantly impact our ability to deliver this project as proposed.

[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

All content will be released under the permissive CC-0 MIT license, allowing anyone to freely use, modify and share the materials. We believe in providing completely open resources to maximize value to the community.

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

Our solution is to create an interactive 'living guide' for Aiken smart contract development. This will be a website that accomplishes the following:

1. Clarifies and expands on existing Aiken documentation with practical insights
2. Shares our team's real-world learnings, best practices, and pitfalls to avoid based on our extensive experience building with Aiken and our talks with other devs
3. Provides detailed usage examples and tutorials for key Aiken concepts, libraries and new features
4. Allows developers to comment, ask questions and share their own experiences, creating a collaborative community resource
5. Will be continuously updated as we deepen our Aiken knowledge and gain feedback from the community

The guide will cover key topics like Aiken smart contract best practices, using the Aiken standard library, working with new features like EMNC and aiken mood, and more. Content will target both beginner and advanced developers.

All materials will be fully open-source. We'll use GitHub to store the website source code, and the site itself will have clear commenting/feedback mechanisms to make it a living community resource.

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

This project will make building on Aiken more efficient and accessible for developers of all skill levels. By supplementing official documentation with practical insights and an interactive community layer, we can accelerate Aiken learning and adoption.

Specific impacts include:

• Faster, easier onboarding for new Aiken developers
• Fewer development hurdles and wasted effort from learning best practices
• Increased Aiken smart contract quality and security
• Community collaboration and knowledge sharing
• More developers building on Cardano

We'll measure impact through site metrics (visits, time on site, return visits, comments), GitHub stars/forks, and community surveys on Aiken development experience. The ultimate goal is more and better Aiken smart contracts deployed on Cardano.

[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?

Our team is uniquely qualified to create this living Aiken guide based on our deep experience with the language. We're already building marketplace functionalities using Aiken (through a funded Catalyst proposal), and have encountered the need for this project firsthand.

We're already documenting our Aiken learnings internally - this project will allow us to share them widely and incorporate community insights. Our developers have built numerous successful projects and have the skills to create a seamless user experience.

To validate feasibility and gain early feedback, we'll release a minimum viable version of the guide after milestone 1 (2 months). This will include our existing internal documentation, clarifications on official docs, and examples for key concepts. We'll incorporate suggestions into future full release.

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

Milestone 1 (3 months):

• Plan and create website infrastructure
• Import existing internal Aiken documentation and insights
• Clarify and expand on key parts of official Aiken docs based on our experience
• Write new guides/tutorials for 5 key Aiken concepts
• Set up GitHub repo and basic commenting functionality
• Release initial MVP version of guide for community feedback

Milestone 2 (2 months):

• Incorporate community feedback and suggestions into guide
• Write additional guides, usage examples and best practices (up to 10 topics)
• Implement full commenting and community contribution functionality
• Conduct marketing and outreach to raise awareness among Aiken/Cardano devs
• Release full v1.0 of Living Aiken Guide

Milestone 3 (2 months):

• Continue expanding guide content based on our learnings and community input
• Develop and release interactive tutorials for advanced Aiken topics
• Promote and grow community usage and contributions
• Gather feedback and metrics on guide impact and usage
• Plan for ongoing maintenance and expansion of the guide

Final Milestone:

• Release Living Aiken Guide v2.0 with hopefully 30+ topics, advanced tutorials, and robust community layer
• Complete project close-out report detailing development process, community reception, key metrics and future plans
• Produce project video highlighting the guide and its value to the Aiken/Cardano ecosystem
• Transition guide to fully community-maintained mode with our ongoing support

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

Chadi Nassar - Project Lead and Researcher

Nicolas Caridi - Project Marketer and Content Editor

Fahim Ahamad - Dev Lead and Lead Researcher

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

Here is our proposed budget breakdown for the 75,000 ADA grant:

• Development and Technical Writing (65%) - 48,750 ADA
• 3 Aiken experts to write documentation, create examples, build site features
• Design and User Experience (15%) - 11,250 ADA
• Web designer to ensure intuitive, visually engaging user experience
• Marketing and Community Outreach (10%) - 7,500 ADA
• Marketing strategist to promote the guide and foster community contributions
• Project Management and Misc. Expenses (10%) - 7,500 ADA
• PM to keep project on schedule, coordinate team, misc. expenses

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

This project will deliver tremendous value to the Cardano ecosystem relative to its cost by providing an unparalleled resource for Aiken smart contract developers. With a 75K ADA investment, the Cardano community will gain:

• A continuously expanding guide with (hopefully) 30+ topics worth of expert Aiken knowledge
• Countless hours saved from developers having clear, practical documentation and avoiding common pitfalls we've encountered
• Potential for more secure smart contracts from devs following best practices
• Faster and easier onboarding of new Aiken/Cardano developers
• Community collaboration and knowledge sharing around Aiken

No other project is providing this level of practical Aiken knowledge-sharing and interactive guidance. Our team's unique experience positions us to deliver outsized impact for this budget.

By open-sourcing all materials, this will provide ongoing value to Cardano well beyond the 6 month project. It will serve as a key resource to grow the Aiken community, ultimately resulting in more/better dApps and use cases on Cardano. We believe this is an extremely high-leverage investment in the future of Cardano development.