Sustaining the ComunidadCardano Spanish Forum

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Alejandro Gallardo

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

Individual

[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

Yes

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

Funding to cover the costs of the domain, hosting and blogging system of a 2 year old Spanish Cardano forum, ensuring its sustainability and continued support to the growing community.

[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

Our project embraces open-source principles by ensuring that all content and knowledge shared within the community will be freely accessible to all users. This allows the collective insights, tutorials, and discussions generated on the platform to be reused and repurposed by anyone, both inside and outside the community. We believe that the open sharing of information fosters collaboration, innovation, and shared wisdom, which ultimately benefits everyone. While the platform's underlying code may not be open source, the community-driven content will remain freely available, enriching the broader ecosystem and promoting the growth of shared knowledge.

[METADATA] Horizons

Community

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

The problem we are solving is the lack of financial resources to maintain and enhance a dedicated Spanish-speaking forum for the Cardano community. We have spent two years, since the community was created, dedicating time and resources to its maintenance and constant improvement, as well as covering expenses associated with community add-ons and extensions, without earning any income related to the community. After these two years, expenses continue to rise, and the costs of evolving the community with new blogging systems, hosting, server upgrades, and ideas are preventing its growth.

This forum serves as a hub for discussion, education, and collaboration among Spanish-speaking users, many of whom do not have access to quality information and engagement in their native language. As mentioned, the essential costs of running the forum (such as domain, hosting, server, and maintenance for the Flarum platform and a blog system) are not sustainable without external funding. Additionally, the forum’s current scale limits its potential to grow and engage more users over time.

Our approach focuses on securing not just immediate funding to cover these costs, but also future-proofing the forum by including resources for upgrades and scalability. This allows us to ensure that the forum will remain a valuable and functional platform as the Cardano ecosystem grows. Our solution goes beyond simple short-term funding; it fosters a self-sustaining and evolving community-driven platform for many years to come.

What makes this proposal unique is the incorporation of a user-driven governance model that empowers forum users to control part of the forum’s budget. The idea is to separate the funding into two treasuries. On the one hand, a treasury where the money necessary for the technical support of the community for years will be deposited, and on the other hand, a second separate treasury, also financed with contributions from the community, which will be used by the community through a system of democratic participation. This governance system will allow the community to propose and vote on initiatives, such as raffles or funding small projects that align with Cardano's values and contribute to the growth of its ecosystem. This participatory approach not only strengthens engagement but also fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility among the forum members.

Our project will engage a wide range of individuals, from new users curious about blockchain technology to more experienced developers and stakeholders within the Cardano ecosystem, all within the Spanish-speaking community. By targeting this specific demographic, we are filling a critical gap in the Cardano ecosystem, where language barriers often prevent non-English-speaking users from fully participating and benefiting from available resources.

To demonstrate our impact, we will track forum growth metrics such as user registrations, active participation, and the number of community-led initiatives. The implementation of the governance model will further allow us to track the successful allocation of funds for small projects, helping us showcase the direct benefits the community is receiving. We will provide transparent reports on how the forum’s funds are being managed, including detailed descriptions of all initiatives financed through the governance system.

Ultimately, this project is important to Cardano because it helps foster diversity and inclusion within the ecosystem, ensuring that Spanish-speaking users have a voice and a space to actively contribute. It creates a thriving environment where Cardano’s values of decentralization, governance, and innovation can take root in a new demographic, helping the Cardano community expand globally.

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

The success of this project will bring substantial value to the wider Cardano community by fostering inclusion, collaboration, and growth within the Spanish-speaking demographic, which is currently underserved. By maintaining and expanding a dedicated forum in Spanish (one of the three most spoken languages worldwide) we provide a platform where thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of potential users, developers, and stakeholders who may not speak English can access vital information, connect with other Cardano enthusiasts, and contribute to the ecosystem in their native language.

The forum will serve as a bridge, introducing new users to Cardano while keeping experienced members engaged. By removing language barriers, we ensure that the Cardano ecosystem becomes truly global, allowing Spanish-speaking users to contribute their ideas, tutorials, projects, and feedback. Additionally, we offer SPOs and contributors to the Cardano ecosystem a platform to promote themselves and communicate with members of their channel or pool. This will not only help enrich the community but also increase the visibility of the Cardano network and its benefits, enhancing education and collaboration with a variety of perspectives.

As previously mentioned, we will implement two treasuries. The first will be dedicated to maintaining the community, while the second will finance small contributions to projects, content creators, and platforms that may not qualify for Catalyst funding. This second treasury will serve as a new avenue of funding for entrepreneurs with innovative and valuable ideas, allowing them to receive support for their contributions to the Cardano ecosystem.

Measuring Impact:

We will measure the impact of the project through both quantitative and qualitative metrics:

- Quantitative Metrics:

• Growth in forum registrations and active users.
• Data from platforms like Google Webmaster or SEMrush to track web performance and reach.
• Number of community-initiated projects funded through the governance model, with a public wallet that details the destination of all funds.
• Engagement metrics, including forum posts, comments, and votes on governance initiatives.

- Qualitative Metrics:

• Community feedback on the governance system and funded initiatives.
• Monitoring funding to ensure it is allocated to legitimate projects, with controls to prevent exploitation or manipulation (e.g., preventing individuals from gaining multiple representations).

To ensure transparency and accountability, we will share detailed reports on these metrics with both the Cardano and forum communities. These reports will be shared through:

• The forum itself, with regular updates on forum growth, using reports from SEMrush and Google Webmaster.
• Social media channels and Cardano community spaces to reach a broader audience.
• Updates on the funding treasury’s use, including a publicly accessible wallet where users can track the allocation of funds and verify that projects are receiving legitimate funding.

Outputs and Ideas Sharing:

As part of our governance model, we will implement a publicly accessible dashboard on the forum. This dashboard will provide constant insights into community decisions, fund allocation, and project progress. It will also track participation in governance votes, ensuring transparency in fund distribution and decision-making. Regular updates will be shared with the broader Cardano community, including opportunities for partnerships, content creation, and new initiatives launched by forum members.

By empowering the community to make decisions through a democratic process, this project will inspire a sense of ownership and active participation within the Cardano ecosystem. The success stories, funded projects and governance decisions made at the forum will serve as real-world examples of how decentralization and governance work in practice not only in a blockchain project, but also in a community of users, aligning with Cardano's vision of building a fairer and more inclusive financial system among all.

Ultimately, the long-term impact of this project will be measured by the sustained growth of the forum and the ability of its community members to share knowledge and support initiatives, thus contributing to the Cardano ecosystem in a meaningful way.

Here is an image showing the metrics for this past year:

[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?

We have demonstrated over two years of consistent dedication to the creation, growth, and maintenance of the Cardano Spanish-speaking forum and blog. Throughout this time, we have successfully managed the technical and operational aspects of the platform while creating content and helping users who have joined the community, ensuring its stability and growth.

We are deeply involved in fostering engagement, moderating discussions, and facilitating a collaborative environment where new users, developers, and experienced Cardano enthusiasts can exchange ideas and information. Our long term commitment to the project without any prior funding demonstrates our reliability, resilience, and passion for the community.

To demonstrate this, we are going to work hard on these points:

• Content creation: We will continue creating content as we have been doing for the past two years, both on the forum and with articles on our Spanish blog. We will also continue to provide support to all those users who need help or want to get involved in the Cardano ecosystem.
• Transparent fund management: We will create a publicly accessible treasury wallet for the community to keep track of all funds received and their allocations. This wallet will be visible to everyone, ensuring full transparency in how funds are used for maintenance, upgrades, and community-driven initiatives.

How we are going to do that?

First of all we want to improve the blog platform, since we are currently using blogger to mitigate expenses. By using wordpress instead of blogger we ensure that our blog platform to share all kinds of articles related to the Cardano ecosystem will see numerous benefits when using a professional platform to create this type of content. Add to that we have extensive experience in wordpress, which will not be a problem to get the platform up and running, although we will have to pay for the costs of acquiring a server and paying for some extensions necessary for the blog.

Once this is done, it is necessary to use the purchased server for the forum cms we use, called Flarum, since it is currently on a free platform called Freeflarum, also to save expenses, which causes it to often suffer crashes and slowdowns. In this way we can use our own server to host the entire community.

To implement a governance system on our Flarum forum, we will combine community participation, trusted moderators, and future integration of blockchain technology to ensure fair and effective decision-making. Here's how we plan to achieve this:

Governance Moderators:

We will establish a group of Governance Moderators, who will play a key role in overseeing proposals and ensuring that the voting process remains transparent and organized. They will be chosen from active forum users with proven experience and a strong commitment to the ecosystem. Their responsibilities will include:

• Reviewing proposals submitted by the community, ensuring they meet predefined criteria before being put to a vote.
• Moderating discussions to ensure they remain constructive and aligned with Cardano's values.
• Preventing abuse, such as duplicate accounts or fraudulent voting practices.

Criteria for funding proposals:

To ensure that allocated funds are used effectively, we will adopt a policy of only funding projects that have already started. This means that we will not fund ideas or promises that are in early stages, but rather initiatives that have demonstrated tangible progress. In this way, we will not fund promises, we will fund people who have previously worked on that idea and are interested in taking it forward.

Voting System and Cardano Wallet Integration:

In the future, we plan to explore the possibility of integrating a Cardano wallet-based voting system into the forum. This would allow users to link their Cardano wallets to their forum accounts and participate in governance using their wallets for more secure and transparent voting.

Ongoing Accountability:

To ensure continuous accountability, we will implement regular reports and updates on the state of the forum's governance and funding. Governance Moderators will publish the results of votes, updates on funded projects, and provide transparency about how funds are being used.

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

The first key milestone for achieving our goals is to migrate the existing blog and forum from free platforms to a dedicated server under our control. This will give us greater flexibility in managing the community. To begin, we will acquire a hosting server with SSH access, as this is essential for setting up the Flarum platform and the necessary plugins.

Once the server is secured, the blog currently hosted on Blogger will be transferred to WordPress. We will carefully move all content, ensuring no data is lost during the migration process, and customize the website to maintain consistency with the community’s branding. The same process will be applied to the forum, which is currently hosted on a free platform. We will request the export of the forum’s database, set up Flarum on a subdomain of our new server, and import all existing forum data. The successful migration will be validated once both the blog and forum are fully operational and the community can access them without any issues.

After successfully migrating the forum and blog to our own server, the next key milestone is to focus on building a strong foundation of content and expanding the community’s engagement across both the blog and forum. This phase will prioritize the creation of high-quality, educational content and increasing the visibility of our platform to ensure sustained community growth.

Our first objective is to create informative, relevant, and engaging content for the blog, which will cover a range of topics from beginner-friendly introductions to Cardano and blockchain technology. This content will be tailored specifically to Spanish-speaking users, a demographic that often lacks comprehensive resources in their native language. By producing regular articles, tutorials, and updates, we aim to establish the blog as a go-to educational resource within the Spanish-speaking Cardano community.

Simultaneously, we will encourage active participation on the forum by stimulating discussions on key topics related to Cardano. Forum moderators and early adopters will play a key role in generating discussions, posting thought-provoking content, and guiding conversations around governance, community projects, and ecosystem developments.

A crucial aspect of this milestone will be promoting the platform through social media channels. We will develop a strong presence on platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Telegram, where we can share updates on the blog, highlight significant forum discussions, and share content in social Cardano channels. By establishing partnerships with prominent influencers, SPOs, and content creators within the Cardano ecosystem, we will further increase the platform’s reach, encouraging new members to join the community.

Moreover, we will initiate content creation campaigns that invite community members to contribute their own tutorials, articles, and discussions.

By the end of this milestone, we aim to have established a vibrant flow of content on both the blog and forum, with a noticeable increase in user activity and engagement. This will lay the groundwork for the introduction of governance features, ensuring that the community is not only informed but also actively participating in discussions that will shape the future of the platform.

Once we attract activity to the platform, the next step is to introduce governance features that will allow the community to manage part of the forum treasury and make decisions about funding. To start, we will appoint a team of governance moderators from among trusted community members. These moderators will play a crucial role in managing the governance system, reviewing proposals, and ensuring that discussions and voting processes are fair and transparent.

The governance model will allow users to submit their own proposals for community initiatives, with moderators ensuring that only serious and structured proposals make it to the voting stage. As part of this phase, we will also establish two separate treasuries: one for maintaining the forum, and the other for funding small projects initiated by community members. These treasuries will be managed transparently, and updates on how funds are allocated will be shared with the community regularly.

In the future, we aim to explore the possibility of integrating a voting system based on the Cardano wallet, which will allow users to participate in governance directly through their wallets using tools like Atala Prism. While this feature will not be part of the initial launch, it remains a long-term goal to further decentralize and secure the governance process.

After the governance system is established, the final milestone will focus on testing the system and funding initial community-led projects. We will begin by encouraging users to submit proposals for small projects that align with the goals of the forum and the broader Cardano ecosystem. The Governance Moderators will oversee the first rounds of voting, ensuring the process runs smoothly and that the community is engaged in decision-making.

To ensure that the funds are used effectively, we will prioritize proposals from projects that have already demonstrated progress. This way, we can avoid funding speculative ideas and instead support initiatives that have already shown commitment and potential. Community feedback will also be crucial in refining the governance system and ensuring that the process remains transparent and fair.

As part of this milestone, we will track the number of proposals submitted, the projects funded, and overall engagement from the community. This information will be shared with the wider Cardano community, providing full transparency about the impact and success of the governance model.

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

Currently, there are 3 people involved in the project. On the one hand, there are:

Two users:

• Alex: https://foro.comunidadcardano.com/u/Alex
• Shifu: https://foro.comunidadcardano.com/u/Shifu

Me, as the creator of the website:

• Clarity: https://foro.comunidadcardano.com/u/Clarity

Both users have been helping me generate content.

Since they have no knowledge of web pages, all the stories that have been named focused on this will be done by me. For their part, they will continue to contribute their grain of sand in providing more content to the community. In addition, given the trust after being in the community for two years, they will be proposed as possible moderators in the future to lead the change of the community towards a community with decentralized financing.

For my part, I started in Cardano in 2019. 3 years ago, I decided to spread the Cardano ecosystem through websites that could be useful. The first website was elcriptoverso.com, which had a section dedicated to Cardano that received multiple visits, although for a few years now, I have been focused solely and exclusively on the community dedicated to the project.

Given my knowledge of websites, I will be in charge of carrying out the first migration story to a new server and the story of turning our forum into a place to finance projects through governance between users.

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

We value every ADA that is made available to Project Catalyst to fund projects that will benefit Cardano in the short, medium and long term. For our part, we have always been critical of the fact that sometimes that ADA is wasted on useless projects and ideas. That is why we only ask for the minimum funding for our community, as we believe that this amount is enough to fund us in the long term.

We do not want to use that ADA to pay ourselves for spending time and creating content in the community, we do this as a hobby, not for financial gain. All the ADA that is raised will go solely and exclusively to the maintenance of the website, as we have detailed in the proposal. The surplus will go to the treasury fund for funding projects from our community, as we have also detailed above.

The initial costs, including domain, hosting, server acquisition, and migration of the forum and blog, are essential investments. These are critical to moving from free platforms to a dedicated, secure, and scalable infrastructure, which will ultimately allow us to deliver a stable user experience as the community grows. Hosting with SSH access, for example, is a necessity for running and maintaining the Flarum forum software, ensuring we can continue to add features, scale the community, and meet the needs of our users. 

An example of the cost of a monthly hosting:

Annual domain renewal price (cloudflare)

An example of the cost of a wordpress theme:

Wordpress Integration Extension Price in Flarum (neccesary)

Semrush, to perform statistics and measurements (Most basic and cheapest plan)

Add the costs of:

• Organizing contests or raffles: To encourage participation and engagement in the community.
• Funding community projects: As part of the governance model, allocate a portion of the budget to fund projects initiated by community members.
• Paying potential developers in the future to include custom extensions or addons that allow us to adopt our goals to our community
• Other needs that may arise in the short, medium or long term

Therefore, as we have mentioned, the financing will be destined solely and exclusively to the payment of the maintenance, growth and sustainability of the website, with the surplus being destined to the reserve fund for financing.

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

As we have mentioned, all the funds allocated to this proposal will be used exclusively for the maintenance, support, and growth of the community. We derive no economic benefit from this; it is driven by our passion for Cardano. However, we need financing to cover essential costs and allocate surplus funds to a small community treasury, which will ensure that all remaining funds benefit the Cardano ecosystem through community-driven initiatives.

The cost of our project represents significant value for the Cardano ecosystem by providing a sustainable, long-term platform that supports and grows the Spanish-speaking community, an essential but underserved demographic within Cardano. As we say, the budget we have outlined is not only aimed at covering the technical costs of hosting and maintaining the forum and blog but also ensuring that the community can continue to evolve, grow, and become self-sustaining through the implementation of a governance model.

We’ve ensured that the budget is cost-effective, only including plans that provide the necessary resources for the community to run smoothly for years without unnecessary expenses.

Our strategy ensures the efficient use of funds by targeting the community’s long-term sustainability, which in turn contributes to Cardano’s global reach and decentralized mission. We aim not only to cover immediate needs but to future-proof the community, creating a platform that can grow organically while staying true to Cardano’s principles of transparency and inclusivity.

For these reasons, and based on everything we’ve explained above, we request your support for this proposal. For two years, we have nurtured this project altruistically, and we hope you find it valuable enough to help us continue this journey.