Last updated 3 months ago
African Cardano users lose millions to scams yearly due to English-only tools and lack of localized resources, making them vulnerable to phishing, false offers, and unclear security warnings.
TrustCardano AI Co-Pilot is a Swahili Telegram bot that onboards African communities to Cardano, teaches safe staking/voting, detects scams, and maintains engagement via workshops and trainers.
Please provide your proposal title
TrustCardano AI Co-Pilot: Africa Scam-Proof Onboarding
Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA
60000
Please specify how many months you expect your project to last
8
Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated
No
Original Language
en
What is the problem you want to solve?
African Cardano users lose millions to scams yearly due to English-only tools and lack of localized resources, making them vulnerable to phishing, false offers, and unclear security warnings.
Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?
No
Describe any dependencies or write 'No dependencies'
No dependencies
Will your project's outputs be fully open source?
No
Please provide details on the intellectual property (IP) status of your project outputs, including whether they will be released as open source or retained under another licence.
MIT license. All educational materials (curriculum, slides, refusal guides, workshop videos) public from day 1. Basic script (150 lines, API-based) open for adaptation; no custom dev.
Please choose the most relevant theme and tag related to the outcomes of your proposal
Education
Who you’re targeting, how you’ll reach them, and why this matters for Cardano?
**Who we are targeting: **
**How we will reach them: **
We will engage African Cardano users and community builders through multiple channels to ensure onboarding, education, and long-term engagement:
**Why this matters for Cardano: **
Provide a list of key activities of your project:
Key Activities of our projects are
Deploy the TrustCardano AI Co-Pilot Telegram Bot: Guide users in Swahili through safe onboarding, staking, voting, and scam detection, with ongoing support.
Online Workshops & Webinars: Host interactive, hands-on sessions via Zoom or other online platforms, targeting African colleges and university hubs. Teach practical Cardano skills wallets, staking, voting and foster community trust through live demos and Q&A.
Train-the-Trainer Program: Empower 20+ local educators/community leaders African educators and community leaders through virtual sessions to scale onboarding and maintain and sustain community and local hubs.
Community Engagement via Social Media & Telegram Groups: Share updates, host discussions, answer questions, and maintain engagement with African Cardano users.
Ongoing Bot Engagement: Provide continuous updates, Q&A, and guidance through the Telegram bot to keep users informed and safe.
Feedback & Surveys: Collect online feedback from bot users and workshop participants to improve onboarding materials and user experience.
Educational Content Distribution/ Curriculum: Share Swahili-language guides, videos, and tutorials online via GitHub, Google Drive, or Telegram channels.
Virtual Hackathons / Challenge Events: Encourage users to practice what they’ve learned, create mini-projects, and deepen engagement safely online.
Rationale for Key Activities:
Deploy the TrustCardano AI Co-Pilot Telegram Bot: The bot provides accessible, Swahili-language guidance for African users, addressing the gap caused by English-only tools. It ensures safe onboarding, staking, voting, and scam detection, giving users ongoing support and reducing vulnerability to scams.
Online Workshops & Webinars: Interactive sessions via Zoom or other platforms allow us to reach users across Africa without physical constraints. Workshops teach practical Cardano skills and build trust and confidence in using the network, fostering active participation in staking, voting, and governance.
Train-the-Trainer Program: Training 20+ local educators and community leaders scales the project’s impact, ensuring sustainable adoption. Local trainers maintain engagement, support new users, and help grow self-sustaining African Cardano communities.
Community Engagement via Social Media & Telegram Groups: Regular updates, discussions, and Q&A keep the community informed, connected, and active, creating a vibrant ecosystem and encouraging peer-to-peer learning and collaboration.
Ongoing Bot Engagement: Continuous guidance through the bot reinforces learning, keeps users safe from scams, and ensures that community engagement is maintained over time, not just during initial onboarding.
Feedback & Surveys: Collecting user feedback ensures continuous improvement of the bot, workshops, and educational content, making the solution more effective and aligned with user needs.
Educational Content Distribution / Curriculum: Sharing Swahili-language guides, videos, and tutorials online extends access to learning materials, allowing users to learn at their own pace and supporting widespread adoption across African communities.
Virtual Hackathons / Challenge Events: These events reinforce skills learned during onboarding and workshops, encourage practical application, and deepen engagement while fostering community creativity and collaboration safely online.
What are your success metrics?
1,100+ new wallets created through the Telegram bot, demonstrating practical onboarding success.
100+ users completing safe staking and voting tutorials, showing adoption of core Cardano functionalities.
Active bot usage: 1000+ registered users
20+ community trainers educated via virtual Train-the-Trainer sessions to maintain local hubs and expand reach.
10+ African university/college hubs engaged online, measured by active workshop participation and follow-up Telegram activity.
3, Educational Content & Impact
100% Swahili curriculum completion and validation via focus groups.
Documentation & open-source contribution: All materials uploaded to GitHub, enabling reuse and transparency.
Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem
African Cardano users, especially in emerging markets, often struggle to participate safely and effectively because most existing educational tools are English-only, fragmented, or technically complex. Many users lose ADA to scams or fall prey to misleading offers because they cannot fully understand security warnings or official documentation. This creates a significant barrier to adoption, governance participation, and trust in the Cardano ecosystem. Additionally, there is currently no centralized, localized, and interactive system to guide users safely while keeping them engaged in the community long-term.
To address these gaps, we are building TrustCardano AI Co-Pilot, a Swahili-language Telegram bot designed to provide interactive, guided onboarding for African users. Telegram was chosen because it is widely used across Africa, accessible on low-bandwidth networks, and allows both real-time interaction and asynchronous learning, making it ideal for a geographically distributed audience. Unlike a static group, the bot provides personalized, AI-assisted guidance, answers questions on-demand, and actively detects scams or harmful prompts, offering a safe and engaging learning environment that scales without requiring a human moderator for every interaction.
The AI component is integrated to ensure that interactions are adaptive and context-aware, giving users relevant instructions based on their progress. Users are guided step-by-step through wallet setup, staking delegation, voting, and governance participation. The bot is designed with open-source APIs and a simple script that can be iteratively improved based on user feedback, making it lightweight, adaptable, and transparent. By using AI, the bot can respond to multiple users simultaneously, reduce repetitive questions, and maintain consistent educational quality.
Building the bot will involve customizing an existing open-source Telegram framework, translating all content into Swahili, integrating wallet and voting guidance, and adding ethical AI safety checks to detect scam patterns or unsafe commands. Regular updates and improvements will be informed by user feedback collected via surveys, in-bot prompts, and workshop interactions.
Promotion will focus on online engagement channels, including social media campaigns, collaborations with university clubs, influencer partnerships in African crypto communities, and leveraging Telegram itself to encourage word-of-mouth adoption. Community workshops and webinars will complement the bot by providing hands-on, live learning opportunities for new users and trainers.
Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community
The project will directly onboard 1,000+ African users safely, guiding them through wallet setup, staking, voting, and governance participation. By providing Swahili-language guidance and ethical AI-based scam detection, it reduces ADA losses, protects users from fraudulent schemes, and builds trust in the Cardano ecosystem.
Beyond individual users, the project fosters self-sustaining local communities through virtual workshops, webinars, and a train-the-trainer program, empowering 20+ educators and community leaders to scale onboarding and maintain active hubs. This creates a long-term network effect, where trained users help others, increasing adoption and governance participation organically across Africa.
The AI bot ensures continuous engagement, providing ongoing guidance, Q&A support, and updates, keeping users informed and connected to the community. Online content distribution of Swahili-language guides, videos, and tutorials further amplifies reach, allowing thousands more to learn safely at their own pace.
Additionally, virtual hackathons and challenge events promote practical learning, encourage user creativity, and deepen engagement, building a vibrant, skilled, and active Cardano community. Overall, the initiative strengthens the African Cardano ecosystem and increases on-chain activity.
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 combines expertise in AI, community engagement, localization, and technical implementation, giving us the capability to deliver this project with high trust and accountability. I, Emrakeb Ermias, lead the project with 2+ years of experience in AI ethics and community-driven initiatives, ensuring that all activities align with ethical standards, Cardano ecosystem goals, and user safety. While Dawit Melka strengthens quality assurance, content integration, and feedback management to maintain high operational standards.
We will validate our approach through measurable milestones and iterative feedback loops:
Pilot Workshop (Month 1–2): Test curriculum and bot with 50 participants to gather usability and comprehension feedback.
Bot Engagement Metrics: Track interactions, completion of onboarding steps, and engagement rates to assess effectiveness.
Focus Groups & Surveys: Conduct virtual feedback sessions with users and trainers to measure clarity, accessibility, and trust.
Continuous Improvement: Adjust materials, bot responses, and workshop approaches based on collected data before wider rollout.
Reporting & Transparency: Maintain public GitHub repository with all curriculum materials, scripts, and logs for independent verification.
Milestone Title
Curriculum & AI Bot Content Framework Development
Milestone Outputs
The first milestone will consist of developing a structured Cardano educational curriculum tailored for the African context, focusing on safe wallet setup, staking, governance participation, scam awareness, and decentralized security fundamentals. This curriculum will be translated into structured AI bot dialogue flow, lesson modules for workshops, and content for trainer guides. It includes curriculum mapping, user onboarding flow design, and pre-testing modules. We will collaborate with experienced Cardano educators, AI ethics experts, and regional trainers to ensure inclusivity, clarity, and accuracy. The content will be adapted to mobile learning formats and written in simple language suitable for beginner-level audiences, emphasizing step-by-step guidance and real-world safety use cases. Alongside the written curriculum, we will also create internal bot logic flow diagrams showing how the AI responds to different user queries.
Acceptance Criteria
Full curriculum draft completed (English version)
Translatable lesson materials created (workshops + bot content)
AI dialog decision tree completed
Reviewed by 2 Cardano experts and 2 African educators
Ready for Swahili translation
Evidence of Completion
Curriculum document PDF
Bot architecture diagram
Feedback reports from expert reviewers
Sign-off memo
Delivery Month
2
Cost
12000
Progress
20 %
Milestone Title
Swahili Localization & Community Validation
Milestone Outputs
Translate all curriculum, bot content, and onboarding materials into Swahili, ensuring cultural accuracy and regional relevance. Conduct online focus group validation sessions with 10 target users to test clarity and usability.
Acceptance Criteria
Evidence of Completion
Delivery Month
4
Cost
18000
Progress
50 %
Milestone Title
AI Bot Deployment & Online Workshops Launch
Milestone Outputs
Deploy functional TrustCardano Co-Pilot Telegram bot that is on public beta and host three live online workshops among University and collage students. Integrate basic scam detection and onboarding flows.
Acceptance Criteria
Evidence of Completion
Delivery Month
6
Cost
18000
Progress
80 %
Milestone Title
Train-the-Trainer Program & Impact Expansion
Milestone Outputs
Train more than 20+ African educators and/or community leads through online and virtual program to help sustain and grow adoption and community and launch Telegram community group monitoring bot users.
Acceptance Criteria
Evidence of Completion
Delivery Month
8
Cost
12000
Progress
100 %
Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources
Milestone 1 – Curriculum & AI Bot Content Framework Development
Budget Allocation: 20% → 12,000 ADA
Breakdown:
Milestone 2 – Swahili Localization & Community Validation
Budget Allocation: 30% → 18,000 ADA
Breakdown:
Milestone 3 – AI Bot Deployment & Online Workshops Launch
Budget Allocation: 30% → 18,000 ADA
Breakdown:
Milestone 4 – Train-the-Trainer Program & Impact Expansion
Budget Allocation: 20% → 12,000 ADA
Breakdown:
Total Budget = 60,000 ADA
How does the cost of the project represent value for the Cardano ecosystem?
The 60,000 ADA investment in TrustCardano AI Co-Pilot delivers exceptional value by combining direct user onboarding, community building, and long-term ecosystem growth at a highly efficient cost per impact metric. With a target of 1,000+ African users onboarded safely, the project ensures that every ₳50 spent results in secure wallet creation, staking participation, and governance engagement, reducing ADA losses from scams and FUD.
Beyond individual impact, the project trains 20+ educators and community leaders, creating a self-sustaining network of local hubs that will continue onboarding new users long after the initial delivery. This means the investment is multiplicative, as trained trainers and engaged users propagate knowledge and safe practices across their communities.
The combination of an AI-powered Telegram bot and online workshops ensures continuous, low-cost engagement, allowing thousands of users to access learning and support without the need for expensive physical events or travel. Swahili localization further increases accessibility and adoption, maximizing the reach and relevance of every ADA spent.
The project also delivers fully open-source materials curriculum, scripts, guides, and tutorials that can be reused, adapted, and scaled across Africa and globally, providing long-term value far beyond the initial funding. By integrating measurable outcomes such as wallets created, staking delegated, and governance votes cast, the project offers quantifiable returns on investment, making it highly efficient and impactful for the Cardano ecosystem.
In short, this proposal ensures direct results, sustainable community growth, measurable impact, and reusable educational resources, maximizing the ecosystem’s return on every ADA spent.
I confirm that the proposal is a non-technical initiative, with ≤20% of the budget for tech support.
Yes
I confirm that the proposal provides verifiable evidence (portfolio, links, reports) of the team's ability to deliver the project.
Yes
I confirm that the proposer and all team members are in good standing with prior Catalyst projects.
Yes
I confirm that the proposal includes clear objectives with both Output Metrics (what proposal did) and Adoption-Focused Metrics (what effect proposal had).
Yes
I confirm that the proposal clearly explains the user journey and provides a credible plan for how the project will equip and motivate users for future on-chain activity.
Yes
I confirm that the initiative clearly demonstrates how it will grow the Cardano ecosystem or onboard users.
Yes
I confirm that the project plan and timeline (≤ 12 months) are realistic and well-defined.
Yes
I confirm that the proposal commits to public outputs and justifies any exceptions.
Yes
I confirm that the budget adheres to all policies: it is for future work, follows the merchandise rule, and excludes establishing local treasuries, incentives/giveaways, re-grants.
Yes
I Agree
Yes
1, Emrakeb Ermias
Project Lead & Community and Ethics Coordinator
Lead overall project strategy, oversee curriculum and workshops, coordinate community outreach, ensure AI ethics compliance, track KPIs, and handle reporting. Responsible for aligning all activities with Cardano ecosystem growth and user safety.
Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/emrakeb-ermias-61375721b/
2, Dawit Melka
AI & Bot Specialist / Content Integration Lead
Develop and maintain the Telegram bot, integrate AI-driven onboarding guidance, scam detection, and adaptive learning features. Ensure all AI outputs are aligned with Swahili content and culturally relevant examples. Support curriculum integration and technical aspects of online workshops.
Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawit-melka/?originalSubdomain=et
GitHub- https://github.com/dawit-melka
3, Bereket Legesse-
Bot Deployment & Backend Engineer
Deploy/test/maintain Telegram bot infrastructure, integrate content, backend maintenance