Dev Journey into DID/SSI* Paradigm

*DID = Decentralized Identity, SSI = Self Sovereign Identity

Cardano has developed great learning programs such as the Atala Prism Pioneer program, what we seek through this proposal is to expose and educate about the building blocks behind this amazing technology in such a way that will ease the onboarding process of local developers into this new paradigm. 

Context: 

Currently the solutions that we have for managing our identity and access are very centralized. Over the past few years we have seen a lot of progress transitioning away from centralized models towards a federated model. The problem of ownership still remains in these federated models. There are now big players such as Facebook, or Google that have adopted the latest version of federated ID management such that they end up owning your identity, or at least the part of your identity you choose to share. These sites then act as an intermediary between you and other sites, they are representing your identity on your behalf. Think about when you go to a website and it offers options such as: "Login with Google" or "Login with Facebook"--sound familiar? 

The uprising solution, in this case decentralized identity, is bringing a huge paradigm shift to the way that we architect identity and access management (IAM) systems today. This shift is so deep and groundbreaking to developers in the African context who might not even be aware of these options. There is an urgent need to train local developers in Africa, starting in Cameroon, not only on the theoretical concepts of decentralized ID but also to mentor them through the implementation of such models with real examples fit for their context. 

Overview:

We are developing a curriculum for training in Haskell and Plutus, and with this proposal we seek funding to also expand those courses to incorporate DID and Atala Prism SDK. Our approach is to teach using project based learning techniques. See our specific projects that we will be working through alongside this specific training. 

Main proposal for Plutus and Haskell training program: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Spread-Plutus-through-Africa/381332-48088 

Affiliated Projects: Specific projects to guide our learning (project based learning) and additional outreach initiatives

• Nation Building Dapps: Lost |&| Found https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Lost-Found/383626-48088
• Boosting Cardano's DeFi: Djangui: Local Savings Account Mgmt https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Djangui-Local-Savings-Account-Mgmt/383394-48088
• DAOs Cardano: Bees Delivery DAO https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Bees-Delivery-DAO/383418-48088
• Mini/Low-Budget Dapps & Integrations: Small Change Wallet https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Small-Change-Wallet/382218-48088
• Accelerate decentralised identity: Dev. Journey into DID Paradigm https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Dev-Journey-into-DID-Paradigm/383664-48088 (Need transition and better wording)
• Community Events: DLT adoption via clubs+hackathons https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/DLT-adoption-via-clubs+hackathons/381318-48088
• Seeding Cardano's Grassroots DeFi: 300 Plutus Trained Women by 2025 https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/300-Plutus-Women-by-2025/385111-48088
• Improve and Grow Auditability: Auditability through film and media https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Auditability-through-film-and-media/385141-48088
• Multilingual Resources: Scale-UP Wada's Translation FRENCH+ https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Scale-UP-Wada-s-Translation-FRENCH+/381310-48088

On the practical level, each of these projects explicitly include some notion of Identity and Access Management, and the DID solution to each of them will serve as a basis for training and teaching developers about Atala Prism. On the theoretical level, these projects will provide explicit examples for the developers in training to grasp the concepts in a more complete way. 

Feasibility:

Reference (Past Successes):

Wada has been successfully organizing monthly meet-ups across our hubs, spreading awareness and introductory education on Cardano, Project Catalyst, and Blockchain technology as a whole. We have already established active hubs in: Ivory Coast (French), Ghana (English), Nigeria (English), Cameroon (French & English) and Democratic Republic of Congo (French) that have been participating in these programs.

General curriculum outline:

1. Introduction to cryptography (basic cryptography techniques, hash functions, encryption, digital signatures, verifiable data structure)
2. Introduction to Blockchain technology and decentralization
3. The 3 Digital identity models (centralized, federated, decentralized)
4. Building blocks of DID (verifiable credentials; issuer, holder, and verifier triangle; digital wallet; digital Agents; DIDs; Blockchain registries and other verifiable registries; governance frameworks)
5. DID architecture (identifier and public keys, secure communication and interfaces, credentials, governance frameworks)
6. Decentralized Identifiers (Conceptual level, Functional level, Architectural level, Semantic level, DIDs vs PKIs)
7. Atala Prism SDK as an implementation example (We will leverage the Atala Prism Pioneer Program content but make chunks of information that are smaller, and more manageable for learners to access)

Core Team & Roles:

Wada HubTrainers & Coordination:

• Manfo: Cameroon Team Co-Lead, Senior software architect & developer, 12+ year of experience programming, 3+ years in functional programming paradigm (F#, Haskell, Elm), Multilingual (French, English, Italian, Ngiembo)
• Nkalla: Senior software architect & developer, 12+ year of experience programming, 3+ years in functional programming paradigm (Haskell), Mathematics teacher (Education Systems Engineering), Multilingual (French, Italian, English, Mbo)
• Arcel: Senior Software developer in Closure 7 + years experience, Project manager, Multilingual (French, English)
• Megan: Cameroon Team Co-Lead, Central Africa Coordination Lead, Wada core team member (Education and Event Lead), Math & Physics teacher, bilingual (French & English)

Budget (12 months):

• Resources (books, subject matter experts guest speaker motivations): $2 000
• Marketing: $2 000
• Trainers (x3) motivations: $8 000

 Auditability:

What success looks like: 

Up-Scale Wada devs--A pool of software developers that are capable of programming within the DID/SSI paradigm, who are able to integrate Atala Prism into their applications in a concrete way. With this level of onboarding into DID/SSI paradigm Wada will have within its network a solid base of developers who can implement a wide variety of solutions for all types of problems, specifically emphasizing decentralized identity.

• 3 months - curriculum finalized, at least 10 future devs pre-enrolled in program, 20 community members attending monthly meet-ups discussing identity

• 6 months - 30 devs selected to program, 

• 12 months - 30 Wada devs fully trained to implement DID/SSI

KPIs:

• Number of devs enrolled in DID/SSI program
• Number of videos created
• Views on videos 
• Number of devs who complete the course, and get Wada certification