ALDEA, the Latin American DAO, has been serving the community since its conception, aligned with its mission to enable change in Latin America by creating an ecosystem that will allow people to come together to communicate, self-govern, produce and trade as a Decentralized and Autonomous Community, with no third parties and with no central entities that may exercise any type of censorship in these interactions.

ALDEA needs some help to keep serving the community in a self-sustainable way!

2021 set the beginning of a journey towards bringing the Cardano blockchain processes and tools to the Latin American communities.

We started creating a community from scratch: a forum for regional SPOs, bringing the community together on different channels and gatherings. An example of such a collaboration is the ALDEA Wiki project, which provides incentivized ways for participants to learn, teach and collaborate with the Cardano community as a whole. This all comes together beautifully, truly building up towards ALDEA's mission: https://www.aldea-dao.org/about-eng.html of enabling change in the region by providing tools to communicate, self-govern, produce and trade.

After months of hard work, ALDEA was able to build not only the community, but also identify the mechanisms by which the DAO will be defined, through what is called "Iteration 0": https://iteracion0.aldea-dao.org/v/en

That's the name of the first iteration ALDEA is running, together with the community. During this iteration, which is still not automated or on-chain, ALDEA is learning how all of these interactions will be defined, to later on be formalized in a peer-reviewed whitepaper to finally be implemented.

As a way to kickstart the DAO treasure, the first idea was to put up an NFT sale. ALDEA Core Team has a great designer who put together a series of limited edition designer-level NFTs, representing the flags of the community (participating countries): https://nft.aldea-dao.org

The idea behind this sale was to gather funds to build up the treasure, but definitely not just that! The fact of participating in this NFT sale will grant governance tokens for the buyers once this is in place!

This treasure would be mostly used to fund proposals sent out by the community, "à la Project Catalyst" and in alignment with our mission. At the very same time, and aligned with Cardano's mission, we're building the community's knowledge in the whole Cardano ecosystem:

Having iterations, fuelled by the treasure and driven by proposals sent by the community
Having Leaders from the community that will lead these proposals
Having Community Advisors, trained for their role and already working as such
Bringing SPOs to the mix, coaching them in the process and adding an extra level of confidence in the whole iteration
Having several channels where the community can get together to communicate, including live conversations on Fridays to talk about what's going on in ALDEA specifically and Cardano as a whole

We came a long way. The numbers speak for themselves:

22 SPOs signed up for Iteration 0 - and 24 total, 2 came to ALDEA after the SPO registration closed for Iteration 0: https://adafolio.com/portfolio/b8e11970-b9f3-11eb-8c63-0242c0a86003
An active community on Telegram: https://fogon.aldea-dao.org of more than 200 people and 410 on Discord: https://discord.aldea-dao.org
Iteration 0 boasts a treasure of more than 7,800 ADA
Meetings on Fridays are having increasingly more attendants
Started to bring Brasil to the community as well!
...and more!

These accomplishments took long hours of dedication and hard work, and we realize there is MUCH MORE WORK to be done!

In order to take ALDEA to the next level, we have a dream… but more importantly, we have a plan: ALDEA will be self-sustainable by H2 2022! Help us make this dream come true!

Solution to the problem

ALDEA created a site to put through the NFT sale. While functional, this solution is not scalable or self-sustainable.

Introducing: ALDEA NFT Marketplace!

Take this concept and scale it up to take advantage of the power of the community, the power of the DAO and the power of the platform!

This new Marketplace model will allow for simple but extremely powerful interactions:

NFT Minting: a seller is able to connect their wallet and mint an NFT from an image

NFT Publishing: the NFT will be published after content moderation (to avoid unwanted images being published). This NFT can be either freshly minted on the platform or pre-existent in the user's wallet

Improved UX/UI: for all this to take place, the browsing experience and the overall UX/UI need to be revamped, with search and filter capabilities added

Glass Box Treasure: public status of the treasure for increased transparency

Buy NFTs: this interaction means:

Seller: will receive a percentage of the sale

Treasure: part of the sale will go to the ALDEA DAO Treasure

ALDEA NFT Marketplace fee: a small part of it will be used for platform support and investment

Partners

ALDEA NFT is powered by Tango Crypto API Services, a Project Catalyst Fund6 Winner proposal and part of our community.

Use cases

ALDEA NFT Marketplace can be used to power up a wide range of activities like:

Buy NFTs
Sell NFTs
Create NFTs
List your own

The Team

Tech Lead + Senior Backend Developer: Matías Falcone.

Professional with 10+ years of experience in IT development and production support in the Banking Industry. Experience in start-ups and larger technology companies. Falcon Cardano Stakepool Operator and ALDEA Core Team Member.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/Matias-Falcone

Senior Front-End Developer + Designer: Mauro Falcone.

Professional with over 8 years of experience in software development. Advanced experience in JavaScript, ReactJS, CSS, HTML, NextJS and Responsive Web Design. ALDEA Core Team Member.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mauro-hernan-falcone

Product Manager: Esteban Ramallo.

Product Wizard with 15+ years of experience in IT and digital transformation. Global Product Lead of 50+ people worldwide. ALDEA Core Team Member. Passionate problem solver.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eramallo

Technical Information

ALDEA NFT is being built using the following technologies and frameworks:

Next.js
TypeScript
React
Node.js
MongoDB
Cardano Smart Contracts

Roadmap

First month:

Wallet integration (Nami and more)
Revamp UX/UI
NFT Mint
Search & Filters

Second month:

Smart Contracts Development
Front-End Interaction with Smart Contracts
Creating your own NFTs
Publishing your own NFTs

Third month:

Smart Contracts Testing
Smart Contracts Audit
Smart Contracts Deployment

KPIs

We will measure the success of our platform by the following metrics:

Number of transactions generated within our platform (this metric directly impacts the "Will we see an increase in transactions processed (blocks minted) in Latin America?" challenge metric)
Number of different wallets interacting with our platform.
Number of different collections published using our platform (this metric is related to "Did we attract new members of the community from Latin American countries?" challenge metric since the collections can be published by any member of our community).
Monthly Platform Traffic

Marketing

All the marketing of ALDEA NFT Marketplace will be strategically managed. This efforts are being carried out on a separate proposal that will help us with communication and awareness within the Cardano community, not only in Latin America but globally: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Grow-ALDEA-Grow-Latin-America/383175-48088

Budget

We'll need the following roles for 3 months:

1 Tech Lead + Senior Backend Developer - Full Time: USD 3.800/monthly

1 Senior Front-End Developer + Designer - Full Time: USD 3.000/monthly
1 Product Manager - Part Time: USD 3.500/monthly
Tech Lead for 3 months - Full Time: USD 11.400

Front-End for 3 months - Full Time: USD 9.000
Product Manager for 3 months - Part Time: USD 5.250
Total funds for roles: USD 25.650

In addition to this, we will need additional USD 1.200 to deploy the necessary infrastructure to provide a good and reliable service.

Completed outcome

Download report

Monthly report

October 24, 2022 Progress report

Status:

On track: No

Estimated completion date: -

Evidence

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nVKkxrSQ1wQRancO5ylo5t1cbYLIg3O5 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aiGXrXbN9xtb1211WzvBk1JWIIaRzRf0 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kXaWKf0A0BFS9Ok4DDgZ0Kg5aGtjmHGj https://drive.google.com/open?id=1W0Em37m1IzSIiXK5McDSmpDNdyH-UtLS https://drive.google.com/open?id=1s4qwk-VM4Idm1vDjCqvuykWiR6yute33

Summary

- Changes to improve the UX of the Marketplace - We have updated all code to leave it ready to our next Phase which is the public Testnet for ALDEA users

September 24, 2022 Progress report

Status:

On track: No

Estimated completion date: -

Evidence

https://drive.google.com/open?id=15GzMT9kBvO0buaAMZvhJ6q0CGZHIA-yj https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PE2v6BXpABzAxHoq7NM0e_exkFxXJF9l https://drive.google.com/open?id=12FDN7RGucLM1M4nonxxC_NZ8GCnOj_lf https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ahF_1f4uddxxadH7_a4FGhNslOvToE5J https://drive.google.com/open?id=1X0zdWJGgTUDxaSGK7_5lt49Glskpbvno

Summary

During this month, we have performed the following tasks: BACKEND - All code was updated to Plutus v2 - We added the use of Plutonomy, to compile the contract code in a more efficient and fast way, also so that the contracts utilizes less resources in the node - We developed a tool to deploy the contract and all the files that are needed FRONTEND - We added the functionality to get the metadata of the tokens that are on sale (reading the minting tx and the metadata there) - We removed the cardano-serialization-lib and replaced it with lucid, which has an updated version to go with the Vasil era, add contracts and minting v2 policies and uses contracts and datums by reference - Nextjs version was updated

August 25, 2022 Progress report

Status:

On track: No

Estimated completion date: -

July 25, 2022 Progress report

Status:

On track: No

Estimated completion date: -

June 27, 2022 Progress report

Status:

On track: No

Estimated completion date: 12/31/2022

Evidence

https://drive.google.com/open?id=15kFjnPY3lnauwo1ZpkWjPepDXinudIRM

Summary

We have launched the MVP phase with participation from the community. You can mint an NFT with a piece of art of your own or you can share the NFT you already own with the community and agree on a price for trading. We have received more than 20 applications for the community to participate. The MVP has a theme selected by the community: Nature, Animals and Ecology in Latin America.

May 24, 2022 Progress report

Status:

On track: No

Estimated completion date: 12/31/2022

May 8, 2022 Progress report

Status:

On track: No

Estimated completion date: 12/31/2022

April 22, 2022 Progress report

Status:

On track: No

Estimated completion date: 12/31/2022

March 21, 2022 Progress report

Status:

On track: No

Estimated completion date: 12/31/2022

Summary

In order to make sure the strategy and business plan will hold water as we think it would (based on past experience during Iteration 0), our first next steps are to validate our hypotheses in a lean way. Fail-fast! In an inexpensive, straight-forward way, we will validate if the market for NFT sale within the community is fertile, as well as the buy market. This will all be driven by the marketing and communications pillar (not part of this proposal) which will also be validated during this first phase. Through our new marketing pillar, communications will be sent out to grant community members with the possibility of publishing thematic NFTs on the ALDEA NFT Marketplace for free, on a first come, first served basis. The ADA value will have a pre-defined maximum value, but each NFT value will be set by the sellers themselves. These NFTs will be manually published within the existing ALDEA NFT site, and again through marketing, the sale will happen on a specified date / time, granting both buyer and seller with governance tokens*. The success of this experiment will be determined by the time in which the NFTs are sold. (*) Governance tokens will not be provided as part of this endeavour and will be air-dropped at a later time.