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More background on the problem:

Marginalized people in developing nations may own land but they lack financial capital. They cannot use their property as loan collateral or as the basis of bank account applications and credit scores because they do not have reliable title deeds that prove their ownership. It is estimated that up to 1 billion legitimate land owners around the world do not hold legal title documentation for their own property.

The cost of acquiring this documentation is a serious barrier to entry into a secure financial system. The process is also fraught with missteps due to mismanaged or compromised registry systems. For example, a single plot of land may be registered to several different names and sold to different people behind the true owner's back.

While there have been some blockchain-based land registry research projects in the Global North, they have failed to gain traction in the real world because those jurisdictions have fairly reliable systems that are good enough. Not so in the Global South where the appetite for alternatives to broken or compromised systems is much greater. We believe that the barrier to success for a truly break-through project is ensuring that any blockchain-based document notarization is synced with real-world legacy systems. This is to ensure that these transactions are fully legally-binding for physical enforcement and admissibility as evidence in court proceedings.

Our vision:

The goal of Landano is to make land title registration as simple, cost-effective, and reliable as possible for those who need it most. This will enable new economic opportunities like credit financing, rental income, and DeFi. It will also nurture pride of ownership and a sense of psychological and physical security.

Trustworthy land ownership records are a foundational layer for peaceful nation building. It's not Landano's intention to replace legacy registry systems where those are already functioning well. Our number one goal is to remove barriers into the legitimate financial world for marginalized people.

However, if it turns out that the Landano system proves to be a better alternative to mismanaged or out-of-date land registry systems then, of course, we'd be happy to explore how this decentralized, Cardano-native solution might be adopted by governments as their official land-registry platform.

The Landano Nation Building Dapp solution:

1. Landano is in the process of tokenizing an Open Street map layer for Accra, Ghana and its surroundings. We are syncing it with the official government cadastre maps. We will use NFT technology to ensure that there is only ever one Landano registry token per legal title.
2. All Landano documents and processes will be made legally-binding from the very first day that our security-audited Dapp goes live on Cardano mainnet. This will be accomplished by working with local lawyers and government officials that deal with land registry procedures on a daily basis.
3. Landano has a community ambassador team member who is based in Accra, Ghana. He is supported by the local chapter of the Wada alliance ( https://wadalliance.org ). They will coordinate with government officials, legal professionals, and enlist legitimate property owners to pilot test the Landano solution. Nana Safo and Wada will gather grass-roots requirements and relevant issues from our local stakeholders (land owners, renters, squatters, ancestral chiefs, real estate developers, government officials, etc.). This information will inform Landano product design and ensure that we meet our own high standards for ethical technological change. We want to avoid replacing one elite with a new one.
4. Property owners will only ever interact with a simple-to-use smartphone Dapp which verifies their true identity using an Atala Prism DID integration. There is significant smartphone ownership in Ghana which make this is a viable entry point. Landano Dapp users do not have to know anything about blockchain technology or NFTs if that is not of interest to them. However, we do have experienced blockchain educators on the team who will educate interested Accra, Ghana participants in the fundamentals of the Cardano technology which underpins the Landano solution.
5. Landano will address the often-unspoken "blockchain notarization" problem by adopting the Orcfax trustworthy, decentralized record-keeping solution (Catalyst Fund 6). Orcfax enables authentic, IPFS-based audit trails secured by its "proof-of-fact" Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) design. This ensures that all the necessary off-chain documentation is reliably archived and accessible to support this complex business process. Our goal is to make Landano the world's first fully-decentralized, cryptographically-secured "proof-of-title" solution.
6. Landano has begun discussions with Empowa ( https://empowa.io ) to explore how our tools and processes can be combined to provide a user-friendly one-stop shop for real estate developers looking to register and sub-divide titles and enable decentralised Empowa funding.
7. Our software and documentation will be released under free and open source software license so that Landano power-users and other developers working on similar solutions may freely study, improve, and redistribute our core components to meet their objectives.
8. Landano will be launched as a self-sustaining Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). The Landano DAO will subsidize the cost of legal fees and further development via an initial treasury endowment that is supplemented through ADA staking rewards and transaction fees paid with the utility Landano token.

Sounds great but...

We are aware that these may sound like audacious goals. There are many entrenched political and cultural powers that will be working against our objectives. However, everyone on our team is united by the core philosophy that "Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu" -- "a person is a person through other people." We are all connected as one global family and one person can only grow and progress through the growth and progression of all of us.

The Landano mission is aimed squarely at the United Nations' #1 Sustainable Development Goal which is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. By empowering our brothers and sisters in the Global South to leverage the equity they hold in their land, we are giving them a real fighting chance to take the next step up to increased prosperity and security.

We will be posting a FAQ to our website shortly to address the tough questions about our solution in more detail, as well as identify honestly where we don't have a good answer yet and need help from our community to arrive at one.

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Core team:

Nana Safo Community Ambassador (Accra, Ghana)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nana-kwadwo-safo-30114517a/

Nana is the University Ambassador for Wada and the Blockchain Education Network (BEN) in Accra, Ghana. Amongst his responsibilities are delivering workshops to explain Cardano blockchain technology to newcomers. His presentations are grounded in a deep knowledge of Ghanian history and culture for which he is an eloquent advocate.

Nana has witnessed first-hand the tragic and sometimes violent effects of expensive, mismanaged, and corruptible land registry processes in Ghana. He is optimistic that Landano provides a significant step towards a more equitable and accessible alternative.

Peter Van Garderen Lead developer.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/petervangarderen/

Peter is a professional archivist and a world-renowned expert in the field of digital records management. He is the founder of the industry-leading Archivematica and AccessToMemory open-source software projects which are used by institutions worldwide to preserve and provide access to digital archives collections. Peter is also the lead developer of the Catalyst Fund 6 project Orcfax which is developing a truly trustworthy Cardano oracle using "proofs-of-fact" based on academic record-keeping research. Peter will introduce the Orcfax decentralized record-keeping components as a foundational layer for the Landano infrastructure.

Peter worked on several international development projects early in his career and was inspired when the economist Heranando De Soto's book "The Mystery of Capitalism" began to be circulated and debated in these circles. He has thought often about its core thesis since then; the idea that impoverished people remain so largely because they can't register the title on their legally-owned property. This documentation problem is tailor-made for an archives-based solution which Peter is highly qualified and keen to deliver via the Landano project.

Dorus van der Kroft Lead developer.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dorus/

Dorus is a full stack developer with over twenty years of industry experience delivering projects from start to finish for both start-ups and large enterprises. His broad set of technical skills spans from coding to technical design, to functional design and requirements analysis. He's also received training in the fields of testing and deployment. Dorus is an expert consultant for the Mendix "low code" platform and he is looking forward to implementing this agile development tool to deliver the Landano mobile app MVP.

Dorus was based in Ghana for a year during his early years in software development. It was then when he saw first-hand the atrocities of a non-functional land registry system. He is looking forward to putting forward his knowledge and experience to bring prosperity to the unbanked.

Dr. Shadrack Katuu Expert Advisor & Researcher. (Nairobi, Kenya)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/skatuu/

Dr. Katuu has over two decades experience working as a digital records management expert throughout the world and the African continent. This includes several agencies within the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations. Dr. Katuu is a much sought after consultant and published author in the field of electronic record-keeping. He is based out of Nairobi, Kenya which is widely recognized as the African hub for fintech and mobile money initiatives. Dr. Katuu will be researching and providing guidance on the findings of the Ghana pilot and comparing it to issues and opportunities for the Landano solution in the Kenyan context.

Derek Drew Expert Advisor & Researcher (Aurora, Illinois)

Derek has significant experience working with local governments in the state of Illinois as a community innovator, municipalism advocate, and blockchain evangelist. He holds a Graduate Degree in Communications from Illinois State University. His Chicago-based startup Plasia is seeking to empower the local African-American community via communal ownership initiatives. Derek's own family has been affected by an arcane legal loophole called "heir's property" that has resulted in wealthy developers taking ownership of land that otherwise belongs to descendants of freed American slaves. Derek will be researching how the findings of the Ghana pilot can inform a Landano based solution to this rampant problem in his home state of Illinois and then elsewhere in the U.S..

Our values:

We will encourage "collabitition" (collaboration + competition). Blockchain-based land registration to leverage previously untapped equity for marginalized peoples is too an important of a concept to entrust to one project or team. This is not about "winning". This is about ending poverty for all human beings that share this wonderful planet.

Our team believes in:

• Enabling secure prosperity for property owners
• Delivering innovative technology
• Building meaningful, long-term relationships
• Demonstrating professional excellence
• Empowering team-members to do their best work
• Nurturing empathetic excitement

Licensing:

The software source code will be published under the permissive, open-source MIT license. All software documentation will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution-4.0-International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license.

Our roadmap to success:

After one month:

1. Use case stories
2. Landano cadastre map for Accra, Ghana
3. Blog post: technical update
4. Blog post: pilot scenario: Ghana, Kenya, and Illinois
5. Landano Whitepaper - first draft (overview of solution concept and technical architecture)

After two months:

1. Proof-of-concept: mobile Dapp
2. Proof-of-concept: off-chain registry records system
3. Technical architecture documentation posted at docs.landano.app
4. Formal partnership with legal professional(s) to liaise with Ghana land management office
5. Blog post: technical update
6. Blog post: pilot scenario: Ghana, Kenya, and Illinois

After three months:

1. Landano MVP launched on Cardano Testnet
2. Five Ghana property owners field testing Landano
3. Atala Prism integration proof-of-concept
4. Blog post: "Landano in Ghana - Results and findings"
5. Pre-print paper for peer review: "Opportunities for Landano in Kenya"
6. Pre-print paper for peer review: "Opportunities for Landano in Illinois"
7. Landano Whitepaper v1 (overview of solution concept and technical architecture)

-------- end of Fund 7 grant--------

After six months:

1. Landano Whitepaper v2: Decentralized Autonomous Organization and tokenomics
2. Landano Initial Stake Pool Offering (ISPO)
3. Landano beta Dapp on Testnet
4. Twenty Ghana property owners field testing Landano
5. Five Kenya property owners field testing Landano
6. One Illinois "heir's property" land claim field testing Landano

After one year:

1. Cardano Level 3 Certified Dapp
2. Landano launch on Cardano mainnet
3. Twenty legally-binding property registrations on Landano
4. Landano DAO operational
5. Landano utility token minted and circulating as Cardano native asset

Our budget:

Our team believes in equal pay for all the human resources that are contributing to delivering the tasks and products on our roadmap. We have decided on the rate of $75 per hour as a fair reflection of the team's significant and unique expertise as well as in consideration of our living costs and earning potential outside Project Catalyst.

Our team members will provide their own computing equipment. Hosting for the project website and code repositories are provided free of charge via Github. Community outreach will be done via (free) Twitter and YouTube accounts as well as the various Project Catalyst communication channels.

Please refer to our detailed roadmap above for descriptions of the tasks and work products that will be delivered in three, four-week sprints

• Month 1 (Tasks #1-5): 230 hours x $75 = $17,250
• Month 2 (Tasks #1-6): 430 hours x $75 = $32,250
• Month 3 (Tasks #1-7): 370 hours x $75 = $27,750
• Meeting room rentals and transportation fees (Accra, Ghana): $1,500
• Professional fees: including legal, accounting, and communications: $11,000
• SUBTOTAL: $89,750
• plus 10% project management and office expenses: $8,975

TOTAL: $98,725