Lost |&| Found

Build a decentralized system that connects lost items to owners integrating DID and a digital wallet as parts of the supporting sub system.

Wada Cameroon Hub: 3 Senior Software Engineers and Architects with previous experience/relationship with Govt. building software in CMR

Impact:

How does this proposal fit into this challenge?

Our Lost |&| Found dApp will be a life changing solution specifically intended for widespread adoption in developing nations such as Cameroon where they currently lack digital organization of important records. In our solution we will expand the notion of "lost items" to include missing/kidnapped dear ones as well as stolen cars etc. This solution is truly a Nation building dApp because it will assist at the core with tools needed by law enforcement and local communities. Specifically geared towards developing nations starting with Cameroon and other countries in Africa with whom we are working through the Wada network. Our notification module will create a solution for lost or stolen items to be recovered. 

How will this campaign add value to our ecosystem?

Our solution will use Atala Prism DID framework to identify both users and lost items. The micro-payment module will generate a considerable amount of transactions on the Cardano blockchain.

Outlook and future challenges?

Our end goal is to build a nation wide platform that connects those with a missing item, person etc with those who found it and ease its recovery. 

Feasibility:

Reference (Past Successes):

Wada has already established active hubs in: Ivory Coast (French), Ghana (English), Nigeria (English), Cameroon (French & English) and Democratic Republic of Congo (French). Through our Cameroon hub we are launching a Haskell and Plutus training initiative that will be leading project based learning throughout our hubs. This project is an example of one of the projects we wish to work through as a learning journey for our aspiring devs. 

See related proposal for Scale-UP Cardano Community Hubs: Spread Plutus through Africa https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Spread-Plutus-through-Africa/381332-48088 

Understanding the context:

It is surprisingly common to see the number of IDs and other important items left unclaimed in money transfer, travel agencies, public offices ...etc. Often these ID documents end up in these public offices with no means for the owner and finder to connect. Radio broadcasts are sometimes used to solve the problem, but they fail miserably as not only is their reach local but often many people just don't listen to these broadcasts.  

In the United States, for example, the solution to this is rather simple. If you find an ID there is usually an address on it and you can simply put it in a mail box to be returned to its rightful owner, however in less developed parts of the world there is no simple solution and IDs usually end up just sitting around waiting to be collected. This issue is not exclusive to IDs, and our solution will be such that it will incorporate ways to recover anything that is lost or found, including missing persons or animals. We will be starting our solution building in Cameroon with the idea that our solution could be replicated throughout other developing nations. We intend to suggest this to governments as a tool to recover any lost and found item more efficiently. This is something that can be used in a variety or sectors ranging from law enforcement to more common everyday users.  

Solution:

The end goal of this project is to set up an electronic platform allowing the public to recover their lost items. Specifically, it will allow its users to:

• Register themselves as users (through Atala Prism DID solution)
• Declare lost items (at a small fee)
• Register found items 
• Match lost and found items and notify all the stakeholders
• Search recovered items
• Connect users with the information needed to recover their lost / found items
• Donate 

Roadmap:

The solution will be built in small independent modules that integrate together to solve the main problem. 

1. Identity and access management (DID): (in progress ... see github) IAM will allow us to set the ground for roles and accesses to resources within the platform
2. Lost and found item inventory management: (in progress ... see github) The main function of this module will be to collect both lost and found objects, organizing and categorizing them in such a way that they are easily searchable and match-able.
3. Search & Match Subsystem. This will be a real time algorithm that runs continuously in the background and try to match lost and found items
4. Notification management: This will be a real time solution allowing stakeholders to signup to events of their interest choosing from a multitude of notification medium. 
5. Payment (digital wallet): We will be implementing a digital wallet that will allow people declaring lost item to pays a small fee and other value transactions within the system 
6. Verification of ownership: This module will set up tailored challenge questions for owners to pass in order to regain their lost objects. This is something we have thought about quite a lot as it is the area in which we are most susceptible to people playing the system in order to steal identities or other items. For this we have thought of a reputation management system to mitigate some of that risk through community support.
7. Donations: Here we will build a module that accept several forms of donation to the system. Crypto money will certainly be one of them. There will be a small fee in order to declare a lost item on the platform, and there will be the option to pay an additional donation once your item is recovered to support the Lost |&| Found initiative.
8. Digital token pegged on the local currency coin: This will facilitate the micro-payments transactions that will go through the system
9. Marketing and Outreach for dApp launch (T.V. billboards, radio)

Core Team & Roles:

Wada Cameroon Hub

• 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)

Wada Network

• **Wada Devs:**this will be one of the projects which will be lead through the Cameroon Hub but will also leverage our network of Wada Devs that we will be training in Plutus and Haskell to support the development of our dApp. Also we will be creating a solution together with many inputs from the different Wada hubs making a pathway for this dApp to be implemented in other countries within our network as well.

• Wada Marketing and Advertising Team

Budget: 

• Marketing & Advertisement: $3 000
• Team motivations (1 project manager $150/mo, 5 Developers $300/mo x 12 months): $20 000
• Misc. other motivations: $1 000

Auditability:

What success looks like:

• MVP dApp Launched within 9 months post funding
• Version 1 launched within 15 months post funding
• 500 users in first 3 months post launch
• Long term goal: Mass user adoption throughout Cameroon and other countries in Wada network

Key Metrics: dApp success can be measured by mass user adoption(goal 5K users in 1st year), and the number of recovered items recovered through the dApp (goal 3K recovered items in 1st year)

Within the first 3 months of launch:

• 500 of users (accounts created) 
• 400 of lost items entered / month
• 200 of recovered items / month

Other things we will be tracking:

• An increasing number of lost items registered in the system
• An increasing number of recovered items from the system
• Total number of micro-payments made within the platform

Other goals for this project:

• 6 + developers working/training in Plutus through the development of this project