Decentralized Autonomous Iddir

[IMPACT]

Iddirs are traditional Ethiopian community risk sharing organizations with up to 85-90% prevalence among Ethiopians in the country and diaspora. Ethiopian population is estimated at 115 million.

We propose here to create a careful detailed plan to manage a traditional risk sharing community organizations in Ethiopia that are over 100 years old and has over 100 million members! We need a DAO to insure the future of this organizations.

Iddirs mainly provided financial and social support to grieving families of a deceased persons.

Some iddirs with better financial standing also provide additional services such as supporting a family in case of catastrophic loss of economic means. In Ethiopia where there is limited insurance services and governments are weak to provide social security, iddirs are the only support structure for most of the population in case of individual emergencies.

Iddirs are not only a risk sharing organizations but a community support group.

Iddirs are financially self-sufficient and ideally have no need for institutional or legal dependence. They have volunteer leadership and everyone pays an equal amount of contribution.

Iddirs have written bylaws and keep ledgers for their finance inventory and use banking services where it is available.

Iddirs have all the qualities of a decentralized organization as all decisions are made by all members democratically. But direct democratic participation becomes difficult as the membership number grows. This difficulty usually results in discontent and splitting up of the iddirs in to manageable sizes.

Though this preserves the direct participation of members in the governance, the quantity and quality of services they can provide remains limited.

Equally if an iddir has too few members it become unsustainable and collapses.

Iddirs are naturally suited to build a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

The resulting organization would be called Decentralized Autonomous Iddir (DA Iddir)

And the following components are needed.

1. A decentralized identity system that has an option for easy on-boarding, community authentication, and easy recovery in case of loss.
2. A DAO frame work with governance and treasury components. FreeOS.io provides a very good model for adoption in Cardano.
3. Registration of the DAO in a jurisdiction that allows such organization so that the DAO can have a legal status to operate all over the world where ever Ethiopians are.
4. Forming local DA Iddir chapters in different world regions and in Ethiopia.

It is difficult to know exactly how many Ethiopian diaspora exists around the world. The estimation is between 1.5 and 2.5 million. Where ever Ethiopians reside the first community organizations they form are iddirs. But where the number of Ethiopians are too few to sustain an iddir they are forced to live without their beloved organizations.

Therefore the initial target audience of Decentralized Autonomous Iddir (DA Iddir) would be diaspora Ethiopians and Ethiopians in the country with access to online service. As the concept and function of iddirs is well known and sought after we can expect the adoption would be painless as long as the on-boarding process is simple.

DA Iddir would reduce the cost of membership for individuals or increases the the quality and quantity of services to its members.

We cooperate for implementation with other proposals such as https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/399791

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/396593

Reference

Amsalu, D. (2020). "I Have Risen from the Place I Always Used to Be": An Annotated Bibliography of the Ethiopian Iddir (SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 3665215). Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3665215

"Beyond The Customary View" The Roles of Iddirs On Supporting Orphans Children's in Ethiopia | PDF | Hiv/Aids | Ethiopia. (n.d.). Scribd. Retrieved November 7, 2021, from https://www.scribd.com/document/396613358/Beyond-the-Customary-View-The-Roles-of-Iddirs-on-Supporting-Orphans-Children-s-in-Ethiopia

Formal Insurance and Transfer Motives in Informal Risk Sharing Groups: Experimental Evidence from Iddir in Rural Ethiopia - PDF Free Download. (n.d.). Retrieved November 5, 2021, from https://financedocbox.com/Insurance/102034169-Formal-insurance-and-transfer-motives-in-informal-risk-sharing-groups-experimental-evidence-from-iddir-in-rural-ethiopia.html

One of the challenge focus areas is Self-governance of Emergent Communities through DAO Governance. This proposal directly addresses this focus area.

It will also address the main challenge focus of accelerated adoption of decentralized identity and Cardano.

Main challenges to deliver the project success

1. Ease of use of the tools.
2. Legality issues outside of the registered jurisdiction.
3. Acceptability of the DA Iddir as global and leaderless organization.

Usability and adoption are an iterative process. Therefore challenges for early adopters is expected.

Once setup and a critical mass is reached DA Iddir would achieved self sufficiency. It would have it's own resources for further development of the tools, services and expansion.

[FEASIBILITY]

Tentative road map

1. Assemble experts in iddir, community organizations and DAO to produce a working DA Iddir white paper. 2-4 months
2. commission the adoption or building of DAO components for DA Iddir 4-6 months.
3. Pilot DA Iddir in two cities and two countries. 6 to 9 months
4. Register DAO as legal entity and deploy in multiple jurisdictions. 9 to 12 months.

The most challenging part of this project is the ease of use of the components of the DAO. Iddirs have a rather simple economic model and there are already developed DAO principles that can accommodate the existing Iddir principles and add more value to it. Particularly the freeos.io frame work has promising functionality that can be used by DA Iddir.

The budget provided is to produce the first phase of the road map. The experts to be contacted are identified

Iddir experts. $150 x 40 hours = $6000

legal experts $300/hour x 10 hours = $3000

Economic modelling, Software design, development 300 x 40 hours = 12000

Project management, community organization, on boarding $100 x 30 hours = $3000

Total $24000

1. Expert on iddir, their social functions and legal status. Studied Iddirs and their role in a society and able to formulate the characteristics of DA Iddir to be able to fulfill the expectations of the society. The appropriate expert is identified and and initial contact is made. But he is not member of the catalyst community.
2. Legal expert on DAO (Need assistance from IOG)
3. Software tools designer and implementer. Appropriate decentralized identity, smart contracts for treasury and governance and network. Discussions are made with identity and DAO tool developers to collaborate. Agreed Iddirs to be an amazing use-case for a DAO. Agreed to continue discussion and cooperation, on how they can add functionalities that would serve the needs of communities.
4. project lead, Community organizer, implementer.

• Tegegne CAtalyst OG, Community orgnizaer, opensource implementer, localizer.
• Badege, Fresh out of collage, enthused to serve his community

Additional community outreach will be invited as appropriate.

[AUDITABILITY]

1. Production of white paper with input from the appropriate experts.
2. Git hub commits for software development
3. Number of hours of related meetings with project developers
4. Number of meetings with communities

The tools to be built and the lessons learned can be replicated in Africa and other developing nations where similar organizations exist. One such organizations funeral Stokvel of South Africa. https://cardano.ideascale.com/userimages/accounts/93/936143/panel_upload_48088/Legal_nature_of_stokvel-529a91.pdf

Production of MVP for test on early adopters and get feed back.

Refinement of the product based on the feedback.

The idea was presented in fund 7 but was archived before going to assessment stage.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/381135