Tech Talent – Bring Devs to Cardano

[IMPACT]

What is Tech Talent?

Tech Talent is a blockchain-based system proposed to help address the worldwide shortage of tech skills. It works by stimulating the search and development of the talents that the digital economy needs. Companies define the technology skills they need by sponsoring digital badges on Tech Talent. Mentors, working as sport scouts, seek out people and help them learn the skills needed to earn badges sponsored by companies. The sponsoring company has access to the list of people (talents) who have earned the badge.

Figure 8 - Tech Talent Overview

The system is responsible for rewarding participants through the distribution of tokens used to sponsor the badges. Mentors, Talents and Certifiers are rewarded for badges earned and when the sponsoring company hires a Talent. It is a win-win ecosystem run by the community. The most demanded skill tends to be the most sponsored badge attracting Mentors, Talents and Certifiers who will try to meet this demand.

In addition to the objective of helping to supply the most in-demand tech skills, Tech Talent can play an import social role by allowing the “so to be discovered Talent” in underserved communities the chance to study, earn badges and financially help their families during this process.

Roles at Tech Talent

Organizations -> Sponsors badges according to their tech interests. Has access to the list of Talents that achieve the goals of your sponsored badges.

Mentors -> Actively look for Talent in the community that might fit the sponsored badges. Help Talent develop the badge skills. Point to sources that Talent will use as learning materials. Monitor the evolution of learning. Assesses when Talent is ready to apply for badge certification.

Certifiers -> Creates badges that verify learning. Checks the Talent's abilities according to the rules defined by the seal. Mint and distributes the badges.

Talents -> Learners. They are mentored towards achieving the skills to earn the badges.

What we are proposing.

We want to incentivize developers to learn the Cardano technology. The short-term goal is to bring developers into the Cardano ecosystem. The mid-term is to helps fill the technology jobs needed for the growth of Cardano-based projects. In the long term, we want to use blockchain and the power of community to help solve the world's shortage of tech skills.

To this challenge we are proposing to develop a Catalyst pilot based on Tech Talent ideas. The pilot includes:

• Development of 3 badges related to Cardano technology;
• Open the badges to 10 Mentors, 100 Talents and 1 Certifier;
• Lock/sponsor 25K ADA tokens to distribute to Mentors, Talents and the Certifier.

We believe that this pilot complements and can go hand in hand with other projects focused on Cardano technology education like GimbaLabs and Catalyst School. For example, GimbaLabs brings frameworks, APIs, and project-based learning that help newcomers to Cardano. Tech Talent, on the other hand, looks for talent, provides incentives and guidance to newcomer developers to help the Cardano ecosystem grow.

We want to help bring developers to Cardano by creating a network of blockchain-based incentives. We believe there’s enough people to fill this gap, but we need a platform that actively look for and develop them. It is a win-win ecosystem run by the community. Mentors and Certifiers are motivated to bring developers to Cardano. Talents are rewarded for the time spent developing new skills. The ecosystem wins with new developers able to build on top of Cardano.

Building a product is a challenge in itself. Besides that, we need to balance the rewards between Mentors, Certifications and Talents. All ecosystem members must be properly rewarded to keep the network running.

Community engagement is key to start the pilot. The Tech Talent team will work with the community (companies, projects, devs) to define and prioritize the first set of badges. We will also rely on the Cardano education community to help select Mentors for the pilot. Each Mentor will be responsible for recruiting ten Talents.

Certifiers are key participants in Tech Talent. They need to be trustee nodes in the network. We want to bring education institutions to play this role.

As tokens are distributed, we need to be aware that there will be people who will just want to “hack” without adding value to the system. For example, we need to ensure that Talents do not re-enter the system and receive rewards repeatedly. We need to not allow Mentors, Talents or Certifiers to be the same people. These are some examples of "high level" hacks. We should consider "low-level" hacks like smart contract exploits as well.

We intent to use Atala PRISM for DID's and Verifiable Credentials but the SDK is not public yet and are planned to be available sometime Q2 this year. If we cannot find a developer with knowledge of Atala PRISM, extra time will be needed to learn how to use the SDK. Worst case scenario we will develop our own version of DID and Credential. It won't be as complete and robust as the Atala PRISM, but enough to run the pilot. When the project passes the pilot phase, we return to the implementation of Atala PRISM.

[FEASIBILITY]

WBS

• Lightpaper describing the tokenomics for the pilot;
• Detailed requirements (3 badges) related to Cardano technology;
• List of projects/products that wish to have access to the Talents developed by the pilot;
• Mentors and Certifier definition;
• Smart contract and UI development for the pilot;
• 100 Talents recruitment;
• Pilot on mainnet;
• Badge issuance to Talents that achieve the related badge goals;
• ADA token distribution to Mentors, Talents and Certifier;
• Connect the developed Talents to projects/products;
• Extra distributions of ADA tokens if talent joins the projects/products teams;
• Pilot evaluation report.

M0 - 3,000 USD

• Lightpaper describing the tokenomics for the pilot;

M1 - 7,000 USD

• Detailed requirements (3 badges) related to Cardano tech needs;
• Platform architecture;
• List of projects/products that wish to have access to the Talents developed by the pilot;

M2, M3, M4 - 41,000 USD

• Mentors and Certifier definition;
• Smart contract and UI development for the pilot;
• 100 Talents recruitment.

M5 - 10,000 USD

• Pilot on mainnet.
• Bugs and adjustments.

M6 - 5,000 USD + 25,000 ADA

• Badge issuance to Talents that achieve the related badge goals;
• ADA token distribution to Mentors, Talents and Certifier;
• Connect the developed Talents to projects/products;
• Extra distributions of ADA tokens if talent joins the projects/products teams;
• Pilot evaluation report.

TOTAL*: 66,000 USD + 25,000 ADA

*IMPORTANT: the requested funds include development only. We need the additional 25,000 ADA to use as rewards.

The project will be led by Parahuari (Linkedin). He has 20+ years of experience developing tech solutions for learning. He has played roles as teacher, programmer, author, instructional designer, product manager and researcher working on the development of several types of educational solutions such as portals, textbooks, simulations, adaptive systems, and games.

Team

• 1 - Leader - 6 months.
• 1 - Web Designer - freelance.
• 1 - Web3 Architect for Smart Contract and DIDs architecture - 4 months.
• 1 - Web3 Developer Haskell, Plutus, and Marlowe - 4 months.
• 1 - Web2 Developer React - 3 months.
• 1 - Q&A - 2 months.

[AUDITABILITY]

The audibility of project development can be done based on each delivery defined on the budget breakdown.

The success of the project can be measured by the number of new developers that were onboarded to the Cardano ecosystem.

It's a new proposal.

SDG Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

SDG subgoals:

4.3 By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

4.4 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

4.3.1 Participation rate of youth and adults in formal and non-formal education and training in the previous 12 months, by sex

4.4.1 Proportion of youth and adults with information and communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skill

proposertoolsdg

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