OpenSource Quadratic Voting Funding

[IMPACT]

Snapbrillia was born six months ago with the mission to accelerate the world's transition to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce and guarantee fair opportunities for all through the adoption of AI and blockchain technologies globally. Earlier in February after deep research and much deliberation, we decided to work with the Cardano network to deploy an open-source quadratic voting and funding platform to foster a community of open-source projects, contributors, and entrepreneurs.

Open source is a public good. Quadratic funding optimizes matching funds by prioritizing open-source projects based on the number of people who contributed and voted. This way, funds meant to benefit the public go towards projects that really benefit a broad public ensuring future efforts benefit from the work that is funded today like open-source tools, instead of things that only have a few wealthy backers.

Our solution is an open-sourced quadratic voting and funding platform that aims to support open-source fundraising campaigns and increase collaborative contributions where open-source projects and entrepreneurs will be able to fund match or raise funds in multiple currencies in a decentralized marketplace with security, transparency, and a streamlined user experience.

Examples of traditional crowdfunding:

Project 1 gets $100 from 1 funder.

Project 2 gets $100 from 10 funders.

At the end of the round, both projects get $100 in matching.

Examples of quadratic funding:

Project 1 gets $100 from 1 funder.

Project 2 gets $100 from 10 funders.

At the end of the round, Project 1 gets $10 in matching, Project 2 gets $190 in matching. [1]

Quadratic funding strongly encourages people to make contributions, no matter how small and ensures a democratic allocation of funds meant to benefit the public. [2] This is especially relevant now with the introduction of the dReps (delegation representatives) voting system here on Catalyst where voting is going to be centralized from tens of thousands of voters to 150 representative delegates. [3] When voting power is consolidated into a few individuals instead of democratizing voting for public goods like open-source tools and projects, it doesn't always advance the public good and it weakens democracy. [4] We want to drive higher enthusiasm for the Cardano ecosystem, community, and open-source projects overall because both the funding sources and voting power will become more decentralized. This enforces different individuals and communities to align between different open source community efforts to produce the most public good instead of consolidating funding and voting power to themselves.

There is a massive opportunity for the Cardano open-source and dev community to grow and scale because engineering hiring and job hunting suck not just for Web3 but across tech globally. The hiring environment is extremely competitive with 1,847,900 open software engineering jobs in the US alone [5] when the US provides only 47,906 CS graduates each year. There is also a huge gap in gender diversity (21.7%) and ethnic diversity (15.5%) among computer science graduates. [6] At the same time, over 25 million people have quit their jobs in the last 6 months and as many as 375 million people will quit their jobs between now and 2030 hoping to break into better careers globally. [7]

Quadratic voting and funding together with Snapbrillia Mentor-mentee Bounties & eLearning will empower people to collaborate and share their knowledge to build a sustainable open-source ecosystem in and out of Cardano. [8] Maximizing the impact of public goods available on Cardano and decentralizing the funding sources for public goods provides one of the final pieces required for the Cardano network to become a self-sustaining system - Voltaire. To foster sustained collaboration between open source experts and new collaborators we need to build an Open-Source On-Chain Practical Resume on ATALA Prism through our partnership with RootsID SSI Wallet to provide proof of reputation that helps people build and showcase their work history, credentials, projects, and contributions because it's our basic human right to control our money, data, and identity including our career.

Snapbrillia provides an alternative for emerging open-source contributors to quickly get hands-on experience through a mentor-mentee eLearning marketplace of open-source bounties, open-source workshops, and open-source hackathons. For seasoned developers and entrepreneurs, Snapbrillia provides a way to democratically grow support and funding for their projects and quickly attract experts to collaborate and share their knowledge and work. Our user research and startup journey have led us to the blockchain, Cardano, and the infinite possibilities that this platform and technology can provide to streamline and minimize bias in funding and hiring to guarantee more fair opportunities for all through open-source and blockchain. We are excited to share more about it with you.

Entrepreneurs and developers from all over the world will be able to register their projects for a quadratic funding campaign to compete for open-source grants and funds. We want to create a rewarding incentive system for open-source projects and accelerate the development of common tools, frameworks, core infrastructures, and proof of concepts that are created and owned by the community for the community.

This will allow users and projects without technical knowledge related to blockchain technologies, to launch their funding campaigns and fund them and this platform will facilitate everything directly on Cardano.

Together with our Decentralized eLearning and No-code-setup Collaborative Cloud IDE (with support of 60 coding languages and frameworks including Haskell, Plutus, and Marlowe) [8], this also allows new contributors to effectively join open-source projects and build their Practical On-Chain Resume. Our combined platform accelerates the open web in and out of the Cardano network by tapping into the network effect in the broader open-source community. [9] [10] [11]

Global crowdfunding exploded from $8.61 billion in 2020 to $113.52 billion last year – a 1,021% increase with an average of $1,315 per investor. [12] 76% of investors believe it is important to fund Women and Minority entrepreneurs. Investment crowdfunding has proven itself as a scalable way to do that. [13]

If we can execute well to build this quadratic funding platform, the Cardano open-source community will immensely benefit from the crowdfunding's massive growth to become a $239.78 billion industry by 2026 with an 18.97% year-over-year growth rate. [14] Better access to opportunities, funding, and learning bring developers and entrepreneurs together to co-create.

Take Gitcoin as an example of why quadratic voting and funding build trust between individuals, bigger projects, and major donors within and outside of ETH and the open-source ecosystem. GitCoin was able to drive $58,275,259 funding to open source projects with major donors matching individuals' funding of their passion open source project. [15] [16] We can do better especially with the Catalyst community and our Fortune 1000 partners, perhaps becoming the first major fund matching donors on this platform. The sheer hiring demand and the average hiring costs of $28,548.00 to $35,684.00 for developers with real (open source) work experience by bigger projects and companies creates a perfect storm for a platform like this. [17] We believe that with our Fortune 1000 relationships, API access to a network of 840 million professionals, and Cardano's Gitcoin, we can drive this huge appetite of major projects and companies to join this quadratic funding matching community to fund more and also bigger open-source teams. 🔥

Please make sure to also check out the links and attachments to see the evidence of the benefits quadratic voting and funding platforms like GitCoin have on the open-source community in and outside of the Ethereum network in 2021 alone. We need the same and better for the Cardano network. [18]

[1] https://ethresear.ch/t/pairwise-coordination-subsidies-a-new-quadratic-funding-design/5553

[2] https://www.radicalxchange.org/concepts/quadratic-funding/

[3] https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/435.pdf

[4] https://www.worldcat.org/title/voting-squared-quadratic-voting-in-democratic-politics/oclc/869561134

[5] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm

[6] https://datausa.io/profile/cip/computer-science-110701

[7] https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/public%20and%20social%20sector/our%20insights/what%20the%20future%20of%20work%20will%20mean%20for%20jobs%20skills%20and%20wages/mgi-jobs-lost-jobs-gained-executive-summary-december-6-2017.pdf

[8] https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397419

[9] https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1311/1311.1334.pdf

[10] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.11300.pdf

[11] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.04414.pdf

[12] https://financefeeds.com/private-markets-equity-crowdfunding-expected-soar-2022/

[13] https://www.prweb.com/releases/2022/01/prweb18413822.htm

[14] https://www.technavio.com/report/crowdfunding-market-industry-service-analysis

[15] https://gitcoin.co/results

[16] https://github.com/Photrek/Cardano-Catalyst/blob/main/Diversify%20Voting%20Influence/Cardano%20DVI%20Presentation%206Oct2021.pdf

[17] https://codesubmit.io/blog/cost-of-hiring-a-software-developer

[18] https://gitcoin.co/blog/gitcoin-2021-year-in-review/

We need resources including time, money, and additional helping hands and expertise in Plutus, Marlowe, and Prism to be able to execute this project effectively. To make this possible, Snapbrillia will have to further expand its No-code-setup Collaborative Cloud IDE that supports over 60 languages and frameworks including Haskel to also include Plutus and Marlowe.

Furthermore, we will have to create the DeFi marketplace on the blockchain for bounties and grants (smart contract and governance) and the decentralized eLearning user experience between mentors and mentees.

[FEASIBILITY]

Implementation milestones and deliverables:

Q1 of 2022

• Implement Quadratic Voting system on Dev

Q2 of 2022

• Deploy Quadratic Funding for open-source projects on Prod
• Deploy fiat currency payments and transactions on Prod
• Deploy payments in all major cryptocurrencies on Prod
• Deploy On-Chain Practical Resume on Prod
• Deploy Mentor-mentee Decentralized eLearning on Prod
• Deploy Quadratic Voting & Funding DAO on Prod

KPIs:

• Number of funded open-source projects
• Amount of money raised on the platform for open-source projects
• Number of funded and active open-source projects with recent commits
• Monthly active developers and users
• Number of users with a practical on-chain resume and credentials

Our current full-time dev team consists of:

• 2x Web3 Architects for Smart Contract, DAO, and DIDs architecture
• 6x Web3 Developers for Haskell, Plutus, and Marlowe development
• 10x Machine Learning Engineers and Data Scientist for AI research and eLearning development
• 16x Full-Stack Developers for front-end, back-end, IDE, and other web2 development

We also have dedicated product, design, and growth teams that manage our product, web design, marketing, and branding. We have a committed team of full-timers who work six days a week, 12 hours a day, the support of other projects that could help us in case of any unforeseen event, and partnerships such as the Yoma Foundation, RootsID, Phoetrek World, SANADA, PRToken, Athena Labz, Konma Labz, and HireEZ. [19]

In addition to AWS/GCP cloud hosting fees and Cardano gas fees (which are conservative estimates based on GitCoin's first six months of user growth and transaction volume), we will need to hire additional senior developers in Vietnam to upgrade our IDE and professional Cardano developers to help us build the smart contracts and the On-Chain Practical Resume. Salaries are market-rate.

• 5x Web2 Developers: $1,500.00/mo x4 months = $30,000.00
• 4x Web3 Developers: : $3,000.00/mo x4 months = $48,000.00
• Cardano Gas-fees Budget: $24,000.00 [20]
• Cloud Hosting: $10,000.00

Total Budget: $112,000.00

With that said, money as a resource without proper execution only goes so far. We are absolutely open to collaboration with other existing projects, teams, and individuals who want to contribute to any aspect of this platform. Together, we can create and share value with everyone.

[19] Please see comments for details of each partnership:

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397419/comments

[20] Please see comments for how we arrived at the Gas-fees budget:

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/396834/comments

Social Networks:

• Follow Snapbrillia on LinkedIn:
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/snapbrillia
• Like Snapbrillia on Facebook:
• https://www.facebook.com/Snapbrillia
• Follow Snapbrillia on Twitter:
• https://twitter.com/snapbrillia
• Follow Snapbrillia on Instagram:
• https://www.instagram.com/snapbrillia
• Follow Snapbrilia on Quora:
• https://www.quora.com/profile/Snapbrillia
• Follow Snapbrillia on AngelList:
• https://angel.co/company/snapbrillia
• Join Snapbrillia Discord:
• https://discord.gg/D99ttD5Y

CA Guideline Help:

We invite all CAs and vCAs to approach any of the social networks or contact us personally by Discord, to resolve any questions about this proposal, please remember that this is possible at the stage of assessments and review. However, we will also pitch why we believe this proposal should receive a good rating.

Frank Albanese is the Chief Scientist and Co-founder at Snapbrillia and Y Combinator alumni. He is a Solidity, Rust, and Haskell researcher, Henry Ford Health System alum, and Co-founder of the Ucratic DAO, an organization founded to accelerate innovation of interoperable Open Metaverse tools, to allow anyone to design, mint, transport, and own virtual space and avatar across multiple Metaverse ecosystems like Cryptovoxels, The Sandbox, Dreams, and Decentraland. Ucratic DAO combined Three.js with web3.js and Hardhat to mint composable ERC-721 NFTs of 3D models in virtual spaces to Polygon and IPFS. With Ucratic, Frank also helped research ways to bring self-hosted virtual spaces to the Internet Computer and Dfinity canisters. Frank admires Gitcoin’s utility in the Web3 space and feels this architecture could thrive in Cardano’s ecosystem along with an eLearning and immutable, composable Practical Resume standard that serves as Proof of Reputation. Frank is also interested in the applicability of zero-knowledge proofs, and their potential role in Proof of Reputation and Proof of Identity solutions. Reach Frank on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-albanese-a8b17885

James Willingham is the CIO and Co-founder of Snapbrillia and TechStars alumni. James brings his vast expertise in UX/UI design and full-stack development to the team. He is a seasoned leader in the startup space working within multiple industries ranging from FinTech, where he designed and built the first true peer-to-peer lending platform on both iOS and Android in hopes to minimize the predatory pay-day loan cycle. In Healthcare, he designed and built a platform that allows doctors, patients, caregivers, and researchers to easily collaborate and work towards better health outcomes for everyone. James thrives on the mission of helping others get the help they need when they need it, life can be hard and challenging so he works to make them easier and more positive for everyone. Reach James on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-willingham-3704b824

Beatrice Thelisma is the CTO and Co-founder at Snapbrillia and TechFuturesGroup alumni. Beatrice has an amazing knack for leading engineering teams to execute on web applications whether back-end, front-end, or DevOps. She has vast experience with nonprofits empowering women and children with critical survival funds and education for financial literacy. She is passionate about accelerating diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace and empowering and promoting the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, economic, or another status. Reach Beatrice on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelisma

Ninh Tran is the CEO and Co-founder of Snapbrillia and Google alumni. Ninh brings his expertise in product management, business development, and startup execution. As UC Berkeley alumni, Ninh founded Trucksome to empower emerging local food economies to thrive and create jobs for the previously incarcerated. After joining Google, Ninh co-founded an executive search firm HireTeamMate placing hundreds in a year while building HireEZ (formerly Hiretual), an AI recruiting platform used by Google, Facebook, Amazon, and thousands of others, to hire millions of people every year. Reach Ninh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ninhtran08

Kenric Nelson, Ph.D. is an engineer, educator, and innovative leader in the research, development, and deployment of systems for complex decision-making. He has led industry, academic, and community-service teams in the design of a variety of machine intelligence algorithms. For the Catalyst community, he served as the Community Advisor Representative to the Catalyst Circle v2 and successfully delivered the Fund 4 Diversify Voting Influence project. In these roles, Kenric has been a strong advocate for improving the quality and inclusivity of decentralized governance. Kenric completed the Atala Prism Pioneers program and is currently enrolled in the Plutus Pioneers program. Reach Kenric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenric-nelson-ph-d-7495b77/

Nori Nishigaya is the Founder of the Salmon Nation Decentralized Alliance (SANADA), Bridge Builders, and SAMON pool. Member of the Catalyst Circle Admin Team, Cardano4Climate, and Rapid Funding Challenge Team. Cardano Ambassador, CA, and Funded proposer. He is passionate about radical inclusivity and community and devoted to making Cardano the best community on the planet. Nori brings over 30 years of experience in software development, agile methodologies, leadership and managing teams, and founding and running technology

startups. Reach Nori on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishigaya/

Other members of our Dev team:

• Cuong Tran - 10+ years Back-End Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trquoccuong
• Four Tran - 10+ years Full-Stack Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/four-tran-59b02310b
• 60+ more: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?keywords=snapbrillia

We are fellow humans. :) Check our team pictures: https://www.snapbrillia.com/about/

[AUDITABILITY]

The audibility of project development and impact is clear:

• objective KPIs to measure its success

• the project has been separated into stages to make it feasible

• all quadratic funding will be completely transparent and publically available on our website

• Quadratic Voting and Funding will be open-source on Github where everyone can clearly see and measure the progress and development of the project.

• On-Chain Practical Resume will be open-source on Github where everyone can clearly see and measure the progress and development of the project.

We will be hosting periodic community sync or demo days about our progress via Discord.

The success of this project is very clear:

• to provide a secure and transparent quadratic funding platform for open-source projects that allows all individuals to directly impact the level of funding and support an open-source project receives in and out of Cardano

• to provide On-Chain Practical Resume service for Decentralized Identity and Decentralized Networking and give everyone their human right to control of their money, data, and identity including their career history.

• to provide a Decentralized eLearning platform where mentors and mentees build and deliver the future of the open web and foster the next generations of contributors

Snapbrillia’s long-term goal is to build a platform that gets one million people into tech via open-source that otherwise wouldn’t break into tech at all.

This is an entirely new proposal that's connected with a funded F4 proposal - Diversify Voting Influence: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/340657

It is also connected with our other F8 proposal - Mentor-mentee Bounties & eLearning: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397419

Vote YES for Cardano

Vote YES for More Funding Opportunities for Everyone

Vote YES for OpenSource Quadratic Voting Funding

SDG Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere

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

Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

SDG subgoals:

1.a Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries, in particular, least developed countries, to implement programs and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions

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

4.5 By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, and children in vulnerable situations

4.7 By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

4.b By 2030, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular, least developed countries, small island developing States, and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programs, in developed countries and other developing countries

4.c By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing States

5.5 Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic, and public life

5.b Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women

8.2 Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading, and innovation, including through a focus on high-value-add and labor-intensive sectors

8.3 Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services

8.5 By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value

8.6 By 2030, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education, or training

8.8 Protect labor rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular, women migrants, and those in precarious employment

9.1 Develop quality, reliable, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all

9.2 Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and, by 2030, significantly raise industry’s share of employment and gross domestic product, in line with national circumstances, and double its share in the least developed countries

9.5 Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of industrial sectors in all countries, in particular developing countries, including, by 2030, encouraging innovation and substantially increasing the number of research and development workers per 1 million people and public and private research and development spending

9.b Support domestic technology development, research, and innovation in developing countries, including by ensuring a conducive policy environment for, inter alia, industrial diversification and value addition to commodities

10.1 By 2030, progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population at a rate higher than the national average

10.2 By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, economic, or another status

10.3 Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome, including by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies, and action in this regard

10.4 Adopt policies, especially fiscal, wage, and social protection policies, and progressively achieve greater equality

10.6 Ensure enhanced representation and voice for developing countries in decision-making in global international economic and financial institutions in order to deliver more effective, credible, accountable, and legitimate institutions

17.3 Mobilize additional financial resources for developing countries from multiple sources

17.7 Promote the development, transfer, dissemination, and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries on favorable terms, including on concessional and preferential terms, as mutually agreed

17.8 Fully operationalize the technology bank and science, technology, and innovation capacity-building mechanism for least developed countries by 2017 and enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology

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

- Increase the gender diversity of users on the platform by 10%

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

- Increase platforms users under 18 years old by 10%

4.5.1 Parity indices (female/male, rural/urban, bottom/top wealth quintile, and others such as disability status, indigenous peoples, and conflict-affected, as data become available) for all education indicators on this list that can be disaggregated

- Provide real-time parity analytics and reduce demographic and socioeconomic disparity rating by 10%

4.c.1 Proportion of teachers with the minimum required qualifications, by education level

- Increase the number of mentors and teachers ratio by 10%

5.5.2 Proportion of women in managerial positions

- Increase gender diversity fund allocation by 10%

8.5.2 Unemployment rate, by sex, age, and persons with disabilities

- Diversify employment rate by sex, age, and persons with disabilities by 10%

9.5.2 Researchers (in full-time equivalent) per million inhabitants

- Increase developer users by 10%

17.7.1 Total amount of funding for developing countries to promote the development, transfer, dissemination, and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies

- Increase green technology open source project funding by 10%