SalmonNation Decentralized Alliance

[IMPACT]

This is a proposal to provide continuing operating funds for SANADA (Salmon Nation Decentralized Alliance) as a Cardano Local Community Center as it continues to ramp up towards self-sustainability. Through our self-sustainability projects (see details below), we expect to be self-sufficient within 6 months. This proposal is a request for bridge funding to allow us to continue delivering value (events, new member onboarding, community management) to the community while we work toward that goal.

SANADA is a local Cardano Community Hub in Victoria, BC, Canada. Our mission is three-fold:

1. Host in-person and online events to help grow the Cardano and Catalyst community, with a special emphasis on the Salmon Nation bioregion and timezone.
2. Onboard new participants to Project Catalyst as proposers, voters, community advisors, and to take part in the ongoing governance experiment.
3. Connect local, regional, and global change-makers, entrepreneurs, and developers to build blockchain-based solutions to local and global challenges.

As well as hosting events for the bioregion and neighboring areas, SANADA sponsors the Pacific Town Hall, a bi-weekly online event designed as a space where people in the Pacific Timezone can gather and discuss important Cardano and Catalyst topics at a convenient time (the usual EU-centric times for community events does not allow for participation from large segments of the community on the west coast of North America due to landing in the middle of the workday).

About SANADA

SANADA (Salmon Nation Decentralized Alliance) is an organization founded to educate, connect, and foster the development of decentralized blockchain solutions in our local bio-region. Salmon Nation is a multi-country bioregion that extends from Alaska down to Northern California. If you are new to the concept of Salmon Nation, here is a thesis that describes the movement.

Salmon Nation is a multi-country bioregion that extends from Alaska down to Northern California. Salmon Nation is a unique and beautiful bio-region that is home to millions of people, including Indigenous populations in both the US and Canada. From issues of Indigenous sovereignty, to re-envisioning democracy and governance, to the challenges of sustainable resource extraction, the issues and challenges of the region are many and require new ways of thinking and collaborating. Cardano brings the green blockchain and smart contract solutions to help solve many of these issues with enough creativity and passion of the people on the ground trying to solve these problems.

SANADA is not a formal part of the Salmon Nation organization or Raven network. We are a collective of blockchain enthusiasts who believe in the Salmon Nation mission and hope to contribute to the body of wisdom and practices to share with the community, particularly how we can apply blockchain solutions to local challenges. SANADA seeks to act as a resource for software developers; connect with and educate the local community, creatives, and businesses; and raise awareness of Cardano and the power of blockchain and decentralization. We seek to solve local challenges to bring creative and sustainable solutions to the region and empower regional communities.

The proposed solution meets the “minimum viable hub” criteria by keeping the cost model as low as possible by maximizing the reach and impact of our efforts. We do this through several mechanisms:

1. We favor online events over face-to-face events. While face-to-face events are valuable and something we do, we prefer to host online events to reach a greater audience. Online events also facilitate the recording of the event so those that could not attend are able to watch at a later date, further increasing the impact and reach of the event. See our recorded Pacific Town Halls as an example:
2. We publish materials using a combination of open source and Creative Commons licenses, which allows the community to have free and open access to our materials, and the ability to re-mix, extend and use those materials as they see fit. See our Github repository for examples: https://github.com/Salmon-Nation-Decentralized-Alliance
3. We strive for long-term sustainability. SANADA has a stake pool that is intended to help long-term sustainability for the organization. We currently have over 300K ADA in live stake and are actively minting blocks. The funding requests in this proposal are intended to help us bridge the gap to sustainability by funding our community managers, event organizers, and human networking operations while we continue to market and build up the stake pool.
4. A potential avenue to help sustainability is the creation of a paid course that will go beyond our free online and in-person educational events, provide more in-depth information on a variety of topics and provide a revenue stream to pay for operational expenses.
5. We have a distributed team who can work from anywhere in the region, so we do not have large carrying costs for office space. For our primary Victoria hub, we use a co-working space for our primary office and networking space instead of renting a permanent office: https://www.clubkwench.com/en. A physical presence is important to have a place people can find you, and working from a co-working space facilitates serendipitous discovery and connections with other people that work in that space.
6. We are actively building a community. We do this through a combination of in-person and online events, outreach to the local community through Q&A seminars, and joining events for people who are “crypto-curious”. A strong community is the heart of a successful hub and is a source of volunteers to help scale what the hub can achieve. We are also building our online community and have our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/JG7N3cV9fw.
7. We network locally with other blockchain groups. In addition to building our local and online community, we also reach out to and attend other blockchain meetups and events and leverage these existing groups as opportunities to evangelize Cardano and attract people to the community, getting knowledge to people who would otherwise not have had the opportunity to ask questions and get to know what we have to offer as a more energy-efficient blockchain and the exciting possibilities of governance and participation in Project Catalyst.

The target audience for SANADA is people in the Salmon Nation bioregion who are looking to use Cardano blockchain technology to solve local and regional problems. We seek to onboard new people to Project Catalyst and to help them become successful community members. A secondary audience is those that are in neighboring regions who find events happening in the Pacific timezones convenient (USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Pacific Islanders, etc.).

SANADA is closely affiliated with Cardano4Climate and the emerging Cardano Impact Collective and biases towards topics and projects related to sustainability and impact. We seek, through our efforts, to help the world solve its many critical challenges through the creative application of blockchain technology, decentralized governance, self-sovereignty, and recreating a more fair and sustainable financial infrastructure for tomorrow.

Risk: There is a strong negative opinion outside of the blockchain communities towards cryptocurrencies. There have been notable critical critiques such as:

• Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs
• https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-polarization-of-crypto-narrative
• https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

Mitigation: In response to these, instead of ignoring or dismissing the growing polarization of the crypto narrative, we hosted several Pacific Town Halls covering the topics of whether Crypto, NFTs, and DAOs were the technology of the future or just technical sleight of hand, or worse, outright scams. The community stepped up and engaged in thoughtful and insightful discussions. They were recorded and can be found here: 

• Pacific Town Hall - A Critical Look at Web 3.0, NFTs, and more
• Pacific Town Hall #3 DAOs Hype or the future of collaboration

Risk: An existential risk to SANADA is the loss of key personnel that is crucial to the activities of SANADA. 

Mitigation: This will be mitigated by increasing the size of the core team, spreading key tasks, and creating playbooks and mechanisms so there is continuity of knowledge and process in the unfortunate event of losing key people.

Risk: Lack of continuous Catalyst Funding will limit the effectiveness of SANADA

Mitigation: SANADA has a stake pool (SAMON pool) to generate a more stable income stream that is not dependent upon Catalyst. SANADA is also providing “stake pool as a service” to several community project stake pools, which also has the potential for bringing in more revenue to support operations. As we mature as an organization, we will also be looking at other forms of revenue from online courses to published materials. The long-term goal of SANADA is to be independent of Catalyst for day-to-day operations and to only use Catalyst for launching new initiatives and projects.

[FEASIBILITY]

Monthly activities of SANADA as a community hub (to repeat over 6 months of funding)

• Networking in the local community
• Out-reach and participation in local meetups and events to spread knowledge and awareness of Cardano and Project Catalyst
• 1:1 help for on-boarding to Project Catalyst for the local community
• Host 2 x Pacific Town Halls
• Event planning
• Facilitation
• Moderation
• Processing and uploading videos
• Host 2 x local community events online or in-person (COVID allowing) to introduce Cardano and Project Catalyst, focusing on the basics of Cardano knowledge, buying ADA, wallets and delegation, introduction to Project Catalyst.
• Event planning
• Facilitation

Additional activities:

• Maintenance of SANADA's GitHub repository of information (website and educational materials): https://github.com/Salmon-Nation-Decentralized-Alliance
• Creation of Open Source and Creative Commons licensed educational materials and videos.
• Helping review and mentor Project Catalyst proposals for Salmon Nation community members
• Mentoring and helping new community members navigate Project Catalyst
• Connecting projects, developers, entrepreneurs to create opportunities and facilitate the growth of the local and global community networks.
• Marketing and development of our Stake Pool to attract more delegation
• Expand our "stake pool as a service" to support more community projects
• Creating plans for selling educational courses and materials

Detailed Budget for 6 mo. of operation:

• Community Hub Management team: $50/hr 20 hrs/mo. 6 mo = 6000
• Event Team: $300/event * 12 Pacific Town Halls + 6 local events = 5400
• New community on-boarding team: $50/hr * 20 hrs/mo * 6 mo = 6000
• Technology and Services: $250 / mo * 6 = 1500
• Co-working space fee: $400/mo. x 6 months = 2400

Total: 21,300

Nori Nishigaya - Founder of the Salmon Nation Decentralized Alliance (SANADA), Bridge Builders, and co-founder of SAMON pool. Member of the Catalyst Circle Admin Team, Cardano4Climate, and co-organizer of the Pacific Town Hall. Cardano Ambassador, CA, and Funded proposer.

Bryan Lesiuk - Co-founder of SAMON pool, Stakepool operator, CA, Software Development Engineer, and Funded Proposer, cryptocoin enthusiast.

Jeremy Kiffiak - Co-founder of SAMON pool, Stakepool operator, IT professional, co-organizer of the Pacific Town Hall, and Funded Proposer.

Melanie Russo - Core Team member of Cardano4Climate, CA, Funded Proposer, Challenge Setting Challenge Team member, co-organizer of the Pacific Town Hall.

[AUDITABILITY]

We will measure our progress and reach in several ways:

• Number of attendees of our online events
• Number of attendees of our in-person events
• Number of users signed up to the Discord server
• Number of videos published to our YouTube channels (PTH and SANADA educational)
• Number of views of our Github knowledge repositories
• Number of people that join the core team to contribute to event planning, running events, and creating content and educational materials.
• Number of proposals in Catalyst from the Salmon Nation bioregion

Engaging with more people in the local and regional communities, bringing them into Project Catalyst, helping to educate, network, and foster collaboration between builders, dreamers, and visionaries who seek to change the world.

This proposal is a continuation of the Fund 6 proposal: Salmon Nation Decentralized Alliance: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/SalmonNation-Decentralized-Alliance/368369-48088