CIP - Education Financing

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

We will draft a CIP based on findings from preliminary use case testing and a PoC around the tokenization of the Income Share Agreements (ISA) in emerging markets.  

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Seedstars has spent the past 9 years enabling emerging market entrepreneurs across 75 countries. The group supported 37k+ entrepreneurs, trained 2k+, and invested in 75 high-growth companies. Additionally, we have an established relationship with the Cardano community.

[GENERAL] Requested funds in USD.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Contextual background: 

• Seedstars is very active with entrepreneurs’ education and collaborates with institutions like 01Edu, We Think Code_ and others to open 5 Seedstars Academies, tech entrepreneurial education schools, in the next 3 years. The first Academy was launched in South Africa in 2022 followed in September by one in the Ivory Coast and India in 2023. Our goal is to unlock entrepreneurial talent equipped with adequate tech skills. The talents will also acquire blockchain technology and development skills.   
• Problem: Tertiary Education in Emerging Markets does not Match the 21st Century Job Market, and access to quality education - meaning education leading to decently paying jobs - caters to those who have the financial means to attend private institutions in Africa that is only 8% of the youth population. Education financing options are limited for talents and investors see educational debt as a non-attractive asset class 
• Solution:
• We propose to unlock access to education financing through Income Share Agreements (ISA). With an ISA, a talent agrees to pay for their college education, or a portion of their education, by making pre-determined payments after graduation based on a percentage of their income.
• We want to share learnings with the wider community through a Cardano Improvement Proposal.

Our objective with this proposal is to: 

• Set up standards for the Cardano Community around the tokenization of education financing techniques (i.e. income share agreements). To do so we'll
• build on our learnings around ISA value chain, efficiency and deployment in emerging markets
• Explore the latest development in the on-chain realm to best build tokenized ISAs
• Kindly note this proposal is related to the work of our preliminary usecase testing work and the development of our proposed PoC. 

Our unique reason for doing it this way is to develop new standards around education and education financing amongst the Cardano community and hopefully spread it beyond it. 

Our audience is:

• Education providers equipping talents with 21st-century skills in emerging markets 
• Income Share Agreement providers targeting emerging markets 
• Talents using/opting/signing up for income share agreements 
• Players trying to enable the tokenization of real-world assets 
• Developers 

Through the Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP) we aim to describe standards, and processes and provide general guidelines/information to the Cardano Community regarding education financing. 

The output will be a formal, technical communication process that exists off-chain.

The impact will be the creation of new standards for the Cardano community. 

The proposal will operate in synergy with 

• Tokenization of income share - Use Cases l 
• Tokenization of income share - PoC 

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Through the proposed solution that operated in complementarity with the aforementioned proposals we wil address the challenge of having dapps, products and integrations implemented to bring impactful use cases to Cardano ecosystem that help drive more adoption by setting standards that will enable a catalytic adoption / development of solutions built on Cardano. 

This project will benefit the Cardano ecosystem: 

• Creation of new technical standards linked to education-linked tokens 
• Goodwill and positive associations to Cardano as a technology as it will be seen as a technology that can facilitate real-world positive projects as opposed to being a vehicle for speculation.
• It can draw the attention of public, private, and crypto organizations who seek better ways to transfer money to people in countries with little access to quality tertiary education.
• Building bottom-up incentives for Cardano adoption. All recipients will need to have an ADA wallet to receive their rewards. As the Seedstars Academy scales up, broad-based adoption will follow naturally.

The relevance of the project lies in the fact that quality Dapps, products, and integrations will increase the utility & adoption of Cardano: 

• Ensuring the next generation of well-trained talents in emerging markets have interacted with Cardano on matters as important as their education and first salary will increase the adoption of Cardano amongst well-trained working professionals. 
• Education providers in emerging markets will interact with on-chain financing mechanisms and we assume it will increase the adoption of crypto in legacy systems 
• Testing and proving the model will de-risk the adoption of the model for crypto investors thereby unlocking a new asset class for them 
• Education courses for students about blockchain technology and Cardano will support the next-gen of developers and entrepreneurs

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

Risk: The number 1 risk would be to propose a CIP that is not used as a standard

Mitigation: This is why we want to federate around these reflections and why we are making a catalyst proposal 

Risk: We also want to raise awareness around the interest of ISA, which are today little visible and present in the Web3 ecosystem

Mitigation: CIP!

Risk: Make a proposal that is disconnected from operational reality 

Mitigation: The consortium of actors who will work together on the proposal

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Kindly find the extensive workplan that explains how the various projects complement one another here.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

A more detailed allocation of resources can be found here. 

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

This proposal is a collaboration between several Catalyst & Cardano ecosystem players. All very engaged and involved also with the Catalyst Community. 

Lead Submitter: 

• Seedstars (https://seedstars.com/) is a group on a mission to impact people's lives in emerging markets through technology and entrepreneurship. It consists of 3 tracks: investments (VC funds), capacity building for tech startups (Seedstars Programs), and entrepreneurial education (Seedstars Academy). 
• Pierre-Alain Masson
• Background: Founder and CEO of Seedstars, Founder Ensures Capital, CFO SOS Evasans
• Expertise: Business launch, development and scaling, finance. 
• Michael Weber 
• Background: Founder and Managing Partner at Seedstars, currently leading the development of the Seedstars Capital Platform. Previously co-Founder of soSport. Associate at the Corporate Finance Group, Senior Consultant at PwC.  
• Experience: Finance (incl. Venture Capital, Corporate Finance)
• Rosie Keller 
• Background: Global Partnerships Lead at Seedstars, Seedstars Academy Team, Regional Manager Asia at Seedstars, Founder of Emerging Markets fellowship.   
• Expertise: Partnerships, product design, Asian entrepreneurial scene. 
• Horatiu Ticau 
• Background: Head of People Operations at Seedstars, Seedstars Academy Team, Board Member of the Entrepreneurship Academy (Romania), Entrepreneurship methodology designer at Yincubate 
• Expertise: Entrepreneurial Education Design, People Operations, Business Operations  
• Tiziana Bombassei 
• Background: Global Partnerships Team at Seedstars, Seedstars Academy Team, Regional Manager MENA at Seedstars, VC analyst at Seedstars, Founder of Changemakers International 
• Expertise: Venture analysis, partnerships, entrepreneurial education operations, MENA entrepreneurial scene. 
• 
  

Co-Submitters 

• Smart Chain (https://smart-chain.fr/en/) - designs and implements Blockchain solutions to improve operational performance and create value within ecosystems. The blockchain research and development center counts 50 people, +20 cross-chain projects and distinguishes itself by its experience in development, blockchain technical research, and impact use cases. 
• Adrien Hubert 
• Background: Bank innovation management, Economic
• Expertise: Tokenomics, Business Model
• Vincent Katchavenda 
• Background: Entrepreneur
• Expertise: Creating communities, networks in Africa
• Trisha Suresh 
• Background: Entrepreneur
• Expertise: Creating Communities, Networks in Africa

• ProofSpace (https://proofspace.id/)- ProofSpace is an interoperable identity network wrapped with no-code tools for issuing and verifying decentralised identity credentials. They aim to eliminate the technical barriers to entry for SSI and proliferate the number of use cases that are possible with SSI. They support Atala PRISM and Hyperledger Indy, bringing a robust, scalable and decentralized identity layer. ProofSpace can also act as a L2 Trust Registry allowing other services and ecosystems to share users without onboarding them separately.
• Nick Mason, CEO (proofspace.nick)
• Background: Venture analyst at Toniic, Head of Portfolio and Operations at BeyondMe, UK Director for Sierra Leone based education charity and Trustee for Street Child. Co-Founded ProofSpace (formerly ZAKA in 2019).
• Expertise: Venture development and analysis, partnership development project management, business development and operations. Europe and Africa.
• Viktor Radchenko, CTO (viktor.rko)
• Background:20-year R&D and full-stack track record. 
• Expertise: Skilled in project and product management, solution architecture, science consulting, blockchain, mobile, web, game, and embedded development. 6 publications in peer-reviewed journals. 
• Olesya Kershaw, Customer Success Analyst 
• Background: professional musician and concert pianist, teacher and business analyst
• Expertise: Analytics, attention to detail, project management, flexibility, quick adaptability to change, reliability, relationship building.
• Ruslan Shevchenko PhD, Solution Architect (rssh)
• Background: Researcher at Institute of Software Systems, Founder of several successful ventures including NBI (internet provider), GradSoft (software development firm), and largest UA Scala group. 10 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Author of “Methods of Algebraic Programming” and active columnist.
• Expertise: 30yrs full-stack across blockchain, telco, advertising, and financial services.
• Chancen International (https://chancen.international/) - is a not-for-profit organization that provides an ethical, fair, and responsible financing model for young people in Africa to access quality tertiary education.
• Batya Blankers 
• Background: Batya is South African and was given access to a university in Germany through participation in an Income Share Agreement. She launched Chancen in 2018 and has financed 1600 young people with an ISA in Rwanda and South Africa.
• Expertise: Feasibility, research, and operational implementation of ISAs in SSA. MBA from African Leadership University and 10+ management experience in non-profit and for-profit enterprises

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To be noted that our teams are also working on two other proposals 

• Tokenizing Income Share - Use Cases, here, that aim to do a preliminary use case testing for the tokenization of ISAs 
• Tokenizing Income Share - PoC, here, that aim at technically developing the PoC of tokenizing ISAs
• Side note: Seedstars is a large organization composed of more than 80 team members. It is to our understanding that other teams are submitting proposals unrelated to the activities of our team. For more information, you can visit the IdeaScale handle seedstars.

In terms of time management, this is how we intend to manage our work across proposals

• Proofspace: Here is a link explaining workload management: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xkE9MMoJGXWKLl9Lkdh7c-R3hH1nn7XdMsZzRSE9LCY/edit?usp=sharing 
• Seedstars: We have foreseen time to centralize learning as part of the other proposals. Such learnings shall suffice in terms of heavyweight. We will then support with the few hours allocated to the CIP over the week of drafting. 
• Chancen International: Chancen will house this project in its Research and Product Department and make 1 full-time project lead available for 6 months. Our team has over 7 years of experience in ISAs and currently managed 1651 ISA contracts in Rwanda and South Africa. Our input will ensure that underwriting, risk management, and operationalizing in the real world is realistically translated into tokenization and a POC that can lead to further scale and ensure an ISA marketplace is established.

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

If we are funded, we will return to the catalyst to scale the initiative. With the Fund 9 proposals, we aim to research the field and implementation to build a proof of concept and lay the foundations for the scaling of the initiative. Through our Fund 10 foreseen applications we aim to deploy the proof of concept and work on blocking elements we will have identified in the first phase of the project. 

Seedstars see Cardano and the Catalyst community as a long-term partners with multiple collaboration opportunities. We will therefore reach out to the community on various key initiatives that could bring use cases and high-value creation to the Cardano ecosystem 

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Every deliverable of the project described in the detailed workplan will be visible to the community through monthly reports, which will demonstrate adherence to the work plan. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are mostly related to the achievement of the success metrics (see below). 

The CIP shall be drafted at once. The elements tracked will be dependent on our ability to work from the other proposals presented in the workplan, in the preliminary use case testing, and in the PoC projects.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Success will primarily be measured in terms of proving the viability of a new application on top of Cardano and the attraction of new users to Cardano. 

Key milestones of success include

• Validation of the CIP draft
• Final CIP Validation
• CIP Use cases (see our proposal on use cases and PoC)

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This proposal is an entirely new one.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

Our proposal contributes to various SDGs but mostly Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

The main subgoals tackled are: 

• 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.b 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 programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries

To this end, in the scale up of our proposal (research and PoC) we’ll track 

• The the participation rate of youth and adults in formal and non-formal education and training in the previous 12 months, by sex
• The proportion of youth and adults with information and communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skills
• The volume of official development assistance flows for scholarships by sector and type of study