Cardano Commoner: SofiH

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

This is an individual effort which aims to work for the benefit of the Cardano community in a neutral way. The goal is to collaborate with other members without being exclusive to certain groups.

The proposer will work a fixed number of hours per week over a period of 6 months, focused on supporting decentralized communities (DAO’s, Commons, DisCo’s) within the ecosystem. Each month will be a complete iteration of work: from planning to delivery, each with a specific focus. The work will include research, documenting, collaborating with other projects, coordinating efforts to define standards and sharing the results.

To give some examples of possible directions that could be focussed on:

Token tracking

Most communities will use a set of specific tokens within their community. It would be useful to have a dedicated database to track all the interactions and movements of these tokens without running a full db-sync node. Such decoupling could also allow this to be a native graph based solution. This would allow the token network to be analyzed as a social graph. Such a database could be developed independently of any token and offered as a containerized open source solution that any group issuing a token could run an instance of

Token based authentication

Tokens will often be used to determine permissions within the system and in online platforms and tools that are used within a community. The focus of an iteration could be on building a proof of concept for such a solution. However, there are already several groups who have committed to building this and so this might be redundant. If several solutions exist an iteration could instead focus on creating an overview and analysis of the current offering.

Other general directions:

• Data Science Infrastructure
• Multi Agent modeling
• Tokenomics models
• Metadata use cases

Preliminary work has been done in all these areas, priorities will be aligned with relevant stakeholders.

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

This proposal aims to work with existing DAO's and other similar organizations who are actively developing their own tools. By doing so and doing this cross-project the goal is to improve the overall overing and visibility of solutions available within the Cardano ecosystem

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

The space and the projects in it move fast and several groups are often working on similar solutions. It is hard to predict what will be most valuable to focus on in 3 months time and beyond.

For this reason the work will be done iteratively and in an agile manner. A main subject will be chosen at the start of each month with input from relevant stakeholders. This way the work can prioritize what is most relevant at that time.

The proposal relies on the willingness of other projects and proposers to collaborate with this effort. The proposer has already worked with several other open source developers in the Catalyst ecosystem and several have shown to be interested in this effort. 

The outcomes of the work might be overlooked or only impact the involved projects. Sharing the work has been a weak point of the engagement so far and will be a priority in the following months. Currently work is being done to set up better outgoing communication channels including a dedicated discord server

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

The total duration would be 6 months, minimum 12 hours a week.*

The work will be split in iterations of 1 month. Each iteration would include some output in the form of a report or public documentation, a presentation of the deliverable and an alignment session for the next iteration with key stakeholders.

Work will be done using agile principles focusing on delivering value in small increments. Each iteration will include an upfront goal and a reflection of the iteration at the end, to improve the process continuously.

*These hours will be matched with additional voluntary work in the community to participate in the public debate, stay up to date with other projects and share the results with others.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

The budget for the proposal consists of a fixed payment per month per iteration completed. Additionally there is a budget to reward contributions from fellow community members who help bring the proposal to a success.

Monthly payment: 3000$ 

With 48 hours per month this equates to 3000/48 = 62.5$/h (at minimum hours)

6 months total: 18000$

Contribution rewards: 2000$

Total budget: 20.000$ (2% of the total challenge budget)

All other costs made during the course of the proposal (subscriptions, literature, hosting) will be paid using the monthly payments. (This format was chosen to minimize overhead cost of administration)

The monthly payments can be distributed per iteration upon completion of the previous iteration. Contribution rewards can be partially distributed up front and/or on a per need basis. This approach should limit the risk for the community. 

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

Proposer: Sosha (SofiH)

For linked in and other references:

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOdUcZlU=/

Basic academic background in the fields of Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence & Computational Logistics (Bsc. Artificial Intelligence, UvA). Professional experience with software development and applied AI in the domains of Education (EdTech) & Health (e-Mental Health). 

Experience participating in a variety of self organizing communities (activist organizations, autonomous communities, voluntaire based event organization). Experience with principles of the Commons, Holacracy, Agile Governance. 

Theoretical and experimental background in multi agent systems, swarm intelligence, decentralized network routing, neural networks and natural language processing

Technical knowledge of Cardano, experience with node operations, constructing transactions. Familiar with several projects working on foundational components both for the Cardano and Catalyst ecosystem. Contributed to Cardano API infrastructure project (Dandelion)

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

Due to the format of the proposal, the output would not create any form of revenue and so this proposal is not seeding a business. Whether there will be a continuation depends on feedback and encouragement from other community members.

In alignment with the subject matter, there are also possibilities to fund this type of work through other decentralized funds that might exist in the future. This would be the long term goal and hopefully this effort can contribute to the development of such systems.

[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?

Each iteration of work (1 month) will conclude with a public deliverable and some form of public presentation. At the start of each iteration there is a session to set the focus for that month. Participants who will be invited include challenge team members, proposers and contributors of open source projects. The decision for the focus per iteration will be recorded and explained.

Engagement and interest in these sessions and the deliverable can function as a form of auditing and tracking progress.

A discord server will be set up to host some of these events and to set up announcement channels for updates on progress

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

Collaboration with a number of different projects resulting in six tangible deliverables (articles, standard drafts, proof of concept) which are used by others as a building block. Continued and growing engagement in public sessions and with stakeholders throughout the six months.

Past the scope, continued collaboration between projects engaged during this proposal. Improved documentation for developers to understand the design of decentralized solutions.

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

A timeline and overview of previous proposals:

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOdvGm3c=/

Previous efforts include promoting the Open Source ecosystem through the Challenge Setting, proposing and guiding the Open Source Developer Ecosystem Challenge in F6 & F7.

This proposal is a continuation of an ongoing effort. This started with a successful pilot in role based proposals in F7 and was subsequently funded again in F8. The F7 proposal has been completed in effort, however the finalization has been delayed due to unforeseen circumstances during the spring.

Community Consultancy: Tokenomics (funded, being finalized)

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384043

This proposal is meant as a continuation, due to the length of the current funding cycle there would be only a short period of overlap with the proposal of F8. This is the only proposal I am actively involved in in this round and this effort has my highest priority among my community efforts.

Open Standards & Design Patterns (funded, ongoing, ends in november)

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/399132

Below are some references from other community members:

James Dunseith (Gimbalabs)

“In every experience I've had working with him over the last 12 months, Sosha brings an interdisciplinary approach based in his broad technical expertise and careful attention to all that is human in our work. He comes to conversations first as a listener, and because he is so consistently present, he is able to notice details that I overlook. Most important to me is - owing to Sosha's consistency and domain expertise - that he is able to say "hard things": giving constructive feedback and straightforward assessments, even when it's hard to hear. This is how Sosha helps people to grow.“

Roberto Morano (Dandelion)

"Sosha's support has been of great help to identify what, when and even who (ie, which community groups/customers) would be better to focus on to accomplish different missions within Dandelion project. He has vast knowledge on the technical side of things (AI, data management, SaaS development...) but where his experience shines the most is around teams' interactions. He has developed a framework inspired by traditional agile methodologies, but conceived to be in constant evolution and adaptation to boost people's/team's cooperation; helping them to find the highest potential of human collaboration."