Cardano Community Hubs DAO &cDDK

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Firstly I'd like to thank you very much for reading our proposal, and if this is the 100th or one thousandth proposal you have read thank you for your tenacity!

Charles Hoskinson has stated that Cardano Community Hubs are the best way to build adoption and to connect Cardano to the needs of the world - we TOTALLY agree, here is a short video where Charles Hoskinson outlines his vision:

We are going to launch ourselves as the Cardano Community Hubs DAO "CCH DAO" with the aim of increasing our effectiveness at establishing Hubs around the world, this was one of the objectives stated in our Fund 7 & 8 roadmaps.

We will record all of the steps in detail (and using multilingual multimedia) and share them as an open-source guide to create DAOs, we will also be working with other proposers to develop special DAO creation tools, we will also encourage our Cardano Hubs to become DAOs to support themselves financially for the long term so they can relieve the demands on Project Catalyst Funding (giving others a chance).

We will be incorporating all of our work and developped projects into CCH DAO, by the very nature of the DAO business model we will put the control of how we build the number of Cardano Community Hubs in the hands of the community:

This will be our CCH DAO Ecosystem

We are also in contact with others planning to educate and create tools or DAO creation to collaborate to the maximum (more on this below).

Click the Image below to read our initial White Paper

(Final Contents to be voted on)

CCH DAO Treasury

Our focus is the building of Cardano Community Hubs Worldwide, to fund this 70% of all "HUBS" Token Sales will go to our Treasury - The Treasury will specifically focus on provide funding to build and run Cardano Hubs around the world. This will take the pressure off of Project Catalyst funding & provide a dedicated funding option controled by the community.

We will be employing the latest voting and governance options, this will include quadratic and "rolling" voting methods. We are also discussing collaborations with other stakeholders, developers and toolmakers who will help to make this a great success.

What is a DAO?

Initially, for anyone who is unfamiliar with the acronym “D.A.O.”, it stands for a “Decentralised Autonomous Organisation”, this means that the administration of the organisation is controlled purely by code on the blockchain, or otherwise known as a smart contract, the creativity for the organisation is provided by the human beings involved who propose ideas to the DAO so that the entire community can then vote on whether they want the proposal to be implemented or not.

"The Way" or "The Path"

NOTE: In Chinese the word “DAO” means: a way or a path. Confucians used the word

to explain the way human beings ought to behave in society in an ethical or moral way.

PHASE 4 of our Cardano Community Hubs Catalyst proposals

We propose to provide solutions to this challenge as a natural progression of our previous funded activities in the Project Catalyst experiment. We will create the CCH DAO and record our journey for all to learn from.

How we perceive the problem we are solving;

We want to help the increased adoption of the DAO model on the cardano BLOCKCHAIN, we will also document our journey in creating our CCH DAO and presenting it As a Cardano DAO development kit (cDDK) making it as easy as possible to follow.

Our reasons for approaching it in the way that we have; 

We believe the most powerful way to educate, and guide is to lead by example, we want to help demystify the process of creating a decentralised autonomous organisation by demonstrating how it can be done.

The Stakeholders our project will engage; 

As our primary objective has been to increase the number of Cardano Community Hubs around the world and to have those hubs become financially independent, we will focus our efforts on encouraging new and existing Cardano Hubs to adopt the DAO model as part of their monetisation and efforts to become self-sustainable.

How our project will be implemented; 

In addition to our own research about DAO creation we have also reached out to other proposers and community members with similar interests.

Reaching Out & Collaborating

In particular we are at the beginning stages of agreeing a collaboration between ourselves and Logan Panchot & Justin Schreiner of Clear Contracts: https://clearcontracts.io/. Who also have complimentary proposals and joint venture agreements with companies such as MLABS (Haskell, Rust, Blockchain and AI consultancy): https://mlabs.city/ and F10 Incubator & Accelerator: https://www.f10.global/

Other “Clear Contracts” Proposals that align with our objectives.

DAO smart contract templetizaiton

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/382086

F7: DApps & Integrations

No code, audited Smart Contracts

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/382311

F8: DApps and Integrations

Clarity DAO Incubator

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/396524

F9: DAOs <3 Cardano

Clarity DAO Incubator

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/414261

F9: DAOs <3 Cardano

Clarity DAO Infrastructure

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/414257

We will continue to reach out to build more collaborations within the Cardano Community to create the best possible results.

What we will produce;

We will create ourselves as the “CCH DAO” and we will record our journey to create a cDDK (Cardano DAO Development Kit) in coordination with other experts in this area.

Our expected outcomes;

We hope and expect that leading by example will motivate all corners of the Cardano community to employ the DAO Governance models to increase the number of transactions and create self-sustainable projects and businesses build specifically on the Cardano Blockchain.

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

Our Reasoning:

We believe that the best way to develop the structures and tools required to support the launching of multiple DAOs on the Cardano blockchain will be to find the solutions while building our own DAO so that we can experiment, and everyone will see the results in real time.

We are lucky because there are many examples of DAOs launched in the past on other Blockchains, we can build the DAOs of the future using the good and bad examples to learn from, and the superior Cardano, IOHK & Emurgo development technology.

We must remember that all Cardano DAO (cDAO) governance tokens are tier one tokens, unlike the tokens of Etherium, for example, as complex individual smart contracts are not necessary (because the Cardano Blockchain provides a lot of the code natively), the tokens are as fundamentally strong as ₳DA, that means there is less chance of faulty code and potential exploits that can be used by hackers.

Since the very beginning of our proposals to build Cardano Community Hubs we have always stated that we would like to hand over control to the community of our activities under a DAO framework.

Happily, we have the operational abilities, software skills and availability of the necessary team members to provide multiple solutions to this challenge.

"Our approach in reaching out to all interested parties in the DAO operating model will ensure we reach the highest levels in DAO community collaboration, DAO creation, DAO operation and DAO governance."

Our History & Addressing Challenges

Over the last 4 Funds the community has changed the challenges, which means the priorities perceived to be of the highest need for Cardano.

Project Catalyst has changed a great deal since "FUND 1" (We have only been involved since FUND 6), each Fund has brought new ways of doing things and new guidance on submitting proposals and running projects - seems to all be for the good making Project Catalyst more sophisticated at every stage.

You will see at the beginning we submitted 23 Insights & 23 Proposals (Fund 6, 7, 8 & 9) built upon them, you can open a full list below - at the launch of each fund we have sought to address the community's "Challenges" while remaining true to our original ideas, incorporating them in activities required by the Cardano Community through challenges set.

This iteration is stated as a desirable quality by the Project Catalyst team, and also IOHK, "Taking initiative" has been requested by all including Charles Hoskinson, saying "Show me what you've got!", each fund we try to do just that.

Where we have received Project Catalyst funding it has helped move forward in the knowledge the Cardano Community are with us, in many cases where funding has not been available, but we feel we can add value, we have self-funded proposals to move them to a position where the community can make a judgment based in the evidence before them, we have called this "Show don't Tell" - we will continue to do this.

Click the image to view the spreadsheet

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

As with a lot of blockchain based technologies the establishment and use of a DAO framework is often misunderstood and therefore feared. We cannot know the future or what will happen in each country, we can never-the-less be alert and remain agile to respond to whatever comes up.

This does not mean that the decentralised autonomous organisation is doomed. What it does mean is that there needs to be some forward thinking and in-built flexibility required to be prepared for the challenges ahead, below we have outlined several key areas that will need to be addressed and I'm sure that there will be more headings as we go forward:

Slow Decision Making

As a DAO is operated by allowing every member of the DAO to vote on all or most matters this can make progress cumbersome. There are there are various ways we can counteract this including having special committees or having voting delegated to individuals or specialised groups where the decision-making process can be quickened.

Majority Control

There is also the possibility, where the voting is tied to the number of tokens owned, that large owners would effectively be able to run the DAO in a centralised fashion.

This is the opposite to our objective! Therefore, we are looking at other ways to vote, such as one person one vote and quadratic voting. Of course large holders may feel that they have a lot more to lose than smaller holders so we will probably need to have several tiers of voting, or different sections, that relate to different parts of the operation of the DAO.

There will be certain matters that have a fundamental effect on the value of the DAO where large holders perhaps should have a bigger say in the decision-making process, on the other hand there will be day to day operational matters that simply need a decision by the community, such as marketing for example, where the fundamentals of the DAO are not being affected and everyone should have an equal vote.

Immutable code

All code on the blockchain is immutable, meaning it cannot be changed once it has been lodged, this could lead two roadblocks down the line as matters evolve. Therefore a process involving voting will need to be employed in the code to allow subsequent code to be added and referenced by the foundation code, allowing the DAO to operate under new unknown circumstances.

Code Flaws

In the past there have been DAOs that have failed (The DAO) because the code had not been properly written and audited, allowing hackers to exploit fundamental errors. The answer to this is to learn from the past and identify where open exploits may be and also to have a rigorous auditing of the smart contract before it is employed on the blockchain.

Opensource

As you may know the blockchain and all the code on it is totally open source, this means that potential hackers can read it, research, test and launch attacks on the code, the comments in the previous section apply here also.

Responsibility & Liability

There has been some discussion in America and elsewhere that a DAO, due to its decentralised ownership, is difficult for other entities to identify who would be responsible in the case of damage to another party and where the liability would stand.

There are various options that may need to be employed in the future, this is not the case at the moment, such as using or adopting similar structures to existing partnership corporations or not for profit charities. (See the next section under ownership).

Ownership

Similar to the above comments identifying ownership can be difficult, particularly as via the tokenisation certain individuals may have a level of anonymity. This is not a problem when all is running well but of course if there is ever any claims against the operation or governments decide that they want to try and tax profits for example some type of structure recognised universally may need to be adopted or incorporated, these include Limited Liability Company (LLC), Blockchain-Based LLC or Not-For-Profit/Limited By Guarantee companies.

Regulation

As mentioned above there is no way to know how the future will play out in relation to the regulation of block chain and digital currencies, we simply must monitor everything that is going on and be prepared to take whatever action is required to comply with governmental involvement in our organisations.

National Differences

Another variable will be the approach taken by individual sovereign States and governments towards our technologies, once again we can only stay vigilant and act with best practice in mind to be prepared for legislation or regulation that may be imposed in the future.

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

Timeline explanation

We have structured our activities timeline on a monthly basis to align with the monthly funding payments from Project Catalyst (6 Equal Payments Expected), as we have 2 proposals in this funding round, we have displayed both timelines to show how we have planned the works in parallel.

July (Pre-Funding) Colour: Green – Activities: Research & Preparation, Close F8

August (Pre-Funding) Colour: Green – Activities: Research & Preparation, , Close F8

September (Funded) Colour: Blue – Activities: “Launch” all foundational work

October (Funded) Colour: Gold – Activities: “Implementation” & publishing

November (Funded) Colour: Orange – Activities: “Testing & Refinement”

December (Funded) Colour: Purple – Activities: “Finalisation” works

Expected formal close out date 31/12/2022

You can see the detailed activity timeline by clicking the image below (Linked to a Google Doc), you will see the timelines for both of our FUND 9 proposals (And Closing our FUND 8 Proposal by August 31st) to show how we have planned to deliver both projects:

Funded Projects - Completion Reports

To support our record of delivering on our promises to the Cardano Community and to show our journey of iterations towards delivering a useful service, below are links to our two close-out reports (that include video presentations) to IOHK/Project Catalyst:

FUND 7: Scale-UP Cardanos Community Hubs - Cardano Worldwide Community Hubs

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jJ1_KKVG-_8jSHa4i_V2dvpPMs1qdxrb/view

FUND 7: Catalyst Natives COTI: Pay with ADA Plug-in - ADA Payments for Joomla 3 & 4

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P_KiNmPCon8gT3j8qiSJuuszyD7t-hgi/view

INTERVIEW With COTI:

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Budget Explanation

We have structured and colour coded our budget to match our activity timeline so you can cross check activities against expenditure, the stated budgets are for each month and calculated to try and maintain cash stability, to pay workers, in line with the monthly payments from the Project Catalyst treasury.

NB: Project Catalyst does not give the funding of projects in one lump sum, funding is paid over the number of months projected to complete the project, plus an initial payment and a final payment on closing out the project. Therefore a four-month project would get 6 equal payments.

These payments are only paid if a monthly report is received by Project Catalist/IOHK by the 24th day of each month (No report no funding!), we will publish our monthly reports on our website and social media channels for the community.

Please click on the image below to see the detailed budgets, here are the key line items for your convenience:

Website Code & Admin $3,925.00      

Research, Writing $7,525.00        

Admin, Marketing $12,090.00  

TOTAL = $23,540.00 (6 Payments of $3,923.33)

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

SKILLS REQUIRED - How can the community have confidence our projects will be completed?

We have demonstrated our commitment & competences by completing previous funded proposals (Fund 7 & 8) and we have a substantial team of in house and external developers, translators, researchers and data entry assistants.

We also we have numerous advisors and executives we could bring into this project as it grows, up to this point there are three key management individuals that have been guiding this project forward who have all worked together for a period approximately 10 years on multiple projects:

Carl Henry - 43 Year career as a serial entrepreneur and turnaround consultant. 20+ years building business websites using PHP, CSS, HTML, multimedia, AI, Running teams of up to 50 developers.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlhenry/

Lisa Santillo - University of New Hampshire - Bachelor of Arts; Multilingual executive, skilled in sales, marketing, interpersonal communication and technical project management. Six years recent experience connecting emerging software capabilities with industry opportunities. Leader in cohesive cross functional team engagement, building data driven product strategies to ensure successful outcomes.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-santillo-616104164/

Ankit Dave - Gujarat University - Master of Business Administration, finance, information technology and business analysis - Experienced Chief Executive Officer and founder of Tailored Solutions Pvt Ltd - Leading Joomla, Magento, Wordpress, Laravel, PHP, Mobile Application Development Company. with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Strong entrepreneurship professional skilled in IoT, Bluetooth Low Energy, Mobility, E-commerce & IT Solutions.

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankit-dave-indolytics/

Here are some of our valued team members:

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

This proposal is designed to take us forward to a point where we can become financally self-sustaining, that said depending on various outcomes we may need to apply to FUND 10 for some support in the beginning of 2023.

We will be actively promoting Project Catalyst to our Cardano Community Hubs as referrers.

[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?

This proposal is projected to last for 6 months, 2 months Pre-Funding & 4 months funded, as it is fairly complex, and we would like to have time to create several iterations to perfect the process.

HOW WILL THESE ITEMS BE MONITORED & REPORTED?

NB: Project Catalyst does not give the funding of projects in one lump sum, funding is paid over the number of months projected to complete the project plus an initial payment and a final payment on closing out the project. Therefore A four-month project would get 6 equal payments.

These payments are only paid if a monthly report is received by Project Catalist/IOHK by the 24th day of each month (No report no funding!), we will publish our monthly reports on our website and social media channels for the community.

Also, under our policy of “Show not Tell” we will be developing everything in public and open-source, therefore all progress can be monitored in real-time.

Qualitative Measurements.

How clear is our guidance explaining the process of creating a cDAO from A to Z?

How clear is our guidance explaining the process of operating a cDAO?

How effective is our guidance for both beginners & experienced people?

TARGET: Provide complete roadmap guidance that can be followed by a complete beginner.

What matters remain unclear and how to add the missing information?

TARGET: We will provide a “community feedback” portal where there can be Q&A – this may be via a Helpdesk with a ticketing system, social media or a forum.

Have we given guidance on all the optional cDAO models?

TARGET: Through our research we plan to give initial guidance on every type of DAO operating model.

How long does it take for a new cDAO to be created using our guidance?

TARGET: At the point of writing we have a target timetable of 3 Months from inception to launch.

Quantitative Measurements

Have we published a comprehensive multilingual cDDK (Cardano DAO Development Kit)?

TARGET: We plan to establish the cDDK as an online resource giving clear instructions and a logical roadmap indicating the options at each stage.

How many cDAOs are using our tools & guidance?

What stage of creation are the cDAOs: Starting, in process of forming, Launched?

TARGET: Within 6 months our current target is 10 in various stages as we are starting this project from zero, we expect this to increase greatly once properly established.

How many Languages has the cDDK been translated into?

TARGET: Our minimum target is 30 Languages.

Has the Cardano Community Hubs cDAO “CCH DAO” been launched?

TARGET: We expect to have fully launched the “CCH DAO” within 6 months from the end of FUND 9.

How many wallets hold the “$HUBS” native Cardano Token?

TARGET: Within 6 months from the end of FUND 9 we aim for 500 or more holders of $HUBS.

How many “$HUBS” native Cardano Tokens been reserved or allocated?

TARGET: During the 6 month period we will have allocated all $HUBS tokens to the various parties as allocated in the Whitepaper Token Economics.

How many holders of “$HUBS” are participating in the voting process?

TARGET: We expect that about 50% of $HUBS holders will be active voters.

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

Our aim is to add a new effective way to increase transactions on the Cardano Blockchain that will lead to increased payments to the Project Catalyst treasury.

We plan to give both individuals & organisations a high level of confidence that building their DAO on the Cardano Blockchain is the very best way to develop their project and community.

We want people to build certainty that they can build a DAO and operate it due to our clear and effective instructions.

We will be internationally inclusive by making all the online guidance multilingual with the aim of DAOs being created around the world.

We will offer ₳commerce tools to help DAOs become sustainable by creating revenues denoted in ₳DA and other native tokens.

We hope that the DAO model will be the main way that Cardano Community Hubs

organise themselves for long term sustainable futures.

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

We see this proposal as our PHASE 4 in the development of Cardano Community Hubs internationally.

It has always been our intention to hand over control of our work to the general Cardano Community in the form of a DAO.

As this Challenge “DAOs <3 Cardano” is about helping others to establish a DAO on the Cardano Blockchain we see an opportunity to achieve two things at the same time: by documenting our experiences in creating a Cardano DAO “cDAO” we can create a roadmap, “The Way”, for others to follow.

Our PHASE 2 (Fund 7) and PHASE 3 (Fund 8) of building Cardano Community Hubs were funded by Project Catalyst:

F7 - Cardano Worldwide Community Hubs – Closed Out

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/383417

F8 - CardanoCommunityHubs.com Worldwide – Current (Close Out 31st August 2022)

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/399147

Our other funded proposal in FUND 7 was:

F7 - ADA Payments for Joomla 3 & 4 – Closed Out

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/385165

In this challenge we worked with COTI ₳DA Pay to build software for website based shopping carts, this demonstrates our ability to build software tools to help with the creation and operation of DAOs.

NB: We plan to close out our work on PHASE 3 (FUND 8) by the 31st of August 2022 so that our work on PHASE 4 (FUND 9) can start in September.

We have also made a supporting proposal in FUND 9 that helps to facilitate the objectives of this proposal, here are the details:

F9: Dapps, Products & Integrations: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/campaigns/26595/about

Proposal Name: Building Profitable Cardano Hubs

Proposal Link: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/413931

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

Our proposals touch on all SDG's