Cardano Start Guide

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

I will create an accessible guide that can be given to someone completely new to Cardano, that will take them through the process of creating a wallet all the way up to interacting with DeFi apps and L2 solutions. I will host this guide online for anyone to link to, and also the text and images will be licensed with an open license (Creative Commons license or similar) so anyone in the Cardano ecosystem can duplicate, modify, and re-use the guide--or just the relevant parts--as needed for their own projects and applications.

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

Currently each Dapp, Product, and Integration in the Cardano ecosystem assumes that their users arrive with an already-existing knowledge of blockchain and Cardano in particular, or else they individually devote resources to creating their own onboarding and support documentation to guide new users.

An open-licensed accurate and simple guide to Cardano will be a useful resource for any project in the ecosystem, either by linking to it directly or copying and building on just the relevant parts. For instance, a project operating a bridge might want to appropriate the sections showing a new user how to create a wallet, but won't need to include information about NFTs, stake pools, etc.

[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 only significant risk is feature-creep, trying to explain too many things and making the document too large and unwieldy. I am experienced with managing this kind of challenge, however, and I know how to set milestones and prune and edit as I work.

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

One part of the timeline will depend on the public release of the Lace light wallet (lace.io), since that will be used along with Daedalus as the sample case demonstrating how to set up a new wallet and perform basic actions.

However, in general the schedule will be to complete 1 new chapter every 2 weeks. Provisionally, the chapters will be as follows.

#1: Blockchain review (What is a blockchain and how does it work?)

#2: Welcome to Cardano! (What makes Cardano unique?)

#3: Getting started (Creating a wallet)

#4: Hands-on tour of the Cardano ecosystem

#5: Stake pools and delegating

#6: Governance

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Keeping the timeline of 2 weeks per chapter, at 6 chapters the creation of the guide will require approximately 3 months of work. In addition to the writing, this will include creation of art and diagrams, editing, layout, and publishing online to the web. The rate of USD $3200 per month over 3 months will cover all of this as well as guaranteed web hosting for at least 5 years in the future (and most likely continuously after that).

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

The primary author will be Leo King, former customer support lead for Yoroi wallet at Emurgo and technical writer for dcSpark. Leo has worked within the Cardano ecosystem for more than 5 years, during which time he has authored several important user-facing documents that are used heavily by the community, including most recently the Getting Started guide for Milkomeda.

Freelance help will also be employed to assist with editing and layout work.

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

If the reception of the guide is good and there is a demand, I may look to translate it into other languages in the future.

[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?

We will provide updates as each new chapter is completed, to show whether we are meeting or ahead of our goal of one chapter per 2 weeks. Sample text will also be released throughout the task to give an idea of quality of the work being done (although none of the text will be final until everything is completed and reviewed at the end).

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

The Cardano Start Guide is implemented in whole or in part by many projects in the Cardano ecosystem and people also access it directly. Users actually read it, understand it, and benefit from it and the Cardano userbase grows.

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

This is a new project