CDA DeFi Education

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Our Solution

We propose an educational campaign, led by top-tier DeFi teams, for onboarding developers and users to the Cardano space. As is appreciated, Cardano's architecture and ecosystem are unique meaning lessons learned on EVM chains and elsewhere may not necessarily apply. For the "Great Migration" to accelerate, these resources are needed to guide the journey of newcomers. We will also work to promote Cardano across the developer/user communities of other blockchains. A straightforward example of this would be explainer posts comparing Cardano's limited gas fees to Ethereum users when Ethereum gas fees spike.

Market

dApp builders and users on Ethereum/Etheruem Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchains as well as laypeople in the Cardano ecosystem.

Problem Space

Ethereum and EVM blockchains (Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, etc) account for a disproportionately vast share of the smart contract blockchain market. This situation means developers and users naturally flock to EVM chains despite the oft-cited limitations stemming from global state, non-deterministic gas fees, and so on.

Of course, Cardano's design aims to address these limitations. Although it trails the development of its competitors, numerous Cardano dApps are here with others just around the corner, and EVM bridging solutions like Milkomeda are already experiencing strong demand.

As such, much of the technical groundwork is already set for "The Great Migration." Arguably, one of the final, yet most important, steps is smoothing out the onboarding experience for both developers and users.

How can we improve the onboarding experience for newcomers to Cardano?

Blockchain is experiencing a faster adoption curve than the internet, and marketing research firm Gartner suggests this trend shows no signs of weakening. So, what drives this heated interest?

Speculation plays its part, but compelling use cases are just as important. Finance, logistical, and medical use-cases are all promising, but these applications must be built and their utility understood for an influx of new users to be realized. For instance, the growth of DeFi dApps (and later NFT use-cases) is noted to have driven Ethereum’s market capitalization from a relative low of ~$9 billion to a high of ~$550 billion over three years.

Currently, numerous promising applications are underway on Cardano. However, more could be done to disseminate best practices for developers and pertinent information for consumers. Technical guidelines, video tutorials, educational articles, and how-tos will ensure that new participants fully understand the benefits, use-cases, and even quirks of Cardano. Most importantly, these resources will ensure applications bridging cross-chain, alongside their users, can easily migrate into the ecosystem with a low lag time for deploying tantalizing use cases.

How is the CDA well-positioned to provide educational resources for developers and users?

Together, members of the CDA represent an integrated and profound DeFi experience that stands to bring substantial attention to the ecosystem. Members live and breathe Plutus development and are intimately familiar with aspects of Cardano pertinent to new developers and users. Moreover, the consortium has the ear of IOG and frequently cooperates on the direction of development.

On Medium, the collective has published several topical articles detailing:

• how tokens can be verified (valuable know-how for DEX users and NFT collectors)
• upcoming Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs) and their implications
• ecosystem goals and how they can be achieved
• much more

Individual members are also important contributors to the body of knowledge surrounding Cardano's growth:

• MLabs: Plutonomicon – A developer-driven guide to Plutus smart contract language in practice
• Liqwid: Agora – Plutus governance module and open-source DAO tool
• Genius Yield: Coverage of IOHK releases and their implications
• Indigo: MetAcademy – Library of educational resources in the metaverse
• SundaeSwap: Concurrency, State, & Cardano

To name a few contributions. Many more can be discovered across the social channels of CDA member projects.

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

Our Proposal

We propose an educational campaign centered on key concepts and development issues facing Cardano. As seen with our other outreach, this content will be aimed at developers and users while remaining entirely accessible. It will focus on orientation, onboarding, and setting expectations, as well as highlighting areas where research, development, and cooperation are needed. As part of this proposal, we will also make ourselves available to answer comments and questions from community members as well as provide general advice (e.g., Q&A sessions) when possible.

It should be noted, however, that this proposal does not look to replace the Plutus Pioneer Program lecture series but rather complement it. This proposal includes developer- and user-facing content. A portion of our developer-facing content will highlight the ground-breaking development tools built outside of IOG. These tools represent exciting new capabilities for blockchain DApps, and we intend to promote them, as well, to newcomers and developers in other ecosystems.

This proposal primarily focuses on four key media types:

• Explainer articles complete with infographics
• Professionally edited and snappy screencast demonstrations/how-to videos
• Regular Twitter spaces
• Simple explainer animations

This proposal seeks funding to cover expenditures involving:

• Content research and fact-checking
• Professional writing and editing services
• Professional video editing services
• Twitter Spaces broadcasting and recording
• Community engagement, Q&A, and general feedback

How will these resources help Cardano?

Primarily, these educational items will ensure that best practices are maintained across the ecosystem while actively attracting new participants from EVM and other chains. They will serve as ever-green go-to sources for developers and topical educational resources to help users avoid common pitfalls and mistakes. They will also help inform and rally the community around R&D issues (e.g., CIPs) required to realize Cardano’s full impact.

Finally, content stemming from this proposal will be published and promoted in a manner meant to appeal to other blockchain communities. For example, posts and explainer videos covering the enhanced ownership protections available with Cardano NFTs versus those on, say, Tezos.

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

This proposal is very low-risk as CDA participants are highly experienced in providing educational content. For instance, each project has already gathered the relevant knowledge and know-how and circulates similar resources internally. The only challenge, which will be easily overcome, is establishing a regular release cadence to ensure maximum community engagement.

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

3 Months:

Organize content schedule via input from CDA members. This includes key issues to be covered while leaving room to address matters suggested by the community. Delegate writing responsibilities and begin publishing. Source a video editor.

6 Months:

Professionally written, high-impact articles published following a determined timeline. Regular video content and Twitter Spaces. Regular and active community engagement including outreach to cross-chain projects.

12 Months:

An impressive publication list of evergreen content aimed at best practices having been released alongside topical matters as they arose. A defined series of video content serving as valuable tutorials and how-to sources. Several cross-chain projects engaging in the space independently or as new members of the CDA.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Funding:

Hours involved: 625

Total: $50,000

Breakdown:

Feature Total Time

Content Research, Organization, and Fact-Checking 100

Professional Writing Services 85

Professional Editing Services 65

Screencast Video Production 45

Professional Video Editing 60

Twitter Spaces and Organization 55

Community Engagement 55

General Community Outreach and Education 50

Marketing and Promotion 35

Subtotal 550

Change Budget 75

Total Time 625 hours

Total Cost $50,000

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

OUR TEAM

Who is the CDA?

The Cardano DeFi Alliance (CDA) is a consortium consisting of project leaders from top-tier DeFi dApps. Membership is open and currently includes:

Ardana, Charli3, Coti ErgoDex, Genius Yield, GeroWallet, Indigo, Liqwid, MetaDex, Minswap, MLabs, Muesliswap, Optim, Sundaeswap, and VyFinance.

According to the group’s charter, CDA’s primary mission is to standardize Plutus and Cardano best practices within the ecosystem while driving composability across Cardano DeFi protocols. More specifically, the CDA’s mission includes:

• Providing a channel of transparency and communication to the Cardano DeFi community on key issues and roadmaps.
• Shaping protocol best practices related to smart contract design patterns, protocol security, and off-chain infrastructure.
• Providing Plutus developers insights from internal CDA members as well as the community.

Core Team

Hari Amoor

Hari is a software engineer at MLabs, mainly specializing in formal methods, i.e., type theory, proof-automation, etc., which is a core competency of MLabs; thus, he is familiar with languages such as Agda and Idris, along with Haskell. Moreover, he is also proficient in systems programming, mainly with Rust but also in C++ and Zig.

Hari has made many contributions to various smart contract systems and tooling on Cardano while at MLabs, while spending his spare time fulfilling his pursuits as a “crypto degen."

GitHub: https://github.com/hariamoor-mlabs

Ben Hart

Ben Hart

Ben heads the majority of MLabs’ Cardano-based projects. This includes open-source efforts such as the Cardano-Tx-Lib, currently under development, which aims to facilitate web3-like browser-based applications on Cardano. Although he previously developed in Solidity on Ethereum, he is a Haskell expert. He also has experience in implementing accounting software, web development, functional javascript, technical writing, and more.

GitHub: https://github.com/Benjmhart

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

This is a possibility that depends on input from the community. If we are successful in our goal of creating engaging onboarding material and marketing Cardano cross-chain, we may apply to later Catalyst rounds to continue the effort. Naturally, we will incorporate community feedback, lessons learned, etc. should we do so.

[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?

Intended Fund – Fund9: The Great Migration (from Ethereum)

Challenge Question: “How might we make it easy and fast for dApps and other projects to expand or completely move from Ethereum to Cardano?"

Project Impact: High

Best Practices: This proposal will help DeFi and Plutus leaders highlight and disseminate best practices for secure dApp development.

User Orientation: Although notably safer and more reliable than EVM blockchains, Cardano is not without its quirks and cautious points. As demonstrated in our token verification article, our outreach will help users overcome any initial hurdles to becoming power users in the space.

Community Engagement: Community engagement is a necessary component of a successful project--this is why Charles Hoskinson is so active on social media. This proposal will help the CDA focus a greater amount of energy on community engagement where it is poised to deliver outsized benefits to ecosystem participants. These efforts will also extend to promoting Cardano and its benefits to other blockchain communities.

To judge our effectiveness here, we will measure:

-views, likes, comments, etc. on our article posts

-growth in social metrics including engagement on Twitter

-growth in active users on Cardano

-growing number of member projects

-reposting of our content

-engagement and turn-out for Twitter Spaces and Q&As

-general community feedback and reception of our content campaign

The deliverables of this proposal will be easily audited by interested community members. All content will be publicly available, open-source, and marketed through our social channels.

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

We hope that a selection of our content essentially becomes evergreen onboarding documentation for developers and users joining the space. We hope our channels are easily discovered by newcomers and that readers/viewers are better equipped to navigate and build on Cardano by consuming our content. We will also work to attract users/builders from other chains by evangelizing the benefits of Cardano to other blockchain communities.

[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 proposal.