I strongly agree with all that you said Daniel! And of course also with @0xhuman
I would rather first see the implementation of one DAO and evaluate whether after six months the preliminary results are satisfactory enough to launch the other 2 DAOs.
All these proposals are ambitious and exciting, but at the same time in a bear market period and with the celo price in the ATL zone, one necessarily needs to be transparent about expenses and optimize processes.
Hi All!
I am new here - Will Ruddick From Grassroots Economics based in Kenya. grassecon.org we work with over 60,000 users and have developed over 50 blockchain based currencies in vulnerable communities: see viz.sarafu.network
I love the emphasis of Africa DAO - on training and onboarding - Grassroots Economics also focuses on helping communities turn into Economic Commons - that issue blockchain based vouchers as a medium of exchange. Would be amazing to include these types of training - and trainers of trainers.
Some major financial concerns for our work with vulnerable communities in Kenya and Cameroon and South Africa and soon most of Africa:
If there can be some direction toward supporting these grassroots crypto using vulnerable communities it would be amazing.
Looking forward to being part of the community.
Best,
Will
@0xhuman .Very interesting feedback. In my own opinion, $120k may sound like a huge figure for a hackathon. However,on closer inspection,I think the hackathons would be distributed across the whole African region such that there would be in-person participants in Kenya,in-person participants in Nigeria ,Uganda,South Africa which translating to a higher cost for venue and food.
We could however optimize the prizes to bring the cost downwards.
Hi @0xhuman thanks for your input.
• firstly, the actual cost of hackathon is $75,000 per hackathon if we exclude the cost of paying the technical ambassadors. And while the Berkeley ( A city ) cost up to $39K, this hackathon is focusing on the entire Africa continent with over 1bn people with specific in-person activities in up to 5 countries. With the price, we had decided to have a placeholder and make any necessary changes from the community feedback gather. Really appreciate your points of breaking it down further.
• Additionally, the proposal has been put in place to pay all local ambassadors across Africa, up to 30 of them, such that we do not have to pay ambassadors through community grant anymore since ambassadors are primarily driving community initiatives. Thank you for your honest feedback and we shall take into consideration all points noted.
Welcome to the Celo Community Will.
Looking forward to speaking more about the work by Grassroots Economics, there are some great resources in the ecosystem.
I shall reach out to you directly.
Hello Everyone,
I would like to introduce Montech Studios, we are an Enterprise Web3 Studio that specialized in building great products across multiple different chains. We have deployed 25+ apps on EVM & non EVM compatible chains. We look forward to participating in Focus Area 3 of the DAO in Africa and working with other creators to expand the Celo ecosystem in Africa.
My Name is Olu Akinwande, I am the Founder and CTO at Montech Studios, If anyone is in need of a professional, agile development team to help bring there projects to life we are available for consult by visiting Montech.io and scheduling an appointment.
Thank you Celo for supporting Africa!!!
Hi, We could see about supporting with smartphone access. We do it with a lease to buy deal with fair rates often with coops and communities. It would be great to see us run on Celo and some initial funds to seed the “defi” circle from the outside. We are in Rwanda, looking at Zimbabwe. In Cameroon we need a trustworthy partner - could be Will’s link?
We rely on USSD (AfricasTalking and in Cameroon a company like that called Nexah) Without subsidy the services are WAY!!too expensive to use for transactions.
I’m looking forward to riffing off the Valora and Kolecktivo (fork) wallets as well as telegram and other bots for wallets in the near future. BUT I think we will still want USSD for many years to come to reach people without smart phones… (also keen on the Opera Mini feature phone wallet?!)
Here is the current network in Kenya using USSD wallets trading vouchers (soon to be on CELO (F*ck Yeah! so excited)! https://viz.sarafu.network/ … Note that we (non-profit & open source) make nothing on our tech stack at all and are eagerly awaiting aligned tech orgs to step in and offer products for the humanitarian space that we can use. The custodial system we use for USSD and telegram is under a lot of rewrite and we could use folks looking at it and using it as well.
This sounds very exciting for me as well
Hello @CeloCommunity, Here is an updated proposal for your review and comments from community members.
Amount Requested
$428K worth of CELO for Africa (5-7 countries) over 6 months
Areas of Focus
The primary objective is to support individuals and projects that are interested in building on Celo. We envision successful projects going on to receive funding from Celo Ecosystem.
| Key Deliverables | Success Criteria | |
|---|---|---|
| Developer Incubator Program | 1 program held across Africa |
100 Participants
30 Projects in Finalists
Local Demo Day held with Top VC|1-3 projects receive VC funding
Launch & Scale Program on Celo|
|Developer Workshops & Support|15 Technical Workshops
150 Active Developers
30 Technical Articles|Active Developers on Celo in Africa minimum of 100 per month
300 Contract Kit Downloads
…|
| Q1 | Q2 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Incubator Program | |||
| Prize | $50,000 | $50,000 | |
| Venue ($500 per week per country for 6 weeks) | $15,000 | $15,000 | |
| Food ($10 per head x 30 x 6 weeks during the incubation program) | $9000 | $9000 | |
| Platform and Administration (We are considering working with Dacade on this subject to requirements) | $10,000 | $10,000 | |
| Total | $79,950 | $84,000 | |
| Local Developer Relations | |||
| Junior Developer Network (15 developers across Africa - $1500 per quarter per developer) | $22,500 | $22,500 | $45,000 |
| Technical Ambassador x 5 ($4.5K per Quarter per Ambassador) | $22,500 | $22,500 | $45,000 |
| Total | $90,000 |
Focus Area 1 - Local Incubator Program and Developer Relations.
Total Budget: $174,000
Developer Incubator Program: $84,000
Key Deliverables: 1 Accelerator program held in Africa targeting 100 participants per batch with 30 completed projects and a VC demo day.
Success Criteria: The project launches and scales on Celo with up to 3 projects receiving VC funding.
Developer Workshops and Support: $90,000
Key Deliverables: 30 Technical workshops, 60 technical articles and 300 active developers building on Celo.
Success Criteria: 100 active developers in Africa each month with over 300 downloads of the contract kit.
Help onboard new community members and users and guide them through the ecosystem.
| Key Deliverables | Success Criteria | |
|---|---|---|
| Community Education | 1 Community Meetup per Country per Month | * 150 Participants each month |
| Q1 | Q2 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community Educations | |||
| Food ($10 x 50 Participants) | $1500 | 1500 | |
| Venue ($500 per venue) | $1500 | $1500 | |
| Swag ($10 x 20) | 600 | 600 | |
| Per Country | $3600 | $3600 | |
| #5 Countries | $18000 | $18000 | |
| Total | $36,000 | ||
| University programs | |||
| Food ($10 x 50 Participants) | $1500 | 1500 | |
| Swag ($10 x 50 participants) | $1500 | $1500 | |
| Per Country | $3000 | $3000 | |
| #3 Countries | $9000 | $9000 | |
| Total | $18,000 | ||
| Ambassadors (Community and University) | |||
| Ambassador per Quarter | $3,000 | $3,000 | |
| #Ambassadors | 8 | 8 | |
| #Months per Quarter | $24,000 | $24,000 | |
| Total | $48,000 |
Focus Area 2 Deliverables and expectations - Community Education and University Outreach
Total Budget: $102,000
Community Education: $36,000
Key Deliverables: 1 community meetup per country per month for a total of up to 60 events for the year across Africa.
Success Criteria : 150 participants monthly across Africa with more than 30% women.75 contract kit downloads per month with social media growth at 100 online community members monthly.
University Outreach: $18,000
Key Deliverables: 1 University event per country per month for a total of up to 60 events for the year across Africa.
Success Criteria: 5 University clubs activated monthly with up to 30 developers building on Celo from African Universities.150 participants across university events with more than 30% women.75 contract kit downloads with community growth rates at 100 online community members per month.
Community Education & University Ambassadors: $48,000
Collaborate with over 33 individual contributors to the Celo Ecosystem within the Africa Regional DAO as ambassadors for the Celo mission.
Build our community locally and on the ground. This includes the translation of ecosystem news into local languages. Hosting Twitter spaces and local AMAs. Educating the community on projects in the ecosystem and programs.
| Key Deliverables | Success Criteria | |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing | 1 Twitter Space per Week |
4 Social Posts
Monthly Community Forum Recap|1000 Followers
10,000 Engagements
Over 500k impressions across all PRs put out for the events|
|Local Event Sponsorship|Sponsorship of Local Top Tier Crypto Examples for 2023 include:
5 new partners joining Regional Alliance|
| Q1 | Q2 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing | |||
| Content | $1000 | ||
| #Ambassadors | 5 | ||
| #Months | 3 | ||
| Total Content | $15000 | $15000 | $30,000 |
| Paid Ads & Swag | $3,000 | $3,000 | $6,000 |
| PR & Comms | $6,250 | $6,250 | $12,500 |
| Total MARCOM | $48,500 | ||
| Events | |||
| Sponsorship | $8,000 | $8,000 | Total |
| Side Event | $2000 | $2000 | |
| # Events | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| $20,000 | $20,000 | ||
| Total | $40,000 |
8If Event Sponsorship opportunities are not strong and present a return to the ecosystem fund would be done
Focus Area 3 Deliverables and expectations- Market Awareness and Brand Positioning- Total Budget : $88,500
Marketing: $48,500
Key Deliverables: 1 Twitter space weekly alongside 4 social posts and a monthly community forum post recap of activities and state of the DAO.
Success Criteria: over 4,000 social followers, with over 40,000 engagements and over 500,000 impressions across PR.
Local Event Sponsorship:$40,000
Key Deliverables: Sponsorship of Africa’s top-tier events of 2023: Past examples include: Africa Tech Summit, Eth Safari, Crypto Fest, Blockchain and Crypto Conference Nigeria.
Success Criteria: Onboard 10 members into the Regional Alliance while reaching more than 300 participants per event sponsored.
We commit to posting monthly updates on our progress. We plan to measure success by developing a set of reports that we will share quarterly tracking the progress of:
Here is a template of what we plan to share each month
| Budget Amount | Amount Spend | Delta | Owner | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus Area 1: Developer Acquisition | $174,000 | Khadijah Amusat | |||
| Focus Area 2: Community Growth | $102,000 | Chimezie Chuta | |||
| Focus Area 3: Awareness & Positioning | $88,500 | Noah B. | |||
| Total | $358,500 |
| Jan | Feb | March | Q1 Total | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. Technical Workshop Participants | |||||
| No. of Incubator Participants | |||||
| No. of Active Developers | |||||
| No. Projects raised Funds | |||||
| No.Social Media Followers | |||||
| No. Community Event Attendees | |||||
| No. of New Partnerships / Alliance Members | |||||
| No. of University Clubs set up | |||||
Structure & Mult-Sig
| Role | Name | Multisig | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local Event Lead | Chimezie Chuta | TBC | |
| Local Marketing and Social | Noah Baalessanvu | TBC | |
| Local Developer Relations | Khadijah Amusat | TBC | |
| Local Business Development | Aliu Musa | TBC |
Compensation
First, I support the engagement and support at the grassroots level and a DAO is a great utility for it.
Your feedback is terrific feedback and covers my main points too.
The challenge I see with many DAOs (voting) is the actual decentralization. Many who it accurately targets have little understanding of the mechanism. For this, transparency and support ( how do I vote, what does it mean,…) is needed to speak of inclusion.
I second the idea of having the leads employed by the DAO rather than the foundation itself. With clear KPI’s the voting would guide the actual (wanted) roadmap and activities.
Again, transparency is the key.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
This is a good initiative. I am a blockchain community advocate and the convener of CodeUp Blockchain Festival, an annual gathering of Web3 developers in the city of Warri, Nigeria. Thus, I can help the team to organize some of the hackathon in the southern part of Nigeria. Also, from the tech hub I manage are some web3 projects on going which I can tell the teams to focus on how to incorporate the Celo Blockchain into it towards advancing the ecosystem. They include: (1) blood donation platform, (2) a crypto to cash payment solution and (3) a Bio-energy solution for rural community. @Aliu, Please do let me know areas that I can come in. Thank you.
Would love to talk about Liquidity Investment into African tokens. Buying and pooling various on-chain utility tokens / vouchers
Please see how we are working to pool Celo vouchers into pools that can become exchangeable for eachother as well as block validation rewards
What would be the process to have this Africa Regional DAO consider Community Asset Vouchers and Commitment Pooling?