Please describe your proposed solution
This is a collaborative proposal between Andamio and Gimbalabs. Andamio will build a new set of smart contracts that connect on-chain credentials to decision-making privileges.
To make sure that Andamio development meets the needs of real users, Gimbalabs will run an experiment with a new group of "PBL Course Maintainers". Maintainers are tasked with updating the Plutus Project-Based Learning course that Gimbalabs has been publishing since 2021, and will earn credentials for contributing to course maintenance. Maintainers will join the Andamio team in a product-development lifecycle, and Andamio will deliver a new product.
A side benefit of this proposal is that the Plutus Project-Based Learning course will be updated for Cardano’s Conway Era. A published case study and playbook will provide ideas to the rest of the Cardano Community, so that other teams can use the governance features at the heart of this proposal.
Background: About Andamio
The purpose of Andamio is to support people to learn so that they can contribute to work they find meaningful. Learning features are now live at andamio.io, and Contribution features are rolling out in Q4 2024. With this project, Andamio will implement a set of governance contracts that enable anyone to go on a journey from learning to governance:
Background: About Plutus Project-Based Learning (PPBL)
The first version of PPBL was launched by Gimbalabs in the fall of 2021 with a small group of developers who have gone on to do exciting things. New iterations of the course were released in early-2022 and late-2022, on Canvas LMS. Then, in 2023 the fourth iteration of PPBL was released on a prototype of our own learning platform, which soon became Andamio.
Plutus PBL 2024 is the 5th iteration of the course, and was launched on Andamio in March 2024.
This project is designed to drive Plutus PBL into a new era of community stewardship. The course will be an example of a community-governed public resource.
Phase 1: Solving Immediate Problems
This proposal builds upon our experience by focusing on two immediate problems:
- The current iteration of PPBL is out of date. This year’s version of the course was originally launched in March 2024, and now, following the Chang hard-fork in September 2024, some lessons and code examples need to be updated.
- People need invitations and supportive opportunities to start contributing. When people learn, they need some initial opportunities to contribute so that they can build relationships and reputation.
This proposal will address both problems at once, by giving PPBL 2024 students the opportunity to contribute by making updates the course.
For this phase of the project to be successful, PPBL 2024 will be updated for the Conway era, and students will be earning on-chain credentials by making their first contributions.
Phase 2: Building Andamio Governance Smart Contracts
In this phase of the project, we will focus on development of Andamio governance features. We will complete a full product development cycle that starts with user research and results in on-chain and off-chain Andamio governance features. The work we do in Phase 1 will inform conceptual and feature development work in this phase of the project.
Andamio is already being used to issue credentials when people learn and contribute. With this project, we will build new features in Andamio that provide rails for maintainers to become key decision-makers, because we believe that good decisions are made by people with hands-on experience. New smart contracts will be written that enable people with a track-record of contribution to participate in project governance.
Gimbalabs and Andamio will collaborate through a complete product life-cycle to develop these new concepts into new products - collecting user feedback from Maintainers while building on-chain, off-chain, and front-end product features defined thru the process. Andamio will build the software. Gimbalabs will build the social technology and provide a playbook for using the tech. The work of updating PPBL 2024 (Phase 1) will be used as a case study in the playbook.
Phase 3: Writing a Playbook
By working on this specific project, we will define systems and processes for keeping other developer courses up to date. Then, we will write documentation in the form of a playbook that other teams and organizations can use.
It’s always exciting to build something new - like an application, a company, or in our case, a course about Cardano development. If we want something that is new today to have a lasting impact, it must be well-maintained. This applies to software, cities, companies, educational materials, and decentralized, global communities like Cardano. As Cardano continues to scale, this playbook will be a useful tool for demonstrating what blockchain can do to new circles of stakeholders.
How We Will Prove Our Project's Success
- Create a 2024 PPBL Maintainers Cohort: Any student who completes the PPBL course will earn a credential to be a PPBL Maintainer. This cohort will be the first of its kind, just like the original authors of PPBL in 2021. Their experience will inform a governance model for other teams to use.
- Identify + Respond to Issues: PPBL Maintainers will audit the course and create a backlog of issues to be resolved. Maintainers will update the course, earning rewards from a treasury funded by this proposal, along with credentials for their contributions.
- Product Definition and Delivery: Maintainers will collaborate with Andamio to define new product features, and the Andamio team will deliver new governance features.
- Documentation and Playbook: Gimbalabs will publish a playbook outlining the case study so other teams can build upon. We will iterate upon the model immediately by applying it to the maintenance of other Gimbalabs PBL courses. The playbook will public and freely available, so that any other team can do the same.