Please describe your proposed solution.

Context

Globally, around 1.7 billion adults are still unbanked, that means without an account at a financial institution or through a mobile money provider. In 2014, this number was 2 billion [confere https://globalfindex.worldbank.org/sites/globalfindex/files/chapters/2017%20Findex%20full%20report_chapter2.pdf]. Because account ownership is nearly universal in high-income economies, virtually all unbanked adults live in developing economies. This proportion of people is automatically excluded from traditional bank credit. The criteria for access to traditional bank credit do not take into account external data to the banking systems. This drastically reduces the number of people who can access bank credit. However, among these two categories of people set aside by the not really intelligent filter of the banks, there are undoubtedly customers of good character, producing values, making transactions, which, taken into account in the calculation of the credit score, would give them a solvency enabling them to access bank credit.

With the advent of cryptocurrency which offers enormous flexibility, freedom, security, decentralization, as well as cheaper fund transfers, many people have opted for this alternative. They produce a lot of values there. The Cardano platform with its ADA cryptocurrency has seen quite a high flow of transactions lately. These multifaceted transactions constitute values for the customer.

Moreover, crypto-currencies do not have a system that is efficient enough to grant credit, the basis for financing projects that are the main levers of development. On the other hand, traditional banking systems have a system for granting bank credit. But only access to traditional bank credit incorporates filters that exclude a good number of solvent people (who produce values not taken into account in the determination of conventional solvency). Transactions made on Cardano's platform would be quite important elements that would give financial institutions relevant arguments to not only improve the criteria for selecting applicants for bank loans, but also allow the inclusion of those who had no access at all to traditional banking services.

Solution

This will involve providing financial institutions (or any other third-party institution), at the customer's request, with organized multiform information, allowing them to integrate it into the process of calculating the credit score. It is about creating an interactive platform allowing anyone with an account on cardano (Cardano Wallet), to collect, group their transactions information so that they can be used in the process of calculating the credit score and to be able to make it available to the banking/financial institution of their choice. Make banking/financial institutions understand that on the Cardano blockchain multifaceted values are produced and should be taken into consideration in the assessment of the creditworthiness of customers.

The solution will include a client application (web client, mobile application) and a server application that interact with Cardano blockchain. On the client application, the user will be able to access the values he has produced resulting from his transactions on the Cardano blockchain. The server application will be a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning that will extract transactions of a user on the Cardano platform, process them and organize them in formats desirable by the user and the bank institution. It will make those data available to banks after verification and express authorization by the user via the client application.

How it works?

1. From an interface, the user requests the collection on the Cardano blockchain, necessary information that can be taken into account in the calculation of the credit score.
2. The application accesses the customer's transactions on Cardano, collects the information, processes it and makes it available to any applicant. This data is updated as the user completes transactions.
3. From an interface, the third-party institution inserts the cardano wallet address of his customer requesting the credit and accesses the processed information.
4. The third-party institution chooses the format in which it needs the information to be formatted and imports it (many format wil be available: PDF, CSV, TEXT, XML, JSON, etc).
5. The import can be done through sending an email, sending it to a file server, downloading locally, to an API end-point, etc.

A use Case

Ewané is a young Plutus developer. He has developed applications on the Cardano blockchain. In his applications, he has integrated smart contracts that take (with the permission of the user) a delta from each user transaction for the benefit of his account. These applications constitute values for Ewané.

Having knowledge of agriculture as the son of a farmer, Ewané would like to diversify his activities by launching an agricultural project. But he does not have the financial means to achieve his goals.

On the Cardano platform, its applications are gradually increasing in value. The interest of users in its applications, the penetration rate of its applications, the evolution curve of the number of users of its applications, the evolution curve of the number of transactions in its applications are growing .

Ewané goes to a bank to lend money to start his agricultural project. Considering only the classic criteria (Payment history, Total amount owed, Length of credit history, Types of credit, New credit) for the granting of credit, Ewané would be refused credit. Because it would not meet several of the conditions considered by the bank. Its solvency would be certainly quite low. However, Ewané is a trustworthy man. Beyond trust, it produces value on the Cardano blockchain. These values could be used as a guarantee to increase Ewané's solvency and allow it to benefit from the credit.

With the application available, Ewané could convince the bank to take into consideration the values he produces on the Cardano platform in determining his creditworthiness. If the bank agrees to take these values into consideration, it will query the application, which will provide it with information on Ewané's solvency based on criteria such as:

• The balance of Ewané in ADA,
• Consistency in transactions,
• The interest that users have in its applications on Cardano platform,
• The penetration rate of its applications,
• The scalability of the number of users of its applications,
• The evolution curve of the number of transactions in its applications,
• The increase in the accumulation of deltas deducted from user transactions,
• etc

Parameters favoring the increase of Ewané's chances of obtaining credit and then financing his agricultural project.

Added value

1. For anyone active on Cardano and producing values that can be considered on other platforms is a real added value to the Cardano system. The application allows Cardano to make quite an important feature available to customers.
2. The app allows Cardano to contribute to the inclusion in bank credit of people initially excluded by traditional methods.
3. The app will drive people to adopt the Cardano blockchain, build loyalty among common users, and help financial inclusion for a population of over 1.7 billion people.
4. The application allows banks to integrate values other than those considered by traditional criteria (smart contracts) into the credit score calculation process.
5. The application will allow Cardano to think about integrating the decentralized credit service into its platform thanks to the results of business intelligence (BI) and machine learning that will be made available.

The project engages many experts in varying domains:

1. Expert in financial domain
2. Expert in software application
3. Expert in software security
4. Expert in BI (business intelligence) and machine learning (ML)

The Plutus Application Backend will integrate a backoffice for managing:

• users and their actions on the platforme,
• financial institution and their actions on the platform,
• cardano transaction data,
• data collected on the terrain for survey,
• etc

and mesure it impact on population by showing the growing:

• curve of the number of persons accessing bank credit who did not initialy get access to bank credit.
• curve of the number of financial institution using the application.
• curve of the number of bank loans granted thanks to the use of the application

How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

The future application will promote and encourage the adoption of the Cardano blockchain therefore will bring more users therefore more transactions, it will contribute to customer loyalty. The application will allow integration with other systems such as financial systems.

Added value to the Cardano ecosystem

1. For anyone active on Cardano and producing values that can be considered on other platforms is a real added value to the Cardano system. The application allows Cardano to make quite an important feature available to customers.
2. The app allows Cardano to contribute to the inclusion in bank credit of people initially excluded by traditional methods.
3. The app will drive people to adopt the Cardano blockchain, build loyalty among common users, and help financial inclusion for a population of over 1.7 billion people.
4. The application allows banks to integrate values other than those considered by traditional criteria (smart contracts) into the credit score calculation process.
5. The application will allow Cardano to think about integrating the decentralized credit service into its platform thanks to the results of business intelligence (BI) and machine learning that will be made available.

How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

Our project will be considered successful when :

1. More than 10 financial institution use the application for their credit score system. Bank credit is one of the product most use by the bank customers. The improvement of the process to select beneficiaries of this service will be more appreciated by banks and financial instituions.
2. More than ten thousand of users created their cardano wallet to improve their chances to access bank credit. In fact, globally, around 1.7 billion adults are still unbanked, that means without an account at a financial institution or through a mobile money provider. This proportion of people automatically excluded from traditional bank credit are potentialy users of cardano system by creating their Wallet on Cardano platform.
3. More than a thousand of users benefit of bank credit thank to the usage of the application.
4. More than ten thousand of users use the application to improve their chances to access bank credit.

The future application will promote and encourage the adoption of the Cardano blockchain therefore will bring more users therefore more transactions, it will contribute to customer loyalty. The application will allow integration with other systems such as banking systems.

The application will allow Cardano to think about integrating the decentralized credit service into its platform thanks to the results of business intelligence (BI) and machine learning that will be made available and that will produce decisional data.

Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

The relevant data (key performance indicators) of our application will be spread in the community of people who do not have a bank account or do not yet have access to bank credit or who are looking for a way to improve their chances of access to bank credit. We will also share this data with banking and financial institutions as well as Cardano and its entire community.

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

We, at WADA Cameroon combine strong experience in managing Cardano-funded projects on the Catalyst platform. As an institution that promotes the Cardano platform in Africa, We have already carried out the following projects:

1- Spread Plutus through Africa (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/60513)

2- Club and Hackathon (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/60512)

3- Nuturing root (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/64152)

4-etc.

The team also cumulates a strong experience in the construction of software. We have two computer engineers specializing in software engineering (12+ years experiences), a Phd in maths engineering specialized in Data analyst - for Big data and Artificial intelligence (AI) 6+, a professor and meritorious at Northestern Univ and Owner, GMC-TIN specialized in economy and finance. We have 5 Plutus developers we have trained (products of the Spread Plutus through Africa project).

One of our computer engineers led a similar project from start to end. This project consisted in setting up a platform for the aggregation of means of payment for the State of Cameroon (see: https://syampe.cm/accueil). Platform which consists in allowing Cameroonian taxpayers to pay taxes and duties from different means of payment.

Below are the links of our human resources on linkedin:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-tiga-tita-4653a3/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lohic-fotio-tiotsop-0b5183a4/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/didier-junior-nkalla-ehaw%C3%A9-2a40a463/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/felicienfotiomanfo1642a479/

You can see the "Budget breakdown per activity" for the details on the use of the funds that will be allocated to the project.

What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

In general, this project aims to allow Cardano to increase its users as well as its revenues.

More specifically, it will allow:

1. Banking institutions to refine the methods of selecting candidates for access to bank credit
2. inclusion in bank credit to those who would be excluded
3. to increase electronic wallets on the Cardano platform
4. to increase transactions on the Cardano platform
5. Cardano to set up a decentralized credit system
6. The integration of the Cardano platform with the systems of banking institutions

Certain key performance indicators will allow us to measure the achievement of objectives. It is :

1. The rate of use of the application by banking institutions
2. The rate of adherence of the population to the cardano platform
3. The credit rate granted through the application
4. Etc.

Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

The detailed plan including timeline and key milestones for delivering this proposal can be seen below:

Introduction

Project management will be done with modern IT project management methods: the Agile methodology. The Agile method and methodology is a particular approach to project management that is used in software development. This method helps teams respond to the unpredictability of building software. It uses incremental and iterative work sequences, commonly known as sprints. Sprints will be done periodically (once a week). Task tracking will be done using the JIRA tool.

Preparatory phase (preliminaries)

This phase will constitute the start of the mission. It consists of bringing together the elements necessary to carry out the mission. This launch will be marked by:

• a mission familiarization meeting between our experts and engineers in order to fully understand the work requested and describe the outline of the work plan to be followed;
• a documentary review on the project with regard to the administrative aspects (mission order, letter of authorization, etc.). As we will work with the banks to prepare the data that will be needed to calculate the credit score, we will ensure that our banking consultants and others comply with the regulations.
• administrative preparation of the project;
• Preparation of documents giving authorization to provide information;
• and setting up a planning workshop to produce the mission schedule;

At the end of this phase, we will produce an Inception Report or a Framework Note containing the detailed work plan and the methodology adopted.

Studies and analysis of the existing

This phase effectively constitutes the technical launch of the mission. This launch will be marked by:

• an exhaustive identification of internal and external services, actors and operators concerned by the project as well as their areas and sectors of intervention;
• an analysis of the current situation characterized by an awareness of current software used in similar activities such as SCS (Secure Credit Systems);
• a documentary research (recent reports and manuals of procedures) and an identification of the missions and services of the organizations involved, and if necessary, designing appropriate interview guides (questionnaires) to be sent to the main actors involved in the project in order to comply with the law.

As with any development of an IT solution, it is necessary to first know what are the different needs that this solution must meet.

• To do this, it will be important to get closer to clearly identified end users in order to know their needs;
• Finally, we will proceed to the Analysis and evaluation of our needs in the light of the information resulting from the informations collection;

It should also be noted that the conduct of these phases of information collection and needs analysis will be done, among other things, through the organization of one or more ad-hoc technical workshops which will bring together all the actors involved in the project.

At the end of this phase, we will formalize the detailed Specifications of the future IT solution.

Acquisition of the hardware and software infrastructure – Development of the platform

In order to acquire the hardware infrastructure that conforms optimally to the software architecture, we recommend starting in this phase by designing the application.

Platform design

The creation of an electronic platform must imperatively be preceded by an analysis and design methodology whose objective is to formalize the preliminary stages of development so that the final rendering is more faithful to the needs of users. The analysis phase makes it possible to list the expected results, in terms of functionalities, and the design phase makes it possible to describe in an unambiguous manner, most often using a modeling language, the future operation of the system, in order to facilitate the realization.

The success of IT development projects largely depends on the design phase. And if it is not well done, there is a chance that the result obtained will not meet the needs expressed.

In order to build an application:

• Which easily adapts to scalability and extensibility,
• which resists breakdowns,
• which is extremely fast,
• which can be easily controlled,

we propose to design the application with the microservices architecture coupled with the DDD (Domain Driven Design). Each microservice will be responsible for solving a specific business problem and will operate independently of other microservices (low coupling). This architecture makes it possible to optimally address the complexity of the problems by applying the “divide and conquer” principle. In order to allow the reading and understanding of the architecture of the platform, a modeling software based on the functional paradigm will be used to describe the objects resulting from this architecture, their interaction, their interrelation and their relationship with the outside world (third party).

In this phase, it will be about of refining the analysis and designing the platform on the basis of the Specifications produced in the previous phase.

We will proceed through several steps, the first of which will consist in identifying the appropriate technical functionalities that will facilitate the putting online and the use of the business functionalities (needs identified).

Then, we will proceed to the actual modeling of the business functionalities, which will lead to the definition of the architecture of the future System and the choice of technologies and development tools, essentially based on proven and adequate open source solutions.

At the end of this phase, various documents will be produced, in particular:

• the prototype of the application;
• the Analysis Document;
• the Technical Design Document;
• the Quality Assurance Plan (QAP);
• the Security Policy (PS).

Acquisition of hardware and software infrastructure

After choosing the architectures, technologies and development tools, we will proceed to the choice of the hardware infrastructure and the software necessary to carry out the realization of the application. These infrastructures include servers in the cloud, IDE (Integrated Development Environment), licenses, etc.

Application Development

After the design phase of the platform, the development team will be set up and important activities will be carried out:

• We will start with the installations and configurations of the development environments consisting essentially of the Open Source tools chosen in the previous design phase.
• We will then proceed to the development of all the components designed in the previous phase. It will be about successively developing the technical functionalities, the Business functionalities, the security components, the graphic charter (defined in the prototype) and the editorial charter of the platform. Each feature developed will then be integrated into the global platform.
• At the end of the integration of all the developed modules, we will proceed to a packaging of the System for the internal global integration and functioning tests.

At the end of this phase, the following documents will be produced:

• a development report;
• well-documented source codes in digital format;
• a test report,
• Executables,
• a training plan, as well as the various training modules;

User training

It is about giving the users of this project the technical skills for a better exploitation and maintenance of the developed platform. This phase is quite important for the preparation to promote the platform.

• We will start by identifying the types of users to train.
• This identification will guide us in the development and/or appropriate updating of training materials. The focus will be on the major components.
• Then, we will proceed with the preparation of the training: setting up the training site (networked PCs, deployment of the System on these PCs, configuration of the training platform, etc.), modern teaching tools (whiteboard, video projector , training materials in paper and digital format, etc.)
• The course of the training will follow: it will take place in the form of theoretical and practical exercises on the platform. Our trainers will be made up of people who participated in the Design and Development of the application and therefore have the minimum profile required to carry out this mission.

At the end of this phase, we will produce a Training Report with attendance, evaluation and recommendation sheets from the learners.

Deployment of the Application on Cardano

When the training is completed and its report validated, all that remains is to deploy the platform on the equipment acquired previously.

It should be noted that accounts will be opened on the Play Store and App Store platforms for the project in order to publish/deploy the Android and iOS applications obtained during the development of the platform.

Following these deployments, an approval session will be organized for the platform to verify that it complies with the specifications.

The deployment will follow the following steps:

• We will start by identifying the infrastructure (Servers, Storage, Internet Access) necessary to set up the platform.
• Then follow the installation and configuration of the application on this infrastructure;
• All that remains is to put the developed and tested Application into service.

this phase, it will be produced the deployment report.

Workplan

Data collection for the study and analysis of needs

The approach we will adopt to describe the situation is as follows:

• Identification of the different actors/operators and services involved in the project;
• Documentary research, identification of the missions, needs and services of the actors involved, possibly with the help of previously designed interview guides;
• Critical analysis of the current system;
• Analysis and Synthesis of needs obtained;
• Writing the Specifications;
• Validation of the Specifications with the actors involved

Application Design

The approach we will adopt for the design of the platform is as follows:

1. Identification of the appropriate business and technical functionalities to put the business functionalities online (needs identified);
2. Organization of functionalities into modules and identification of microservices;
3. Modeling of the Business Features (identified needs) of each microservice;
4. Definition of methods of interaction between microservices (Context Mapping) and choice of middleware (for asynchronous communications between microservices);
5. Definition of the Components of each microservice and choice of appropriate technologies;
6. Design of the Internal Architecture of each microservice;
7. Design of the architecture of the mobile application;
8. Writing of associated documents: Analysis Document; Technical design document; Quality Assurance plan ; Security policy ;
9. Transmission of documents to the Project Monitoring Committee;
10. Validation of documents relating to the design of the platform.

Application Development

The approach we will adopt for the development of the platform is as follows:

1. Acquisition of development environments;
2. Creation of git accounts for source code version management,
3. Creation of Docker accounts for containerization and preparation for continuous integration.
4. Deployment of development environments;
5. Development and Integration of Technical Features;
6. Development and Integration of Business Features;
7. Development and Integration of Security Components;
8. Packaging of the developed system and testing;
9. Writing of documents relating to Development and transmission to the Project Monitoring Committee;
10. Validation of documents relating to Development (Technical validation workshop).

User training

The approach we will adopt for the training of end users is as follows:

1. Identification of users to be trained;
2. Development of training content;
3. Preparation of the training (site, teaching tools, teaching materials, etc.);
4. Program of the training ;
5. Evaluation of trainers and learners;
6. Writing of the Training Report and Transmission to the Project Monitoring Committee;
7. Validation of the Training Report.

Deployment to production environments

The approach that we will adopt to ensure the deployment on the production environments in order to allow the restitution of the mission is the following:

1. Installing and configuring required software:
2. Installing Docker,
3. Configuration of the repository,
4. Installation of configuration files,
5. Installation of tools such as: proxy server, database server, web client for database access, installation of the chosen middleware, etc.
6. Installation of the databases of the different microservices
7. Deployment of different microservices
8. Deployment/publication of mobile applications (Android and iOS) on the Play Store and App Store platforms;
9. Writing of the deployment report;

Application and hardware maintenance of the platform

We will focus on discussing at this stage the definition of the essential elements of the Maintenance Protocol. These elements relate to:

1. Corrective maintenance
2. Blocking anomalies, leading to a critical malfunction: loss of data integrity, total or partial unavailability of application functionalities
3. Major anomalies, preventing the partial use of a system functionality
4. Minor anomalies, causing a minor malfunction of the system without degrading its use by users.
5. It will also define the mode of communication and the management of the versions of the application.
6. Preventive maintenance: Preventive maintenance consists of: Audit of the technical operation of the application environment and identification of improvements likely to be implemented (studies of the various logs and trace files from the system, the database and the application components)
7. The evaluation of the improvements likely to be obtained by updating the components used, and if necessary the implementation of alternative or complementary solutions.
8. Evolutionary maintenance
9. Adaptive maintenance: This involves taking into account, at the request of users, improvements related to the evolution of the technical environment such as the change of version of the OS, Server, imposed by constraints related to security vulnerabilities on these, or system performance optimization needs.

Timeline

In full compliance with the technical design and methodology presented above, our overall work schedule is described in the table below. It should be remembered that the durations of the activities which emerge from this chronogram are estimated. Thus, this mission can be carried out by our experts/engineers in 64 (sixty-four) weeks (S1, S2, …, S53) i.e. a duration of 12 (twelve) months; subject to contingencies.

Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

The end product will be the solution deployed on an infrastructure. To achieve this and prepare the elements for its maintenance and scalability, it is necessary or even essential to produce intermediate deliverables during its development. These deliverables are:

1. The start report: It closes the initial and framing phase. The activities carried out in this phase are:
2. Preparation of the administrative aspects of the mission
3. Familiarization meeting between our experts and engineers
4. Administrative preparation of the project
5. Setting up a planning workshop to produce the mission schedule
6. Writing of the start report
7. Specifications Document : It closes the study and analysis of the existing phase. The activities carried out in this phase are:
8. Identification of the different actors involved in the project
9. Documentary research (documents and manuals of procedures)
10. Identification of the missions, needs and services of the actors involved,
11. Analysis, Evaluation and Synthesis of the data and needs obtained
12. Writing a document presenting the current system and the needs expressed (Specifications)
13. Organization of an Ad-hoc Workshop to validate the Specifications
14. Validation of the Specifications with the actors involved
15. System Design documents: It closes the application design phase. The activities carried out in this phase are:
16. Identification of the appropriate technical functionalities
17. Identifying microservices
18. Modeling of Business Features in the different microservices
19. Definition of the Components of each microservice and choice of appropriate technologies
20. Design of the global architecture of the platform
21. Validation of System Design documents
22. Acquisition of hardware and software infrastructure report: All the overall software developed need and infrastructure to be runned. These infrastructure need to be acquire. The activities carried out in this phase are:
23. Acquisition of hardware and software infrastructure
24. nstallation, system configuration and security on the acquired hardware and software infrastructure
25. Development Documents report: It closes the application development phase. The activities carried out in this phase are:
26. Acquisition of development environments
27. Deployment of development environments
28. Development and Integration of Technical Features
29. Development and Integration of Business Features
30. Development and Integration of Security Components
31. Packaging of the developed system and tests
32. Writing application Development report
33. End user training report: It closes the end user training phase. The activities carried out in this phase are:
34. Identification of users to be trained
35. Development of training content
36. Preparation of the training (site, educational tools)
37. Training
38. Evaluation of trainers and learners
39. Writing the Training Report
40. Deployment and restitution report: It closes the deployment phase. The activities carried out in this phase are:
41. Identifying the deployment infrastructure
42. Installation and configuration of the application on site
43. Verification test
44. Writing of the deployment report
45. Preparation and participation in the validation workshop

Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

The budget proposed in our project will be distributed as follows:

Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

The team that will be responsible for carrying out the project will consist of:

1. A project manager (cumulating a professional experience of 12 years and more in software engineering): He is in charge of coordinating the activities of the different members of the team. He defines the different deliverables, he is responsible for the technical and functional specifications (in collaboration with the expert in bank and finance), the system architecture and the choice of physical and software infrastructures. He validates the work of the other members of the team. It ensures the availability of resources.
2. Two computer engineers specialized in software engineering with at least 10 years of experience having a software architect level. They are responsible in collaboration with the project manager for carrying out the design of the system, they coordinate the activities of the developers (04). One is in charge of testing and acceptance of the various deliverables and compliance with security standards in the system. The later will be oriented in the coordination of development activities.
3. 4 Putus developers, each with at least 5 years of experience. One will be oriented for front-end development and the 3 others will be oriented for back-end development. They will be responsible for producing the code according to the realized design of the system.
4. An expert in mathematical engineering to coordinate the implementation of BI (business intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning).
5. An expert in finance and banking to frame the functional specifications and the integration tests.

All those resources are availabe to the project. We will not be looking to the resources out of the actual team.

How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

It is important to remember that what we plan to pay to the resources is very insufficient. It is only an encouragement given to them to participate in the realization of the project. Which means that in terms of value for money we are in a very good proportion.

The amounts proposed represent in reality one third of what should normally be paid.

The whole team is part of the project. When the project will begin to produce profits, these will be shared among the members. This is the reason why we can sacrifice ourselves to achieve our goals.