Please describe your proposed solution.
The Landano dApp allows marginalized people with land rights to create and manage their land records via an easy-to-use mobile interface and our Open Cadastral Map initiative. Landano is a true, Africa-focused RealFi solution that is informed by on-the-ground requirements from pilot projects in Ghana, Mozambique, and Kenya.
Our land records are managed in a standards-compliant record-keeping system that includes notarizing documents as NFTs on the Cardano blockchain. Using a shared, auditable ledger like the Cardano blockchain improves transparency and prevents fraud. Having reliable proof of land rights will provide tenant farmers in sub-Saharan Africa with the confidence to make long-term investments in their farmland.
Furthermore, Landano land records will be used as trustworthy DeFi primitives for mortgages, business loans, leases, and crop insurance, opening the door to financial mobility for the estimated 1 billion people in the Global South that have land rights but no documentation to prove that they do.
The Landano project has followed an agile software development project, informed by on-the-ground use case analysis, to create a Minimum Viable Product. This MVP is currently maintained as a Mendix low-code platform application and interacts with the Cardano Testnet.
This Fund 9 Project Catalyst grant will enable the Landano team to refactor the MVP into a true Web3 architecture that includes a transition from the current username/password login to wallet-based authentication and verifiable credentials via the IAMX.id wallet solution.
We will refactor the MVP’s client/server architecture to decentralize the storage of all supporting documents on the Arweave platform. We will also transition from server-based processing of the application’s business logic to WASM-executable code, the final step in true decentralization of our off-chain infrastructure.
Finally, we will update our MVP’s pre-Vasil, Plutus v1 code to take advantage of the Vasil hard fork, Plutus v2 improvements. At that time, we will be ready for the beta launch of the Landano solution on Cardano mainnet.
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
The goal of the Dapps, Products and Integrations Challenge is to launch more novel and viable products on Cardano to increase its adoption rate and user base.
Landano is a high-impact, quality dApp that will increase the utility and adoption of Cardano on Day One of going live on Mainnet. Our community-based pilot projects and MVP software development have proven that Landano is a viable product that is primed to attract a large user base because it provides solutions for long-standing land management issues while also providing a clear path forward into upward financial mobility for highly-motivated but marginalized people.
We have already collaborated with the IAMX.id and Empowa.io teams to plan the integration of our respective land records, self-sovereign identity, and mortgage lending solutions which are all designed to be sensitive to the on-the-ground needs of rural poor in sub-Saharan Africa. These integrations will drive exponential adoption of our respective Cardano-based solutions.
More significantly, our collaboration with the CaVaTeCo project will result in the minting of Landano NFTs for 80,000 new users which, as far as we know, will represent the single largest Cardano on-boarding after IOG’s own initiatives.
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
RISK: Landano NFTs are not recognized as legitimate land records with legal weight.
MITIGATION: The Landano team and advisors includes international experts in the field of electronic record-keeping and digital evidence, including the leading African records scholar, Dr. Shadrack Katuu. The system is designed to be a next-generation, best-of-breed records management platform that is already garnering separate interest from the archives and digital preservation sector. Landano collaborators and advisors include local lawyers with expertise in constitutional land rights and practices. Most importantly, the Landano project has established practical relationships with local land commissioners and community leaders who have the authority to approve documentation and who have indicated their approval of the Landano methodology and infrastructure.
RISK: Shortage of Haskell developers.
MITIGATION: Landano has a strong working relationship with MLabs which provides a flexible work force of the Cardano community's most respected Plutus developers.
RISK: Software development runs behind schedule and over-cost.
MITIGATION: The Landano co-founders have over 35 years combined history in the practice of Agile, open-source software development and leading teams of developers. They have each been responsible for the delivery of enterprise-grade software solutions that are in production at hundreds of large organizations around the world. The project follows a documented SCRUM methodology that closely monitors available human and financial resources to ensure that core features will be delivered on time and within budget.