Please describe your proposed solution

Cardano is considerably behind other blockchains in terms of standard industry metrics such as Daily Active Addresses or DEX Volume. It is difficult to determine why that is, but some reasons might be that ICO Participants don't use the chain or Protocol offerings and Yield opportunities aren't good enough. You can read a full Report for the Background here.

Cardano has always made design choices prioritizing first principles, organic growth and decentralization versus quick growth and catering to the industry’s hottest metrics. In addition, some factors leading to this problem, such as Japanese tax/crypto laws (which is why most ADA ICO participants are hesitant to interact with DeFi), cannot be addressed by the community. However, it is clear Cardano can and should do better to increase the usage of the blockchain. Ultimately, Cardano's security model depends on transaction fees in the long term. Especially with Voltaire coming up and the community having access to the 1.5bn ADA Treasury, projects and community members need to step up, ideate and grow adoption.

This is why we are proposing the Catalyst Funded “Cardano DeFi Onboarding by Minswap”. The aim is to create a framework for a program that is designed to onboard more users to Cardano DeFi. We are starting with a focus on Minswap first, but if successful, the program could in the future be applied to the whole Cardano DeFi ecosystem, with bigger and more attractive incentives.

Such a program should be designed in a way that targets both:

1. Current Cardano users and ADA holders who are not using DeFi.
2. Wider crypto users familiar with other chains but who have not interacted with Cardano DeFi.

For such a program to be successful, it should be accompanied by a strong Incentive and a Marketing campaign. However, this proposal focuses exclusively on the program's Education campaign.

Our solution involves comprehensive content and a series of Learn 2 Earn-based campaigns around the Minswap DeFi protocol, allowing users to be onboarded to Cardano, learn more about Minswap, engage with the platform and the Cardano ecosystem and earn ADA and Cardano native tokens in the process. The program components are:

1. Minswap V2 Guide

This campaign will consist of a Minswap guide for Beginners. The campaign will go over all aspects of getting started with Cardano DeFi and focus on using the largest DEX on Cardano, Minswap. This includes information on: How to create a Cardano Native wallet and connect it to Minswap, Understanding Minswap Features, Tips for Using Minswap Effectively, Risks involved when trading on a DEX, Security tips, and much more. This new, updated Minswap V2 Guide will follow closely the format of the current Minswap V1 guide by Pete.

2. YouTube Content Campaign

There will be a series of videos by Peter Bui (“Astroboysoup”) focused on onboarding users with little to no DeFi knowledge to Cardano DefI, particularly the largest DEX currently on Cardano, Minswap and the new V2 update. His YouTube channel, Learn Cardano has 20k subscribers, and he posts almost daily updates about anything happening in the Cardano ecosystem. He has also previously worked extensively on a library of educational material such as the following.

3. Work.Courses Campaign

Work.Courses features a highly intuitive interface, with neatly organized courses and instructor categories, facilitating easy navigation. The team has done an excellent job in creating a platform that mirrors the familiarity of WEB2 while incorporating WEB3 technology, targeting both experienced users and newcomers to the WEB3 environment. In the world of WEB3, your wallet serves as your account, eliminating the need for traditional email logins.

Work.Courses offers login options with multiple Cardano wallets. The Platform offers the perfect functionality for our campaign: we can enable it so only users with Cardano wallets can access the courses and the corresponding rewards for completing the course.

Learn more about Work.Courses here.

Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

The positive impact on the wider Cardano community will be the onboarding and incentivizing of new users to the Cardano ecosystem, to highlight the great innovations in DeFi on Cardano and create a library of content for posterity that anyone will be able to learn from to use Cardano DeFi.

The positive impact will be showcased in a few ways.

1. New users being onboarded to Cardano DeFi: this can be seen in different ways, such as how many views are the Cardano DeFi Onboarding by Minswap videos getting on YouTube and the reception/comments as well as how many wallets sign up for incentivized Work.Courses course.
2. Updated, high quality educational content tailored to new Cardano DeFi users: by funding this campaign, we will have a large library of educational content to be shared with anyone curious about exploring Cardano DeFi.
3. Evaluation and Open source contribution: The campaign's results will be reported via the Minswap social media accounts, forums, and blog on behalf of the Minswap Volunteers. Other projects may learn from this Education campaign and be inspired to craft a similar one.

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

Work.Course is a learning platform leveraging Cardano under the hood with a wide array of courses. Plenty of instructors have already leveraged this platform, offering courses ranging from how to Create a cardano node from zero in less than 90 minutes to DeFi basics and crypto knowledge courses.

Our team is composed of Minswap Volunteer members, among which there are programmers, blockchain experts, marketing experts, and well known Educators within Cardano. All of them bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to this project.

The Project Lead is Peter Bui, who has a YouTube channel dedicated to Cardano education and previously created a guide titled “Minswap: #1 Easy Beginner’s Complete Course”. This course has a wide array of intricate resources related to Minswap V1, ranging from: Swapping Tokens on Minswap, Providing Liquidity on Minswap and Impermanent Loss, to Yield Farming on Minswap. This new guide for Cardano DeFi newbies will be focused on Minswap V2. Pete also has extensive experience coordinating and creating content for Learn to Earn campaigns leveraging Zealy and other community building platforms.

The Proposal also has the backing of the Minswap Labs team, which is composed of several highly experienced Plutus engineers who have been working on developing Plutus-based Smart Contracts for more than 3 years. As such, Minswap Labs has established itself as a highly experienced and capable company specialized in developing DeFi tools in the Cardano Ecosystem.

The Minswap DEX is the Cardano dApp with the most Daily Active Users and transactions. Data available at: <https://dappsoncardano.com/>

It is also currently the Cardano DeFi dApp with the highest Total Value Locked and handling the majority of Trading Volume on Cardano DEXs. Data available here: <https://defillama.com/chain/Cardano?currency=USD>

What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Milestone 1: Milestone 1 - Minswap V2 Guide - Drafting up the course material based on Minswap V2 and the latest developments in Cardano DeFi.

Milestone outputs

All the relevant Guide documents for the Cardano DeFi Onboarding by Minswap campaign will be published publicly.

Acceptance criteria

The Guide successfully goes over Minswap v2 and is insightful for someone new to Cardano DeFi

Evidence of milestone completion

Published links of the guide

Milestone 2: Milestone 2 - YouTube Content Campaign - Video and mixed media content creation and publishing on YouTube.

Milestone outputs

All the relevant YouTube content for the Cardano DeFi Onboarding by Minswap campaign will be published for anyone to see

Acceptance criteria

The YouTube content successfully goes over Minswap v2 and is insightful for someone new to Cardano DeFi

Evidence of milestone completion

Published links of the relevant YouTube videos

Final Milestone: Final Milestone - Work.Courses campaign: The resources from Milestone 1 will be structured into a course within the Work.Courses platform. We will leverage this platform to have users create Cardano wallets in order to access this course content and the corresponding Cardano token rewards (Learn 2 Earn).

Milestone outputs

Structured course utilizing resources from Milestone 1 delivered on the Working Courses platform. Participants must create Cardano wallets to access the course and earn ADA and other tokens.

Acceptance criteria

The course successfully structures the content from the Minswap V2 Guide and YouTube Content Campaign and participants have to sign up with a Cardano wallet to complete the course and claim the corresponding rewards.

Evidence of milestone completion

Link to the Work.Courses platform with the Cardano DeFi Onboarding by Minswap material

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

Documentation, outreach, and coordination led by Minswap Volunteers.

Peter Bui (“Astroboysoup”) - Project Lead - Pete is one of the most renowned educators in Cardano. His YouTube channel has 20k subscribers, and he posts updates about almost everything happening in the Cardano ecosystem daily. He has also worked extensively on a library of educational material, such as the following.

Paolo Pezzarossa (“RedPa”) - Project Manager - Paolo is a Full Stack developer at Kiwui, familiar with eutxo and chain indexers.

Smurfy - Project Member - Smurfy is an expert marketer in Cardano/crypto. Previously a Social Media Manager &amp; Marketing Lead at Dropspot (Cardano NFT Platform). His content library can be viewed here.

Sean Davies - (“seanworkingdead”) - Project Member - Sean is the founder of the [working courses platform](<http://<member id='206462' communityId='163'>work</member>_courses>), a cross-chain support learning platform leveraging Cardano under the hood with a wide array of courses ranging from how to Create a Cardano node from zero in less than 90 minutes to DeFi basics and crypto knowledge courses. Previous experience as a developer at the prominent Cardano NFT project Ape Society.

Other Minswap Volunteers have a track record and experience on Cardano and have contributed in the past to Minswap, such as CWSchub or Chicken.

Technical Support from Minswap Labs

Adrian (“PurritoGeneral”) - Product lead, previous experience at Optim Labs.

Long Nguyen (“longng”) - Tech lead, previous experience at AWS Cloud, Anduin Transactions (specialists in smart deal tech solutions for the alternative investment market) and Jenkins (extensible automation engine)

Website: <https://minswap.org/>

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

The projects' costs are primarily related to content creation. All the platforms that will be used have no upfront or ongoing costs.

Costs are based on the average industry standard for writing technical documentation and video content.

Technical writer: $45 USD per hour / 95.74 ADA per hour

Video content creation $45 USD per hour / 95.74 ADA per hour

Project management $60 USD per hour / 85.11 ADA per hour

Current ADA price 0.47 ADA per $1 USD

Milestone 1 - Minswap V2 Guide

Technical writer: 240 hours / 22977.6 ADA

Project management: 50 hours / 4255.5 ADA

Milestone 2 - YouTube Content Campaign

Video content creator: 240 hours / 22977.6 ADA

Project management: 50 hours / 4255.5 ADA

Milestone 3 - Work.Courses campaign

Technical writer: 80 hours / 7659.2 ADA

Project management: 50 hours / 4255.5 ADA

Incentive Rewards go directly back to all participants in the Work.Courses Learn to Earn campaign: 33619.1 ADA

Total cost: 100,000 ADA

No dependencies.

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

Investing in this proposal offers exceptional value for the Cardano ecosystem. By creating a detailed DeFi Education campaign focused on the currently largest Cardano DEX, we aim to not only increase user adoption (and all the positive things it brings) but also empower positive perspectives towards Cardano's innovative DeFi capabilities. These new users, can become pivotal in enhancing the ecosystem's dynamism and reputation, leading to increased overall engagement and investment.

In the long term, the cost of funding an Education Program as part of a Cardano DeFi Onboarding by Minswap campaign would be a strategic investment in a Public Library of Cardano DeFi content that could have a significant impact on Cardano. By allocating resources to this initiative, the Cardano ecosystem will have a competent team copywriting, studying and delivering an education program that will provide any newcomer curious about Cardano all the information they need to get started by using Minswap V2. We will be able to assess the results and discuss as a community if it's worth exploring more types of education programs further and on a bigger scale.

In the short term, the Proposal aims at bringing value for money to Cardano by attracting regular crypto users from other chains as well as Cardano users who do not often interact with DeFi. This should improve metrics where Cardano is lagging, such as DEX Volumes or Active Addresses and enhance the liquidity and overall health of the Cardano ecosystem, making it more attractive to new users and investors.

The wider Cardano DeFi Onboarding by Minswap campaign aims to foster a sense of community among users that will be drawn to Cardano by encouraging participation in DeFi Education and Learn to earn activities, the Incentives for activity in various forms of Cardano DeFi platforms such as Minswap, and a Marketing campaign to highlight the advantages of Cardano and the ongoing activities in the ecosystem.