Please describe your proposed solution.
Its easier to forget the fact that global blockchain adoption is way far behind, our momentary gains and the buzz of the news may give us an illusive feeling of achievement of how much progress blockchain is making but the fact still remains blockchain is still far behind when it comes to adoption and this is even a bigger problem when we take a nuclear view at just Cardano adoption alone. Let's look at the data, to examine the problem;
- According to <u>buy bitcoin worldwide </u>only 2.8% of the world's population is already using blockchain.
- The total number of blockchain users globally is 80,025,125
- Security and digital currencies are the most common use-cases of Blockchain
- Adoption of Cardano (ADA) sits at around 19% of crypto owners.
- Currently, there are more than 3 million Cardano wallets indicating about 3 million active Cardano users
The essence of this data is to show us how much we have achieved as an ecosystem but more so, how much more we need to achieve as well.
Special kudos must be given to the men and women in our ecosystem who have been actively onboarding users through education, marketing and other methods. However, the data indicates that a lot still needs to be done and every approach that can onboard new users, especially non-crypto natives should be welcomed, as we are not only helping onboard into Cardano but into the blockchain generally.
The need for more novel approaches is where STAC(Stories, Tea, Art, and Coffee) is birthed from. These are everyday elements, which most people resonate with, in this proposal, we will be using these to attract new participants who know little or nothing about blockchain and/or Cardano to the Cardano ecosystem, using a very novel approach.
CONCEPT:
The STAC proposal seeks to establish a cafe called the STAC cafe in one of the most active commercial cities in Nigeria. This cafe will not operate like conventional cafes but is designed in a way that its customers are exposed to Cardano, in fact, it is impossible to go to this cafe and go through our menu and experience without having some knowledge of Cardano, and likely getting onboarded.
HOW IT WORKS(A USERS JOURNEY)
Consider a user named Alice, with little or no knowledge of Blockchain or Cardano, Alice sees a Cafe called STAC cafe at the center of the city, she suddenly remembers that she needs to have some coffee after a very stressful day at work, whenever Alice is stressed out coffee has always been her confidant and on a very stressful day like today, there's nothing Alice needs more than a solid cup of coffee. Alice steps into this STAC cafe, what catches her attention is how exceptionally different this cafe is with respect to the cafes she is used to, there's a spark of excellence and uniqueness that characterizes this cafe, which she will get to find out very soon. She steps in and takes a seat, on the seat there's a bulletin of the different types of coffee, tea, etc that the cafe has, while going through the menu she observes that the prices of the coffee are listed in her local currency(Naira) and in ADA, what is ADA? She mutters silently but before she could give herself some moments to think up a response, there's a tap on her shoulder, its the waiter. "welcome to STAC cafe, what may we offer you?" the waiter asks, in a manner, smile and class that is pristine and classical the last time Alice had this kind of politeness and gesture from a waiter was abroad on one of those summer holidays she went with her family last year. Oh cold brew coffee she responded, trying to look around and to make sense of this level of treat which is uncharacteristic of her city cafes. The receptionist hands over a token which is an ID informing her it is unique to her order and lets her track her order in time using the screen display.
So Alice goes back to the menu, just somehow trying to keep herself busy while she waits for her cold brewed cup of coffee. She notices a beautiful logo just beside the STAC logo, and its written beside it Cardano, Alice can't make sense of what that means, except that it is beautifully designed and appealing. She looks at the display on the screen and sees her unique ID, besides it indicates 3 minutes before her order will be ready. Alice decides to keep herself busy by reading what was written at the back of the menu. At the back of the menu is a short story about Cardano and blockchain, it is so well written and intriguing that it captures Alice's attention that she didn't notice when the waiter brought her favorite cup of coffee. "Coffee is served" Alice hears the voice faintly from behind. It was then she took the coffee and had her first sip, I think the first sip suddenly helped Alice back to life, as she suddenly noticed a lot about her surrounding she didn't prior notice or give attention to. The first was the cozy music that was playing in the background, the other was an iPad beside her table written story tablets, and another was the beautiful art that decorated the cafes and a place called an NFT gallery room. As she sips her coffee silently, gulping through her cold brewed coffee, her mind keeps going back to the story she read about Cardano, blockchain, ADA ………………..
UNIQUE FEATURES OF THE STAC CAFE:
- Discounted Price for all goods and services paid through ADA: For every cup of coffee or tea, or any other service offered at the cafe, users receive between 10-20% discount if they pay through ADA. This directly incentifies them to pay through ADA and to open ADA wallets in order to benefit from the discounts.
- Standby Cardano Onboarding Service: Our cafes are mobile onboarding centers, all our staffs are well-informed about the Cardano and are willing to engage with our customers about it, they are also equipped with the requisite skills to onboard new users and help them with how to use ADA.
- Cardano Tokens as Loyalty Rewards: Cafe has loyalty rewards for consistent and regular customers, this helps breed patronage and consistent loyalty to the store. In this cafe loyalty rewards are issued using a Cardano token, once presented customers have access to perks and services that are exclusive to them.
- Stories on the Chain: Part of our package for entertaining customers is the use of stories, innovative stories, these stories will be in different genres and categories which users can browse from, the story collection will be an open collection series where writers can directly contribute their story to our monthly call for stories and get compensated in ADA if their stories is accepted. As such introducing these conventional writers to the Cradano blockchain.
- NFT Gallery Room: Part of the entertaining aspects of our cafe is the exclusive gallery where artists will submit digital collections and customers get to see interesting pieces of art while at the cafe, the buy options for these collections are in ADA, and the yearly royalties for their art are paid in ADA as well. For many of these local artists, this will be their first time knowing the link between their arts and NFTs.
FUTURE SCOPE: There's a whole lot we can do with this experimentation of onboarding the next generation of Cardano users using the conventional approach. In the future, we will be probably integrating SSID into the order process, to make the identification of one order seamless and easier. As this model grows and we establish many STAC cafes all around the world, we will probably launch our own digital tokens on the Cardano blockchain for all our users to have access to exclusive benefits and community privileges, and assets.
SUSTAINABILITY: Unlike many projects, this project once funded will run in a loop and they'll be no need to get funding for it anymore as it will be able to generate its own revenue, pay subsequent rents, staff, expand, and keep bringing visibility to our ecosystem.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
In 6 months assuming we have a daily patronage of 20 customers(this is a very conservative estimate) then monthly we will be having about 600 customers and in the first 6 months of this project we will be reaching about 3600 persons. The implication of this is, that every customer who comes to our cafe is introduced to the Cardano ecosystem, ordinarily having this level of awareness is positive on its own to the ecosystem, but that's not all, our model has the ability to convert about 40-50% of the customers into becoming active Cardano users and ADA holders, this means that we will be onboarding actively about 1500 customers into Cardano in every 6 months, with the potential to scale we are talking of more than 10,000 Cardano users in the next 2-3 years.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
- The number of customers visiting the STAC cafe daily gives us an idea of the number of people constantly being exposed to Cardano it ade aware of Cardano daily.
- The number of new users getting our wallet and onboarded to the ecosystem, shows how active and appealing our ecosystem is and contributes to the general amount of active wallets in the Cardano ecosystem.
- The number of users paying for goods and services in the Cafe using ADA, this is proof of how ADA is being used for different use cases
- The number of local writers and artists getting paid in ADA, brings new players to our ecosystem
- The number of views Cardano related content in the cafe generates, this increased awareness on the Cardano brand
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
Month 1: Market Survey and Preliminary Preparations
Month 2: Rent of Space, Purchase of all necessary equipment
Month 3: Crafting and redesigning the rented space to suit the specification for our use case
Open call for submission of stories
Open call for submission of Artwork
Month 4: Launch of Cafe
Month 5: Marketing
Month 6: Documentation
The documentation and report from this project will form the basis to the continuity of this project and a fundamental framework for others who want to create more use case-based projects that helps onboard users from their point of