Please describe your proposed solution

The Swarm Treasury system, in development since late 2021, is a set of processes which combine Community Contribution systems to an on-chain Treasury System, making it easy for a community to build fully public and transparent contributions and treasury processes into a modular system.

The first serious developments of the system have been funded through the Fund 9 DAO - Tools proposal (<https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/421708>) which has been successfully completed in March 2023.

The Treasury PBL

We take all previously gained knowledge and experiences and wrap everything into a Swarm Treasury PBL, using the Andamio Platform to ensure that anyone is able to have easy access to an education format to use SWARM’s gained knowledge and experiences for their own needs.

More about Andamio at: <https://www.andamio.io/>

Our approach is to meet often and co-create Swarm Treasury PBL.

There are four stages of creating Treasury PBL.

1. Creating onboarding lessons to have context, tooling, and access set to start Treasury Management.
2. Creating basic background knowledge lessons for different features and processes
3. Creating lessons for specialisation, such as automation and integration best practices
4. Creating lessons on how to apply your treasury management skills for organisations

We will additionally create evaluation quizzes for veterans to assess their knowledge without having to go through and read all the material the course provides.

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

The Swarm Treasury PBL (Project-Based Learning) initiative will bring transformative value to the Cardano ecosystem by leveraging more than three years of accumulated knowledge and practical experience in contribution and treasury systems. By creating a course using the Andamio Platform, we aim to provide a streamlined and accessible educational format, enabling projects and individuals across the Cardano ecosystem to benefit from the wisdom we've built at Swarm.

Projects that adopt this PBL approach will gain immediate access to insights, tools, and guidance on contribution tracking, governance models, and treasury management. This foundation will empower new and existing projects to innovate, scale, and refine their internal operations confidently, using tried-and-tested methods for managing decentralised contributions.

Value to the Cardano Community:

Accessible Education on Decentralized Practices: The PBL course provides a structured, hands-on learning environment where participants learn and contribute to advanced concepts like treasury systems and decentralised project management/

Our method will also make it more accessible to a broader audience, empowering more community members to actively participate in building Cardano.

Skill Development for Contributors and Leaders: By participating in this PBL course, both new and experienced contributors will gain practical skills necessary for effectively navigating and contributing to decentralised organisations. This includes understanding how to implement and manage transparent contribution systems, improving governance capabilities, and contributing to the growth of the Cardano ecosystem.

Practical Use Cases for Cardano’s Blockchain Technology: By applying what they learn in real-world scenarios, participants will contribute to the development of practical, blockchain-powered solutions that leverage Cardano's blockchain and metadata. This will further strengthen the Cardano ecosystem by demonstrating its use in transparent, decentralised systems that other projects can adopt and expand upon.

We will utilise both quantitative and qualitative metrics to measure the success of our project

1. Quantitative Metrics:
2. At least five onboarding lessons
3. At least 10 BBK Lessons
4. At least 2 Specialising Lessons
5. At least 8 Students complete the course two weeks after launch
6. Qualitative Metrics:
7. Retrospectives and associated documentation from live sessions

We are committed to sharing our progress and opportunities that result from this project through the following channels:

1. Swarm YouTube Videos:
2. Regular updates on the course updates in a public and transparent manner.
3. Recorded learning sessions
4. Open-Source Code Repository:
5. The codebase for the course will be shared as an open-source project, allowing the wider Cardano community to review, contribute to, and adapt it for their projects.

Through these channels, we aim to ensure that the broader Cardano community is kept informed and engaged while also providing opportunities for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

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?

Swarm has been active in Catalyst since its earliest days in early 2021. Since inception, we have played a key role in building up the Catalyst Ecosystem and communities, initiated and supported the emergence of whole communities, projects and companies and have, since then, grown our networks and engagements across multiple ecosystems where we play a role in building up decentralised communities and ecosystems. Our Treasury System has been proven to be of great use not only to projects but also to whole communities and ecosystems, such as the SingularityNET Ambassadors program. We have years of experience, and we know what we do and what we speak about. We are builders and craftsmen, deeply committed to building decentralised communities and ecosystems.

We have a great friendship with the Andamio team to ensure the PBL will be easy to follow and valuable. The Andamio team consists of seasoned Cardano Developers with an outstanding capacity for all things education and Cardano Blockchain development.

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

Milestone 1: A: Milestone outputs

• Create a public GitHub repository with a project board to track milestones, issues, and feature development.
• Develop and share a public project event calendar for all planning and community engagement sessions.
• Publicity and outreach to engage the community in the project’s stages.
• Develop Course requirements documentation, including
• Onboarding Lessons
• Basic Background Knowledge Lessons
• Specialising Lessons
• Contributing Lessons

B: Acceptance criteria

• Share Course Requirements documentation and collect feedback in a public session

C: Evidence of milestone completion

• The link to videos where we discussed course requirements.
• Link to Course Requirement Document

Milestone 2: A: Milestone outputs

• Conduct 4 "Train the Trainers" sessions to equip course leaders with the knowledge and skills to create onboarding course content.
• Async Work by the team to refine the SLTs based on workshop outcomes.
• Upload Course content to Andamio

B: Acceptance criteria

• Record and upload all workshop sessions to the Swarm YouTube Channel for public access
• Successful installation and configuration of the Andamio instance with initial course content uploaded

C: Evidence of milestone completion

• Links to recorded "Train the Trainers" sessions and workshops on the Swarm YouTube Channel.
• Link to Miro Board to visualise course updates and progress
• Link to documentation with course content

Milestone 3: A: Milestone outputs

• Conduct 4 "Train the Trainers" sessions to equip course leaders with the knowledge and skills to create background knowledge course content.
• Async Work by the team to refine the SLTs based on workshop outcomes.
• Upload Course content to Andamio

B: Acceptance criteria

• Record and upload all workshop sessions to the Swarm YouTube Channel for public access.

C: Evidence of milestone completion

• Links to recorded "Train the Trainers" sessions and workshops on the Swarm YouTube Channel.
• Link to Miro Board to visualise course updates and progress
• Link to documentation with course content

Milestone 4: A: Milestone outputs

• Conduct 4 "Train the Trainers" sessions to equip course leaders with the knowledge and skills to create specialising and contributions course content.
• Async Work by the team to refine the SLTs based on workshop outcomes.
• Upload Course content to Andamio

B: Acceptance criteria

• Record and upload all workshop sessions to the Swarm YouTube Channel for public access.

C: Evidence of milestone completion

• Links to recorded "Train the Trainers" sessions and workshops on the Swarm YouTube Channel.
• Link to Miro Board to visualise course updates and progress
• Link to documentation with course content

Milestone 5: A: Milestone outputs

• Official Launch of the SWARM Treasury PBL, making the course accessible to the public.
• Facilitate and moderate participant engagement through Andamio Platform and SWARM Discord, ensuring smooth onboarding and interaction for course participants.
• Hold a bi-weekly Progress Meeting to review the launch, gather feedback, and address any issues.

B: Acceptance criteria

• PBL Treasury set up and ready for use, with clear documentation and links for course participants.
• Course launch announcements and facilitation of participant engagement on the Gimbalabs and the Swarm Discord Servers.

C: Evidence of milestone completion

• Links to the live Andamio instance and the publicly accessible Treasury PBL URL
• Documentation and recordings from the bi-weekly Meetings are shared via the Swarm YouTube Channel.

Final Milestone: A: Milestone outputs

• Proposal Close-Out Report and Product Demo Video
• Retrospective and Reflection on the Course Creation

B: Acceptance criteria

• Report created

C: Evidence of milestone completion

• Link to Proposal Close-Out and Product Demo Video
• Link to the Course website

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

Andre Diamond, Full Stack Developer

Experienced in Javascript frontend and backend development. Joined the Catalyst Circle Admin team in November 2021 as Treasurer and later co-founded the Treasury Guild with Miroslav, Felix, and Tevo to amplify support for projects in the Catalyst community. Currently responsible for developing the Treasury Guild treasury dashboard and other tools in the ecosystem. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andré-diamond-45871242/

Tevo, Project Management and Documentation

Tevo is a Cardano and Catalyst OG, additionally a SingularityNET Ambassador and a leading Member of the SWARM. Tevo has been highly engaged in Catalyst since Fund 1 and is deeply committed to decentralised community and ecosystem tools and architectures. <https://linktr.ee/tevosaks>

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

Course Content Budget: 49133 ADA

Documentation: 14422 ADA

Project Management and Community Engagement: 15522 ADA

Check the Budget Sheet for more details Swarm Treasury Proposal Budget Sheets

If the Treasury Manager Proposal gets funded, we will delay the PBL to start date by a few months to create PBL using the newest tools <https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/132809>

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

The cost of this project represents excellent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem for the following reasons:

Our proposal includes project management, community engagement, and the production of user documentation, tutorials, and support materials. Our team members have extensive experience in managing decentralised projects and ensuring community alignment, making the proposed cost proportional to their expertise and contributions.

Swarm Treasury System has been used to validate over 12000 recognitions and done over 200 transactions totalling over 150000 USD in tokens + additional 250000 AGIX and 40000 ADA

The project has been designed with input from the Cardano community and directly addresses pain points faced by decentralised organisations. This alignment ensures that the value delivered is theoretical and grounded in actual needs and demands.

We have developed a course on Dework PBL, demonstrating our ability to create useful educational material. This reduces risk and increases confidence that the proposed budget will be effectively utilised to create valuable learning materials. You can see the Dework PBL course here: <https://instance-dework-pbl.vercel.app/course/module/101/overview>

The rates we used are self-employed rates that take into account the employment overheads of the resources contracted. The rates are based on the low end of US and European averages. The amounts are calculated for each milestone based on the hours to complete.

In addition all the resources working on this project are taking on the currency risk of being paid in ADA. This means that a fall in the ADA price will result in being paid less or delivering less in each milestone. Any rise in the ADA price will represent a reward for investing in the Cardano ecosystem.

Consequently, given these factors, we believe this proposal offers excellent value for money in a volatile cryptocurrency environment.