Please describe your proposed solution.

Summary

We want to make it as easy as possible for;

• Developers to say “yes” to work in the Cardano Developer Ecosystem
• Organisations to onboard new developers
• Professional service providers (accountants and lawyers) to do their jobs helping Developers and Organisations with local accounting, reporting and compliance

This proposal will build on the Fund 9 "Accounting Reporting France" project to support accounting, reporting and compliance needs in multiple countries.

Introduction

The number one problem for organisations wanting to build on Cardano globally is talent. There are projects needing developers, and funds to support getting projects into production, but the overhead of introducing and managing payments in ADA creates friction when building a development team. Being able to provide support for development team members, and a good experience contributing to a Cardano project, is challenging and time consuming. Particularly if your team is remote first, and spread across multiple jurisdictions.

Developers generally don’t have a problem receiving ADA into a wallet once they have decided which one they will use. But, as knowledge of Cardano (and Cryptocurrencies generally) is limited among local professional service providers, Dev’s face often time-consuming (and frankly, annoying) conversations around accounting, reporting and compliance. These conversations are repeated again and again across the ecosystem. They are a distraction for developers doing what they love doing… developing!

Many local professional service providers are only just beginning their journey to understand alternative currencies, how DEX and decentralised communities operate, treasuries, protocols, staking, etc. There is a lack of coherent and jurisdictionally correct information for these professionals to refer to. The result is an increase in cost (many bill their time based on 10min intervals) and this cost is incurred again and again.

The deliverables from this project are critical to Cardano, Project Catalyst and its Smarthubs, a network of organisations, situated in local communities, focused on bottom-up adoption. They help introduce their communities to Cardano and Project Catalyst, and reduce the support work necessary to get organisations, developers, and professional service providers onboarded.

Jobs-to-be-done

To understand what needs doing, imagine this:

You’re about to work on your first Cardano-based project.

You think it will be time well spent (aligns with your own goals, purpose and increases your prosperity), you can see lots of future opportunities in the ecosystem.

You are having a conversation with your accountant, finalising your last year returns etc. and mention your Cardano plan.

Here are examples of the barrage of (IRL) questions that follow:

• What is Blockchain/Cardano/Catalyst?
• Where the money is coming from?
• Who is the entity that should be on the invoice?
• Who owns the wallet, the team working on the project, you as a person or your company?
• Is it a personal income or a company income?
• How do we deal with ADA price volatility, do we calculate financial gains and losses?
• How do we get funds to our bank account?
• What will be the process for all this?

Everytime you answer a question above there is a different path to follow which brings yet more questions, such as:

• How do you manage the wallets?
• How do you convert ADA to FIAT?
• Does the exchange account need to be a private one or a company one, or do we need both?
• If the project is done with others, and you are a project lead, how is the accounting done between the individuals, or organisations?
• In each case how to report the projects revenue?
• How do we deal with staking income?
• Should I report a wallet address as any bank account I need to officially report?
• How do we report payments in ADA for services provided by other community members and who prefer to receive ADA?

We have summarised here some of the information collected from 100’s of experiences over the last 2+ years.

Funding this project proposal will enable the Smarthubs team to use our user stories to begin to create the foundations of a resource which addresses more jurisdictions. It will provide key learnings and information to share with accountants and legal professionals to make life easier for developers as Self-sovereign workers.

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

The proposed solution directly addresses the challenge of developer talent acquisition and management in the Cardano ecosystem. It simplifies the process of earning ADA, and addresses the cost of support required for onboarding great talent, fostering professionalism and trust in the process.

By making accounting for payments in ADA easier for developers and organisations, this project will support the smooth implementation of incentivisation and collaborative structures.

Ultimately we aim to develop a seamless experience for onboarding developers contributing to Cardano projects, reducing friction, distraction and time lost on accounting and compliance questions. Offering resources, guidelines, and best practices, we will begin to bridge the knowledge gap among professional service providers. We will (and already do) contribute to ensuring they can assist developers and organisations with accounting, reporting, and compliance needs around income they’ve generated through Cardano.

The benefits of this proposal to the Cardano ecosystem include: easier onboarding for developers and organisations; reduced support work; increased compliance and professionalism, making the Cardano developer ecosystem first, best choice.

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

KPIs for the “Make earning ADA easier for developers” project include:

• Number of Countries we are able to create resources for

• Number of developers/organisations/professional service providers who use our documentation

We will also seek information, feedback and ideas from community members and their service providers (i.e.; accountants) about the value and needs. For example, through community feedback since our Fund 9 "Accounting Reporting France" project closed-out we have developed a section in our documents about web 3 accounting software providers.

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

We will provide updates, once we submit the data for each milestone to Project Catalyst’s system, through our discord server.

Updates will be announced through our SmartHubs twitter account.

As trialled in the fund 9 proposal, Smarthubs will also provide a service through Project Catalyst community After Town Hall sessions and dedicated webinar content which can be shared through Cardano media, e.g.; Cardano Spot.

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

Our team has already delivered multiple successful projects with funding support from Project Catalyst, including the first experiment around earning ADA, focussed on accounting in France.

Having worked as sole traders and run companies spread across the world our team has first hand experience managing the devil-in-the-detail of accounting for income and have cultivated networks of professional service providers and strong relationships in the Project Catalyst community.

Our dedication and experience in onboarding new individuals, companies and businesses to Cardano has been demonstrated. Building the ecosystem – gaining attention, interest, desire to use the technology and benefit from the community, and taking action to onboard them, supporting through the learning curve – is what we do. We are well positioned to be able to execute the proposal in a successful manner and will continue to add great value to the Cardano Project Catalyst community.

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

The main goal is to make it easy for people and organisations receiving revenue in ADA to be compliant with tax reporting in their respective countries.

In order to achieve this we need to facilitate the following:

• Education & explaination to accountants and legal services the source of the funds and the revenue, work processes and opportunities
• Tools to support recording and reporting of income
• Best practices of other countries and use cases

The feasibility and utility of our approach is built on the successful fund 9 proposal.

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.

Our collaboration begins with our team. Each member bringing together people and organisations they’ve previously onboarded and others who need to report Cardano and Catalyst related income for financial year 2023.

Accounting and reporting processes and requirements will be crowdsourced from these community members. Work will be done by each member asynchrony with monthly 2 hour meetings for coordination and ongoing sharing of information via Smarthubs discord about:

• Specific laws
• Feedback from accountants / lawyers
• Format of revenue and transaction sharing
• Tools used

Milestone 1, December 2023 – Setting up the collaboration

• Marketing to the community to find members and organisations that wish to work on their 2023 reporting and accounting collaboratively
• 2 x Workshops with the community to explain the project
• Set a working group with all interested members and ones that need to report the 2023 financial year
• Bi-weekly sessions with community members who need additional information and support

Milestone 2, February 2024 – Developing content

• Start building use cases for multiple countries
• Setting up repository
• Monthly meetup for coordination & information sharing
• Bi-weekly session with community members that need information and support

Milestone 3, April 2024 – Finalise reports

• Ongoing updates
• Finalise financial use cases
• Monthly meetup for coordination & information sharing
• Bi-weekly session with community members that need information and support
• Updating of Smarthubs accounting/reporting repository
• Final report to Project Catalyst

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

• Deliverables Milestone 1, months 1-2
• Survey the community and find people who can support with information from their specific country

Output: Survey results, first draft outline of document

Outcome: Find the most needed countries for accounting and reporting

• Deliverables Milestone 2, months 3-4
• Compiling initial content

Output: Set up online repository

Outcome: Collaboration becomes async and draft content begins to accumulate

• Deliverables Milestone 3, month 5-6
• Collect and add community member testimonies to share the impact this information has
• Create a way for community members to share info on their own county's tax and reporting laws
• Promote the repository of reporting and accounting information

Output: Closing report

Outcome: At least 100 people to use the document

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

BUDGET

6mnth project x Rate 280/hr/ADA

Survey/Marketing [2mnth x 15hr per month] ₳8,400

Community Support Budget [4mnth x 16hr per month] ₳17,920

Content Research [4mnth x 15hrs per month] ₳16,800

Repository Creation [3mnth x 6hrs per month] ₳5,040

Content layout and Editing [3mnth x 6hr per month] ₳5,040

Treasury Guild Services [3mnth x 6hr per month] ₳5,040

TOTAL ₳58,240

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

Our team has been working together on various projects since Fund 7. We have complimentary experience and are located in different timezones, with different cultures. We are used to sharing our experience to best fit the needs of companies we’re onboarding across a wide variety of spaces, sectors and nationalities.

We are aligned on values and dedicated full-time to Cardano and Catalyst. We all have previously funded proposals as well as multiple proposals in fund 9.

This specific proposal is focusing on mainstream activities we have individual experience of over the last 6 months

This proposal is connected to, and part of the smarthubs model we are developing to enable and support location specific community-led onboarding, support and collaboration centres for people and organisations building on Cardano.

Jo Allum: Project Product lead <https://www.linkedin.com/in/joallum/>

Co-founder of a community-led coworking space, Entrepreneur Ecosystem Development and Support Organisation (EDSO) (including incubation, acceleration programs), a charity focused on school-aged entrepreneurs, and a country-wide network of EDSO's for Impact entrepreneurs. Communications specialist working with the Angel Association New Zealand's Investor network and member of the committee of New Zealand's Open Source Society. Funded Proposer, Challenge Team member and Core contributor to DID and Refi organisations and applications being built on Cardano in Aotearoa, New Zealand with global teams.

Cole Bartlett, Project Youth Lead <https://www.linkedin.com/in/cole-bartlett>

Bachelors in Economics and Sustainability, Blockchain/Sustainability Researcher, Social Entrepreneur. Co-founder and Core contributor of Impact Web 3 and Sustainable ADA, Positive Blockchain and Decentralized Lead Generation (P-Gen Network). Donation Officer for Yagazie Foundation. Member of Blockchain Learning Center. Co-Founder of Vermont Fishing and excited to have been chosen to be a Youth Delegate to UNITE 2030.

Nori Nishigaya, Project Tech lead <https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishigaya>

Founder of the Salmon Nation Decentralized Alliance (SANADA), Bridge Builders, and SAMON stake pool. Member of the Catalyst Circle Admin Team, Cardano4Climate, and Rapid Funding Challenge Team. Cardano Ambassador, CA, and Funded proposer. Specialist in collaborative software development agile methodologies, leadership and management of teams. Passionate about radical inclusivity, community, and Cardano being the best community on the planet.

Yoram Ben-Zvi, Project Partnership lead <https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoram-ben-zvi-446836>

Social entrepreneur with extensive network across Asia and Europe, focused on combining impact and business fundamentals. International leadership and mentoring experience with boards, operations, and startups using technology to serve and connect customers globally. Active member of Project Catalyst, a CA and Cardano4Climate community Co-founder and coordinator. Actively promoting Catalyst and Cardano’s community to impact investors, companies and networks, to connect them to the ecosystem.

Miro, Treasury Guild, Project Domain lead and Treasury services for project <https://www.linkedin.com/in/miroslav-rajh-94566845> <https://treasuryguild.github.io/Gitbook/>

Experienced Finance, Human Resources, and Operations Manager for several NGOs and a University. Co-Treasurer of Catalyst Circle Admin team, Swarm, Cardano4Climate, Community Governance and Bridge Builders. Expert in the efficient setup and management of Project Wallets and distribution of funds, keeping track of all budget items, payments, creating Dework & Discord server & channels. Focused on metadata to enable future dapps to create dynamic tailor made dashboards and templates.

We will probably return in future funds to update and iterate on this product. At the same time, we are working towards a self-sustaining model for Smarthubs to include this Accounting and Reporting resource.

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

This project is less than 1% of the challenge budget however is a significant project in terms of building the reality-based user experience for self-sovereign workers and organisations in their own jurisdictions to join and operate in and on the Cardano ecosystem. We need to expand our toolbox to the next stage, make it a repository that is easy to contribute to and update, and has wider coverage in terms of accounting/reporting information for all Cardano community members globally.

The Smarthubs team has continued to work together after the closing report of Fund 9, demonstrating our commitment and belief in the value the project could bring to the ecosystem.

We look forward to helping support Cardano community projects and businesses with their post-funding activities. In the future, we look forward to providing services in collaboration with recruitment, incubation and accelerator programs etc., wherever there are people and organisations to onboard into Cardano’s community.