Please describe your proposed solution.
The idea for this project sprang from a popular feature of a mainstream crypto-exchange mobile app (Coinbase). In that app, users can earn small amounts of cryptocurrencies by engaging with learning modules and taking a brief quiz. The reward is usually worth about $1 per quiz and capped at $3-5 dollars worth of any single currency. Interestingly, even though it is a "token" amount of money, the gamification* incentives have led me - and thousands of other users - to learn about many projects and currencies that we otherwise would not have done.
Gamification is the business/tech concept of making tasks more engaging by introducing elements of game-play to the experience. It has proven useful in the workplace, in learning environments, and anywhere that it is desirable to encourage enthusiastic, dedicated users. Leaderboards, point systems, badges, graphic elements, and winning prizes are elements often used to introduce “Gamification” to everyday tasks.
What We Already Have:
Our Website, LidoNation.com, provides education about Cardano and Project Catalyst in English, Spanish, and Swahili in written and audio formats. Topics include:
- How to open a Cardano wallet, reviews, and overviews of different wallet types
- How to buy ADA
- Articles about many facets of Project Catalyst and how to participate
- News about Cardano
- In-depth, newcomer-friendly insights about blockchain and the vision of a decentralized future that works for everyone.
We already have 40+ articles published and translated to Swahili, including contributions from native-Swahili speakers in Kenya. New content is published each week.
What is needed now:
Gamification,* incentivization, & marketing for Swahili speakers to engage with our content, learn about Cardano and Project Catalyst, and to get hands-on experience working with blockchain tools and products, like wallets, ADA, NFTs, and on-chain transactions.
How will we do it?
- We will add a multiple-choice Swahili language quiz to each of our translated articles.
- Logged-in users will be able to take quizzes to earn ADA - $1 in ADA per successful quiz.
- Logged-in users can take 1 quiz per day. This encourages more regular use of the website and limits the potential for abuse.
- Overall rewards per user will be limited to ~$25 in ADA.
- A user who reaches 25 completed quizzes will be sent an NFT - like an achievement badge!
- Ongoing engagement with more content quizzes will earn an additional NFT for each additional 25 completed quizzes, up to a possible 3 NFTs per user.
The monetary-reward budget for this proposal is $12,500, which would reward at least 500 unique Swahili-speaking users to read 25 educational articles about Cardano - if every single person MAXED OUT the benefit! In the likely scenario that many people will not reach the max benefit, the potential reach is hundreds more. The NFT reward extends the potential pool of users even further; a total of 1,500 NFT badges will be available, allowing us to incentivize up to that many more new users in Swahili-speaking Africa.
Users will set up a wallet and connect it to our site with a receiving address to participate. In the course of reading articles and taking quizzes, participants will learn the basics of buying and using ADA, read news about Cardano developments and partnerships, and learn about many ways to participate in the ecosystem, including Project Catalyst.
Spreading Awareness
Marketing will be an important aspect of the project in order to attract new users. Funding from Project Catalyst allowed us to found a Cardano Blockchain lab in Kenya in Fund 7. Participants at the Lab spread awareness of Cardano through both local, on-the ground influence, as well as using social platforms like Twitter. Swahili-language marketing work from the Cardano Lab staff will kickstart the effort to attract new users and spread the word about this new way to earn ADA, learn something useful, and engage with new financial tools. This project will result in:
–> Thousands of new Cardano Wallets created in Swahili-speaking Africa
–> $12,500 worth of ADA seeded into 500++ new wallets, allowing new users to participate in staking, DeFi, and other network activities
Market Size
Swahili is one of the world’s 10 most widely spoken languages in the world, with 200M+ speakers. Swahili speakers spread over more than 14 countries, including 12 in Africa: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, and Comoros. Furthermore, most of these areas are economically depressed, meaning that the value and impact of the monetary reward system are significant. This impact area (Africa) is central to this campaign and to the core values and goals of the Cardano ecosystem.
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
This project takes aim at many key areas of the "Grow Africa, Grow Cardano" Challenge!
The Challenge brief states:
"We need to look at the fundamentals that are preventing Africa from being a Cardano adoption leader, rather than a perpetual follower."
The first step toward adoption is awareness and education! The proposal aims to make a clear, measurable impact on African awareness and education about Cardano.
The brief also states:
"Practical innovations offered on tackling the unique challenges faced by the continent. A clear roadmap that points to increased adoption."
This project is both clear and practical, while taking on relevant considerations of language, local context, and monetary incentivization.
The Challenge brief lists a number of Key Metrics that are directly addressed by this project:
Number of proposals addressing the fundamental issues preventing Cardano adoption in Africa.
We contend that the basic elements of awareness and education about Cardano are absolutely at the foundation of adoption!
Number of proposals offering solutions to infrastructure and education concerns.
This project takes direct aim at education, through a well-organized website and "Beginner level" blockchain interactions.
Number of new Africa-based users onboarded onto Cardano (wallets, platform sign-ups).
Many websites have content that can be read and learned. This project takes the learner to the next level: to receive monetary rewards, the user must first create a Cardano wallet, by following step-by-step instructions in Swahili. Then as they learn, they earn small amounts of ADA and NFTs. These prepare the user to participate in Staking, DeFi, NFT marketplaces, and more. We believe this way of bringing new users through a series of easy and successful "micro-interactions" as they learn is the most effective way to launch new users onto a successful blockchain learning path.
Number of new Africa-based Catalyst members (proposers, voters, CAs).
Our content library includes articles about how to become a CA, how to become a successful proposer, and more – so far we have more than 10 in-depth articles about Project Catalyst, with 12+ more planned for this year! Users will read these articles in Swahili and answer quiz questions to prove understanding. While we will know the number of new wallets created (Because they will link to our site to receive rewards!) we may not be able to measure or know definitively how many people take part in Project Catalyst as a direct result of this project - except perhaps anecdotally! Nevertheless, we know that raising awareness through compelling educational experiences is the first step!
Local impact (measurable through user activity and reach).
We believe that the monetary incentivization scheme will lead to successful adoption of the learning tools! Baseline success would involve at least 500 new Cardano users. We think the likely reach will be far higher, as some users will only dabble, while others will get sucked in and continue learning as much as they can! Even the dabblers constitute a level of success. Once they have a wallet and some ADA, we think they will start paying attention to the ecosystem and finding their way forward in the community! We will know the exact number of new wallets that connect to our website to participate. We will also be able to measure website activity and geographical results through Google Analytics reports.
Local partnerships formed (size of institution + influence).
We will be working with the Ngong Road Blockchain Lab in Kenya, which was founded with funding in Project Catalyst Fund 7. Lab members in Kenya will serve as Swahili Translators, Local and Online Marketing leads, customer service, and beta testers. Their local network will likely form the first wave of Swahili learners and quiz participants, which is exactly the kind of local networking and cooperation that the Lab was founded to engender! Through social media campaigns and online networking, we expect the reach to expand beyond the Nairobi area and into other corners of Swahili-speaking Africa.
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
Team turnover is always a risk on a small team. We have experienced some staff turnover already, and we know it will continue to be a factor as our team grows and changes. The best is when turnover is planned and predictable. But we must also maintain a certain amount of flexibility to expect the unexpected. While we have identified preferred leads for all essential roles in this project, we have multiple people in our team and network who could be tapped-in if needed. If and when we experience staffing issues, we may experience temporary delays, but the work will continue.
The other risk for success is that no one wants to use it – we feel this is often the trouble with educational resources because busy people don't have the time or sufficient interest to engage with it. We believe the monetary/NFT incentivization will adequately address this. The areas of the world that speak Swahili are, broadly speaking, economically depressed. Therefore, even what may seem to some as small amounts of compensation will likely be compelling enough for people to want to participate and to tell their friends, given the relative value of the rewards. At the same time, the amount of rewards available is small and restricted enough that it is not likely to incentivize abuse.
Finally, some will have concerns about the potential for abuse in this system. What is to stop people from cheating or stealing the prize money? First, we must acknowledge that it will not be possible to prevent every instance of misuse. Unlike the Coinbase app, which ensures 1-person-1-prize through the KYC (Know Your Customer) protocols to use the app, we don’t yet have access to DIDs (Decentralized Ids) that would make a similar security mechanism possible for us. However, inserting hurdles will make abuse more challenging and highly inconvenient.
To achieve such a goal, we will require users to be registered on our website and connect with a unique wallet. Additionally, each wallet can only earn $1 per day for reading an article and taking the quiz. Furthermore, we will monitor IP addresses which will help with security as well as assisting all users to easily stay within the parameters.
According to our calculations, to abuse the system, a user would have to open multiple user accounts, each with their own wallet, and then use different devices to take a single quiz per day for $1 on each device (all on separate IP addresses). Since our objective is to teach people how to use blockchain tools while reading educational content and taking quizzes, it seems this imaginary “Bad Actor” might, in fact, be our star student!
However, we don’t take our stewardship of community funds lightly. We will tighten security even further if we have reason to suspect abuse. Requiring users to provide a unique email address with their registration could serve as another inconvenience, among others. In an extreme scenario, there is the possibility of requiring “proof-of-life” by attending our monthly Lido Nation public meeting “in person” to get validated to participate with an approved account. Time will tell, but we greatly doubt the need to go that far. To the extent possible, we want to keep the barriers to entry low to encourage more new people to participate.