Cardano Media Projects — Proposal in Project Catalyst

In case you don’t know, in the Cardano ecosystem, there is Project Catalyst which enables people to submit proposals and receive funding if the community votes. Right now Fund2 is going on and somewhere soon voting will start.

I just recently wrote about my “Cardano Hub” proposal and I decided to write about my second proposal — Cardano Media Projects.
This proposal also was in Fund1 (test phase of Project Catalyst) and now you can see it in the Ideascale. If you plan to submit your proposals in the future funds — that’s a good idea to join Ideascale right now.

This proposal received 2.76 rating (from a maximum 5) which is bad, but it’s not yet a failure — ADA holders will decide its fate. Yes, so if you hold 8000 ADA or more — you will be able to vote.

And what I can say — check my proposal, check my youtube channel and decide. You may decide to support it, so I will have funds and will be able to focus on content creation. Or maybe you will decide that I’m not competent enough for this, or you just prefer to support other projects.

Problem statement :

There is a problem with media in general, and with crypto-media in particular. A lot of fake news, biases, lack of research, etc.

Describe your solution to the problem

Create and distribute content — video programs, and then text versions based on them.

Relevant experience

I have 3+ years of experience in creating crypto-related content (text and video program) and managing small crypto media.

Detailed plan (not required) — Fill in here any additional details

First of all, I’m very thankful to everyone who left their comments, feedback suggestions. I decided to decrease the number of ADA requested. (I thought to lover it to 77K as I mentioned in the comment, but after speaking with Ambassador Maria Carmo, I decided to agree with her suggestion and to put the amount which would be more or less equal to 10K of USD. Cardano Media Projects is something which I’m already doing on a smaller scale and which I will do even for free (if the proposal is not submitted), but of course, if you support my proposal — I will be able to focus more on this work.

I decided not to stick with the names of the programs (probably I won’t use them, leaving them as the reference), but what I promise is to do 2 videos (interviews, programs) a week for the next 6 months or a longer period.

The main challenge is how to bring developers to the Cardano ecosystem so the main focuses of my programs will be:

I. Goguen and Smart-Contracts/

II. Project Catalyst — as now when Cardano has superior governance — more people should know about, more developers and teams should come and submit their proposals.

III. Governance and Economic theory, on the way of Cardano’s path to becoming next financial system of the world.

These are 3 main directions, but I won’t stick to them only, as crypto space is very dynamic and I will stay up to date. Also, I will use all your suggestions and I invite you to collaborate (as guest, as viewer, or maybe even as co-host)

Regarding languages — I will focus on Russian and Ukrainian, we will translate to them, and also I will organize Cardano meetups in Kyiv (Ukraine) on a monthly or weekly basis (Let’s see how the coronavirus situations goes) — to build and maintain local Cardano community.

All the videos will be published on Cryptotexty youtube with 1K+ subscribers

Then they will be published on my crypto-blogs and crypto platforms which I maintain and grow for the last years. Here is the list of the blogs which I have

1. Bitcointalk — Sr.Member with 325+ merit 1150+ activity / 2300+ posts

2. Hive — Reputation 65, number of followers — 1662

3. Steemit — Member since 2017–65 reputation, 1651 followers

4. Reddit — Since 2012–1.8K Karma

5. Uptrennd — Level 21, 366+ followers

6. Publish0x — 430+ followers

7. Altcoinstalk — Senior member — 380+ activity

8. Trybe — Trybe High Council with over 170K+ tokens

9. Golos.io — Rating 78

10. Golos.id — Reputation 65

11. Read.Cash — 60+ subscribers

12. Twitter — Since 2009–11k+ followers

___________

Honoring the tradition in the Cardano ecosystem to give names of prominent people to projects, I propose 5 Projects, 5 shows, each will focus on a particular topic.

Project Gaetano — On governance | Project Vilfredo — On tokenomics, cryptoeconomics and economic theory | Project Umberto — On dapps | Project CATO — On marketing strategies, ADA promotion, conversation with Ambassadors (CATO — Cardano Adoption Through Outreach) | Project Cosimo — On trading

Some of the programs will be broadcasted live (Cryptotexty youtube has over 1k subscribers so it’s possible to stream live) while others will be recorded on Zoom and published later.

After some time, after the audience is built for each program and when there will be many live viewers — we will use the interactive mode more.

We will make a text version of each show.

Each publication will be also shared on 10+ crypto blog platforms with thousands of total views.

Videos will be also published on LBRY, Dtube.

We will translate texts to Ukrainian and Russian. In Ukrainian text will be published on Cryptotexty.com Ukrainian site + Hive + occasionally. on lb.ua (one of the top local sites) and dt.ua

In Russian text will be published on Hub Forklog (one of the top crypto media in the region) + Hive

We will make at least 2 programs a week, hopefully more.

We will align the programs with live meetups when possible and will continue the work towards the creation of Cardano Hub (where media studio will be part of it).

My video presentation of crypto-background and why I’m interested in the Cardano ecosystem

Requested funds in ada. Only use numbers! No symbols, letters, fractions. 94000

Which of these definitions apply to you? Entrepreneur, Other/Prefer not to say, Marketing professional

Below is a summary of the notes given to the proposal by community advisors:

Impact: This proposal effectively addresses the challenge

Building a hub does not address challenge.

An offline space could foster collaboration among Cardano developers, but wouldn’t scale due to its local nature.

“This proposal seems to be aligned with the objective of fund2. The existence of this space can encourage the organization of meetups and hackathons, but it has not been demonstrated how a physical location can bring additional benefits in events over the internet, through video conferences. Today the vast majority of events related to blockchain occur over the internet due to the restrictions imposed by covid-19 and this is a problem that cannot be ignored when evaluating this proposal.

Many people have avoided social contact and governments have placed measures to restrict agglomerations in public places. This week (last week of October) there was news of rising cases and some countries in Europe are taking restrictive measures of social distancing.

In addition, this proposal is requesting almost half of the resources of fund2 and there are no justifications present in this proposal that justify such a huge commitment from fund2.

I suggest postponing this proposal to the next funds, when there is a larger budget and we are more confident that the situation of covid-19 is under control.”

A meetup hub will be hard to get up and running in the next 6 months with COVID raging. Many countries impose a limit on how many people can be together in a group, which will hurt such a hub. Apart from that, a meetup space is more of a longtail project, and it will be hard to get developers building on Cardano within 6 months through this idea.

Hubs for community and developers are aligned with the fund goal.

“Would have given higher rating but under current circumstances — I don’t see how this project can fulfil:

“”Cardano Hub — your key to the future. Hub will include meetup space, co-working, library, media, cafe, bookstore, startup accelerator, etc.””

Countries are locking down, home office, etc. I don’t see this proposal can live up to its expectations during present round at all.

Regardless, I like the idea in general.”

This idea is great i think we need to have more exposure to locals, but i don’t know how this can be done to attract developers in the next 6 months with this pandemic going on.

The nature of this proposal is well aligned with Fund 2’s goals to bring devs and entrepreneurs onto the platform. It is the ‘effectiveness’ aspect of scoring that lets it down, based on the other assessments below.

The amount of ADA ask is too low. You are either going to rent or buy location. Fails to say how it will maintain sustainability, to be able to pay rent, utilities, etc

Feasibility: Given experience and plan presented it is highly likely this proposal will be implemented successfully

The proposal could be fleshed out further; it has lots of ideas and maybes but little is concrete.

“There is no further detail regarding the proposer’s professional experience and knowledge, there is only one mention about the creation of a bar in 2019 that served as a meeting point for the crypto community.

There is no detailed plan for how the Cardano hub will engage the developer community in a practical way, mainly because many people are in social isolation due to covid-19. There is no detailed budget allocation.”

The experience is a great plus, since something very much like thing was implemented prior. It is however not a given that people will adopt the idea of a Cardano Hub, and actually meet up. The is some risk that the incentive is not great enough, and it might take a lot of marketing to draw people in.

The plan looks interesting, but the requested funding is way too much for this type of proposal.

“Based on the track record of the person — that is involvement — this would be very likely possible to entertain.

However, plan does not take into account current Covid-19 situation which makes this proposal impossible to implement with desirable level of success. This can be a contender in later rounds when there is more clarity. “

The plan can be improved a lot, i bet there is a lot of ppl that can bring a plan for doing a combined hub, even with some shared profit and costs.

There’s an idea here, but not a concrete plan. There is no factual basis presented to assert that the financials for the physical premises would be sustainable.

Can’t be done within 6 months, and fails to meet the overall challenge of bringing developers and entrepreneurs to Cardano.

Visitor metrics for the previous cryptobar would be useful for both feasibility and impact assessment. Some skin in the game would have improved the proposal significantly. For example, photos of spaces, cost breakdowns, whether alternatives were considered. Many projects get by fine with meetups hosted at company offices.

Auditability: The proposal provides sufficient information to assess how feasible it is and how effectively it addresses the challenge.

“There is not enough information to assess the project’s impact and viability in fund2.

The requested budget was 888 888 ADAs, which corresponds to almost half of the fund2 and there was no detail on the allocation of funds. It is important that the community has a good description of how the funds will be allocated. The requested budget would be for 1 year of operation of the Cardano Hub, which exceeds the 6-month period defined in fund2 to meet the challenge.”

This is no budget to be found, and no forecasting or modelling for how many people it will attract and hence how many projects would be started on Cardano within the next 6 months.

There are no milestones, metrics or KPIs present in the proposal

“Unfortunately, proposal does not go into any depth or detail how the proposed budgetary value actually makes sense and where it will be allocated.”

I think we need a better plan, more ppl thinking about how to bring this to really in a sustainable way. What we need to be in place first to be able to achieve sustainability?

This plan needs to be substantially fleshed out before it would allay risks that the Treasury funds wouldn’t be lost in a failed business.

Note you can access the community advisors guidelines to learn what principles and instructions they were following when assessing proposals: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13GDOj2vuxZzQttagfgnS3hbnP65xsSsWbf_6TURLI_U/edit?ts=5f4f871f#heading=h.bnxyy561vexh"

I wanted to address each of these opinions and answer in detail, but this will make the article very long. Did you read to this line? But if you think that’s a good idea — I will reply to everything in another article