Challenging question, how do we deploy Cardano to Cities with urban scale/projects in developing countries in the next 12 months?. This is a new idea for a challenge setting that has never been challenged before. This challenge enables multiple conceptual projects to incorporate Cardano into development programs, strategies, and urban-scale projects in developing cities for adoption I am very impressed and believe there will be many useful new projects in this challenge

The expansion of successful use cases for Cardano in cities in developed countries ultimately increased the exposure of the ecosystem in population with above average purchasing power so I can see an indirect alignment with the strategic goal that seeks to accelerate the growth and evolution of the ecosystem. The challenge team does a grear job presenting valid arguments in the challenge setting. Nevertheless, I am concerned about the large barriers which might impede potential proposals seeking funding in this challenge, because there are several large players in these cities who view the Blockchain as a threat to the status quo in which they have control. I remember Charles Hoskinson stating not too long ago, in interviews, that "There is no JPMorgan Chase. There is no huge and massive legacy financial system that dominates and controls." in reference to why the focus is on areas such as Africa. Taking advantage of the shortcomings in emerging economies with more flexible legislation, Cardano appears to be taking an approach that can be applied to the rest of the developed world by following the path that Cardano has taken. Accordingly, I have assigned a score of 3.

This challenge aims to incentivize the development of Carano-based solutions that target City-related use cases, such as land and property management, mobility payments, water and pollution management, etc. It emphasizes solutions that can be deployed within the next 12 months. The author explains the importance of city-focused use cases with the argument that more than 50% of the world's population lives in cities already, and that number will only grow in the future. The requested budget of the challenge is $2M, and the author mentions that this is not enough for major projects, but the expectation that the funds will "serve as seeds for initiatives to grow in cities". The Fund9 Challenge Setting Challenge seeks challenges that can inspire impactful and original proposals, and, in my opinion, the City Challenge can definitely do that because of the high number of people who live in cities and understand their problems. At the same time, the Challenge Setting Challenge aims to engage the highest number of voters, and here limiting the use case in comparison to more general challenges, such as "DApps, Products, and Integrations" can be seen as a limitation. That's because at the early stage of the Cardano ecosystem it is hard to logically identify use cases that will bring the most value. So, creating more general challenges allows the voters to allocate funding to specific use cases and solutions without making a leap of faith that a certain area, such as cities is ripe for adoption in the next 12 months.

Key metrics to measure ( Number of proposals to integrate Cardano into programs / Number of events organized to introduce Cardano to governments / agencies of Cities / Number of urban development programs, strategies and projects have Cardano integration for application / Observable impact of funds projects (meet) their KPIs) / Having good feedback on the progress, failure or success of the funds project help us understand the problems of deploying Cardano solutions across cities?. A very detailed challenge guide that helps the Cardano community, especially Defi and NFT, to solve urban problems in developing countries.

The proposal names the following key metrics "the number of proposals", "the number of events", "the number of development programs", and "good feedback on funded projects". In my view, the have some problems with regards to their ability to measure the impact and progress in addressing the challenge. For example:

1. the metrics focus on activies rather than their impact/outcomes, such as a high number of events is no guarantee for the resulting from of Cardano ecosystem driven by city use cases. Metrics, such the newber of new ADA wallets connected to city-used cases, or others should be considered to mesaure the impact of the initiatives rather than just the activities.
2. some metrics are very vague to be precisely measured, such as "good feedback on funded projects". There are many ways to defined it - is it "how many organizations say that it's not useless" or "how many organizations have onboarded more than 1000 people and use it every day?" Of course, defining such metrics precisely is hard, but the reason for that is that the author needs to envision precisely what does success look like for this challenge, and right now that vison seems blurry to me.

The challenge team has defined correctly the success criteria for the challenge, which provides a clear direction for potential proposers on the approach to this challenge. Regarding the suggested success metrics, I see several areas for improvement; this section should provide metrics that the proposers may use as a basis for the definition of the metrics in their individual proposals. That is, the focus of the metrics presented is on measuring the performance of the challenge itself, rather than focusing on the potential proposals. In fact, my recommendation to the challenge team would be to present two sets of metrics, one focused on the challenge and the other focused on the potential proposals based on the use cases. According to the above I have decided to assign a score of 4.