Detailed Plan

A platform powered by Cardano’s blockchain that produces Non-Fungible Tokens for land, real estate, and build a niche NFT marketplace for real estate and land, with admin panels of different levels according to the type of client having in mind that our big customer is the state government which needs special authority, including all other standard features of marketplace.

Another good part about this project is; its huge scalability as well as flexibility in terms of accommodating different customer segments that are related to each other in some way. We can scale it to other African countries like South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, and others who would show interest. The project can also be elasticated to an extent to give options for architectural designers to put up their works for sale as NFT enabling them to earn royalties off of a resale of their work. This by itself solves the hassle of freelancing urban architects to find clients and get paid appropriately.

Moreover, there is a good potential in the platform to attach domestic water and electricity supply services to main NFTs(Real estate and land ownership), keeping in mind that people are most likely to use these.

The house tokens and land tokens will keep records of crucial data of the physical asset including those that are related to its value in the market, location, and links to token metadata will be stored in decentralized storage. The tokes will be created and will be available to the public in the digital marketplace. The marketplace will enable the trading of tokens as well as view details of the tokens. When a property is registered the corresponding legal documents are validated and their copies are attached to the token (Token metadata).

We would like to be on the right side in fighting corruption in the land and real estate market by providing traceability of economic activities in the sector, creating and using NFTs on the Cardano blockchain, the blockchain by far more secure for NFTs as the result of advanced design and technicalities.

The major features of this niche NFT-Marketplace include:

• Generate Assets history and QR code for owners (printable).
• Showcase the assets with the corresponding history.
• Token details: like the location, infrastructure in the area and in the property, built date, construction contractor(if any), owner information, the real estate company information (when applicable), telephone, water, and electricity services(if available)
• Tsoken sales (payment is the ADA equivalent of the value in fiat currency, while taxes are calculated in fiat)
• Search Token by QR code
• Amount of properties a Real estate business owns/sold/built
• ADA will be the primary currency for payment on our platform
• Process tax, and related payment in local currency
• Generate receipt in local currency
• The seller shows the receipt to the National income tax office and pays the determined amount

Revenue model

• Transaction fee from the purchases
• Annual or monthly subscription fee
• Registration fee
• users would have to send the scanned file the legal documents of the property along with required information about the property and it gets validated by a professional. Once validated, the token will be created in the blockchain land listed in our marketplace.

Value Proposition:

• To Cardano: ADA usage and the Cardano blockchain adoption
• To Users: Avoids expensive middlemen, Avoids Price inflation caused by stacks of middlemen, Easy access legal documents, Untamparable Proof of Ownership, Legality proof both for owners and buyers, Land Administration Authority will take full monitoring access on the sale and gift, and part of the plan is to pursue the business model in the following repeatable and interoperable cycles.

1. Customer Development and Team dynamics ( Three months)

First thing first, we establish regular communication with private real estate owners and Addis Ababa city mayor office independently but parallelly, to understand the full dynamics of their constraints, the details in their problem set, cultivate their understanding about what a blockchain-powered application can do(more specifically non-fungible tokens), and understand how they want our solution to fill the gaps in their business by showing the most minified product of solution to give them enough hint about what to expect.

Alongside, building efficient team dynamics. We would hire experts needed to build the platform fully engineered as well as sustaining our project as a thriving business.

Having those two intact, once we get a yes node from one of the prospects(a real estate company and/or the land administration office), we will proceed to develop the solution considering their preferences and security of tokens; next step.

2. Product development (Six months)

Still keeping our communication with our direct customers, we will go on building the platform in their preferred way and ensuring end-user convenience without violating crucial values like security and visibility of the traceability of tokens.

As developing the product’s features progresses through milestones, we keep the customer development process and taking feedbacks.

The product will be carefully built with capabilities of accomodating the fairly complex behavior of land administration.

3. Adoption (Four months)

We make strategic partnerships with entities including prospective clients to adopt and promote our services along with their own services. We would also give an extended free trial period to use our platform and promote it appended to their own regular promotion.

Using the appropriate marketing channel, we spread the news about the value/service we provide to our customer segments.

4. Scaling (Four months)

At this stage, we would raise investment funds from promising local investment organizations/groups such as this to support expenses for scaling our service. Scaling up will require us more budget for expanding technical utilities like servers, human resources for the new scope of the project, marketing expenses, and other miscellaneous expenses.

5. Sustaining and continuous product improvement (Continous work)

Sustaining the project as a full profit organization thriving in the space providing values to the stakeholders in the sector and the general economic aspect of the East-African region.

We would mix up the 5 stages a little bit, as they go that way by their nature.

The Opportunities:

• Perfect timing: It will give us the first comer advantage, Cardano’s latest deal with the Ethiopian gov’t paved the way to some extent, and the gov’t is calling upon local innovative solutions for local issues
• Immense demand: The sector is problematic and the gov’t doesn’t know what to do with the middlemen except appreciating platforms that would avoid them, investors commit corruption with local land administrative officers taking advantage of gaps in the non-blockchain digital solutions( mainly the mutable states), hence the government highly appreciates blockchain solution.
• Accessibility of stakeholders: We can access the potential users through the land administration office’s advertisement and if (or when ) the administrative office decides to use our platform as a storage of the assets in a tokenized manner
• Supportive Environment: Tech solutions are highly appreciated in Ethiopia and everything is going digital.

Risks and Challenges:

• One challenge is that there could be slower adoption to payment in ADA but the recent announcement that the Ethiopian government signed a contract with Cardano to build blockchain-based digital identification of 5 million students and teachers would pave the way for us to some extent.
• Another challenge is finding a good Plutus smart contract developer and NFT marketplace developer on a budget. Although it’s not as difficult if we get help from the Cardano community.
• Risks in the space are quite a few and at the minimum level, and there is room to pivot if necessary.

Success Measurements:

• Making key partnership
• meeting project milestones
• Meeting client expectation
• Good user experience
• Return on investment a year after Adoption stage
• Self-sustaining
• early-stage adoption from the land administration office of Addis Ababa, private real estate owners, and end-users.
• Customers actually gaining the proposed value
• The project becomes self-sufficient after securing two clients.
• Enabling services for water and electricity based on clients openness
• Start scaling up to the international market after 18 months of successful adoption of the local market

Budget plan:

Most of the budget will go to salaries of experts helping to realize the project, here is the plan:

Three months budget:

• Quality Assurance officer: $1,500 for 3 months (par-timer)
• Legal consultant: $1,500 for 3 months (it may not necessarily be sequential months).
• Business consultant: $1,500 for 3 months (it may not necessarily be sequential months).

Six months budget:

• Plutus Smart Contract Developer: $16,000 for 4 months.
• DevOps Engineer: $4,000 for 4 months
• Back-end Engineer: $4,000 for 4 months
• Front-end Engineer: $4,000 for 4 months

12 months budget:

• Customer service officers: $6,000 for 12 months
• Project Manager: $24,000 for 12 months
• Cloud services: AWS Graviton2-based EC2 instances; p2.xlage($0.9/hr) = $7884 for 12 months
• Internet connection: $2,000 for 12 months
• Marketing: $3,000 for 12 months
• Accountant: $6,000 for 12 months
• Office rent: $2000 for 12 months (Temporary co-working space rent, until we start generating income)
• Miscellaneous expenses for some minor affairs in relation to this project: $2,126 for 12 months.

The total budget to fully the project is 79,510 USD.

We ask for a 45,410 USD funds from Cardano to be able to develop the product and the customers, get licensed in local authority, and secure one or two clients.

We have plans to acquire the remaining 34,400 USD later on, at the adoption and scaling stages from other options like Venture Capitals, and different investment groups.

The Team:

Mearaf Tadewos: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mearaf-tadewos-634228174/

Nathan Samson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-samson-419349135/

Nebiyu Sultan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nebiyu-sultan-30775446/

This proposal is derived from my daily observation of my friends in the construction/real estate sector, my community issues with buying/selling assets like houses and lands, victim complaint programs on news channels, and my own experience. There will be great value in solving this critical problem.

P.S. While writing my proposal, I kept in mind that fashioning this project to become a win-win for our clients and the end-users (clients of our clients), and for Cardano simultaneously, the key things that would define the project’s success in short and long terms, milestones, estimating a budget for each milestone, which experts to hire and where to find them, how to find and approach prospective clients and understanding their point of view, and way to run the project as a self-sustaining business.