over budget impact proposal

BORA: Empower Tomorrow’s Leaders

$44,000.00 Requested
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Community Review Results (9 reviewers)
Impact / Alignment
Feasibility
Auditability
Solution

Democratize access to student loans with BORA DAO, a DAO managed and operated by the community to approve student loans in a project catalyst inspired style.

Problem:

Thousands of students are excluded from education because they cannot access student loans (funding) due to a lack of a credit record and/or lack of access to funding.

Yes Votes:
₳ 86,081,114
No Votes:
₳ 16,982,407
Votes Cast:
484

Team

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[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Bora’s vision is to fund the education of future leaders through community driven DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) funded through the value in cyberspace. Bora will bring financial inclusion, accessibility, and sustainability to students all over the world.

Bora will operate similar to Cardano’s Project Catalyst. “Catalyst is bringing on-chain governance to the Cardano blockchain by allowing the community to self-determine priorities for growth. It also lets participants deploy funding to proposals which tackle challenges and capitalize on opportunities that arise in the life cycle of Cardano.” Bora will draw inspiration from the Project Catalyst model by using Proposers, Voters and Community Advisors to operate and manage the Bora Protocol.

The Bora DAO will have three tokens that will be used for rewards, governance and transparency: $BORA, vBORA and sBORA. $BORA will be used to reward users for investing and performing different operations on the network. vBORA will be used for voting and governance. sBORA will be used to bring transparency and quality assurance to the Bora protocol.

Lastly, Bora will incorporate DIDs (Decentralized Identifiers) also knows as a Decentralized Digital Identity to function as KYC (Know your customer). All the students that use the Bora protocol have to complete a detailed KYC (Know Your Customer), consisting of various background checks, and reference letters from members of Bora or an recognized partner institute.

Image File

BORA inspired by the Project Catalyst Structure

Bora is building the Project Catalyst for student loans. Project Catalyst has empowered the Cardano community to Seed fund projects in order to grow the whole Cardano ecosystem. Bora will have a similar structure to Project Catalyst. Bora will empower our community to select the students and projects that will be funded. The Bora community will consist of Proposers (Students requiring funding), Voters and Community Advisors.

Proposers

A proposer is someone who submits a proposal (request for student loan, request to fund thesis project) to the Bora protocol to be funded by the treasury. The proposal presents the need for the loan with a detailed presentation of the problem faced. Proposers are the students in need, the people that require funding to reach their educational aspirations. The proposal is the way to communicate the request for a student loan to the Bora community. Furthermore, the proposal will connect members of the community with each other.

Voters

A voter holds vBORA and actively participates in the governance of the Bora protocol (DAO). Voters are the ultimate deciders of the direction of the protocol and which proposals obtain funding. Voters review proposers proposals and vote up or vote down the proposals they would like or dislike to see implemented. They are the stewards of Bora and by voting they bring Bora closer to its vision.

Community Advisor

A Bora Community Advisor (BCA) is a community member that participates in the quality assurance of proposals. BCA’s have the task of reviewing proposals submitted to a given Education Pool/Vault and supplying quality information to voters and proposers. Bora Community Advisors will consist primarily from students with existing loans obtained from the Bora Protocol. Further, a community advisors is anyone who participates in the community to develop, assist, advise, improve the project.

$BORA

Although Bora will have three different tokens, the main native token of the Bora protocol will be the $BORA token. $BORA will be a Cardano Native Token and as such will have all of the major traits of ADA by using the same underlying token logic, including the ability to pay network fees in Bora Token; this is called Babel fees. $BORA holders will receive a percentage of the interest earned in the Bora student loan pools. $BORA holders will also earn a percentage of the transaction fees of the Bora protocol.

vBORA

Governance of the Bora protocol will be done via voting. Holders of vBORA tokens will have the ability to a) Vote on which proposal get funded by the protocol and b) to propose new features for the protocol, vote on the proposed features and execute the approved proposals.

vBORA tokens can be obtained via two methods.

1) Stake BORA tokens in a smart contract to mint vBORA. The amount of vBORA to be minted will be dependent on the amount of BORA staked and the duration of the stake contract (3,6, 9 months etc).

2) Stake stablecoins in Bora Education Pools/Vaults. The Bora Education Pools/Vaults will be used to fund the students and projects approved by the community. Furthermore, users that stake stablecoins in the Bora Education Pools/Vaults will receive the majority of the APY obtained from the repayment of the loans taken out by the students through the Bora protocol.

Through voting for a proposal that gets funding, vBORA gives the providers of liquidity (users that deposit stablecoins in Education Pools/Vaults) the ability to decide where their provided capital will be deployed.

Bora will make use of the Voltaire governance protocol to operate as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) governed by vBORA holders. The vBORA token is designed to be used in the future governance of the Bora protocol. vBORA holders who hold 1% or more of the total vBORA supply can submit development proposals, while any vBORA holder, regardless of how much they hold, is able to vote on these proposals. The vBORA token allows the Bora community to propose features, vote on the proposed features and execute the approved proposals.

Bora governance has been designed in a way that will eventually let the core Bora team step out of the decision-making process entirely, achieving a truly self-sustaining and completely decentralized protocol controlled by the Bora token holding community.

sBORA

Transparency and quality assurance will be incentivised with the sBORA token. Any student that submits a loan proposal request through the protocol will be required to hold a proportional amount of sBORA to the value of the loan requested. sBORA will serve both as collateral that will be staked with the loan agreement, and a show of trust that the particular student is actively involved within the community.

sBORA tokens will be issued as follow:

1) A minimal amount of sBORA will be issued upon successful completion of a student’s DID and acceptance into the protocol.

2) sBORA will predominantly be issued through functioning as a Bora Community Advisor. BCAs have the task of quality assurance for the proposals that the Bora protocol funds. They identify and validate proposals, and filter for proposals that resonate with the Bora mission. This means that the more actively involved with the protocol a student is the greater the loan amount they can take out.

3) sBORA is also issued upon successful repayments of loans proportional to the amount of the loan once again building increased trust into the protocol. Conversely sBORA will be burnt with every default payment.

BCAs are incentivised to do first class quality assurance on proposals as successful repayment of loans insures a low APY on all the loans taken out. The low APY for student loans on the Bora protocol is depended on a low default rate. A low default rate is encouraged via the community mechanisms: 1) members vouch for each other to join the Bora protocol (DAO) - members are accountable to those that vouched for them. 2) Bora Community Advisors are affected by the default rate, it is in the whole communities interest to select and approve quality proposals to fund known individuals to ensure accountability.

sBORA and vBORA will be exchangeable for a small fee that will be paid in BORA this allows for active sBORA holders to exchange a portion of their sBORA for vBORA and gain greater voting and governance rights over the protocol and conversely vBORA holders may convert to sBORA to allow them to apply for a student loan or put forward a proposal to the community.

DAO Fund Management

Successful proposasl approved by the Bora community will be funded from the Bora Treasury. The Treasury will consist of various pools (vaults) that will be funded with stablecoins. Users that deposit stablecoins into the education pools (vaults) will be rewarded in two ways:

1) Depositors will earn ~6% APY on the stablecoins deposited into the Bora pools (vaults).

2) Depositors will receive vBORA to enable depositors to participate in the governance of the Bora protocol and to vote on various funding proposals from the community.

The Bora protocol will offer student loans at a 8% APY. Students would take out the loan, service the interest payments while finishing their education, upon graduation and increased earnings, payback amount will increase to repay the principle down. The payback method takes pressure away from students during studies and offers the opportunity to repay more at a later stage when graduated students have increased their monthly income.

Different Bora pools (vaults) can be set up for each SubDAO, different pools (vaults) can be created to cater to a certain sector or area: Example is to create a pool focused on disabled students, or a pool focused on funding dentistry etc. Creating investment pools/vaults with a focus on a specific area or need, will help members fund the causes that align with each investor’s individual values.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Our solution directly addresses the F9 DAO’s <3 Cardano challenge brief in various ways (pls see below). As per the challenge brief: “Currently if a DAO (even one that is aimed to build products and services around Cardano) wants to setup their DAO infrastructure, the current options are all based on, mostly, the Ethereum blockchain.“

Cardano needs:

  • Similar tools that offer superior features to those offered on other chains.

The Bora DAO will incorporate DIDs (Decentralized Identifiers; Identities on the blockchain) for KYC (Know your customer) as we onboard students to receive proposals and approve funding of the student loans. Cardano’s use of DIDs is ahead of other chains, BORA DAO will further solidify Cardano’s advantage and provide real world use cases for DIDs.

  • Effective Collaboration Management Platforms to Organize Community Intentions and Actions

BORA DAO will operate in a project catalyst model by using Proposers, Voters and Community Advisors to operate and manage the Bora Protocol. BORA DAO innovative use of 3 different tokens will give the community the tools to manage the treasury and incentivise community intentions and actions. The Bora DAO will use three tokens for rewards, governance and transparency: $BORA, vBORA and sBORA. $BORA will be used to reward users for investing and performing different operations on the network. vBORA will be used for voting and governance. sBORA will be used to bring transparency and quality assurance to the Bora protocol.

  • Additional not yet existing tools to give Cardano a distinct advantage

BORA DAO will create tools in Product Version 2.0 that can give Cardano a distinct advantage, BORA DAO will incorporate the qualifications and diplomas obtained by the community to the blockchain for access and verification by third parties. BORA DAO in full action will be a DAO that allows anybody anywhere to create a Sub-DAO with the tools to govern and manage, while simultaneously performing KYC with DIDs and recording qualifications (credentials) to the blockchain for access and verification by any third parties.

  • DAO community collaboration

BORA DAO operates in a similar manner as project catalyst. The protocol is setup so the community must collaborate with each other to approve proposals and receive funding. Students that need a loan must first complete KYC, then create and submit a proposal for the loan. Existing community members (students that received funding in prior rounds) will evaluate the proposals before presenting the proposals to the community for voting. Besides the BORA DAO operating mechanism, community collaboration is further incentivised because members vouch for each other to join the Bora DAO - members are accountable to those that vouched for them to join the DAO. Furthermore, all Bora DAO Community members are affected by the loan repayment default rate. A high default rate will lift the APY repayment rate for all community members, thus it is in the whole community's interest to select and approve quality proposals to fund known individuals to ensure accountability.

  • DAO creation

The Bora protocol will enable the forming of SubDOAs - allowing anybody, anywhere to create and manage their own DAO. Each SubDAO’s will have similar operational mechanics as the main (first) Bora DAO with investment tools. SubDOAs can be formed based on investment type (cohort), such as by country, economic status, course type, or age group. Effectively, any school (from anywhere, academic/ non-academic) can apply to create a SubDAO and add students who could benefit from a loan on the Bora protocol. Creating pools/vaults with a focus on a specific area or need will help members invest in the causes that align with each investor’s individual values. Investments could also be made in several different portfolios to hedge risk across sectors.

  • DAO operation

BORA DAO created the sBORA token to be used for operating the DAO.Transparency and quality assurance will be incentivised with the sBORA token. sBORA will be issued to community advisors and students that completed KYC. Any student that submits a loan proposal request through the protocol will be required to hold a proportional amount of sBORA to the value of the loan requested. To receive additional sBORA and thus increase the size of the loan available to the student, the student will have to be active in the community. This means that the more actively involved with the protocol a student is the greater the loan amount they can take out.

  • DAO governance

BORA DAO created the vBORA token to be used for governance of BORA DOA. Holders of vBORA tokens will have the ability to 1) Vote on which proposal get funded by the protocol and 2) to propose new features for the protocol, 3) vote on the proposed features and execute the approved proposals. Bora will make use of the Voltaire governance protocol to operate as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) governed by vBORA holders. The vBORA token is designed to be used in the future governance of the Bora protocol. vBORA holders who hold 1% or more of the total vBORA supply can submit development proposals, while any vBORA holder, regardless of how much they hold, is able to vote on these proposals. The vBORA token allows the Bora community to propose features, vote on the proposed features and execute the approved proposals.

As seen above, BORA DAO directly addresses several of the needs set out by the challenge brief. BORA DAO will provide a protocol so anybody, anywhere can create a sub-DAO and have the tools and mechanisms to successfully manage and operate the DAO.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

The main challenges for BORA DAO project have been identified, listed and mitigations proposed below:

Challenge: Project not on budget, expenses are running over planned costs.

Mitigation: The project budget is linked with the planned dates and milestones created. Monitoring and tracking the expenditure over time allows the team to early on identify and address any expenses that are the cause of running over budget - correct the cause and ensure the project stays within the projected expenditure.

Challenge: Project not on time and running late.

Mitigation: The project will be tracked closely with the use of dates and milestones. Close monitoring and tracking will allow the team to identify any time slippages early on and address the cause of the slippage early and ensure the project stays on time.

Challenge: Project runway ending, how will BORA DAO get future funding after development of the MVP.

Mitigation: BORA DAO will continue participating in project catalysts funds. We believe that our project will deliver value to the Cardano ecosystem and the community will recognize our effort and continue to support our mission. Alternatively BORA DAO can host an IDO to distribute BORA tokens to early supporters of the project and raise funding in that manner.

Challenge: Community not compliant, try to game the system and proposals.

Mitigation: BORA DAO will first launch and MVP, the MVP will be opened to a selected members of the community - students that joined the BORA and are active in the community and are known in the community. (Please see our target market section below). Because everybody know each other and all proposals are open sourced and reviewed, we can ensure the protocol is not gamed and exploited from within.

Challenge: Loans are not repaid by students - default rate on loans.

Mitigation: Students (community members) have to vouch for each other to get access to the protocol. Furthermore the community selects and approves quality projects to receive funding. The loan default rate affects the overall API that the whole community has to repay, if my friend that I vouched for to get funding does not repay his loan, I will have to repay more on my loan. Our mitigation relays on the community being accountable to each other to ensure loans get repaid and “students” don't disappear with funding.

Challenge: Require additional developer for final 25% of the project

Mitigation: Start the talent search and job advertisement early to align an additional engineer for the team during the final stages of the project. Rely on our existing network and known engineers to ensure we have a developer for the final push.

Challenge: BORA DAO requires a stablecoin to deliver value to the ecosystem

Mitigation: DJED - BORA DAO will rely on the stablecoin DJED, developed by COTI and IOHK to function as stablecoin for the Cardano ecosystem. The stablecoin will launch to mainet after the VASIL hardfork.

Challenge: Who will use the protocol MVP - what is the initial target market

Mitigation: The Bora team has been active with market research in Uganda over the last six months. We have built up a community with several hundred students. We have great traction and we are developing a local community chapter at Makerere University in Kampala Uganda. We sponsored a local football team from the university that went forward to win a multi month league and emerged as champions (please see photos below). We are active in the community and building our first group of students that we will allow into the protocol to participate in the MVP. BORA DAO is managed and operated by the community - transparency and accountability are community driven, thus it is important that we launch the initial MVP with a community that knows and trusts each other. The initial cohort will become the first Bora Community Advisors and will drive the protocol in the future.

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[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Below we outline major versions for the specifications and implementation of the Bora Student Protocol. The versions are aligned with the major strategic priorities of the project over time and expected hard-fork combinator events on Cardano that will make certain new approaches possible.

RoadMap

Week 0 - Project start

Week 2 - Complete initial Scaffold of the Protocol

Week 4 - Develop on-chain script development in Plutarch for v 0.1

Week 6 - Complete on-chain scripts for v 0.1

Week 8 - Test on-chain scripts for v 0.1

Week 10 - Develop on-chain scripts for v0.2

Week 12 - Develop off-chain contracts for v0.2

Week 14 - Complete and test on-chain minting policies for v0.2

Week 16 - Commence Frontend Integration

Week 18 - Complete and Test on-chain validator scripts v0.2

Week 20 - Complete off-chain contracts v0.2 completed & Frontend integration

Week 22 - Launch on Testnet

Week 24 - Pilot project with initial sample group run on Mainnet

RoadMap: Bora Dao RoadMap

Version 0.1 Minimal product (end to end on chain) and Staking functionality

Estimated delivery: End of Week 10

Staking (vBORA)

This version is intended as a starting point for the incremental evolution of the product. The goal is to create a minimal implementation that can be tested end-to-end. This version will not include front-end or centralized back-end components, but it will include smart contracts for a staking system where holders of BORA can earn vBORA. As well as test suites that cover the essential properties of the staking system.

Smart Contracts will be written and tested in Plutarch

Version 0.2 Minimal Viable Product

Estimated delivery: End of Week 24 Subject to Cardano Transaction Library delays.

Loan Application (sBORA)

This version is intended to be a MVP where a small test batch of students can apply for loans, advise on proposals and earn sBORA. It will include smart contracts for receiving sBORA proportional to the individual engagement level of the protocol as well as for locking sBORA upon the application of a loan. It will also include test suites that cover the essential properties of the loan application system.

All offchain contracts will be written in purescript utilizing the Cardano Transaction Library

Identity (sBORA)

KYCs will have to be completed but DIDs will not be onchain and all information will be held by the BORA team. sBORA will be air dropped manually upon KYC completion

Staking Upgrades (vBORA)

New features: The creation of a Stable Coin staking pool dependent on the ecosystem and whether or not a Cardano native stable coin (DJED) is available.

Version 1.0 Launch product

Estimated delivery: Q1/Q2 2023

This Version Is intended to be a full end to end product that consists of a smart contract suite covering staking, voting and funding onchain. With test suites that cover all of the above. With this release loan payments will be issued automatically. Audit process and auditor will be decided closer to the time.

Identity Upgrades (sBORA)

A minimal DID will be created with the successful completion of a KYC and sBORA automatically airdropped however this is dependent on many factors including the state of ATALA Prism as well as strategic partnerships.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Please see below our budget breakdown.

Note: - We are only requesting funding for our engineers. The operating, marketing and general expenses will be funded from another source. Furthermore, please note the fair labor rate that we ask to pay our engineers - $30/hour for an engineer is fair market value.

Week 2

Complete initial Scaffold of the Protocol

1 x Engineer - 80 hours @$30/h

$2,400

Week 4

Develop on-chain scripts for v 0.1

1 x Engineer - 80 hours @$30/h

$2,400

Week 6

Complete on-chain scripts for v 0.1

1 x Engineer - 80 hours @$30/h

$2,400

Week 8

Test on-chain scripts for v 0.1

1 x Engineer - 80 hours @$30/h

$2,400

Week 10

Develop on-chain scripts for v0.2

1 x Engineer - 80 hours @$30/h

$2,400

Week 12

Develop off-chain contracts for v0.2

1 x Engineer - 80 hours @$30/h

$2,400

Week 14

Complete and Test on-chain minting policies for v0.2

1 x Engineer - 80 hours @$30/h

$2,400

Week 16

Commence Frontend Integration

1 x Engineer - 80 hours @$30/h

1 x Front End Dev - 80 hours @$20/h

$4,000

Week 18

Complete and Test on-chain validator scripts v0.2

1 x Engineer - 80 hours @$30/h

1 x Front End Dev - 80 hours @$20/h

$4,000

Week 20

Complete off-chain contracts v0.2 and Frontend Integration

2 x Engineers - 160 hours @$30/h

1 x Front End Dev - 80 hours @$20/h

$6,400

Week 22

Launch on Testnet

2 x Engineers - 160 hours @$30/h

1 x Front End Dev - 80 hours @$20/h

$6,400

Week 24

Pilot project with initial sample group run on Mainnet

2 x Engineers - 160 hours @$30/h

1 x Front End Dev - 80 hours @$20/h

$6,400

TOTAL BUDGET REQUIRED: $44,000

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Bradley Heather - “The Tech Guru”

Brad is an Architect turned blockchain engineer with a deep passion for functional programming. Brad completed the second cohort of the Plutus-Pioneer-Program and an internship at M-Labs and has been actively building on Cardano ever since. He has led the development of projects in both Plutus.Tx and in Plutarch.

https://github.com/Bradley-Heather

Andrew Slabbert - “The Web Guy”

Andy is a professional web developer and online marketer. Andy is experienced and skilled in T-SQL, PHP, WordPress, HTML and Adobe Photoshop. Andy is responsible for the Bora Finance front-end application and will lead the Bora Finance marketing campaign.

Fanna Park - “The All Rounder”

Fanna obtained his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Fanna brings an understanding of financial technology, capital markets, investment banking and consulting.

He has a cross-cultural understanding of African economies combined with multi-year hands-on experience spanning product development and delivery of strategic partnerships.

<https://www.linkedin.com/in/dfn-fanna-park-782b69160/>

Michael Ochailap - “The Educator”

Michael is a holder of a Bachelor of Computer Science and information technology with several years working experience in marketing, management, ICT, entrepreneurship, crypto trading and crypto training. Micheal is an active member in the Ugandan blockchain industry. Micheal will act as a moderator and advisor for our community channels.

Robert Kabega - “The Voice”

Robert is a hands-on sales, marketing, and business development professional with vast experience in supporting small to medium-sized businesses. Robert is adept at mentoring &amp; coaching, strategic planning, project planning &amp; management, and sales development. Robert’s uses his analytical thinking and communication skills to act as the voice of our community.

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Yes, we will return for funding.

We will require funding for the buildout of Bora DAO v2.0 to incorporate additional features for the protocol. We will most likely apply for funding again in F11.

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Progress of the project will be measured in the following ways:

1 Hit all the milestones on the dates planned: Stay on time - measure progress (efficiency) of the team.

It is crucial that the project stays on time. Our budget request is laid out in terms of $rate/hour. The team must be efficient to stay on time. Measuring whether the team hits the milestones on time, we can measure the efficiency of the team.

2 Are all milestones accomplished: Accomplish all goals to ensure project is 100% completed - measure project progress completion.

Project completion will be measured against the milestones set out. We created 12 milestones, each milestone represents 8.33% of the total project.

3 Track expenditure and match to the roadmap: Measure Budget over time to ensure project expenditure stays on track.

Overlapping the amount of project cash spent vs the time taken allows us to measure our budget performance over time. Measuring expenditure vs time will give a clear window into the development of the project.

4 Measure the number and size of github commits: Measure quality and quantity of technical work completed.

The BORA DAO github repository is open source, allowing anybody to view the number and size of the commits. Github provides a window into the technical performance of the team.

5 Monthly progress reports for Catalyst

The team will prepare monthly progress reports to report how the project is progressing in terms of milestones completed and budget expenditure. The reports will be submitted to receive funding on a monthly basis as the project is progressing.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

12 Weeks (3 months) into the project, success looks like:

  • Hit all milestones set out (complete 6 of 12 milestones- 50% project completion)
  • Project on time as set out above
  • Project on budget as set out above
  • Receive continuous funding with the monthly report

24 Weeks (6 months) into the project, success looks like:

  • Project completed 100% (complete 12 of 12 milestones)
  • No time overruns; project completed on time
  • No budget overruns; project completed within planned budget
  • Final funding received from Project Catalyst F9
  • Launch pilot project (MVP - BORA DAO v1.0) with initial sample group run on Mainnet

36 Weeks (9 months) into the project, success looks like:

  • BORA DAO MVP up and running with active pilot community

  • Successfully fund 50 proposals through the BORA DAO v1.0

  • Create the first Sub DOA

  • Complete planning and start working on BORA DAO v2.0

    [AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This project is not a continuation of a previous funded project, however, the team behind the project was involved with a previous funded project from Fund 8.

The project value was $1,249 and the project is currently being implemented.

Link to project can be found here: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/399765

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

SDG subgoals:

4.3 By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

4.b By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

4.3.1 Participation rate of youth and adults in formal and non-formal education and training in the previous 12 months, by sex

4.b.1 Volume of official development assistance flows for scholarships by sector and type of study

#proposertoolsdg

Community Reviews (9)

Impact / Alignment

4.7 / 5
9 Reviews

Does the proposal effectively addresses the challenge?

Commenter gravatar

Many students are excluded from education because they cannot access student loans: lack of credit records and/or lack of access to funding. The author came up with the idea of Democratizing access to student loans with the BORA DAO, a community-run and managed DAO. Good proposal and impact to challenge. Bora will bring financial inclusion, accessibility and sustainability to students around the world. The proposal describes in detail and is rich, creating conditions and opportunities for students to easily access and use financial resources to study. The proposal has given specific solutions, and explained in detail and dense. Besides, the author has given many challenges in the project. At the same time, along with those challenges, the author has all solutions to minimize risks when the project is implemented. That shows that the ability and preparation of the proponent is very active.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

Assessor ID
z_assessor_3820
Total QA Ratings
4
QA Rating Outcome
Confirming your humanity

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Project Catalyst is a great place to get together with people from everywhere on Earth, learn and support each other. Implementing this idea to student loans is simply a fantastic idea. There are some countries that put a heavy burden on students with loans, or some countries with a limited opportunities to students. I like to think this project as scholarship actually, since they are trying to make the repayments with minimum burden on loaners; like pushing the payback process until their graduation.

They are planning to use Voltaire governance protocol to operate as DAO, which is saying they are planning to make a self-sustaining project. They mention that self-sustainability will be their end goal. Their token holders and contributors will have a voice on how the project will execute its projects. One of the hard parts for this is finding trustworthy users at first. Almost all DAOs have this risk; users with bad intentions trying to rig the new systems. Project is also giving their contributors right to bring more people that they trust. This vouching process is a solid plan.

An intricate project like this comes with many risks to be honest. For example, they always need to keep their liquidity pool full. It is very easy to end up like Terra project if this is not done. When you read the project, you can safely say that team is aware of the risks and they have planned their mitigation from the get go. It is great to see the project has started working in Uganda. The team has already started helping people. This proposal could be one of the perfect answers to this challenge.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

Assessor ID
z_assessor_3477
Total QA Ratings
5
QA Rating Outcome
Confirming your humanity

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The proposal wanted to create a DAO platform assisting student for applying and having loans in project catalyst style of funding. The proposed DAO mechanism has been explained very clearly, where it also mentions on how the monetization, incentive and deposit system, and token & governance that will be happening on BORA protocol. The proposal has also considered various risk that might happen during its development, yet each of them has been mitigated quite well in the proposal. Considering on low-cost requested on the proposal yet with a very thorough plan, the proposal will give a great long term impact with its great features, so I personally wish this proposal could be approved.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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There is no society in the world that can improve without education, hence to develop an idea where it empowers students to by providing the loan is definitely a great idea. The idea of building a portal where students can get loan in transparent manner will also help in showing the people about clean governance, This will also help cardano eco system with proper reputation, where it can show how cardano eco system is helping society to make a society a better place to live , with clear goal ahead this proposal effectively addresses the challenge.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The proposal aims to address the problem of students being excluded from education for not getting a student loan due to a lack of credit record and/or lack of access to funding by democratizing student loans with BORA DAO. This DAO will be administered by the community to approve student loans. This proposal already aims to offer a student loan at an APY of 8 percent. This project will provide significant added value to the cardano ecosystem for students around the world in need of a student loan. The proposal is watertight. This project is directly linked to the requested challenges. The creator of this proposal has linked these needs and provided a detailed explanation of how this will happen. Future challenges are included in the proposal along with how they have been addressed. The proposal has a clear explanation of how it will tackle the given problem statement.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The proposal tries to create BORA, a DAO for applying and giving student loans in project catalyst style. The DAO mechanism is explained very clearly, where the lender is incentivized to deposit their stable coin into the treasury by getting ~6% APY, and then will receive vBORA token which is used for governance on the BORA protocol. The proposal is well written with a thorough plan. Considering the inexpensive requested budget and the potential impact of the project, I personally hope the project can get through. The proposal provide numerous risks that may face the project. However, the proposal include a mitigation plans to overcome all those risks.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The stated problem is lack of access to education because of lack of funding. The proposal seeks to address this lack through loans to students. This approach is not clear in how it addresses the challenge of creating more tools for DAOs.

The proposal goes on to explain that a DAO will be used to manage the funds and make decisions about funding.

The proposal goes on to describe tools to be built in order to run the DAO. With this information it it unclear if the goal of the proposal is to assist in making DAOs accessible to others or if the goal is to make a DAO for this project.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The description of the solution is extremely (in a positive way) detailed, and it helps the reader to understand exactly the plan and how it generates impact. The BORA project built on top of Cardano contributes both to the challenge goals of developing DAOs’ solutions and promotes access to education using blockchain technologies. Moreover, the proposal is scalable through its tokenomics system that is described in the solution. One can understand BORA and a sort of Fintech focusing on education and having blockchain solutions for its decentralized governance and execution, which is quite a creative design. For all these reasons, I firmly believe it has impact.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The proposal aims to create a DAO based project on Cardano, BORA DAO based on the principle of Project Catalyst underlying principle of Voltaire Governance Protocols and full decentralisation mechanism. This idea intends to mainly focus on funding of student loan globally with a case study in Uganda, from students from a University as first cohort and community members in the project. The creation and development of such a DAO based project in Cardano will be a testament that the Blockchain is in fact ready and enabling environment for intending and potential project see Cardano as a place to build their DAOs and also a reference point. The proposal should be supported as it definitely addresses criteria of the challenge.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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Feasibility

4.3 / 5
9 Reviews

Given experience and plan presented is likely that this proposal will be implemented successfully?

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The author has provided a very detailed plan. We have enough information to rate this section. The first is the route. According to what is provided, we are told the project roadmap will be implemented in 24 weeks. Simultaneously there are 3 versions: Version 0.1 Packaging and minimal product functionality; Version 0.2 Minimum Viable Product; Version 1.0 Product launch. The to-dos are detailed in the weeks. Next is the budget. The proposal requires a budget of $44,000. This is a reasonable asking value. As the author said budget is needed to fund the engineers. Operating, marketing and general expenses will be financed from another source. At the same time, the author also provides a detailed budget table, analyzed for each job by time ratio in a coherent way. Budget transparency, increase reliability and sustainability for the project. Finally, about the team of team members. We know the members are all people with the right skills and experience to do the work on the project. At the same time, the author also provides texts, presents each member, and attaches links to tell us more about the history and experiences of the members to which the proposal presents. Overall, the plan of the proposal is very good, the budget is transparent and the members are all skilled and experienced, which increases the feasibility of the proposal. Proposal is highly feasible.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The planning is solid, they have addressed their key milestones and laid them out to reasonable timeline. They are planning to release two minimum products before the end product. They identified each of these product versions clearly. It can be seen very easily that they know what they are doing. After seeing such a workload and planning everyone would wait a high budget. However, they are already funded for some part of the project and they kept the pricing for their engineers in a very reasonable price. Actually $44,000 budget is more than reasonable. This can be said easily especially after looking at the people who will be working on the project. Not many projects can say that they have a teammate that has MBA from Stanford. Every single person is a perfect choice for the project.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The proposal has provided a very concise and detailed roadmap and timeline, each detailed action on basis of week. The requested budget has also broken down very very detailed up to the cost per hour specific in every week. Each core team's member background and relevant experience has also been provided. Measuring the provided details in the proposal, including the personal skills of the PIC’s, it should be safe to say that the proposal is completely feasible. However, only 1 person in the PIC’s attached with his Linkedin profile, as I would suggest that it should be better to attach the others too to make the information of each of them more convincing and prove-able.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The presented plan has mentioned about building a portal of providing loan , but the challenge here is how longer will the team provide the loan and what happens if the students doesn't make use of loan in efficient manner. The team should even consider aspects what happens if there is slip in the price of Bora token in the future. Excluding the above point building a web portal which is interactive and most transparent can be achieved , since the team has experienced people consisting of Plutus and Web developers , and members who have worked for marketing in past for more than 20 years, hence with given experience and plan presented it is highly likely this proposal will be implemented successfully.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The people who will contribute to this proposal are included herein. The relevant experiences of these people can be found on github. The team consists of people needed to fully develop this project. The budget is very clearly defined. The funding will be to pay the technicians. The other costs will be financed through another source. The makers of the proposal have ensured that you can see very clearly what will happen (every two weeks). The budget will certainly be sufficient to achieve the objectives. There will be a return for funding to develop Bora DAO v2.0. A timetable has been offered to work out the project. It might be better to allow more time for some milestones. An implementation plan is included in the proposal. Samples will be conducted on the Mainnet. The technical aspects are included in the proposal and are clearly defined. The risks and challenges are included in the proposal. It is good that for these problems there is a clear solution to solve them. An extensive campaign will also be very important to make this a success.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The milestones are explained not only in the points but also described very clearly, also with a very specific roadmap. The budget used is broken down into great detail, up to cost per hour, which is pretty inexpensive. The proposal provides very detailed information on each core team's background, experience, and relevant skills. However, there is only one link to Bradley's (the proposers) Github account, it can be better if all of the members provide LinkedIn/other portfolio links so the community can verify their credibility.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The team has some members with experience relevant to the technical aspects of building tools on Cardano. The team has a Plutus Pioneer, a web developer. An economist is also listed.

It is not clear that the proposers have much experience with the problem they are seeking to solve. The connection to the community could be explained better.

The difficulty in assessing the likely success here is that the proposers have experiences that could be useful in this challenge, but the track records cited do not show relevant experience or success with actual related projects.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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By having considered a broad set of risks that could challenge the proposal implementation, by having presented the references of the 5 members responsible for this proposal and their respective skills, and by having a well-described roadmap, I believe that this proposal is feasible. There’s only one point that raised my attention in this assessment, which is the fact that the proposal says that they are requesting the budget for the engineer's salaries only. Therefore, “operating, marketing and general expenses will be funded from another source”. This does need to be a problem, but proposers could have explained what are these other sources (is it the other funded and related proposal?) and/or if the project could fail if the other sources fail in providing the complimentary budget. As this is not a major issue, but rather a question of being even more transparent, I applied no penalties to this aspect.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The proposal has a sufficient and well articulated plans and step by step process to achieve the different stages of its project development. The budget estimates which resonates with its detailed roadmaps are quite elaborate and reasonable. The profile of the proponents shows that they have the required qualifications and knowledge although not much can be said about their experiences and past achievements within the space. Their intended collaborations within the community to mitigate their shortcomings, I believe that the proposal is definitely in good hands for an effective implementation.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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Auditability

5 / 5
9 Reviews

Does the proposal provides sufficient information to assess and audit progress and completion?

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The author gives indicators to measure project progress according to feasibility. Detailed work schedule, members have enough skills and experience to complete the project on schedule. The budget is analyzed in detail, transparent and easily audited. Monthly progress reports to Catalyst. We are provided with the necessary information, making it easy for us to audit. And in the end result, here the listed short, medium and long term success indicators have been established. create. The team believes in the project, I think, in a positive way. Goals are broken down by time, by month, allowing the community to track whether what was intended has been achieved. Overall, we know the goals to be achieved and the value to the Cardano community and ecosystem.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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As I have mentioned in the previous section, they have laid out their milestones very clearly. To keep track of this they have divided these steps as a percentage, and any time they want to check their progress they can easily say the percentage; with that everyone can be on the same page instantly, For the progress, they have also mentioned the staying on time and not burning down your budget quickly. Both of which are generally overshadowed by other metrics in other projects but this team knows that these are as important as the milestones. One question I have about that is they want to prepare monthly progress reports for Catalyst. They might want to present these reports to their community as well.

Lastly, they have identified three different success metrics with three different times. Separating the project success to parts is better than just giving one final goal.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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There proposal mentioned 5 key points to measure the progress. Those points revolves around the quantifiable number and size of Github commits to matching expenditure as stated in the proposal. The proposal also mentioned that they would update on monthly report for catalyst and they would also have a open GitHub repository for the community, making it is completely auditable. The finish line of success mentioned in the proposal is also very clear.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The audit has presented the proposed solution in best possible manner where it includes steps in building in portal ,Efficiency of Bora coins for future aspects and challenges that the team might face, the plan has presented more than 5-6 challenges in detailed manner which shows the team has worked on pre planning more efficiently. The audit has introduced the team members and their expertise field with their contribution in block chain development , the presented idea has excellent timeline fixed to complete the project and have proper estimated budgeting to make the project still more efficient . Hence ,the information provided is sufficient to audit the progress and the success of the proposal.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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There is a very extensive road map with the associated milestones. This roadmap is very extensive and detailed. The makers offer a lot of transparency about what needs to be done and within what time frame this will happen. Very good KPIs have been included to measure the success of this project. It is good that the milestones are directly linked to the planned deadline that are included. It is good that the makers have chosen to set up KPIs to measure success in the short and long term. (12, 24 and 36 weeks). The proposal clearly describes the intended problem (study loans). This project offers a clear solution for delivering student loans by working with BORA.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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There are 5 points used to measure the project progress, from the number and size of Github commits to matching expenditure as stated in the proposal. The monthly report for catalyst and the open GitHub repo made the community very easy to track the project progress. The defined success of the project is very clear and quantifiable, where each point is divided into 12 weeks, 24 weeks, and 36 weeks.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The feasibility section is well documented and detailed with objective criteria.

The timeline is easy to follow. Milestones and goals are very clear.

The numbers and timeline are very ambitious, but the question is, do we have adequate information to audit the proposal. The answer is yes, the team is very transparent about how they measure success, and the road to success.

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Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The proposal is auditable via different means, starting from the public repository available on github. Important to mention that proposers have indicated a sufficient number of metrics (all related to the proposal’s execution) and explained how they will be measured, which is something rare in many proposals. The view of success is realistic and presents the execution of all the milestones. In addition, they present a modest, but fair number of funded proposals once BORA is running after 36 weeks. For all this excellent design, a score of 5 is more than deserved.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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The proposal has provided sufficient information on how the project should be monitor and assessed. The success metrics which are tied to it's budget, milestones are quite verifiable, elaborate and reasonable. Am convinced that the community has necessary information to significantly assess and confirm the progress and development of the proposal if eventually funded.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

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z_assessor_2292
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