[IMPACT]
The solution’s core will utilize Cardano’s native multi-sig wallets and enrich them with a management interface. The collective/enterprise/business wallet is central since it contains all the wealth of a unit. Whoever controls the wallet controls the organization. Around this core, we will build three main features for business owners:
- Transparent Governance: On-chain companies governance including compensation and corporate actions such as profit payouts. This includes also a
- Contribution Reward System: Many new established companies are looking for alternative ways of organizing work: contribution-based pay and natural hierarchies, and team building. Our system will include management tools enabling such new forms of organizations.
- Smart and Inclusive Decision Making: Besides allowing an alternative way to organize work, the tool will have the possibility to create a repeating decision funnel in which ideas are proposed to contributors and decisions are refined based on their feedback.
- Access to Defi: Certain products like lending might be already usable for companies. However, we see more specific applications such as Supply Chain tracking already being developed on Cardano. Anchoring such applications on the Enterprise Operating System enables smooth administration of all elements of operations.
- Efficient Bookkeeping: A tool to write and receive invoices in ADA, native stablecoins, or any other Cardano based tokens, including an open API to connect to other sources of transactions.
We collaborate with an external parter on this contribution, the Resourceful Human GmbH based in Berlin (https://resourceful-humans.com). RH has been in the field of building frameworks for successful networking organizations for the last decade. They have worked with large cooperations as well as startups. We are proud to bring such a strong partnership with us into the development.
Resourceful Human GmbH Partnership aims to design an optimal governance system for around 150 people. Limiting the Governance to the number of people is rooted in the assumption that groups are better managed if the leadership can establish a social connection with everyone in the group. The number 150 is starting point and not a final conclusion.
Waya Collective
This proposal is part of Waya Collective in the sense of being a building block of it and therefore developed within the Waya framework (https://wayacollective.com/project-catalyst/). However, it is an independent solution which will be made available to the ecosystem and benefit everyone.
Waya Collective is a DAO built on Cardano with the aim to leapfrog industrialization by building a new economy. Starting in Africa, Waya builds new industries from the ground up and utilises Cardano to scale across the world.
The Enterprise Operating System in the Waya Ecosystem is called “Autonomous Collective Operating System” (Enterprise = Autonomous Collective).
(Read our White Paper for more Context: https://wayacollective.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Waya_Collective_A_Decentralized_Autonomous_Production_Network.pdf)
This challenge aims to get Cardano as base layers into companies. Having an easy way to create on-chain entities and enable them to engage Cardano based B2B services is precisely what is needed to facilitate the B2B adoption of Cardano.
The biggest challenges of adoption of crypto overall for companies that we could observe in our previous work are twofold:
- Lack of knowledge: Many companies are simply not aware that Cardano / the blockchain could address the challenges they face.
- Inability to change: large organisations have considerable switching cost
We propose to help new companies to be set up on Cardano and grow with them; thus, we can address both points above. New company founders will look for information actively, and we build an education funnel from there. By setting up new companies as on-chain entities, we skip changing an existing organisation.
However, when it comes to the project itself, we see another set of two main challenges:
- Will we gather 150 people within our Community Contributor working group?
- Will we build a product that satisfies this proposal’s rich set of requirements layout?
Failing to reach less than 150 people working group within 12 months would indicate a severe flaw in marketing the group - in that case we will adjust the marketing. Both teams collaborating on this project have built and shipped working tech products to clients. We are confident we will publish working enterprise wallet containing the basics of the layer of our governance within 12 months.
[FEASIBILITY]
- Kick-Off experimental working group* using RH currently existing SaaS Solutio
- Publish Governance Working-Paper In Close Cooperation with Resourceful Humans (1 Month)
- Kick-Off lean MVP development based on observing the working group
- Reaching 150 online contriubtors on Resourceful Humans currently existing SaaS Solutio
- Deployment of Cardano based MVP of the Enterprise Operating System within our working group (9 Month)
- Second Development cycle based on group feedback
- Publish our learnings and an Open Source Version of the platform (12 month)
*The experimental working group is the global group of Waya Community Contributors willing to help set up Waya. We believe governance is the key to making companies successful. Therefore we choose to build our organisation as a permissionless networking organisation. Waya will share everything we learn along the way with the Cardano Community.
Learn about Networking Organisations:
https://www.resourceful-humans.com/network-organizations
100% will be spent on MVP development
- 60k Development Staff
- 25k UI/UX
- 5K Overhead
Total amount needed 90K: (50%) 45k paid by Catalyst - (50%) 45k paid by Waya.
-> We will share our learnings and part of our code with the community!
External Partners
Resourceful Humans:
- Angela Maus, Co-Founder
- Rasmus Rahe, Project lead for the shared project
Proposer Team (Waya Collective)
Antonia Lorenz - CEO
https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonia-lorenz/
Antonia is an entrepreneur at heart and very passionate about all of her endeavours. She is on the ground in Uganda for us which over the past two years also became her second home. She is creative, tech-savvy and has a great business mind. Before Waya Collective, she started the Podcast Foundality Africa and worked at E&P focus Africa, a consulting firm focused on African markets. She studied industrial engineering and management at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). Currently, she is also the Africa coordinator for Sigma Squared Society, a global entrepreneurship community. At Waya Collective, she brings her determination, her talent for design and her experiences in Uganda. She is responsible for building our fashion production and brand.
Matthias Guilbert - CPO
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthias-guilbert/
Matthias is the Africa lead and is responsible for operating the first factory. He was raised in Ethiopia and served in the French navy in a prestigious unit. He established the production side in Ethiopia for the textile giant Decathlon. In his role Matthis managed and supported over 6,000 employees, including 7 personally recruited management staff. He also became the Head of Sustainable Development for Decathlon. Beyond Industrial production, Matthias has a heart for Art and also co-created a Hub for Africa Creativity and Culture in Addis Ababa.
Carolin Baltzer - CFO
https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolin-baltzer/
Carolin is our numbers expert. Passionate about logical connections, she studied Economical Mathematics at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). During her studies, she started to learn about entrepreneurship and started to work as a CFO at heliopas.ai, a startup committed to helping farmers with soil moisture analysis, and for Plug and Play, an early-stage investment company. At Waya Collective she brings her expertise to corporate finance. Carolin is responsible for the focus areas of finance, legal and operations.
Simon Peters - DAO Architect
https://www.linkedin.com/in/snj-peters/
(Currently transitioning to Waya and Full-Time from 01. April)
Simon is an all-in entrepreneur with a passion for challenging markets. He is a Co-Founder and DAO Architect at the Waya Collective. He served as the Managing Director of DECUS Network GmbH, a corporate venture building an institutional-grade crypto custody solution for EU banks. Previously Simon worked as Venture Pioneer at the impact-driven company builder Ampion Ventures working on supply chain solutions in Nigeria and co-founded the African Entrepreneurship Conference SensXAfrica in Zambia. His vision is to build flexible, incentive-based networks replacing old, rigid and inefficient systems.
Mehdi Nemati - Lead Developer
has 10 years of experience in building SaaS products, including working at NASA as a software developer and was CTO at a digital asset startup for over a year. He is responsible for the technical implementation.
Strategic Contributors
Mutoba Ngoma
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mutoba-ngoma-98b72a22/
Mutoba is a member of “Forbes 30 under 30”. He has achieved this by setting up numerous factories in Africa. He will advise us on setting up our production and running the first autonomous Collective in Zambia.
Tom Pause
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-pause-b2749678/
Several decades ago, Tom Pause established the consultancy “E&P Focus Africa Consulting GmbH”, where he has been advising projects being set up in Africa ever since. As a result, he has built up not only some experience but also a large network. He presents both to us in his function as an advisor.
[AUDITABILITY]
Milestones and KPIs:
- Getting the working group from 10 to 50, 100, 150 people working as an intent driven networ
- Hypothesis Count: How many hypothesis test are confirmed vs failed to be affirmed
- Launch Dates: 1) Working Paper and 2) Product Launch
We will open a transparent Notion Page about this project and those Milestones to track.
The MVP Scope is the measurement of our success. Can we build a:
- Basic governance structure
- Basic team and reward management
- Basic Bookkeeping System + Open API
- The DeFi Connector is a plus that will come after the Version 1 is published
This proposal is a continuation of the successful fund 6 proposal “Elevating Manufacturing in Africa” (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/367408)
With the support of project Catalyst, we were able to do more research and develop our model further which resulted in the model described in the attached White Paper. We were also able to understand Ugandan fashion consumers very well and are in the process of building the first fashion brand, which the first factory will supply.
This proposal is also connected to two other proposals in the current fund 8. Together, the three proposals build the foundation for a new economy, built on Cardano. All proposals bring value to the ecosystem independent of each other, yet they also work together. However, each proposal is also interlinked to form the base of the Waya Economy.
An identifier for businesses giving workers an identity within their workplace making it possible to quantify their added value and enables them to take part in the governance.
Leapfrogging Industrialization (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/400195)
Building the first on-chain factory to set a new standard for highly efficient, sustainable, and decentralised production in Africa. The factory will implement and test the wallet and identifier in order to help build robust and proven tools.
SDG Rating
- No Poverty: By enabling entrepreneurs to set up their business on Cardano, they can access the Defi systems such as lending independent from the entrepreneur’s location
- Reduce Inequalities & Gender Equality: Intransparent compensation and reward distributions are a significant source of gender inequality
- Responsible Consumption and Production: Using a Cardano as a base layer for all transactions enables a real curricular econom