ContiDAO - Mass Adoption of ZEC

Community Grants
1

Hey folks! :grinning:

I have been an fan of Zcash technology since the mainnet launch in 2016, I participated in the first few weeks of mining and since then I have been following the advances in technology. And participated in some conversations on Zooko’s twitter.

I recently founded a DAO with the goal of bringing Web 3 products to the people who really need these innovations, the mainstream. We developed our core program with government and private partnerships to solve the basic infrastructure problems of Web 3, the main one being the lack of internet connection.

ContiDAO :globe_with_meridians:

37% of the world’s population has no access to the internet, even in Brazil, one of the richest countries in Latin America, most of the population has prepaid and limited data services. The reality is very different from the Web 3 industry which assumed that people already have access to the internet or that this would resolve itself over time.

We believe that full freedom is only achieved with knowledge and the greatest way of disseminating knowledge is the internet, so I think that the values ​​of our communities are the same.

I would like to invite you to help us in this mission.

Benefits to the Zcash community

  • Zcash’s technology would be exposed to several private and governmental partners for its mass adoption, whether for tax payments with ZEC, promoting applications in smart city projects, use of the brand in advertising campaigns.

    Recently, Rio de Janeiro created a committee to deal with crypto matters like this.

  • Allocation of CONT tokens from ContiDAO in the proportionality of investments.

  • To pioneer the largest scale of adoption initiative in the world with private companies, DAOs, blockchains and government institutions.

  • Direct advertising during connections to Zcash promotional and educational materials.

Grant

We are requesting $50,000 USD to help fund our daily activities and operations and an additional $100,000 USD annually per unit of hotspot that Zcash wishes to have.

Government partnerships are making public spaces available (parks, squares, museums, hospitals, schools, government offices and others) and funding the electrical energy for the equipment.

Private companies like Telecom companies that provide all internet services, such as installation, maintenance and delivery of services.

Continent DAO promotes investments and tokenomics for the long-term sustainability of the program that is based on the Web 3 Data Economy.

Milestones

With the Grant of $50,000 USD we intend to reach 60,000 people in the next 4 months.

Hotspots take an average of 4-6 weeks to install and start services. Government contracts have a 5-year contract requirement, with an average cost of 100K USD annually.

We can also negotiate discounts with telecoms for more hotspots if the total amount of 500K USD (5 years) is paid in full at the beginning.

Our technology

ContiDAO is deployed on the NEAR Protocol, but our programs are cross-chain. It is very important that we have a privacy-focused technology partner like Zcash, so that we have a wider range of services to provide to users and partners.

More details at: docs(.)contidao(.)com

Investments to date

We are participating in a public bid for 55M USD funded by BitDAO.

We received the following grants:

NEAR Foundation - First Grant: 60K USD
NEAR Foundation - Second Grant: 75K USD

Curiosities

  • The City of SĂŁo Paulo region in Brazil, which is our main government partner, has 44.04 million people. It is also the 21st largest economy in the world. They made 2,000 hotspost areas available to us.

  • Brazil recently passed cryptocurrency regulation.

  • If Grant is approved, Zcash will be our first partner focused on privacy solutions.

  • ContiDAO registered 70,000 people with NEAR in just a few months.

https://zcashgrants.org/gallery/25215916-53ea-4041-a3b2-6d00c487917d/24325558/

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2

Welcome to the forum!

The proposal is a bit unclear to me. What is the proposal about exactly?

  • What is the total amount of the grant?
    Is the total amount requested 150k, with 50k of that used for start up funding? I also read 500k total services budget, is that a typo or is this amount the total you need but you are seeking only 150k from ZcashCommGrants?
  • What is the project about?
    Are you planning to have a public hotspot in Brazil and this will require 100k per year in cost? How big the hotspot will be? Where is it planned to be deployed? Will it be deployed in remote area or the population centers of Rio?
  • How does Zcash come into play? I mean, the grant is intended only to fund the public hotspot, right?
  • What kind of services that Zcash can provide to your users and partners?

Cheers!

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3

Hi @tokidoki , thanks! So we didn’t pre-define some points on purpose because they are flexible points and we would like to reach a more collective decision-making.

  1. This is an important point, we are asking for a total of $150K USD, this guarantees our activity and use of a hotspot for 1 year. However, if the community and the committee are interested in guaranteeing the 5 years of use of the hotspot initially (government contracts are for 5 years), a total of $500K USD would be required. Another advantage is that with $500K USD we can negotiate with private (telecom) partners a second hotspot deployment as a “bonus”.

  2. We solved basic Web 3 infrastructure issues, such as large-scale internet access. For this we form private and governmental partnerships.
    About the cost of the hotspot, the costs are in Brazilian Reais (BRL), but with the conversion to US dollars, the average cost is $100K USD per year.
    Our main ally as indicated in the proposal and in our documentation is the City of SĂŁo Paulo (the largest city in Latin America), we mentioned Rio when we informed you of a special committee that was created recently to accept crypto as taxes and for treasure of the city, which is also a point that we can contribute and request the inclusion of Zcash.

  3. The location of the hotspot is also an open topic of discussion, if we prioritize the number of people with Zcash wallets, we can focus on areas of high population density such as subway stations or commercial centers, if Zcash is interested in the education of people we can choose universities, training centers and schools, if the community prefers new investors we can focus on the main business area in Latin America, Faria Lima, “The Brazilian Wall Street”.

  • Our main point in one of the subway stations has the movement of people around 1.4M.
  • The second largest university in Latin America is located in SĂŁo Paulo.
  • SĂŁo Paulo’s GDR is the 21st largest in the world (USD$603.4 billion).

So I think we can define this according to the focus or priority that Zcash has today.

  1. The $100K USD would finance the costs of installation, services and maintenance of the hotspot and the other $50K USD for the general activities of DAO, which include costs with accounting, lawyers, operational costs with our teams and other costs arising from activities with the hotspots. We operate as a legally registered entity.

  2. We have been talking to some cities that have created projects to become smart cities and invited us to participate in this process, in smart cities there is the possibility of alternative currencies in circulation and part of these monetary operations cannot always be public without privacy, Zcash has years proves to be a high level solution for transactions with privacy.

I know it would make it easier for us to accept our proposal if we picked these points before submitting, but as a DAO it’s more important that we make definitions together than faster approval. (Unless it is inevitable or is contrary to the grant process).

4

Glad to hear that you want to involve the community in this grant proposal.

I still don’t know how what you’re proposing would benefit Zcash. Has there been any similar project like this that you can share?

Also, what do you mean register with NEAR? Do you mean people using NEAR? How do you track this metric? Can you track the same metric for Zcash?

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5

Through the “Free WiFi” program, the results that benefit Zcash are 3: New Users (Mass Adoption), New Investors (Focus on a region with a high concentration of capital) and Education. I like to point out that mass adoption is by people who really need Zcash, in Latin America this is not an alternative, it is a matter of survival and freedom.

We have done many studies and research, the closest we find to our project are those aimed at “Proof of Humanity” or Worldcoin, but they, like the entire industry, also assume that there is already an internet connection for everyone, which is not true.

Unfortunately, the Web 3 industry has focused on competing for existing crypto natives rather than conquering the mainstream and making them new users.

NEAR Protocol has “ENS” by default, so creating a wallet for these people is more than handing them a wallet address, it’s registering them on the blockchain and giving them an address that represents them. We also teach them how to do basic operations like send and receive, staking and other activities.

Yes, we can track this metric, an alternative is to create an auxiliary database to identify and contact them. The public spaces of the hotspots can be scheduled for us to do advertising campaigns and other activities.

6

@Don, after sufficient time for community feedback on the forum, and consideration from the committee the @ZcashGrants Committee has decided to reject this proposal. Thank you for your patience.

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