Zcash Latinoamérica - ZOMG Proposal

Community Grants Applications
1

This post outlines our proposal for Zcash Latinoamérica - ZF Grants, all feedback and questions are welcome.

Problem Statement

Latin America is a region with very large potential for adoption and use of cryptocurrency, yet there are very few resources in Spanish providing information about Zcash technology, its benefits, its developments, and the impact it can have in the region.

Motivation

The goal of this proposal is to create Zcash Latinoamérica, an online hub of information related to Zcash, the technology, the ecosystem, news and guides, presented in Spanish.

Historically, Latin America has seen the many negative effects of fiat currencies with multiple instances of economical upheaval like the crisis in Argentina in 1989 and the crisis in Ecuador in 1999.

The legacy financial systems in Latin America are antiquated, bureaucratic and slow, creating many barriers for the flow of capital within the region and outside of it. It is estimated that remittances sent back into the region by immigrants living abroad is 2.4% of the region’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and growing, with some countries reaching over 20% of their GDP. This is despite the high cost of sending these funds to the region.

Latin America as a region has a very high proportion of smartphone users compared to the population, there is a great opportunity for adoption of a technology supported by mobile devices.

For these reasons, among others, Latin America is well suited for a number of use cases for Zcash. However, there is a gap in information available in Spanish.

We believe we can begin filling in the gap, accelerating awareness and adoption of Zcash, aligning with ECC’s 2022-2025 roadmap of exploring opportunities in this region.

Background

We are a father-and-son team with decades of combined experience in technology consulting, project management, product management in South America and the United States. We are both native Spanish speakers and fluent in English.

  • Rene Vergara Larrea

    • pitmutt on Keybase.
    • Member of the Zcash Community Forums: pitmutt.
    • Current developer and maintainer of ZGo.
    • Authored the documentation for the SecretSwap DEX before its launch in the spring of 2021.

  • Rene Vergara Araque

Technical Approach

  • Creation of the Zcash Latinoamérica website at zcash-latam.io, providing the Spanish-speaking community with:
    • Zcash Ecosystem news
    • Blockchain basics
    • Zcash technology basics
    • Digital privacy basics
    • Guides for major applications in the Zcash Ecosystem
  • Distribute the information and engage the Spanish-speaking community:
    • Twitter account: ZcashLatAm
    • Telegram channel

Execution Risks

Project risks:

  • Credentials of the project’s social media channels could be compromised, reducing the confidence of the audience in the content.

    • Response: Mitigate this risk by using best practices like randomly generated passwords and two-factor authentication.

  • Scammers may use similar names to attempt to commit fraud in social media.

    • Responses:
      • Mitigate by providing educational information to the audience on common scams and how to spot them.
      • Mitigate by providing the audience with methods to verify a channel officially associated with Zcash-LatAm.io via GPG signatures.

Systemic risks:

  • Governments in Latin America may change their stance regarding cryptocurrencies without notice.
    • Response:
      • Accept this risk, as distributing the information about the Zcash ecosystem is not impeded.

Downsides

None identified.

Schedule

We propose to execute this project during a six month period, with the intention of having this proposal accepted in 2021 to align the launch of the website with the launch of the NU5 upgrade in early 2022. See Full Proposal for a detailed breakdown.

After completing this first phase and reviewing the metrics, we intend to submit a follow-on grant proposal to continue with the project.

Evaluation Plan

The project will provide monthly updates according to the proposed schedule:

  • Report 1:
    • Links to all social media channels.
    • Prototype of website demonstrating look and feel.
  • Report 2:
    • Website live in production.
    • Social media metrics:
      • Number of Twitter followers
      • Twitter engagement
      • Number of Telegram members
  • Reports 3 through 6:
    • Website metrics:
      • Number of articles published
      • Number of comments
      • Number of visitors
    • Social media metrics:
      • Number of Twitter followers
      • Twitter engagement
      • Number of Telegram members

Budget

Item                                   Monthly      Total
------------------------------------  -------- ----------
Infrastructure                           $167      $2,000
pitmutt salary (part time)             $2,000     $12,000
reneve59 salary (full time)            $5,000     $30,000
**Phase 1 Total**                              **$44,000**

Table: Budget breakdown

Milestone                   Percentage       Amount
-------------------------- ----------- ------------
Start                              10%       $4,400
Report 1                           15%       $6,600
Report 2                           15%       $6,600
Report 3                           15%       $6,600
Report 4                           15%       $6,600
Report 5                           15%       $6,600
Report 6                           15%       $6,600

Table: Proposed payment milestones

5 Likes
2

Can I ask how you intend to grow the Twitter and Telegram followers? Number of followers on telegram and twitter don’t really matter if it grows as a result of your buying them for cheap dollar, and the bought audience don’t have a genuine interest in crypto, or privacy or more specifically Zcash.

My personal opinion, as someone with an extensive background in community building and marketing, is that your proposal needs more strategy information.

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Also, while asking for $44,000, I think it’s a good idea to think through downsides and execution risks to include in your proposal, because these possibilities exist for every proposed project.

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100%. I have reservation with having follower count as milestone.

I think this proposal will be more interesting if it focuses on the website and its contents such as educational blog and videos. Then the milestone could be focused on the website and video platform engagement.

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44k grand for this grant in Canada where I’m based, would yield mad results. So in South America, with a much greater population and a greater openness to newer technologies, I’d expect to see

  1. Defined KPIs for this proposal
  2. Strategy
  3. Execution risks and downsides

I’ve run campaigns in South America for other crypto projects btw and I know for a fact that it’s much more receptive than North America to campaigns and new tech. The culture is warmer and much more welcoming, this is why. So a plan for this proposal would help paint a full picture of the proposer’s strategy and goals for given market.

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Agree with you about the followers as a milestone part however.

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Hey, I wasn’t saying that South America is more technologically advanced than North America (I wrote my post at the end of the day, and was tired). I simply was trying to make the point that running community campaigns in South America has a lower “pay to play” cost (this is a fact), which will make the results of the budget allocated for this market that much more significant than if the target location were North America. Which is why I was interested in seeing the KPIs for this proposal.

Also just want to point out that I’m not saying North Americans are cold, bad people. I’m just speaking objectively on the cultural differences and how these differences reflect in interactions with campaigns.

Finally, if you look at the countries with the biggest cryptocurrency holders, you’ll actually see that it’s not the most technologically advanced economies that top that list. We have US in second place, but India comes in first place with significantly more holders than the US (100M in India 17M in US), with Brazil (South America) in 3rd and Nigeria 4th.

Crypto is beneficial to the developing countries more than the developed ones since it increases access to financial services without a lack of social trust for the users.

I guess my post should have said more open to cryptocurrencies, as opposed to technology as a whole.

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I want to make people aware of George Donnelly’s work on BCH adoption in Latin America if they are not already. He has a team doing lots of documented on-the-ground work:

https://stats.panmoni.com/

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We have updated the proposal, version 1.1 is now uploaded.

The main objective of this project is the creation of Zcash-LatAm.io, an online hub of information about the Zcash ecosystem. The work will be focused on the creation and publication of content in Spanish related to Zcash, the technology and the ecosystem. As @anon35140610 mentioned, Latin America is quite open to new technologies but there is a lack of available information in Spanish, we intend to fill this gap with the Zcash-LatAm.io website. Social channels will be used to announce and distribute the content but the focus will remain on the creation of the content on the website.

The milestone reports will focus on showing the content that has been created, using the website metrics to show the engagement the content has generated, as @tokidoki mentioned. Social media metrics can assist us in gauging this engagement.

We did not list any direct risks in the proposal because we see no obstacle to the creation and publication of this content, as well as engaging the community of crypto-enthusiasts in Latin America. We have already secured the domain name and related Twitter handle to enable this project and there is no shortage of topics to cover in this ecosystem. We have now added risks related to the operation of a blog as well the overall risk of local regulatory change.

Thank you for the feedback, we look forward to hear more from the community to improve the proposal.

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How will people find the content on the website?

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Social media channels will be used to announce new publications and resources added to the website.

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Let me try one more time.

  • You build a website
  • You create social media channels (Twitter and Telegram)
  • You update the website with Zcash relevant info, and share these website updates on your social media channels.

But:

a) No one knows the website exists, and
b) No one knows your social media channels exist except for existing community members.

To get engagement on Twitter and other channels, you need to have a presence. This proposal does not explain how you will create that presence.

I like the idea, but it misses crucial information imo, information without which, I would be hesitant to consider it. (With that said, I don’t make these decisions :slight_smile: )

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The website will use best practices in Search Engine Optimization to ensure that users searching for information related to cryptocurrency in Spanish can find the content.

Also, the website will allow users to share the content through their social media channels, expanding the distribution of the information in social media channels.

Using Twitter to distribute links to your content is a tried and true strategy to promote it, we are confident that it can bring the content into the audience’s radar. Below is the response to our announcement of this proposal, as a sample:

Screenshot_20211209_132757

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In an ironic way, this image that you shared actually speaks to my point… with that said though, I do wish you the best of luck with your proposal :slight_smile:

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Hello, I’m from ZOMG. Thanks for applying for a grant!

We had a few questions for your team.

  1. We like any specific technical details you have around what you will be using to build the site: is it a template based website like WordPress or from scratch?
  2. Do you have previous website work you can point to in order to show us your experience in building websites?

Thanks!

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Hi @Souptacular,

Our plan is to build our site from scratch, with a focus on a simple and very mobile friendly UI. This will give us more flexibility as to how to organize the content, like guides as seen here.

We have created:

  • ZGo.cash, the companion website for the ZGo app.
    • Front end: AngularJS
    • Back end: NodeJS, MongoDB
  • Tecproval, GIS-enabled website for real estate.
    • Front end: PHP and BootstrapJS
    • Back end: MariaDB

We’d be happy to provide more details if needed.

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Disclaimer: This is my opinion. It’s not affiliated in any way with ECC.

Hello Renes! Thanks for sharing this proposal.

You’ve spotted two areas that (noticeably) need improvement.
1- Documentation and General Information: I think that Zcash has a pretty lacking documentation for being one of the most if not The most novel and advanced cryptocurrency.
2- Widespread Outreach outside the “First World”; Zcash is being used A LOT. But maybe not for the purposes it was created for. Most of the TX’s are done in a t2t fashion. My totally biased and unconfirmed theory is that people move around value with Transparent Zcash thanks to low fees and broad presence in reputable Exchanges.

While I agree with the points you raise about Zcash’s potential in Latinamérica, I don’t see the value of having a separate product spin-off dedicated to this(*) part of the world. On the contrary, I think that creating a dedicated but yet separate section of content for this language and region only, will create a Yet Another Thing to maintain, that given the pace of the tech breakthroughs Zcash has, will be obsolete and outdated sooner that later.

ZF, ZOMG, ECC and the community must work together to bring our documentation and product information to the same level of high standards that our technology has, and of course, all that information must be accessible in different locales in a consistent, uniform, coherent and easy to maintain fashion. Resources must be allocated so that there is team for each locale and region the product documentation is trying to cover, and those resources must be allocated according to an outreach strategy.

Since the whole world needs privacy and economic freedom, we could create a sibling grant application for every geographic and demographic region like the middle east, western Europe, Subsaharan Africa, South Asia, Australasia, and so on. Then we would have X of these efforts to coordinate so that they look the same, and have the updated same content.

I’m not against your idea, but I don’t think this can be done successfully and efficiently in a bottom-up way.

ZF and ZOMG should take this proposal, expand it for every region of interest and create a Call for Proposals that you guys can apply to for the Latin American portion of the planet.

(*)Note that I’m saying THIS part of the world because I’m a born and raised latinoamericano that is still living in this unequal corner of the planet

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100% agree.

Just brainstorming now. But one way to not have “yet another thing to maintain” would be for all the Zcash entities to have a translate function on their websites/documentation sites. And then “hire” translators who can translate content on these sites into relevant languages. And when internet surfers in different demographics look up Zcash, the official sites pop up but with information expressed in their local languages.

This way, since these official websites are already established and have a significant amount of traffic going through them each day, Google’s algorithm would favour them popping up as the top results, as opposed to a new website that isn’t known yet.

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Hello,

This is the motivation for this proposal, create informative content and guides in Spanish to fill this gap.

I agree, documentation and product information should be available in multiple languages. However, our proposal does not intend to be a direct translation of the Zcash website or the existing product documentation into Spanish. Our intention is to create content to inform the Spanish-speaking audience about blockchain, privacy and how Zcash can play a role in the region. We intend to also provide crypto-related news for the region (like the continuous developments in El Salvador and the recent legislation in Paraguay) and the Zcash ecosystem in general.

The code for our website will be open source, so it could be leveraged by other locales that may be interested in creating similar content in their language.

We would definitely be interested in participating in a RFP for the translation of the product documentation into Spanish, if the ZF initiates that effort.

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No reason why the community cannot propose this to be done by ZOMG early next year. We can start by brainstorming on what kind of contents that we’re looking for and which language to prioritize. Learning from ethereum.org website team, some popular languages can actually be volunteer-translated. I believe the RFP, were it to be created by ZOMG, should be focused on original contents (which does not have to be in English).

Would ECC be willing to feature community-contents on z.cash @rosenthvl? Of course, with some editorial process.

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