Sankore 2.0 August Guild Report
Month: August
Guild Name: Sankore 2.0
Our progress so far and insights we’ve learned.
Monthly Highlights
- Our first press release on one of the widest reach crypto news platforms in Africa: BitcoinKe
- Our first NEAR-based Dapp use case with inc4-guild INC4: Principle Payment, covering DeFi for the modelling industry (see below in projects)
- Five new members joined our Telegram Chat
- 50 new people followed us on Twitter
- Six new people applied to work 10-20hours/week for Sankore 2.0: Applicants
- We launched our LinkedIn business page
- @decentricity minted our first NFT’s: twitter
- We presented Sankore 2.0’s initiative to 1200 attendees of octopus-guild metaverse event: video
- We published our first partnership blog post with @LegalGuild: The Evolution on Crypto Regulation in Kenya
- We reworked the Education page of sankore2.com to better promote NEAR certification training for developers (NCD)
Projects
[Principle Payments] (PP): Bringing fast payments and decentralised finance (DeFi) to the modelling industry:
[Open Forest Protocol] (OFP): a NEAR-based product that supports afforestation, reforestation and conservation projects, as well as forest managers to easily measure, report, and verify (MRV) environmental data from their projects.
- Sankore 2.0 is the official East African Office for the Open Forest Protocol
- (action items will follow soon)
[Sankore 2.0 engineering ecosystem] (SEE): Building a dev community in Nairobi.
- Developers have started to fill in our survey to start the NCD.
- We will organise the first NAIRONODE (i.e. hacknode) as soon as we have two committed developers.
Human Resources
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We currently have six applicants covering a range of skills and experience. We will offer each the opportunity to work for Sankore 2.0 (terms and agreements are still in review):
Cross-Guild Collab
@Primaveralina is helping us to develop the Principle Payment product.
[@Sandbox]
After discussing with @Sofia_Alum we are looking to bring some of the applicants into the Sandbox to help monitor the quality of their work and the option to join the larger NEAR ecosystem.
[@LegalGuild]:
As stated in July’s Monthly report, we intend to issue blockchain and crypto policy recommendations to the Kenyan Government. We will collaborate in this endeavour with local legal firms.
An experienced local lawyer expressed an interest in working 10 hours per week for Sankore 2.0. She is a managing partner & head of her firm’s “corporate commercial, telecommunication media and tech” department. She wrote a book on Blockchain & crypto laws and regulations in Kenya, published this year. Moreover, she is a member of the Legal for Blockchain Association of Kenya, which lobbies for regulation. In our mission statement, we explained what we could start working on, and offered to hire her as an independent contractor. The reward can be evaluated monthly, depending on the results.
The current status of the actions specified (in partnership with @SChamat from @LegalGuild) in July’s Monthly report:
- DONE: identify the most significant concern that the Kenyan Government has regarding crypto implementation, especially regarding legal frameworks essential for entrepreneurs to build sustainable solutions (DAO’s, tokenisation etc.) on NEAR for their region (see blog post below)
- DONE: collaborate with local legal entities (i.e. identify what is going on in their terms) (see lawyer applicant above in HR)
- In progress: connect local entities with the NEAR Legal Guild to provide added international framework and other necessities. Produce content for Sankore 2.0’s audience on this e.g. privacy risk, security risk etc.
- In progress: draft proposals with policymakers + perhaps create a course package and provide education.
Blog Posts
Social Media Management and Analytics
- Twitter: 91 followers
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Telegram chat: 30 members
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174 more open views on our introduction post published on nearguild.com
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Infographics, memes and re-tweets made for Sankore 2.0: A Sankore 2.0 tweet pointing to the Kenyan Regulators blog post was retweeted by the Near Legal Guild’s official account Retweet
Sankore 2.0’s key tasks for September
- Set up an official Business licence for Sankore 2.0 in Nairobi.
- Define Sankore 2.0’s business model: Doc
- Apply for NEAR grant funding for Principle Payment (first use case).