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Week 33

Mon 11th Aug - Sun 17th Aug 2025

Thursday 14th August 2025

African Guild

  • Type of meeting: Weekly

  • Present: Duke [facilitator], UKnowZork [documenter], Duke, UKnowZork, Alfred Itodele, Sucre n Spice, esewilliams, Udoma

  • Purpose: African Guild Meeting, 14th of August, 2025

  • Working Docs:

Narrative:

Intro: The meeting opened with Duke noting that payouts in FET rather than AGIX could ease some of the workgroup struggles, since AGIX no longer carries much utility. He admitted he had missed some meetings and wanted to catch up on direction, while Sucre joined shortly after. We briefly had discussion on the Ambassador Program, survey results, and the tension between efficiency expectations and limited resources. Duke pointed out that some groups like Strategy and Marketing Guilds were at risk of suspension due to low survey ratings, while others like Onboarding scored above thresholds. He stressed that without adequate resources, efficiency is unrealistic and workgroups can only do as much as their budgets allow.

Highlights / Upcoming events We discussed merging overlapping guilds to streamline costs, such as combining African Guild with LATAM or consolidating Marketing related groups under one umbrella. We also talked about redefining outputs for the next quarter, with African Guild focusing on outreach, events, and partnerships. Past activities like hackathons and multilingual literacy phases were highlighted as successful, though they required substantial funding. The conversation turned to sustainability: budgets are expected to shrink, and by next year, allocations may reduce further. Duke and Sucre agreed external funding was tricky, since it doesn’t make sense to promote SingularityNet with another company’s money. Cardano was suggested as a possible exception, but skepticism remained about its feasibility. The general consensus was that funding should come from within Deep funding or the foundation itself. UknowZork raised a concern about the recent survey results, saying her fear was how they should brace themselves for this quarter since the survey will likely influence the budget and consent process for the next one. She pointed out that the African Guild was rated low in terms of work quality and expressed worry about how that might affect them moving forward. The discussion then circled around the challenge of producing quality work within the African Guild despite limited funding. Sucre stressed that last quarter it seemed like only one project was accomplished, and suggested the group should look for smaller activities or events that require little to no funding, things that could still keep the Guild active and engaged, maybe with just $50–$100. She also raised concerns that the Guild feels too West African or Nigerian-centric rather than pan-African, which she feels undermines its name and purpose. Advance agreed and explained that while people from other regions in Africa do exist in the ecosystem, many are more active elsewhere, often because better funding and opportunities attract them. He suggested low-cost initiatives like virtual meetups or collaborations to bring a more continental balance back. Duke expanded on this, acknowledging the reality that without strong funding, participation is hard to sustain. He emphasized that Nigerians naturally dominate because of numbers and adoption rates, but if real funding were available, people from all over Africa would join in droves. He also noted that while ideas aren’t lacking, the resources to execute them are.

AOB: AOB: As the conversation wound down, Sucre proposed a practical step: everyone should come to the next meeting with two affordable project ideas. Duke backed this, saying ideas should also be collected in advance, either in a shared document or group chat, so they can be refined before the meeting. UknowZork stepped in and offered to help scout and gather ideas. There was also some back-and-forth about absent members. Should they be expected to contribute ideas too? In the end, the group decided yes: those present would bring two, while at least one should be collected from those not in attendance. The emphasis was on persistence in following up, since getting people to actually submit can be a challenge. The meeting wrapped up on a lighter note, with a few jokes and encouragement shared. Even though the group was smaller than usual, everyone agreed it had been productive and left feeling that, with a pool of new project ideas, the African Guild could keep moving forward despite the constraints.

Action Items:

  • [action] UknowZork to reach out to the rest of the guild to brainstorm plans for the next quarter. [assignee] UKnowZork [due] 19 August 2025 [status] in progress

  • [action] Uknowzork to ask each member to submit at least 2–3 ideas for potential initiatives. [assignee] UKnowZork [due] 15 August 2025 [status] in progress

Keywords/tags:

  • topics covered: Deep Funding, Cardono, FET, Hackathon, Multilingual Literacy, Marketing Guild, LatAm, AGIX rate

  • emotions: Interesting, Insightful, welcoming, progressive, relaxed, collaborative, foward looking

AI Sandbox/Think-tank

In this meeting we discussed:

  • The team spent the call walking through a proposal led by Tevo for the "Cardano Use Cases: Concepts" category of next Catalsy funding round, to build a platform over 12 months, with quarterly milestones, full documentation, demo videos, and integration into the Cardano mainnet. Colleen shared her screen and went through the details of everything from Estonian translations in the materials, to how transactions and APIs would work, and an interesting “reverse gas model” where end users pay the fees.

  • We noted that this 12-month Catalyst proposal is not being submitted to the forthcoming hackathon. The hackathon will require a quick, working prototype in just a few days, and the team plans to use it as a way to build components, test ideas, and strengthen collaboration — lessons that will help shape a feasible strategy if the Catalyst proposal gets funded.

Peter highlighted the need to keep the hackathon work small-scale, while Colleen outlined how the platform would simplify cross-chain agent integration, and Vasu filled in technical background on embeddings, vector stores, and ICP infrastructure. Guillermo suggested treating the hackathon as a focused, simple MVP effort and brought up the Masumi project as a Cardano-based example to learn from.

  • We discussed whether to keep ICP integration just for the hackathon or build it into the bigger plan, and touched on polishing the proposal’s wording. Colleen admitted she probably couldn’t take on development work for the hackathon this time because of technical setup challenges, though she still liked the ICP idea for the future.

  • Toward the end, the conversation shifted to a planned “think tank” session with four discussion topics, ideas for connecting it to AI ethics work, and possibly putting together an RFP to fund AI experts.

Decision Items:

  • The group agreed that the 12-month Catalyst proposal is too large for the hackathon and should be split into two separate proposals, a small, simple MVP for the hackathon and a more ambitious version for Catalyst.

    • [rationale] The 12-month proposal is too large for the hackathon’s short timeline and could breach funding rules, so splitting it allows a small MVP for the hackathon and reserves the full plan for Catalyst.

    • [effect] mayAffectOtherPeople

Keywords/tags:

  • topics covered: Hackathon, Catalyst, ICP infrastructure, Cross chain agent integration

  • emotions: informative, insightful, forward-looking, Ideating, Productive

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