Overview
--------

**The Sovereign Nature Initiative**

[Sovereign Nature Initiative](https://sovereignnature.com/) (SNI) is a non-profit foundation that has brought together multiple partners and engineers from the Kusama ecosystem including [Kodadot](https://nft.kodadot.xyz/), [Unique Network](https://unique.network), [Kilt Protocol](https://kilt.io), [Momentum](https://odyssey.org/explore-momentum), and [Ocean Protocol](https://oceanprotocol.com/), to support the building of Web3 capacities for wildlife conservancies and other NGOs working on restoring and protecting biodiverse ecosystems.

SNI's KWT Hackathon is an online event for crowdsourcing solutions for wild-life identification with computer-vision techniques and onboarding these identities on web3 data and ssi protocols, as well as presenting these identities in different ways in the metaverse. This effort has a major impact on conservation, which currently disposes of manual techniques, taking up to 6 months to process, resulting in siloed physical profiles.

**Venue:** Odyssey Momentum online Hackathon space: sni.odyssey.org

**Hackathon Dates:** October the  7th until November the 6th

**Winners Announcement:** Tuesday the 7th of November

Candidates should apply before the 12th of September 2022 by completing [this form.](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd22MYldgFgyxj0HX5CaIq7CIAgzs8y_6gDhnM4gaupipMrjw/viewform?usp=sf_link) 

We will let applicants know if they are invited or not by the 16th of September 2022. 

**Beneficiary address:**
G2bC9gtyHBkxmg65nZiZ7pbrV7PMLNXUTwr6dqMUk8KDxXG

**Submitter address:**
G2bC9gtyHBkxmg65nZiZ7pbrV7PMLNXUTwr6dqMUk8KDxXG

Community Spend & Deliverables
------------------------------

The pledges we are seeking from the Council will provide prizes to enhance the reach and impact of these project -- 320 KSM in prizes for the winners of the contests, which will encourage them to continue building their DApps to full fruition after the Hackathon for the benefit of KWT and other conservancies around the world dealing with similar challenges (see description below).

### Amount to spend from the community pool

**Total Ask: 320 KSM**

**Distribution:**

-   80 KSM to the first 2 Winners (1 winner per challenge)

-   48 KSM to the first 2 Runners-up (1 runners-up per challenge)

-   60 KSM to be equally divided amongst the remaining teams

The Jury will be composed of representatives of KWT, SNI, and 2 experts from the field of technology and conservation. The Jury will select 4 winners to which it will distribute such an amount. In its decision, the Jury will be looking for novelty, ease of implementation with existing technologies, the degree of impact and efficiency the solution brings to the conservancies' operations, and other relevant factors such as cost of implementation etc.

Introduction to the KWT Hackathon, the Challenges & Ecosystem Growth opportunities

The Web3 for nature restoration and conservation space is growing exponentially, with Hackathons, grants, and investments flooding into this emerging ecosystem. The aim of this Web3 movement is to bring forward the development of tools and token economic models that could support NGOs and other wildlife conservation organizations to find alternative solutions to finance and manage their vital work of protecting and restoring wildlife ecosystems.

This space, loosely defined often as ReFi, Regen Community, or Web3 for Nature is currently led by Ethereum, Polygon, and by the work of Regen.Network which is part of the Cosmos ecosystem.

Sovereign Nature Initiative is recognized as a leading node in such an ecosystem and together with strategic partners such as Kilt Protocol, KodaDOT, Bitgreen, Momentum, and Unique.Network is trying to advocate for the use of the Kusama ecosystem as the "go-to" chain for environmental projects due to its recognized lowest carbon footprint in the market, and its federated framework for governance and decision-making, which are vital features for conservancies and other land stewards. 

To foster innovation in the ecosystem that is both beneficial for the network and builds capacity for nature stewards working in the field, SNI hosts online Hackathons and [Incubators](https://sovereignnature.com/programs/germinators-program) in partnership with conservancies globally.

Building on the success of our latest [competition](https://sovereignnature.com/winter-2022-hackathon-challenge) supported by the [Treasury](https://kusama.polkassembly.io/motion/425), and our recent [May 2022 Experimental Zone](https://sovereignnature.com/tpost/52pojp8lo1-reflections-on-experimental-zone-1) in Amsterdam, in October-November this year we will again be inviting the most talented Web3 teams from around the world to build tech in service to the health and balance of life on our planet.

In this iteration, we are partnering with the [Kenya Wildlife Trust](https://www.kenyawildlifetrust.org/) (KWT), an NGO committed to the protection and conservation of predators and their ecology, situated in the Maasai Mara National park in southwestern Kenya.

KWT, aware of the potential of emerging decentralized technologies, has identified two specific problems they invite teams to tackle:

-   The identification of lions through computer vision models

-   Predators and farmers' conflict management through spatio-temporal prediction modeling and other conflict mitigation approaches

Improving the lions' Identification process and ID management

A significant portion of KWT's resources is spent on the identification of predators in the Maasai Mara ecosystem. These identifications allow staff to monitor the population and  create model-density estimates and distribution trends, data which are essential for conservation. Due to their physical characteristics, individual lions are more challenging to identify than other predators and the images are painstakingly screened and processed by three employees.

This challenge is a fantastic opportunity to develop the capabilities of protocols and teams working on verifiable credentials such as our partners at Kilt Protocol.

### Predators and farmers' conflict mitigation

The survival of predators in a mixed-use landscape like the Maasai Mara depends upon the goodwill of people to coexist with other non-human and undomesticated life. In the Maasai Mara ecosystem, farmers and wildlife live in close proximity, and predators often prey on cattle. Successful measures have been taken to build better protection and deterrent mechanisms. Still, KWT knows that more can be done to create truly resilient means to support cohabitation, which considers both the socio-economical context and the everyday life of farmers' communities. We, therefore, invite teams to harness their creativity, skills, and expertise toward building tools that can serve as facilitators of a new symbiotic relationship between human communities and predators.

Ideas might include, but should not be limited to, providing the technological and economic tools for communities to safely cohabit with predators, and creating the conditions for farmers to understand the importance of predators, and participate in the value predators generate by regulating the complex dynamics of the savanna ecosystem.

This is a wonderful opportunity for protocols and teams working on data markets and IoT to validate and expand the use cases of their technology. For example, machine learning can be done using Ocean Protocol Compute-To-Data service which will allow us to hide lion tracking data from the public while opening it to data processing and prediction modeling.

### Target Group

Ideal participants are labs, startups, collectives, or companies with a heart for conservation, an ambition to build life-sustaining systems, and who are well versed in some or all of the following technology stack:

-   Web3 - wildlife and biodiversity data oracles.

-   Token Engineering - crypto native models for conservancies funds distribution.

-   Spatio-temporal prediction modeling - wildlife mobility predictions and human-wildlife conflict mitigation.

-   Citizen Science - applications for wildlife tracking and identification.

-   Computer Vision models for wild animals recognition, identification, and tracking.

Previous experience working on similar conservation projects is desired but not required.

**Maximum Team Size: 8 members**

Our intention is to have at least half of the participants based in the African continent. We foresee this being an excellent opportunity for Kusama to grow its ecosystem in the East-African region, which is currently dominated by other protocols and their respective supporting communities.

**Open Source**

Nature doesn't care about ownership. In the spirit of open collaboration, all software developed during the Hackathon should be licensed under Open Source license.



The Sovereign Nature Initiative (SNI) is a non-profit foundation that has brought together multiple partners and engineers from the Kusama ecosystem to support the building of Web3 capacities for wildlife conservancies and other NGOs. SNI's KWT Hackathon is an online event crowdsourcing solutions for wildlife identification with computer-vision techniques and onboarding identities on web3 data and ssi protocols. The Council is being asked to provide prizes of 320 KSM to the winners of the hackathon. The Jury will select 4 winners to which it will distribute such an amount. The target group includes labs, startups, collectives, or companies with a heart for conservation and an understanding of the technology stack that includes Web3, Token Engineering, Spatio-temporal prediction modeling, Citizen Science, and Computer Vision models. Teams must be no larger than 8 members, with at least half based in the African continent. All software developed must be Open Source.

#526 SNI Hackathon with Kenya Wildlife Trust: Treasury Proposal