Name of DAO
A Block of Crypto DAO – Providing Education, Basic Income for Instructors, and Marketing for Harmony.
A Block of Crypto went live in February 22 with an Expert track for non-developers in Blockchain, Web3, and Digital assets. The aim of this track is to fill the skills gap in the Blockchain industry, producing web3 experts ready to champion and build on and comfortably use this amazing technology. Blockchains need businesses and Businesses need education on Blockchain.
We charge no fees to our students and are setting up a DAO that will allow us to provide a basic income for instructors and educators, while marketing and promoting Harmony through our different educational and engagement strategies. These will include online and in-person events.
We are now reapplying as a DAO and have spent much time setting up the tooling, the initial structure, and engaging and onboarding governors. We are excited to move forward and bring our Block Of Crypto Harmony DAO application to life.
The Problem’s
There is an awareness of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and web3 but people don’t know what to do with it and don’t know how to use it.
Many that buy into cryptocurrency have a very limited understanding of blockchain and web3 technology and don’t know where to go to learn more.
Fuelled by open-source development allowing for deployment of products in a fraction of time, the rate of innovation in the web3 and blockchain space continues to accelerate.
Much focus from developers has been on “Copy paste” projects due to the speculative and volatile nature of the crypto market and the possibility of quick gains. This is reducing the focus and investment on real innovation in the space.
Innovation has been fast, yet quality training required to produce anything bar developers and cryptocurrency traders is not easily accessible and available. Education and training are key to adoption and the rise of new innovations and ideas.
Not all ideas and innovations will come from developers - We need more changemakers, entrepreneurs and other key roles educated in this space.
Those with existing skills are being snapped up by Fintech and others wanting to get in on the industry. This is leading to a shortage of skilled resources that should feed the adoption cycle as we move from Early adopters to Early Majority.
This skills shortage has also left development teams with little or no business teams, thereby putting strain on the demand for partnerships and slowing down ecosystem growth.
The current user base and those with Web3 literate skills are spread too thin and need to grow rapidly to sustain the growth of development.
Adoption can’t come fast enough.
The Solution
Build a community of educated talented web3 professionals and advocates. Through education and network growth, we will accelerate the rate of adoption in line with the speed of innovation by equipping people with the skills needed to become the marketing innovators, entrepreneurs, and business innovators that will take Web3 to mass adoption.
Our Mission
It is our mission to accelerate the adoption of Web3, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency Technology.
Our Aim
By providing quality education, we aim to create a Web3 literate community of innovators, entrepreneurs, professionals, and end-users ready to navigate, build on and champion the new economy and a decentralized future.
Our Feature Training Program - Expert Track in Web3, Blockchain, and Digital Assets.
We will provide World Class Training & a community for innovators, entrepreneurs, professionals, Cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and end-users.
Over 18 weeks Students will Learn about Web3, Blockchain, and Digital Assets whilst getting ready to navigate, build on and champion the new economy and a decentralized future in an interactive way.
Students will become blockchain and cryptocurrency literate. They will learn from experts in a guided interactive way and they will master the lingo and skills needed to succeed in the Blockchain, Web3, and Digital Asset space.
Using a blended learning approach, this Web3, Blockchain, and Digital Asset Expert track will have weekly live classes, live coaching sessions, self-study material, activities, and assignments. The live classes and coaching sessions will take the learning to a deeper level using case studies and discussions and make up a core component of the track.
Over 18 exciting weeks, students will learn about
- Blockchain Technology
- Ecosystems and Tokenomics
- Cryptocurrency and Value
- NFT’s and the Metaverse
- Governance and DAO’S
- DeFi
- Web 3
- Network, Communications, and Infrastructure
- The Future of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
This expert track is suitable for learners of all levels and is of particular interest to:
- Cryptocurrency Enthusiasts
- Financial and Legal Professionals
- Gamers
- Innovators and Entrepreneurs
- Creators and Artists
- Coders and Developers
Students will be awarded NFT’s as they progress through the track.
We will also have unique award NFT’s which will be given out thought-out the track and at the end. These will be for outstanding contributions in the community, and study group leaders.
A Certificate of completion is available once the student completes the necessary requirements and criteria.
Other activities
Although our Expert track is our featured Expert track, we will also be running a series of online webinars, we will be creating a Udemy course that will be free for learners to take and we will be hosting an in-person event.
Learning from the first block of students
200 Students registered for the course, and what surprised us most, was that 30% of these never started the track. From our student outreach, it has become apparent that having this course free, people just signed up with no real commitment or incentive to engage and complete the track.
Taking for this learning, our next block of students will be open to 300 students and we will also be implementing an incentive model to encourage completion of the track.
For the beta block of students, we will introduce a completion incentive of 200 ONE to those who complete the track. We will also respectively pay this to students that complete the current, Alpha Block. This is now included in our funding allocation.
From our future student outreach, we have also found a need for shorter courses, which are not as in-depth as the expert track.
Mandate
Educate –Educate professionals, businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators, and end users on Blockchain web3 and digital assets. Support learners on their journey, ensuring Harmony is at the forefront of their minds at all stages.
Financial Endowment & Management– Ensure educators and course facilitators can make a sustainable living while helping the governors manage and grow the DAO.
Community - Grow the community of learners and web3 pros that is both diverse and accessible. Empower study group leaders by recruiting them as governors to the DAO.
Decentralized Governance
We have set up a base structure for initial governance and voting using Aragon on Harmony. We have also issued our social token $ABC.
We have adopted a One person One Vote; however, this may change in the future depending on the community and a call for a vote.
https://client.aragon.org/#/blockofcrypto/
Each of the 9 treasury signatures are current and initial token holders and Governors, along with 3 other governing members with a keen interest and support for A Block of Crypto.
All students from the Alpha block of students will be invited to join the DAO over the coming weeks and all future students on our upcoming blocks will also be invited. This will allow growing the DAO membership at the same rate as we scale the expert track. The more educators and trainers we can pay, the more students we can take on, and the larger our DAO membership will grow.
First Community Votes
Our First community vote took place to select 9 signatures from 12 governors on the 21st of April. We did not use DAO tooling for this, as we were not fully set up.
As our DOA governing team will be operated as a board of trustees & faculty advisory and community management for A Block of Crypto, we must be selective. Therefore, our second community vote will be to set the following criteria for governing positions
- The candidate must be an instructor or course facilitator with ABlockOfCrypto
- Study group leaders
- Students that complete and engage with the Expert track
- Professionals in the Blockchain field with a proven track record in DAOs, raising finance or the Blockchain Space, and are believers in our vision.
This second vote will take place in late May 22.
Our third community vote will be for governor rotation. A rotation vote for governors will take place in Sept. This gives us time to complete the first block of students, being the second, and have study group leaders and therefore hopefully providing a diverse group of eligible candidates.
Accounting & Treasury Management
It is our aim to become self-sufficient within 18 months and at that stage, we should no longer require funding from Harmony.
Paula, the founder is a CPA accountant. She will be responsible for keeping proper books of records and producing financial statements and reports for this first tenure. These will be published in follow-up and to the DAO.
The open and transparent timesheets will be available for all activities as a sizable portion of the budget is on hours contributed.
Initially, the treasury will be managed by the governors which are listed below.
Treasury growth and the road to sustainability
Treasury growth strategies will be finalized between the governors after the first vote. Our current proposal to the governors is as follows:
- Partner with growing and established Dapps, protocols, and blockchains to become education partners allowing them to sponsor a cohort or section within the track
- Professional Service to blockchain projects and Dapps such as Business plans, grant applications, tokenomics design/review, talent acquisition, and ecosystem growth.
- Marketing Services to blockchain projects and Dapps such as AMA Meme contests, non-technical bounties, webinars, educational series, in-person events, and non-technical bounty programs.
- Partnership-based support for projects grown from the community. These are pre-bootstrap, pre-seed projects. Projects we support in this way will be required to pay a consultancy fee on receipt of the initial funding round, be it bootstrap funds or seed or other financing options. This will be 2% of the initial funding.
- Deploy a Defi strategy to earn a yield on the treasury balance
- NFTs – Students and learners can purchase an NFT to support free and inclusive education in the Blockchain, web3, and digital assets space.
- Charge students a refundable deposit. This will only be refunded if the student completes the expert track.
Ask
3-month Bootstrap and Operational DAO proposal total ask $150K
Allocation of Funds for the Initial 3-month funding period
Deliverables in next 3 months
- Provide a decentralized basic income for Instructors, trainers/and facilitators.
- Onboard 300 new learners to the expert track (18-week track). This track will be harmony-focused as set out in our previous proposals (the next track starting in July).
- Complete the existing track (to end on June 22). We minted and issued the first Progress Certificate on Harmony.
- Support 1 new project, driven by the community with business support services (professional and marketing) preparing them for the next stage of the project/business.
- In-person event at Blockchain Ireland week. This will be the week starting 30th May and we have set out CTAs in our metrics below. We will have swag and giveaways for those who complete CTA’s.
- 5 online webinars. These will be open to students, DAO members, and the public and will have an educational theme and guest speaker from the Harmony ecosystem. We hope to have some digital sway to give away at these for those that complete the CTAs as listed in the metrics
- Publish a short course on Udemy introducing the Harmony Blockchain that is FREE. Udemy is the leading online training platform. Being such, it is also a great search engine for highly engaged attention. People search for a course because they want to learn more. It’s a much more engaged person that moves from Googling a topic to searching for a course. therefore, Udemy is a great way to bring awareness and educate. The initial payback on this will not be seen within the initial 3 months as the course will need to be written, produced, and published. Then it will take a little time to grow traction. This course will have a number of CTA’s, which are shown in the metrics.
- In the setting up phase on Aragon, we realize we have an internal training need on Aragon as a DAO tool. Within the next 3 months, we will have sent someone on training so we can adequately use DAO tooling to our advantage.
- Grow DAO – within the next 3 months, we hope to grow this DAO to 100 members. We will only be beginning the Beta Block of Students and they will not yet have been granted access to join. Hence the low number.
Metrics
Wallet and DAO Governors
We have set up the multi-sig wallet: 0x78CEDdc962cF71071778026b7DfEdb363Ca07CBE
Each of the governors is an active member of our community and has shown commitment over the last 12 months. This is a diverse group with locations in Ireland, the UK, Portugal, and the USA. The first 9 are also signatures on the multi-sig wallet
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Paula Guilfoyle – CPA accountant, Former Steem Blockchain Community Witness, Founder of the Global Blockchain Meetups group, Founder and Lead instructor of a BlockofCrypto. Excel Expert, Microsoft MVP, Udemy bestselling instructor, blogger & content creator. Member of Blockchain Ireland Education Working group.
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Simon Dyer: My background is in Financial Services, having spent over 25 years in leadership and operational management roles, dealing with compliance, regulation, and change management. I’ve helped teams embrace new technology and use it to their advantage as well as working with internal and external stakeholders to drive change.
Coming from this background, it became apparent that there was very little understanding of traditional finance in general, let alone understanding of emerging asset classes like cryptocurrency. My background and experience in coaching and training, led to me creating a start-up to connect with financial and legal professionals to help them navigate and understand this emerging financial system when dealing with clients. I have a keen interest in technology, and this was part of what brought me to blockchain and cryptocurrency, having seen the innovation and potential for both of these areas.
I live in Bournemouth and, being by the beach, enjoy Paddleboarding and swimming in my downtime. Co-Founder of the Global Blockchain meetups group. Instructor on Expert track with A Block of Crypto. -
Dave Cahill – CoFounder of the Global Blockchain meetups group. Cryptocurrency trader and Musician. Course facilitator and student outreach on Expert track with A Block of Crypto.
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Dernan O’Toole – Member of Global Blockchain meetups group for over 12-month, Front end developer, web3, and cryptocurrency enthlasis. Director for over 10 years in a retail chain.
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Viviana Viviana Marra is a Computer Science Engineer with a degree from one of the most respected universities in the south of Italy and is working in the tech industry for the last fourteen years. She has a background as a Java developer but currently specialised in test automation. Her first encounter with the concept of blockchain in 2016 was quite practical as the IBM group was running a project for startups with the aim of using their Hyperledger blockchain for the benefit of the public, mostly non-profit organizations, but the project itself never went past the prototype phase. Viviana’s interest towards the blockchain and cryptocurrencies returned in 2019 and she is currently an active member of Global Blockchain meetup group and a student in ‘The web3, Blockchain and Digital Asset Expert Track’ course from A Block of Crypto.
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Wayne A member of the Global Blockchain meet-up groups over the past 2 years. At present I am in the middle of completing The Web3 Blockchain Digital Assets Expert Track course. For the past 4 years I am working as a Technical Lab attendant for the School of Computer Science & Statistics in Trinity College.
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Carlos Lopes I work as a Financial Planning & Commercial Analyst. I have a background in gathering and analyzing financial data, with a track record of providing key information to both finance and non-finance professionals helping decision-making and driving revenue,
growth, and profitability. As an accountant, my experience includes revenue
recognition, budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and project management. I have the
desire to understand how a business functions, the systems knowledge to
determine/implement metrics, and the ability to communicate complex information
at all levels.
I am keen to progress as an analyst so it was inevitable that Blockchain Technologies
would cross my path. The gain exposure and to improve my knowledge of the
technology I decided to join groups and attend meetings with Blockchain enthusiasts
mainly in “Meetup” groups. The group that stands out in terms of progress and
understanding of the technology was “Global Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Web3, and
Digital Assets”. The exposure to additional information links to content, general
discussions on the different topics, and expert views allowed me to start building my
knowledge on the blockchain. All these steps and the people I interacted with guided me
to the expert track.
I believe there is still a path to take in terms of knowledge, but the possibilities are
beginning to take shape in my mind. My ambition is to move forward and be able to
take a more direct role within in the adoption of blockchain technology and the
entities willing to pursue its use. -
Marco Silva - Marco is a data analyst with experience in different industries, he studied Fintech at the university, and is involved in the crypto and blockchain space since early 2017. Part of the Global and Blockchain and crypto Meetup community since day one, and study group leader of the “Web3, Blockchain and Digital Asset Expert Track” course, where he contributes with his experience to educate the youngest in the space. Looking forward to contributing with his skills and knowledge to the community.
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Jesse A. Browning - Jesse is an assistant to a Family overseeing Hotels in brands such as Hilton, Marriott, and Intercontinental Hotel Group. In this position, Jesse works closely with The General Managers, Sales & Marketing Directors, and corporate accounts providing administrative assistance. In addition to this role, Jesse is seeking to expand the utility of blockchain technology within immigration services. Jesse sits on the board of, the African Canadian Initiative providing guidance in transitioning operational standards to distributed ledger technology. He is also an active member of the Global Blockchain Meetups Group. 0x38a4fBDc48E8396589CFEAcd6Fc49D0954Db7d2d
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Ciaran Guilfoyle – Founding Partner in GBS & Co Accounting Practise. Keen interest in technology, blockchain, and blockchain education.
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Mark Webber - I have a background of working in the IT Infrastructure business with large corporate clients, helping them transform and support the IT infrastructure required to support their businesses. This background has kept me continually focused on emerging industry technology trends. In the last few years, I have become deeply interested and involved in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. I’m fascinated by this area of growth and opportunity, the projects that have real use cases, which will change life as we know it, both personally and in business. I live near Whistable with my partner and enjoy kayaking and walking my french bulldog, Wilma, in my spare time.
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Alison Geaney - Alison was recently promoted to COO in the pharmacy that she has worked for, for the last 5 years. She was previously Financial Controller. She has decades of experience in the distribution and pharmaceutical industry. Alison has always worked very hard to achieve her goals in life. One of her first jobs was packing groceries into bags. In her free time, Alison likes to hike, swim, garden and DIY. She also has a keen interest in blockchain and cryptocurrency.
to have the Harmony community participate to ask questions and provide feedbacks.