Thanks to the incredible support from Harmony, Dropout DAO was given the opportunity to grant out 10 x $10,000. After 105 applications, 180,000 Twitter impressions, and 9000 Twitter engagements, we’re ready to announce the 10 well-deserving recipients. Below, you will find the applicant’s name, their project name, in addition to their answer to “What problem are you solving & how are you solving it?”
Special thanks to both Li & Rong for making this all possible <3.
Sincerely,
Dropout DAO (David).
Blockhead (blockhead.info) – Darryl Yeo
I’m building the most user-friendly interface in all of web3, including a cross-chain crypto/NFT portfolio, EVM block explorer, and alternative decentralized interfaces for Defi apps and web3 protocols. The funds will go toward development efforts, infrastructure costs, and building more features and integrations.
Agora Labs – Matthew Espinoza
The next generation of creators will have all social tokens to scale their ownership. Currently, social tokens (like NFTs) are based on speculative value, and there is no true utility. We solved this problem by building a web 3 Patreon-like platform that allows creators to make consistent income, and while providing rewards/perks to their top supporters in web 3.
Mirage – David Song + Andrew Hwang
We are building the first decentralized prime brokerage to give traders and institutions better tools to trade crypto derivatives and easily execute complicated strategies. Currently, it is extremely difficult to make full use of decentralized derivatives products since derivatives markets in crypto are highly fragmented on different blockchains. Crypto derivatives are also very rudimentary and limited in which assets can be traded. Our software abstracts away and solves the challenges with fragmentation and gives traders one platform to trade. Our software makes it easy to get exposure to complicated positions and more asset types by composing derivatives and strategies automatically.
ExecBlock – Matt Tengtrakool + Hileamlak Yitayew
Hiring is inefficient and inequitable. ExecBlock is a blockchain-native professional digital identity platform that allows job applicants to construct pre-verified, interoperable resumes. We achieve this by our tokenized social KYC, where we allow validators to stake tokens and approve incoming certifications for mining rewards. This allows us to provide companies with hiring portals that cut overhead for HR management with pre-verified employment, education and other credentials. Especially, we are targeting the pain points of international hiring for small companies by providing them with the bandwidth to make good hires. The support from harmony and dropoutdao would help us greatly to expand our dev team of interns as well as begin our POC testing with express partners. You can learn more about us at: DocSend
Pegasus – Andy Wang + Girish Kumar
We are building a perpetual protocol to allow traders to speculate on Defi yields & interest rates. (e.g. Aave USDC Borrow APY). Each market consists of a synthetic token that tracks the value of the underlying interest rate it represents. For the Aave USDC market, if the current borrow APY is 3.6%, the value for each synthetic token to track is 0.036 USDC. This tracking is done via funding rates as in other perp markets (e.g. dydx). Our motivations for this project are that we believe perpetual contracts are the superior form of derivative swaps and thus products that leverage them will find the greatest product-market fit in Defi derivatives. Introducing a perpetual on top of interest rates is a novel take on the Interest Rate Swap market, which has been growing rapidly in recent months. Finally, we are excited about potential use cases beyond a new form of speculation in the form of APY volatility hedging.
Elysian – Michelle Fang
We’re building Elysian House, a living space and collective that brings together the top Gen Z builders creating change in the world of web3 x community. No matter what city our physical location is in, Elysian House serves as a center point of gravity for the web3 IRL community. Our house residents are working on projects ranging from DAOs, DAO infrastructure, NFT marketplaces, to crypto payments, as well as founders/operators/investors that are just beginning their web3 journey. We set up our first space to live, grow, work, build, and learn in SF in Feb 2022 with the goal of immersing the greater web3 ecosystem and were blown away by the demand for IRL, serendipitous connections. We are excited about continuing to collaborate with startups in the community as a platform to elevate and amplify, as well as expand to our second location in NYC this summer. We’re building our community as a DAO on top of Harmony to further expand our values of transparency and community involvement. We’re experimenting with NFT or tokenized memberships to our community and experiences, with a north star of bringing serendipitous connections to any city we land in.
DeSci World – Aditya Lalchandani
The last 4 paragraphs of the “Where are you in life” question describe DeSci World. In short: we are bringing science on the blockchain and introducing decentralization, DAOs, and P2P funding platforms to scientists. Our first project is a P2P funding platform researchers can use to fund their projects instead of relying on government grants. Its almost ready to launch and we have bootstrapped the project over the past few months. We desperately need cash flow to onboard scientists, market our project, and get the ball rolling. This grant would help us tremendously, it’s hard to put in words.
DuelDAO – Daphne Charles + NEON
We are building an on-chain DAO vs DAO gaming platform. We built an MVP during ETHDenver, check out the demo here: https://twitter.com/daphachar/status/1495840728798347265
LIVE NFT minted concert at NFT LA – Rime Salmi
Too many people in my audience are still scared of web3. by having a live experience (concert, mingling, connecting) with real humans ir,l they can be introduced to the minting process and have a positive emotional connection to it. imagine being at a small intimate concert and coming out of there with an NFT of your favourite song that was played that day exclusively for you. next level POAP 
what an incredible introduction to web3 
I wanna do the first live minting of a live performance and I wanna do it on Harmony, via MAD NFT most probably.
Decent.xyz – William Kantaros
Currently, labels sign artists to extractive record deals where they give away 80-90% of their royalties. Decent.xyz allows for artists to get capital upfront without giving away their rights. By listing a percentage of their royalties (20%) to their fans, they can engage their fans and fund their next release. With money from DropoutDao x Harmony, I would use half of it to explore a defi layer to decent.xyz, which would be intended to utilize bonding curves to provide instant liquidity to the NFT holders. The other half would go to on-boarding artists.