Metana - The Blockchain Bootcamp

Funding Proposals Grants
1

Name of Project

Metana - The Blockchain Bootcamp
Metana trains existing engineers to be blockchain developers in a 4-month boot-camp program.
https://metana.io

Proposal overview

Every blockchain company knows that the most difficult thing to develop their infrastructure and to move forward is the lack of developers in the market. There’s not a lot of web3 developers in the industry. It’s not because web2 engineers don’t want to become web3 engineers, it’s just because they don’t have a clear pathway to make the jump. This is why our waiting list has grown to more than 400 in just weeks. Everyone wants to learn and get into this world, but the resources to do so are scattered everywhere.

At Metana, we have a solid pathway for any web2 engineer to jump into web3. We offer a 4-month bootcamp program which can be taken by any engineer with 2 years of industry experience. The program can be taken on-demand and consists of 200 hours of content. (We have also been requested by community colleges and student blockchain clubs for a beginner level bootcamp, so that’s on the pipeline.)

We have a 400+ student waiting list to start our bootcamp program. We are working on creating a curriculum and finding a lead-instructor for our first cohort which is a Solidity Bootcamp with Harmony modules embedded within. We also have 37 companies that are wanting hire our talent pool once graduated from the program.

Team

Bihan is the youngest to enter university in South Asia (12) + the youngest graduate (16). He earned his master’s degree in CS at 18, teaches coding to over 115,000 students online, and is a university professor at the University of Moratuwa and Open University of Sri Lanka. He just exited an EdTech startup, is a 2-time founder, and is the CEO & Co-Founder who develops our core modules.

Harsha (AKA Stan) is a medical school dropout, has had 4 successful eCommerce businesses, & a 3-time EdTech founder. He’s a Jack of all trades and master of some. Harsha is the COO & Co-Founder who handles financials & partnerships.

Bootcamp

Consists of recorded lectures + live classes. Take on-demand sessions & complete weekly projects to move forward. + Attend office hours for assistance.

  • Monthly Cohorts (40 students)
  • Commitment: 8-12 h/week
  • 1-year access to the course material
  • Blockchain network accredited NFT certification.

Modules Include:

  1. Intro to Web3 & Blockchains (including Harmony)
  2. Intro to Solidity
  3. Smart Contracts
  4. CryptoCurrencies & NFTs
  5. dApps
  6. Security
  7. Portfolio Building Group Projects
  8. Harmony Hackathon

Upon completion of the Harmony Hackathon, students get an accredited certification from Harmony, & an NFT certification from Metana. We would direct the student to apply for jobs in our partnered companies. If the student get hired by a partner company they get their money back.

Proposal ask

The bootcamp consists of recorded lectures + live classes. Students can take the course any-time they like and complete the weekly projects to move forward. We also provide office hours for students to consult our team if they have any questions/doubt when learning web3 materials.

The Metana team is seeking $50,000 in funding. We would use the funds for the following activities:

  • Payment for the instructor for our first cohort
  • Hiring support team members to provide office hours
  • Product development to make the website user-friendly
  • Create learning resources + articles for developing on Harmony

Metrics for success

Key Metrics:

  • More than 80% of out graduates will be hired by web3 companies within 3 month period of time.
  • Grow the number of students on our monthly rolling cohorts.
  • More than 70% of the students will successfully attend the Harmony hackathon we host towards the end of the cohort where they will be building an application on the Harmony blockchain.

Breakdown:

Milestone # Proposed Completion Date (DD/MM/YY) Description of Milestone Deliverable(s)
1 10/03/2022 Finalise the Curriculum & Teaching Materials. A finalised, modular breakdown of the curriculum & teaching materials.
2 15/03/2022 Start the first bootcamp program Have 40 students
3 25/04/2022 Hire support Staff Have a teaching assistant + student support agent
4 25/04/2022 Dev Bidding Platform Platform up and Running. (Validation hypotheses)
5 05/05/2022 Start the Second bootcamp program Have 45+ students
6 15/07/2022 Completing of the first Cohort & Harmony Hackathon for Harmony certification. 80% or higher student success rate.

Links

Website

Twitter

Discord

1 Like
2

need a budget breakdown

3

Hey lij, Thank you for the reply. Here’s our financials, a summery and a deep dive. Harmony Grant Metana Financials - Google Sheets

To increase the odds of getting the grant we’re requesting 50k and planing on cost cutting on couple aspects.

4

Hi there! :hugs:
You have a really cool project!

But how should harmony be integrated into your bootcamp?

I read the sentence, but did not really understand where and how you ar egoing to use HARMONY inside?

5

Can you justify the costs behind the breakdown (in number of days, and $ rate per day)?

6

Hi Andrew, Great question. We believe harmony addresses core blockchain concerns/problems in a bundled solution. For example, Harmony is is energy-efficient, has cross-chain capabilities, offers lower gas fees and has a huge potential for nonfungible tokens.

We’re in the business of training the upcoming generation of developers, giving them a taste of new innovative technologies such as harmony will keep us few steps ahead of building the new web, we believe. We not only give a taste, after the bootcamp we will host a hackathon together with harmony so these developers get started building on harmony upon graduation, get harmony certified, and even get grants like this from harmony for their projects.

7

Hey Jack, We’ll be starting off with 40 students in our first cohort. It may look like a small number, however given we have monthly rolling cohorts with growing no of students per cohort, it’ll be 100 per month by the end of the year.

We have 2 full time founders putting 160+ hours a week individually for Metana. And 2 more staff. Or primary cost will be for founders to sustain to continue this project. putting, It’s approximately $26/hour.

Our primary other costs will be for staff, this includes paying instructors ($120/hour), supporting staff, and mentors for students.

Other minor costs include for the platform Kajabi, $160/month.

8

Bumping to ping on the forum.

9

How familiar is the team with the Harmony ecosystem? Curious to know whether you’re pulling in existing community members to participate with the TAs and support agents.

I’d suggest to have your team solicit and enlist them here. Developing on blockchain is one thing, but putting them together to be very relevant to the ecosystem is going to get the bootcamp graduates to hit the ground running.

10

looks like there may be multiple similar initiatives happening…. e.g.

@Boris_Polania from the Harmony Core Team is involved with another similar initiative for LATAM

probably there are others too

i don’t the answer: but would it benefit if the different projects coordinate to work together a bit? or we can let each evolve and see what works out?

11

The idea and purpose is novel. Unless you’re familiar with the Harmony ecosystem, plugged in within the community, it will be really difficult to execute, even with the funds at hand.

I’d love to see you run through a couple of cohorts initially, use Harmony as a sample EVM-compatible chain, and see what your results look like, circle back with a new proposal after then?

I’m afraid this is not ready for a Partners grant based on the above. We hope you continue to build on this concept and circle back when it is ready to be discussed further. Thank you for choosing Harmony.

1 Like