[Bankless Academy] Season 8 Project Updates

Grants/Funding Season 8 Proposals
1

Title: [Bankless Academy] Season 8 Project Updates
Project Champion: Tetranome :black_flag:#1965
Squad: DidierKrux.eth :black_flag:#1559, OrnellaWeb3 :black_flag:#1111, Tetranome :black_flag:#1965
Purpose: Public Good
Affiliation: None
Authors; Editors: OrnellaWeb3 :black_flag:#1111; Tetranome :black_flag:#1965, DidierKrux.eth :black_flag:#1559
Date created: April 5th, 2023
Date posted: April 12th, 2023
Funds requested: 0
Project wallet(s): 0xf80Cd14ec747b2AdF7B1A9911b38c65a885dAeeA
Own subDAO/Discord server: None

PROJECT TEASER

Bankless Academy is a free-to-access, open-source education platform hosting a range of lessons that help Web3 users “go Bankless.” Our BanklessDAO-native team is on a mission to provide quality web3 education as a public good.

MID-SEASON 7 SUMMARY

Our Season 7 motto has been all about our defining and following our “focus pillars”. By doing this, we’ve been able to better manage our priorities and allocate resources more effectively to achieve our goals. This process has helped us: streamline our operations, improve our impact, and achieve greater success in each respective field. For 2023, we’ve identified three main focus pillars: Content Creation, Community Growth, and Revenue Diversification.

Our recent launch of the Layer 2 lesson, in partnership with Optimism, marks a significant achievement in our content creation efforts, highlighting the strong interest in this topic within the Web3 community. To ensure sustainable growth, we have formed partnerships with both existing and new communities to expand our reach and impact. These efforts have been strengthened by the support and recognition Academy has received from relevant and respected builders in the space, which has energized our team to continue teaching and building.

As a public good, we recognize that sustainability requires a reliable and diverse funding stream, including grants, donations, and revenue generated from content such as digital collectibles. These three main focus pillars have been the key to our coordination efforts during Season 7.

MID-SEASON 7 RETROSPECTIVE

Content & Community

Layer 2 Lesson Launch
23K Lesson Completions
9,4K Academy Badges Minted
Recognition by Gitcoin Passport as a Case Study
Launched Lens Community
Lens Handles Anniversary Gift
3,8K Followers on Twitter
1st Writer’s Cohort
Community Collab with Bankless Africa
Upgraded BanklessDAO Academy: New Project Management Guild Lesson

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Product Updates

Mobile App Release
Wallet Connect Migration + SIWE Integration
No Network Switching

Mobile App Release featured on [BanklessHQ newsletter] (🏴 A War on Stablecoins | Bankless)

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Grants, Partnerships & Collectible Content

Retroactive Public Goods Funding Optimism Grantee
Top Panvala Stamp-Redeeming Community through Giveth
Unstoppable Domains Grant
100 NFT Sales on Optimism

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FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

There are no financial implications for Season 8 of the Bankless Academy project as it will not seek funds from BanklessDAO. This is because the project has been granted Retroactive Public Goods Funding by the Optimism Foundation. This is sufficient to cover this season’s upcoming costs.

Compensation Breakdown

Salaried Roles
Lead Developer @ 30h/week
Lead Designer + Biz Dev @ 30h/week
Community Manager + Marketing @ 20h/week

Total Role Funding (equivalent in BANK)
80 hours/week x 16 weeks x 1000 BANK/hour = 1,280,000 BANK

Tools & Fixed Costs
Web hosting (Vercel), database (Digital Ocean), Zoom, Tally, Descript, Grammarly, Typefully, Mixpanel (stats), Sendgrid (e-mails).

120,000 BANK

BanklessDAO Native Team Building - Bountied Tasks
Illustration 200,000 BANK
Content Editing 70,000 BANK

Total Estimation for Season 8*
1,670,000 BANK

*If funding was requested.

Over the past five seasons, the Bankless Academy project has requested an average of ~1.4M BANK. However, for this season, the compensation breakdown will remain the same, but the ask to BanklessDAO will be lowered to zero. This is an important step and opportunity in our pursuit of being a self-funded and community-driven public good.

It is worth noting that this season’s projected spending will be covered by the grants received by the project. While grants are an important source of recognition and revenue, they are not part of our permanent revenue model as they are one-time in nature. Our primary commitment this year is to continue pursuing self-autonomy through Lesson Sponsorships, Lesson & Article Collectibles, and Whitelabel Partnerships.

SEASONAL KPIs

Factor KPI & Success Metric
Lesson Creation #≥1
The Explorer Handbook Article #≥2
Lesson Completions #≥500/month

COMMITMENTS

Besides its educational purpose, Bankless Academy provides utility to BanklessDAO by facilitating its infrastructure free of cost. This is done via BanklessDAO Academy which is used by Guilds and Departments for onboarding and member roadmaps. At present, the platform holds the BanklessDAO Constitution Lesson and a special curriculum for the Project Management Guild. The price equivalent of such a platform is $40,000. The investment the DAO has made in our platform has allowed free sharing and use of this infrastructure to the benefit of the DAO community, with continued basic maintenance and deployment of lesson content provided by Bankless Academy.

In addition, revenue generated through NFT sales will be used to give back value to the DAO. 5% of the current will be sent back to banklessvault.eth per Lesson Collectible -our upcoming collectible content- with an estimated value of 0.25 ETH per lesson. This is a summary of our latest sales:

How to Fund a Wallet on Layer 2 Article Sales Summary

100 sales at 0.01 = 1 ETH
1 ETH x 5% = 0.05 ETH back to bDAO on Optimism Network

BanklessDAO Constitution Sales Summary

Down the Rabbit Hole 8 Sales

The Bankless Code 5 Sales

Trustless State 7 Sales

Genesis 3 Sales

$BANK 6 Sales

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TOTAL Sales: 29

TOTAL Income: 90 MATIC x 29 x 0.875 = 2283.75 MATIC (1141.875 MATIC for BanklessDAO & same for Bankless Academy)

BRANDING

Bankless Academy is a BanklessDAO native project. We have incorporated the Bankless brand with the aim to be the educational extension of the Bankless movement, and thus we continue to extend the mission, vision, and values of a Bankless lifestyle. The topic will be available to our audience with more detail within the upcoming ‘Going Bankless’ lesson.

FURTHER PROJECT CHANNELS

Bankless Academy Website
Bankless Academy Notion Page
Bankless Academy Twitter Profile
Bankless Academy Lens Community
BanklessDAO Academy

Do you support Bankless Academy’s take-off?
  • LFG!
  • Let me get my helmet, brb.

0 voters

1 Like
2

You really buried the lede on this one. :joy: Lowering the seasonal ask from 1.4M BANK down to ZERO and switching over to external funding sources is a massive accomplishment :clap: Nice work Bankless Academy! LFG!

4 Likes
3

Hi @Ornella. Thanks for putting this up. I would love to see an option for undecided here. I have some questions, but I would like my vote to count until they are answered.
I will ask a couple of them now, and we can go from there.

  1. If Bankless Academy plans to distribute BANK in Season 8, it seems like there should be a proposal along with that, what do you think?

  2. Can you help me understand your roles, bounties and who is on your team a bit more please.

  3. The lesson that launched this season was sponsored by OP. What content was the BANK that has been budgeted for content and editing used for?

  4. I am still not understanding the divide in lessons, and why DAO lessons can only be used within the DAO, and why they wouldn’t be marketed (even just tweeted) as the other content is. I am not seeing a commitment to the DAO. Maybe you can help me understand better.

4

Thank you so much for the support! We’re working hard to achieve this, this is a great opportunity and a great responsibility at the same time. Off we go! :woman_astronaut: :rocket:

1 Like
5

gm @Sprinklesforwinners and thank you for your questions!

Just tried to add it but unfortunately Discourse doesn’t allow it. I’ll consider it next time! In this case, the poll is more of a symbolic aspect (as in, let’s fly together!) :rocket:

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As for your questions, please find your answers here:

  1. Good point, things are, we haven’t yet decided if we will distribute BANK during Season 8. We will prioritize using the incoming funds to pay for the items mentioned in the compensation breakdown.
  2. A proposal is a plan or suggestion put forward for consideration or discussion. In this case, I don’t believe a new proposal is needed since this proposal seeks to break down just that. In the Compensation Breakdown, you can see the details of how funds would be distributed. This has applied to past seasons, and to future ones as of now.

Sure thing! This is the core team:
Lead Developer: DidierKrux.eth :black_flag:#1559
Project Champion, Lead Designer + Biz Dev @ 30h/week Tetranome :black_flag:#1965
Community Manager + Marketing @ 20h/week (that’s me!) OrnellaWeb3 :black_flag:#1111

Our extended team consists of all members who participate through bountied work on different levels of the project. This can be Illustrations with @Cisco_jr , Content Editing with @Trewkat , Content Creation @hirokennelly , User Journeys with Benji, and more. This is a very dynamic process which covers different project needs at specific times.

During this early stage of the project, it’s important to mention that we don’t necessarily destinate the funds specifically for each of the items mentioned in a prior proposal. The different revenue streams serve the project as a whole and are designated as needs and community requests arise to keep going. We are currently improving in this matter by focusing on the three focus pillars mentioned above. Taking this into consideration and if we were to designate a specific outcome, the BANK has served the purpose of helping us create The Explorer’s Handbook, the initial structure for the Layer 2 Blockchains Lesson, and also the foundations of the upcoming (wait for it!) Going Bankless Lesson. Hope this helps!

  1. Can you expand more on what you mean by ‘the divide on the lessons’ and what are your specific concerns?

  2. For DAO Lessons, I believe you are referring to BanklessDAO Academy. As mentioned above, BanklessDAO Academy is the infrastructure created for BanklessDAO. Regarding marketing, quite the contrary! Of course, they can be marketed, they should be. Every Department or Guild that decides to use the platform for their team is welcome to do so. Our only request would be to always be mindful of giving credits to the Bankless Academy infrastructure. This way we can share with the world that we have built together a platform that we are all proud of :muscle:

Hope this helps understand more about BanklessDAO Academy! Just a heads up, we’ve also scheduled a BanklessDAO Academy presentation session for the Community Call on April 21st. It will be a shorter version of the induction call that you received for the creation of Project Management lessons, but very important regardless. At that moment, we realized that we need to educate our community as a whole on how to use the platform so that it can achieve its real potential. Its success only depends on all of us :rocket:

1 Like
6

Thanks for getting back to me @Ornella

910,000 BANK are effectively allocated to project coordination in S7 conducted by the Community manager and project champion. Can you elaborate a little more on the exact activities that require 20 hrs / week from both you and @Tetranome?

In previous budgets there were specific amounts of BANK allocated for content and Editing.
Could we see where the previous seasons and this season’s budget used the way that it was approved for?

I love the idea of the Bankless Explorers Guide, I am just wondering why “BanklessDAO infrastructure” is separate from this, as the DAOs Governance is included in the “Bankless” portion.
The PM Guild is also planning to use Bankless Academy lessons/courses for their credentialing.
Aren’t we just one Bankless Community?
Thanks!

7

Just 1 more question. I am sorry, I have so many.
The zkSync wallet that is attached to the Bankless Academy Gitcoin Account, Explore zkSync L2 Blockchain | zkSync Block Explorer
There was 1.1 ETH transferred into it. Where did that transaction originate from?

8

For sure, the achievements mentioned in the MID-SEASON 7 RETROSPECTIVE section of this Season 8 Update are an example of the activities of the past 2 months:

Sure thing, for Academy Spendings you can refer to our accounting documentation available here (document only accessible to BanklessDAO Accounting). A public version of the document can be found here.

Of course we are one Bankless community! Part of the beauty of our community is actually having a variety of products, services, content, all serving the Bankless mission. This can happen through many ways, in many formats. As you’ve seen, we have many different media, app, content outlets in BanklessDAO and the diversity of each these is what makes it so amazing :fire:

By providing the technical infrastructure for BanklessDAO Academy, we hope that BanklessDAO members have a place to learn ALL THINGS BanklessDAO, this can involve education on BanklessDAO tooling, BanklessDAO Constitution, BanklessDAO Guilds/Departments, etc.

Bankless Academy has a broader scope, because it speaks to any human that would like to start their web3/crypto journey (specially to those that are not yet involved in any DAOs). This is also very diverse and friends arrive to the web3 space in the most incredible and unique ways. We’re already working deeply on learning more about the different user journeys, and what each route means to each Explorer.

It has a broader scope than bDAO from a reach point of view. Some people arrive to the DAO first, then find out about Academy, others learn first about BanklessHQ content, and others learn first about Bankless Academy.

Our curriculum considers a DAO skill tree, and the natural step there is that once it’s available, we could also be able to direct people to BanklessDAO. Bankless Academy’s community has members from all over the world, and we’ve learned on the way that many of them haven’t even heard about the term ‘Bankless’ before.

Our upcoming ‘Going Bankless’ lesson seeks to help connect everything, so that each Explorer, no matter how early or deep they are in their learning curve, can feel confident that they have all the tools, support, and guidance, to keep pursuing a Bankless lifestyle :black_flag: :rocket: :woman_astronaut:

9

I’m unable to answer that question since that is not our our zkSync wallet. Our zkSync wallet on our Gitcoin Page is Explore zkSync L2 Blockchain | zkSync Block Explorer, ending in daeea.

You can check out our Bankless Academy Gitcoin page here: Bankless Academy | Grants | Gitcoin.

10

UPDATE: Estimated calculations have been updated to 16 weeks according to bDIP-07: Set Season Length at 16 Weeks with Designated Downtime.

1 Like
11

Sorry, @Ornella maybe I was asking the wrong questions:

  1. [quote=“Ornella, post:8, topic:5412”]
    For sure, the achievements mentioned in the MID-SEASON 7 RETROSPECTIVE section of this Season 8 Update are an example of the activities of the past 2 months:
    [/quote]

  2. Could you tell me the specific duties of you and Metronome please. Also a list of bounties to show that BANK has been distributed at the rate that the GC funds at - 1,000 BANK/hr

  3. All of the activities that you have shown sure require a lot of marketing and social media. What campaign strategy are you using?

3.Bankless Academy has been funded by Bankless DAO since day 1in BANK. I am struggling to see what long term value the project has provided back to the DAO. Especially, when I look at what you have provided to HumanDAO for the grant that was received from them. Can you help me understand that?

  1. Bankless Academy has based their entire brand off of the Bankless name. If you are not going to be requesting BANK from the DAO, will you no longer be using the Bankless name?

  2. If you are going to continue to use the Bankless name, what are you going to be providing the DAO with in order to do so?

CC @Tetranome @didierkrux

1 Like
12

Hi @Sprinklesforwinners, this forum post is a celebration of our achievements up until this point. We are not asking for DAO funding for S8 operations due to our OP grant.

We plan to continue operations as Bankless Academy, with continued 5% kickback to the DAO from all collectible content/item sales, and providing the bDAO Academy infrastructure + guidance for the bDAO community.

It looks like you underestimate Tetranome’s involvement in the project, which is actually quite deep: project champion, leading design, working with me on UI/UX, coordination, business development (couldn’t have got the OP grant without him), involved a lot in content production. It doesn’t feel like you genuinely want the best for this conversation, team or project.

Ornella tried to answer your questions but it seems to not be going anywhere. These questions seem irrelevant to this post, so I suggest we plan a meeting with the full team to address all them (DM us if interested).

We are not planning to respond further unless someone else has concerns.

3 Likes
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@didierkrux - you don’t have to respond.
I may not have initially been asking the right questions.
They did lead me to the right questions. Which remain, and are important for the Grants Committee - If nothing else, to learn from.
I understand that a small team with the right skills is essential. I don’t underestimate anyone, ever.
It also seems as though you are misunderstanding me.
I want what is best for BanklessDAO and the Bankless name. I would hope that you do also.

14

Awesome. This type of proposal are full of new idead, and a rush of blood to the head. Looking for more projects that align learning with gamification

3 Likes
15

Thank you frens :pray: , great accomplishments. Academy is an example to all of us!

3 Likes
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Thank you Ray for your support :pray:

1 Like