OnBoard: Onboarding Platform for the Bankless Natives

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Original discussion:

Authors: @cart_collector, @perchy, @frogmonkee

Date: 13.05.2021

SUMMARY

OnBoard proposes to be the “Duolingo for learning Bankless." OnBoard is a one-stop-shop that will take someone with absolutely zero knowledge of crypto and smart contracts, and turn them into a fully competent user. This is done through a skill tree, exercises, levels, and rewards.

BACKGROUND

Defi is a confusing and scary place to the average person. We need a way to onboard people of all levels into the world of crypto.

While onboarding already exists in crypto (such as informational videos on Coinbase, or Gemini, etc), there is no comprehensive, one-stop place where a person can go from the very basics through funding their retirement with a self-repaying loan on Alchemix.

The easiest way to do this is to have a single point where you begin your bankless journey. This website is this point.

MOTIVATION

Our aim at Bankless is to reach one billion people and bring them into crypto. This is a direct way to achieve that goal. Additionally, the onboarding website can act as a natural and fair onboarding path to the DAO.

SPECIFICATION

This is what we believe is a workable MVP, to be expanded at later stages of development.

There are 2 types of pages that form the backbone of the website:

  • Skill tree / Skill path - the user can see their progress or “skip” things if they feel confident (after they pass a test)
  • Stages / Steps - every user is at a particular stage or step. This is the “exercise window” - the user reads and performs the action. If successful - they are taken to the next step.

On successful completion of a skill or the whole course, the user is awarded Badges / POAPs.

For the MVP we propose only 3 skills:

  • Fundamentals - The user will understand what a cryptocurrency is, and what the popular cryptocurrencies are. The user will understand the differences between proof of work and proof of stake. The user will understand how to create a wallet and how to protect their seed phrase. The user will understand the flattening of the power structures, removing the middle-man, embracing agency, slaying Moloch, etc… We can make them watch videos like this one: Starting with Bankless - YouTube
  • DeFi - The user will understand what Defi is. The user will understand how to use Uniswap. How to take out a loan / generate interest with X defi protocol (do we go with Bankless sponsors here?
  • NFTs - The user will understand what a non-fungible token is. The user will understand how to buy, sell, and store NFTs using sites like OpenSea or Rarible.

The DeFi and NFTs courses are available upon completion of the Fundamentals course. They can choose to do one or both of them. It is to be decided what amount of skills are needed for access to the Bankless DAO.

NEXT STEPS

  1. Gather more feedback from the community (Please add a comment below) about features and complete the final specs.
  2. Find designers, Frontend developers, Backend developers and Solidity developers
  3. Look into educational software that we can use to onboard onto the testnet.

CONCLUSION

This is important because we will have a fair way to onboard people to the DAO. It is also important to educate novice users in order to make the whole world bankless.

POLL

Vote “Yes” if you want to see this proposal worked on by the members of the bankless community or if you want to work on it yourself.

Vote “No” if you think that the materials that already exist are better suited for what the onboarding website is trying to achieve.

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

Author Background

@cart_collector - I just think this is what the world needs. It is so hard to teach people. This website seems like the “missing link” to onboarding.

@perchy - a longtime Bankless and crypto enthusiast, who wants to create a realistic path to bring their parents into the world of defi.

@frogmonkee gave us feedback on the draft for the proposal :slight_smile: Thank you.

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I dig the idea, but want to add clarity on timeline and priority. This ties into a larger conversation about how to go about education. I also don’t know where this will fall in terms of priorities and the ability to delegate tasks to the right people (writers, devs, video editors) for Season 1.

Edit: Changed vote to yes

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I think there is room to kick this off for scope and possibly design first before doubling down on dev & content later.

This is an ambitious project and may take the greater part of a year to pull off correctly.

I’m voting yes to get started with the expectation that real “work” won’t start for another few months.

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I have a ton of saved resources/tutorials/protocols/dapps. hmu on discord with what the topics are we need:)

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5

I think it’s a really great idea.

Do we have a discord channel for this?

I’m also interested to join and help with this both at the proposal and the shipping level. @cart_collector can you link me to the relevant discussion on discord?

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@jcrypto69#3561is my username

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I love this idea and voted yes to get the ball rolling.

I’m happy to be a beta-tester for this educational material. @cart_collector

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I think this idea has a lot of gravity because it really fits perfectly with the mission. It won’t be easy to achieve but I really think it’s a great fit for us. I think I might break the “YES” button if I smashed it any harder.

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Hi @eenagy. I am happy you want to join the project!

There is a discord channel - #onboard.

You can already start discussing the proposal level here :smiley:

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I have voted yes… but is this one to be a separate website from Bankless or it will be a section in the Bankless website?

Also, back in the day I’ve used the following website to learn about forex trading. I think is excellent and we could replicate it.

https://www.babypips.com/learn

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I was thinking this could be onboard.bankless.community, but I am open for a standalone website if there are good arguments for that :slight_smile:

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I just think if you call a website onboard… onboard is a very broad name. Not related to defi or Bankless at all so there is no conexión. You don’t really know what is it about…

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Great idea. Just drafted something up and then realised this discussion was opened up yday.

I don’t know if any of you has done the CFA test or has a Padi divers license? The first module is typically a broad one that covers all aspects and then gets into more details.

I’d imagine this could work very well for this onboarding/University concept. Just because it’s helpful for everyone to have a minimum level of general understanding. Specialisations into DeFi, NFTs can be used as Level 2 courses

And then, I think this idea should be layered into the $BANK tokenomics:

  • Hold $BANK to do the course and retain $BANK to keep the certificate “active”
  • Utilise the platform to organise courses to trade bodies/organisations that pay revenues to the DAO
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Yes, you don’t know out of context. This forum’s name is just “forum” and the address is “forum.bankless.community”. When you get the context it makes sense that this is the forum of the bankless community. The onboard.bankless.community describes itself perfectly - it is the website for onboarding to the DAO and to DeFi.

Nevertheless, I am happy to mark the name of the project WIP and I am open to suggestions :slight_smile:

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I like the university idea :slight_smile: We are definitely thinking in the same direction. What I am imagining for this project is that the exercises will be literal interactions with the blockchain. (E.g. some testnet for the very beginners) However it would be great if we also teach people about abstract concepts like Moloch and legitimacy.

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Do you have any next steps in mind? Organise a call to sync ideas?

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Love the certification idea; POAP/NFT would be great if we can anti-sybil.

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I love the idea and I think something like this is a great place for Bankless to differentiate itself by talking about something nobody wants to: taxes. Taxes are a huge blind spot for new people in the industry and I’ve seen a lot of good people get themselves into real trouble.

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yeah, I hear you about taxes. I think that’s definitely something to consider adding to this product. But it will be challenging to give tax information/advice, especially if people are entering into this from around the world. Perhaps we have some partners/sponsors (like Koinly or Cointracker) who specialize in Crypto tax, and we send people to them?

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I really like the idea.
I would also suggest in the onboarding fund the student with some eth on ethereum testnet and maybe let him use and progress there, like that he has to use real tools like metamask, etherscan etc.

2 Likes