We would like to request for any and all donations towards contributing to further developing our CollegeDAO Hub platform. College DAO is currently the largest student blockchain network at 100+ colleges worldwide.

We are building out the College DAO Hub, a collaborative platform that solves the problem of fragmented coordination faced by student blockchain clubs and protocols, such that we can foster more collaboration and growth in the student blockchain ecosystem that has been undervalued and underserved. Thus far, we have spent $20,000 in development costs out of our treasury and personal funds, and would like to continue the development of our platform.

About College DAO

College DAO currently is the largest and fastest-growing network in the university blockchain space at 100+ colleges worldwide, funding and supporting the student blockchain ecosystem in Web3 by providing ecosystem services and tooling.

College DAO exists to bridge the gap between students, higher education and blockchain protocols through our work that empower students to build in Web3, expanding the talent pool in Web3 for the next decade.

Over our first year of operations, we have worked with the best blockchain protocols such as Gitcoin, Chainlink, Avalanche, Cosmos, Algorand, Injective & Cyberconnect for initiatives ranging from event activations to ambassador program partnerships, alongside building strong relationships with various ecosystem communities such as UETH, Zuzalu and BEN that cater towards the student blockchain population.

Our notable impact in 2023:

• Led the first and largest university Twitter Tour with 28 clubs and a total reach of 14.6k across 15 Twitter/X spaces.
• Co-organized first university-based Schelling Point .edu in Asia with OKX and Gitcoin.
• Hosted a joint global hackerhouse at Devconnect Istanbul with top university students.
• Represented students in Coinbase's "Stand With Crypto" with lawmakers in Congress.

Our socials:

• Website - https://collegedao.io
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/collegedao_hub
• Introduction to the Hub - https://collegedao.substack.com/p/the-college-dao-hub-rallying-the
• Newsletter - College DAO Substack
• Medium - College DAO Medium

Problem

College DAO exists because we believe students are both the most valuable but also the most undervalued demographic. There's a lot of energy and top-tier talent, and they are the fastest early adopters of new technologies, and this grant helps to supercharge that adoption.

CollegeDAO has been entirely bootstrapped and community-led since we started in August of 2022. Initially, we were heavily focused on facilitating events between student clubs and our ecosystem partners through workshops, panel discussions and conferences in the student blockchain ecosystem. However, we have realized that while events are important for the student demographic, there are more effective ways to serve the students that individual blockchain clubs are unable to provide.

From our experience interacting with students, protocols, and universities, each of them face their own set of challenges that fragments coordination and introduces operational complexities:

• Student blockchain clubs have high operational overhead, often running into coordination and resource allocation issues due to a lack of funding, visibility and opportunities. Without a strong momentum steered by a dedicated club management team, it is hard for student clubs to maintain student engagement consistently over multiple terms, and risk losing valuable partnerships established with reputable blockchain companies.

• Protocols are always open to engaging young fresh talent who are willing to go the extra mile, however maintaining these relationships separately with each club is time-consuming and complicated, alongside difficulties in coordinating larger-scale inter-collegiate initiatives.

Throughout our one and a half years of talking to our student blockchain clubs and industry protocol professionals in our network, we found that these fragmented coordination issues have resulted in a poor environment for clubs and protocols to work together effectively.

We are driven by the belief that there is immense potential in uniting universities, blockchain protocols, and student communities, and believe that getting this right can catalyze the mass adoption of blockchain technology and help develop talent across campuses worldwide.

But coordinating purposeful connections and spurring ecosystem growth is a herculean task. That goes two-fold for the university space with limited systems to properly manage multiple points of contact.

In order to tackle this prevalent issue in the student blockchain ecosystem, we have decided to build CollegeDAO Hub as a platform, by and for students.

Solution

The CollegeDAO Hub is built as a collaborative platform for protocols and students to reach their dream contacts and provides modular partnership requests for joint initiatives.

Explore more on our slide deck at - College DAO Hub Introduction Deck

Our idea started off as a simple partnerships management platform for students to easily create joint initiatives with our industry protocol partners, and have since expanded into a small suite of ecosystem tooling that we intend to build to empower the student blockchain ecosystem to engage more closely with industry protocols to foster stronger relationships.

In order to tackle the existing problems in the student blockchain ecosystem, our current iteration of our MVP will feature the following:

Profile management for students, clubs and industry protocols

We will be building out a dashboard for student blockchain clubs to showcase their contributions, achievements and involvements throughout their years operating as a club, such that industry protocols can reach out to establish partnership requests and vice versa.

Each club profile is managed collectively by the club's team members, with all members contributing to its growth and reputation. By working together, students can build a stronger shared identity in the industry.

A common issue with student clubs are leadership handovers which create gaps in information regarding a club's involvement during the previous terms. Important history such as previous partnerships, events held, initiatives, or projects can be easily lost.

With a dedicated public profile to ensure that not only student leaders understand their strong club legacy, but also protocols being able to clearly identify a club's history of involvements in the blockchain space, this creates a way to incentivize discovery and engagement of blockchain clubs with industry protocols.

Protocols and companies can use the club as an additional reference point to see how individual students work together collaboratively with their peers to accomplish things like research, events, development and more.

Job board for student users

We will also be building out a jobs & internships board tailored specifically for our student users on our platform, such that protocols are able to identify a talent pool of students proactively contributing to the blockchain space. This would be supported by partnerships with venture capital firms, their portfolio companies, and other major employers.

Students we have interacted with have always expressed a heavy interest in being able to apply for a wider pool of internship and job opportunities previously not presented to them, however have always found difficulty in finding relevant listings due to generic blockchain job boards often including jobs not relevant to students, or lacking in internship positions.

Given that CollegeDAO has cultivated our network of clubs and have partnerships with venture capital firms, their portfolio companies, and other major employers who are interested in identifying young talented students early, we intend to grow the talent pool through our student-centric job board.

Ecosystem mapping for the student blockchain ecosystem

As part of our Hub, we will be featuring an interactive ecosystem map as a visual tool for student clubs and protocols to work together in real-time and easily identify synergies with companies through their documentations and active partnership requests.

Our ecosystem map serves a purpose to act as a discovery tool to show how the ecosystem is connected through visual maps of which clubs and blockchain protocols are working together. This would also help blockchain protocols surface key opportunities that will shape outreach strategies for protocols, and also reduce the operational overhead of reaching out to clubs individually and manually. We make it easier to understand and engage with this complex space, which is critical for breaking down barriers and accelerating the growth and legitimacy of the blockchain industry in higher education.

Collaborations in the blockchain industry is an essential part of our culture, and being able to facilitate these collaborations is an essential onboarding process for both the student clubs and protocols.

With our ecosystem map, students can access a wealth of information, including documentation, mission statements, key team members, wallet setup instructions, ecosystem insights, blogs, funding opportunities, grants, and more. 

Our Team

Our College DAO core team consists of the best student talent in the blockchain space, with a diverse backgrounds as club presidents, ecosystem operators, venture analysts and product developers. We collectively believe that the most effective way to effectively engage the student blockchain ecosystem is to empower students to get directly involved, and building the connectivity infrastructure to help them along in their journeys.

College DAO currently currently consists of 4 core team leads working on College DAO Hub, alongside a vibrant community of 16 contributors consisting of various club presidents from Blockchain at Berkeley, Boston University, New York University, University of Illinois. Finally, we have a larger community of independent contributors and students across our global university network.

Our core team leads currently working on College DAO Hub are:

• Joshua: 6 years of experience in product, engineering, marketing and operations roles at major technology companies and founding teams at start-ups.

• Karthik: Excels in organic growth marketing and has managed our ecosystem initiatives with major blockchains and protocols.

• Whales: 2 years of experience in community, operations and product leading SMU Blockchain as its president and winning multiple hackathons.

• Anshul: Worked in engineering teams at top tech companies such as Oracle, specializing in cloud and app development.

Our Ask / Our development so far with CollegeDAO Hub

We would like to request any and all donations towards continuing the development of our College DAO hub.

Thus far, we have bootstrapped an estimate of $20,000 from our own funds in order to continue the development of this platform as a public good for the student blockchain ecosystem, and would greatly appreciate any amount that we would receive.

A large part of these funds were used towards development costs as our software development is currently split between being outsourced to an external development team and building out the new feature functionalities with our core team members, alongside expanding our network of protocols we partner with and the student clubs we support. We have confirmed the interest of at least 6 clubs as part of our closed release in order to continue a strong feedback iteration with our student clubs, and would like to continue working on this platform.

We are currently on the cusp of rolling out our first feature demo for our student clubs, however we have run low on our treasury towards funding the development of the College DAO hub.

For complete transparency, we have provided a detailed breakdown of our development hours that will go towards the development of the College DAO Hub:

Milestones and Components:

• Ecosystem map and club/company profiles: 2 FTE, 36h
• User account structure, onboarding and management: 3 FTE, 48h
• Partnerships portal for proposal creation and distribution: 3 FTE, 56h
• Partnerships management and status updates: 3 FTE, 56h
• Job module for internships/fresh hires and application management: 3 FTE, 48 h
• Testing and deployment: 1 FTE, 20h

Total Estimated Hours: 264 hours

Our core team at College DAO will not take any amount of donations in developing the product, and all of our funding in this grants round will go towards funding our external development team and product development iterations of the College DAO Hub.

As the largest and fastest-growing student network of students involved in blockchain, we strongly believe that we hold a responsibility to give back to the students that have contributed to our network, and be able to provide opportunities for the student blockchain ecosystem that has long been undervalued and underserved. The College DAO Hub platform is a step in the right direction to allow more seamless coordination between students, clubs, protocols and universities.

We exist to bridge the gap between students, higher education and blockchain protocols through our work that empower students to build in Web3, and we intend to work towards turning this reality into fruition.