Grant Proposal: Certy Network

[admin]

Grant ID: 3q4g3p8

Summary:

Certy Network is a Learn-to-Earn and Soulbound NFTs storage for educational certificates Platform built on NEAR Protocol. Previously, we had received a grant from The Graph Foundation to develop subgraph. Then, we finish the milestone grant one month ago. This time, we reapplied to The Graph Grant to create a Learn-to-Earn Campaign focusing on The Graph. We will used our Learn-to-Earn platform, and used the grant from The Graph to reward users. We estimate that 4000-5000 unique users will learn this course. The course is about basic knowledge about the Graph, how to develop subgraph, etc. After the course, each learner will receive a soulbound NFT representing their completion. From this soulbound NFT, users can find job related to The Graph using our career hub, and upload it to our Career Social Network to attract employers. In short, we are educating users about developing subgraph, and connect them to jobs relating to The Graph

I have read and agree to the privacy policy:
true

If available, please enter a link to your project below:
https://www.certy.network/

Are you applying as a team or individual?:
Team

What type of grant are you pursuing?:
Project (one-off)

Please select the category your project best fits into:
Education

Please select who you think will benefit from your project?:
Subgraph Developers, Indexers, Delegators, Curators

How much funding are you looking for? (USD):
5500

Provide a breakdown of your requested funding:

500$ will be used to audit the learning content by our university partner

5000$ will be used as a reward for learning. We target to attract 4000-5000 unique users to participate in the course. After completing the course, each user will receive a Soulbound NFTs representing their participation

Have you applied for (or already received) funding from somewhere else?:
Yes

If yes, please describe where you’ve received funding from and how much you have, or will, receive:
NEAR Foundation: 75000$ Grant: To Develop the Infrastructure for Learn-to-Earn

Filecoin Foundation: 25000$ Grant: To Develop the Infrastructure for Learn-to-Earn

The Graph Foundation (Past Grant): 1500$ Grant: To Develop Subgraph

What’s your vision for how your project will impact The Graph and/or web3?:
Certy Network is a Learn-to-Earn, Career Social Network, and Storage Hub for educational degrees as Soulbound NFTs. Certy can advance The Graph mission statement by bringing an open-source education platform to Filecoin ecosystem. Moreover, as Certy Network has learned to earn features, Certy Network can cooperate with The Graph to attract more users from non-crypto world and crypto users from other chains. Specifically, Certy Network will upload The Graph developer courses to their platform to educate more users about the The Graph ecosystem.

What can you share about any past work that is relevant to this grant?:
Certy is a Decentralized Professional Networking Social Network (Like a Decentralized Linkedin), and a Learn to Earn Platform. We received ~100k$ funding from NEAR Foundation, Filecoin Foundation, and The Graph Foundation Currently, we have finished our MVPs, and will launch testnet and mainnet on December

Can you share any information about current/past web3 experience?:
So I will share about my team experience:

Tuan Nguyen (me): I used to be a developer augmentation at Covalent, Developer at Vingroup, and researcher about blockchain at VinUniversity. I received the Merit Award at the International Blockchain Olympiad.

Edric (CTO): Former Blockchain Engineer at FTX

Daniel (PM): Former Project Manager at Tokenize Exchange

Hsmin (CMO): Former Manager at Foxconn. Country Lead at Covalent and Algodex

Our team have already received grants from NEAR, Filecoin, and The Graph

Why are you interested in contributing to The Graph and/or web3?:
We believe that The Graph is one of the most important project of web3. Also, we received developer grant from the Graph 3 months ago, so we feel that we owed The Graph something, and now we give back by educating thousands of users about the Graph

Primary Community Poll

Do you fundamentally support this grant application, knowing that the final scope and grant amount may differ from the requested proposal?

• Yes
• No

Grant Committee Vote

Do you recommend this grant to the DAO?

• Yes
• No

[AaronNg]

Hi Everyone, this is the sample NFT for Certificate

[GRTDataHub]

Can you answer how this course will bring something different to the courses and documentation out their already?

Just 2 quick examples off the top of my head:

Subgraph Developer Course | The Graph Academy

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J2zm06wZV0EwMEGBD48fGbaFKPPcCdZT/view

I am not saying you won’t bring anything extra but can you give examples of what the extra you will bring, as these courses have been covered and done so to a very high standard already.

[doxe01.eth]

Greetings! Thank you very much for your application! Overall, I would love to hear the answer to the questions above and also add a few of my own:

1. Can you tell me more about the $5000 reward? It’s a bit unclear whether it’s for the best question during the lecture or some kind of raffle, etc.

2. I would like to know about the previous grants, because there are quite large amounts and I would like to know how they were spent, and what benefits they brought to the projects?

3. I would like to understand on what basis you will measure the number of people who have successfully completed the course, will you conduct testing or something like that?

4. Furthermore, I would like to know more about the team, because unfortunately I did not find any information on the website.

Thanks again!

[AaronNg]

Hi all,

Answering the quesion of @GRTDataHub
Actually, the course structure will not be too different from the ones you mentioned. However, the course you mentioned is for people who already want to learn about The Graph to learn it. Our main advantage is that we will attract people who do not know about The Graph previously or already know but simply don’t care. We provide an effective incentive model to give them the motivation to learn about The Graph. We also have the cheating prevention engine (IP check, KYC check if needed, different questions of each person, etc) to prevent them from abusing the incentive mechanism. Also, we also have a Career Hub with AI Engine based on the Edu NFTs they possess, after the course, users will receive recommendations about the jobs that fit them.

Answering the questions of @doxe01.eth

1. So we ask for 5500$. 500$ will be used by the University Partner / Instructor Partner that NEAR Foundation refers us to review the Learning content and prepare the question sets.

5000$ here will be directly deposited into the reward pool. After the course is ended (we will set a time threshold for this. Maybe 1 month), eligible users will be able to claim the reward. Eligible users are the users who complete all the lessons and pass all the quizzes and do not raise any red flags (same IPs for multiple Wallets, suspicious behaviors, etc. They need to go through KYC to receive rewards). We will sort their ranking from highest to lowest (in case there are more participants than our expectation). We also have the settings to choose which group of users will receive the reward, for example, top 5000 (in term of score), top 2500, top 1000, or random.

2. About the past grants (over 100k$ from NEAR, Filecoin, and The Graph), they were spent to develop the decentralized infrastructure for Learn-to-Earn, NFTs, and Career Platform. 100% of them were spent on the development process.

3. Yes, there will be some tests and a final exam to test whether they have gained enough knowledge to complete the course. We also have the cheating prevention engine (IP check, KYC check if needed, different questions of each person, etc) to prevent them from abusing the incentive mechanism.

4. This is the full profile of our Co-Founder:

Tuan - CEO (Founder): Developer at Vingroup, Developer Augmentation at Covalent, Research Assistant about Blockchain at VinUniversity about blockchain-based federated learning. Receive Merit Award at the International Blockchain Olympiad.

Ha Sy Minh (Hsmin - his Telegram nickname) - CMO (Co-founder): Project Manager at Foxconn. Country Manager at Covalent, Country Manager at Algodex, Ambassador at Subquery.

Edric Ngo - CTO (Co-founder): Former Blockchain Engineer at FTX Japan (Quoine). Software Engineer at Vinagame, Co-founder and Lead Developer at Digital Monster and Hero Universe (Binance Smart Chain) with 5m$ Market Cap and 2000 active users, top 15 BSC MVB. Blockchain Developer at Wrejects and Battlefly.

Daniel Nguyen - Project Manager (Co-founder): Software Engineer at Viettel, Application Developer at Storytree Inc, Application Developer at Tokenize Xchange (Digital Currency Trading Platform).

We also have more developers/designers. In case you need to verify our profiles, working experiences, awards, and grants, I can provide all the documents through private message.

[doxe01.eth]

Thank you for your reply! I would be very grateful if you could provide this information.

@AaronNg

verify our profiles, working experiences, awards, and grants, I can provide all the documents through private message

Also about your platforms, specifically careers, alas I clicked on the link to your products and was unable to go any further. Do you still have it in development? Here is a screenshot.

[GRTDataHub]

Thanks for the reply! How many people have currently taken these courses that you have already made? I can see one is blank and the other is 2. Do you have anymore insight? How will you attract these newcomers into Web3 to your app other than an incentive. Which may be $5000 but if that is 5000 people being incentivised to take the course then maybe the course is best to be free and the funds being used for advertisement and promotions, and the course simply being free. You don’t have to worry about multiple people claiming etc. a lot less work. I am using your current app on my mobile and I find it very hard to move around the app, the text doesn’t appear until I have almost scrolled past it and the menus stay open when manoeuvring to different pages within the app. The UI / UX for mobile users (which most of Web3 newbies are) needs vastly improving. This is just my opinion though. But could you explain my attachments and if you have had anymore than the 2 people take your other courses so far?

[Mr.1776]

Thanks for your application! I know Coinbase’s earn-to-learn for The Graph brought a lot of folks into the ecoystem (including myself). So I think the learning model has value. A few follow up questions from me before voting though:

• Would participants who complete the course be receiving GRT? Or a stablecoin?
• Could you ensure that the job openings that exist for The Graph’s Core Devs would be recommended and listed on the job board after folks complete the course?

Thanks! Looking forward to your responses.

[jiimxjim.eth]

Hello @AaronNg !
Thanks for your application.

1. As your previous reply said, they will receive the NFT and the job recommendation when they complete the course.Would the Career Hub get the development skill and past career information from the user?

2. According to the roadmap, CeLearning will be released these months. Do you already make MVP of it?

3. Do you plan to collaborate with the other learning platform or crypto portal?

Thank you.

[doxe01.eth]

Unfortunately, this grant proposal did not generate the level of support in the community to move it to the next phase of the grant application process.

Thank you for submitting this proposal and you are encouraged to stay engaged in the Graph community. You are also welcome to submit new grant applications in the future with proposals that may generate stronger community support.