Grant ID: 86860eh75
Summary:
CollegeDAO is collaborating with EduDAO to host a 9 day hacker house for Devconnect Istanbul from 12th to 20th November, bringing bringing together 20 of the smartest young talent from the best universities to unearth young hidden gems from across the globe.
Our hacker house taps into CollegeDAO & EduDAO’s global network of ivy league blockchain clubs alongside our 80+ student clubs under the CollegeDAO blockchain club collective, and we intend to bring the best of the best to hack for ETHGlobal Istanbul and participate in The Graph prize pool.
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Describe what your project does or is aiming to do in 50 characters or less:
The best student hacker house for Devconnect 2023
If available, please enter a link to your project below:
How far along are you?:
We have secured commitments of USD$7,000 towards our hacker house in terms of sponsorship funding which brings us halfway through our fundraising goal of USD$15,000 for the hacker house.
We have gotten student hackers flying from all across the world coming from Oxford, Shanghai, Canada, Singapore & Malaysia alongside star solo hackers and young Zuzaluians (Zuzalu community members) as part of our hacker house at the moment.
We have secured close collaborations with the local student blockchain society at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Blockchain Acceleration Foundation (BAF), the Zuzalu community for ZuSocial, and the Mu Chiang Mai community. The intention is to align and maintain close relationships with student ecosystem participants ITU & BAF alongside digital nomad communities such as Zuzalu and The Mu focused on public goods and coordination tooling.
Our hacker house location is within walking distance from the hacker house that ITU & BAF is holding, as well as the hacker house that Zuzalu is holding as well. This is to ensure that we are able to cross-collaborate through mutual sharing of events, workshops and co-working opportunities.
Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you’re making?:
This idea started out with Shina who is our East Asia Lead under CollegeDAO after she had hosted a hacker house for Ethereum Singapore hackathon where all 6 projects under our hacker house had won 10 prizes in total.
At CollegeDAO, our entire purpose is to support the student blockchain ecosystem, and hosting hacker houses at conferences not only allows us and The Graph to identify strong student talent hacking for hackathons under our collective, but also provides students the opportunity to have the ‘web3 conference’ experience which has been to say the least a life-changing experience for every student that has joined a conference hackathon for their first time.
As for me (Whales), I am the core team lead at CollegeDAO and a club president for the Singapore Management University (SMU) Blockchain Club (SMUB) for 2 years, having organized over 30 events; Schelling Point .edu in Singapore which marked the first time Schelling Point has been done in not only Asia but at a university campus; and has led the club to growing its telegram community by double, as well as an active advocate for cross-university collaborations. This eventually led to my involvement in CollegeDAO to do what I am passionate about only in Singapore, but worldwide.
As for Shina, she was the organizer of the Ethereum Singapore hacker house alongside being part of Tsinghua’s blockchain club THUBA under ecosystem and partnerships.
What’s new about what you’re making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn’t exist yet (or they don’t know about it)?:
CollegeDAO is currently the only for student by student community that not only has the operational capacity but also the flexibility to lead hacker house initiatives focused not only on result but impact within the student blockchain ecosystem, and our collaboration with eduDAO with a strong history of hosting hacker houses in the past allows us to be operationally effective in executing this hacker house.
Other hacker houses are typically enforcing participation conditions that specifically benefit their protocol, or are looking for star talent that have experience in the blockchain space that students typically are unable to compete against. Vetting process, given that these hacker houses are public, are also incredibly tedious to go through, and CollegeDAO already having a curated community of student talent identified by local blockchain clubs that can vouch for their ability makes our hacker house more accessible, more student-friendly, and more collaborative given our emphasis is not on output but on impact and empowering student involvement in web3.
What’s your vision for how your project will impact The Graph and/or web3?:
Our long term vision for hacker houses is to establish a strong reputation of having the best curated talent in the student blockchain ecosystem to The Graph. This makes talent acquisition much more tangible and easier as young builders are qualifying their ability through winning hackathons such as ETHGlobal Istanbul.
Alongside this goal, our impact is to ensure that we are also able to identify young hidden talents within the student blockchain ecosystem who may not have had the opportunity to participate and have that ‘web3 conference experience’, which increases the talent pool for the entire web3 ecosystem by converting talent into web3.
How will you measure success?:
Our success will be measured in three ways:
- quantitatively through how many prizes our hackathon teams’ projects win,
- qualitatively through the reception we get by our student hackers
- and feedback from protocols on how well we have operationally executed this hackerhouse for iterative continuous improvement in the future.
What milestones will you achieve in the coming weeks/months, with or without the grant?:
Our milestones will be to achieve our funding goal by 20th October and exceed it within the next 2 weeks by 27th October such that we are able to reimburse students for a portion of their flight costs as well.
Given that funding and fulfilling our partnership agreements is our primary goal towards operationalizing this hacker house, we will be reaching out to more potential sponsors, specifically being the other protocols that are part of the ETHGlobal Istanbul prize pool sponsors.
Please select who you think will benefit from your project?:
Subgraph Developers, Other
How much funding are you looking for? (USD):
5000
Provide a breakdown of your requested funding:
USD$4,000 will go towards covering for the hacker house accomodation in booking the venue, and the remaining USD$1,000 will go towards reimbursement of student flights alongside covering for food expenses.
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:
We have received soft commitments of USD$3,000 from Aleo, USD$4,000 from eduDAO and in discussions with Filecoin & Starknet for potential sponsorships.
Can you share any information about current/past web3 experience?:
I am the core team lead at CollegeDAO and a club president for the Singapore Management University (SMU) Blockchain Club (SMUB) for 2 years, having organized over 30 events; Schelling Point .edu in Singapore which marked the first time Schelling Point has been done in not only Asia but at a university campus; and has led the club to growing its telegram community by double, as well as an active advocate for cross-university collaborations. This eventually led to my involvement in CollegeDAO to do what I am passionate about only in Singapore, but worldwide.
Shina, the co-organizer for this hacker house was the organizer of the Ethereum Singapore hacker house which won 10 prizes for the hacker house alongside previously being part of Tsinghua’s blockchain club THUBA under ecosystem and partnerships. Shina is now the East Asia Lead under CollegeDAO.
Why are you interested in contributing to The Graph and/or web3?:
One of the long term visions that CollegeDAO has is building towards a social graph between student blockchain clubs and industry protocols as part of the CollegeDAO platform we are currently building out.
Of course, the main vision for CollegeDAO is to be the public goods for the student blockchain club collective, providing support for blockchain clubs through operations, network and opportunities such that we are able to act as a global talent pool for all web3 protocols and grow the talent pie for the web3 ecosystem at large.
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:
Regional Community
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