Grant Proposal: LEOS - a web3 learning platform with hands-on verification

[admin]

Grant ID: 369ktwh

Summary:

LEOS is a web3 learning platform characterized by on-chain verification. In this project we will design a Graph 101 course that consists of 4-5 modules. Each module will have
-A series of concepts explained using easy to read short paragraphs.
-A quiz with multiple choice questions
-A hands on exercise that will be verified on chain

The project itself will consist of the following modules:

Module One - Introduction to The Graph
–Since this course is targeting people with zero technical experience, we are going to cover the basic concepts in web3; what is a Blockchain, a dApp, etc
–The problem of querying the Blockchain and the solution.
–We will also cover the network and product adoption over time. Basically to answer the question of “Why The Graph?”
–The exercise with verification will be focused on having the user install web version of metamask

Module Two - The Graph as a Protocol
–The design of the protocol (What is a Subgraph, what is an indexer, etc)
–The entire journey of a query; starts with a consumer paying a query fee in GRT and ends with Indexers sharing a portion of their rewards with their Delegators.
–Will treat this module as a story and will not dive into any technical concepts to make it as reader-friendly as possible.
–The exercise with on-chain verification will be to transfer GRT to Metamask and use this for transactions

Module Three - How to Delegate
–What is Delegation and why is it necessary to secure the network
–Risks associated
–How to choose an Indexer (we will cover multiple tools)
–The exercise with on chain verification will be related to delegating and choosing an indexer.

Module Four - How to Curate
–What is Curation and why is it necessary to secure the network
–Risks associated with Curation
–How to choose a Subgraph (will cover multiple tools)
–The exercise with on chain verification will be focused on choosing a Subgraph
–We might break this up into more modules to make it easy on the reader

I have read and agree to the privacy policy:
true

If available, please enter a link to your project below:
https://app.leos.guru/

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?:
Curators, Delegators, Other

How much funding are you looking for? (USD):
20000

Provide a breakdown of your requested funding:
The requested funding details are as follows:

Course Design - Design of The Graph course - 4 person weeks - $8000

Implementation of the Course - 4 person weeks - $8000

Testing and Deployment - 1 person week $4000

Total : $20,000

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 $25,000 from the Stacks Foundation so far to create the Stacks 101 course which is currently available on the platform.

What’s your vision for how your project will impact The Graph and/or web3?:
This project will help on board new users to the Graph ecosystem. Users not only learn about the various concepts of The Graph but also learn about how to actually perform various tasks. And all this without requiring that the users have any programming background. This is vital if we want to have the next Billion people on web3.

What can you share about any past work that is relevant to this grant?:
We have created the first course on Stacks on the LEOS platform. This course has both a description of concepts with quizzes and hands-on exercises that are verified on chain.

Can you share any information about current/past web3 experience?:
One of the members of the team (fanjum with twitter @blockchain092 ) has been very active in Web3 and is also a Graph Advocate. Another member of the team @j2p2 has also been very active on the Stacks ecosystem being responsible for the current state of the Stacks course on the LEOs platform.

In addition, the course content will be created by Ahmad Mardeni (@Mardeni01) who needs no introduction in The Graph community.

Why are you interested in contributing to The Graph and/or web3?:
Web3 is the next revolution of the internet. And The Graph is the Google of Web3. And we need solutions to onboard people to be able to use The Graph on Web3 seamlessly. We believe LEOS is a solution to this problem. Hence we are interested in contributing to 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 (Closes on Nov 10th)

Do you recommend this grant to the DAO?

• Yes
• No

[pdiomede]

Thanks for your grant proposal. Since we have already The Graph Academy, that is the one stop hub for everyone that wants to learn about The Graph, what additional value do you think this project can bring to the ecosystem? Thanks for replying.

[AhmadMardeni]

I’m in support of this grant proposal. I have been working with Farooq for the last 2-3 months now on creating the content. I have to say that what we are building is truly unique and can onboard the next 1000 to The Graph easily.

[fanjum]

Hi @pdiomede thanks for your question.

There are two main differences for LEOS

1. LEOS is focused on hands-on exercises with on-chain verification.
2. LEOS is also focused on teaching normal people who are new to the ecosystem.

This is where it is different compared to other excellent sources of information such as the The Graph Academy. I myself have completed courses on The Graph Academy and I had to design and verify my own hands-on exercises. A newcomer without the right technical background will not be able to do this and will stay away to the detriment of the ecosystem and the user too.

@AhmadMardeni thanks for your support; it’s a pleasure working with you. Yes, looking forward to onboarding the next 1000 users to The Graph to start.

[doxe01.eth]

Hello!

Thank you for your proposal. I have a few questions:

1. I would like to hear more about how the funds will be spent? For example, x for this, x for that and so on.

2. More information about the experience of the team, in general, the people who will be involved in the creation?

3. Do you plan to charge for these courses? Or will they be free?

4. How many do you expect realistically, and what are your viewership numbers in general? How many users have used your platform?

5. Will you create content more than educational or aimed more at the technical component, i.e., for developers?

Also, have you considered the suggestion to create something like a collaborative grant, maybe. @AhmadMardeni has already created a proposal to raise funds for his Graph Social project, and maybe you could create one high quality product that will combine Graph Social and your platform for education.

For example, people will come to the Graph Social conference and will be able to get exclusive access to courses to strengthen their knowledge and skills.

Thank you!

[fanjum]

Hi @doxe01.eth thank you for your questions. See my answers below.

For 1. above does the following suffice or is there other information you are looking for
Course Design - Design of The Graph course - 4 person weeks - $8000
Implementation of the Course - 4 person weeks - $8000
Testing and Deployment - 1 person week $4000
Total : $20,000

For 2.
a. I have about 5 years of experience with Blockchains/web3; I am part of a team that build the LEOS platform. I do code in Clarity and Solidity. Graph Advocate I have also co-founded 2 web2 companies. Tweet at @blockchain092
b. @_jiga is an experienced front-end and back-end programmer; 10+ years of experience in web2 and web3; he set up https://app.leos.guru/ LEOS platform
c. We are also taking the help of @AhmadMardeni to ensure that our course content on Graph is the best there is

For 3. we expect to keep this course free. there might be other courses in future that will be paid.

For 4. We are just starting with Stacks on LEOS. Stacks ecosystem is not very popular and yet we have had 100s of views even at this early stage. We have already minted tens of non-transferable NFTs. These are minted only when the user completes the Stacks course. We expect the viewership number for The Graph course to be in the 1000s.

For 5. our focus at this point is on the normal user who might not have a programming background. Some of the users might become programmers after taking the courses on the LEOS platform.

About the last comment - this course is expected to be free for everyone since we want to onboard 1000s of users to The Graph using this course. We can explore a collaborative grant to create future courses so that people who have the “right NFTS” (such as when they attend a Graph social etc) will be allowed to get exclusive access to the course.

Thanks again for your questions and suggestions. We appreciate this.

[juliannaMLN]

I would like to see some new, creative ideas for the content of the course and if/where possible to use the existing content, for example from the Graph Academy or other available resources.

[fanjum]

Hi @juliannaMLN ;

yes we can link to articles or videos within the course on the LEOs platform as long as we are allowed to do so. We have already done that for the Stacks course that is now hosted on the LEOS platform.

We believe that the hands-on exercises along with on-chain verification before awarding the “course complete” non-transferable NFT to a normal user is a new idea. We are open to other suggestions since the goal is to make the onboarding of normal users to The Graph as seamless as possible. And we want to do this in a scalable fashion that can be used at various events.

[GRTDataHub]

I have seen previous grants been voted no by the community and advocates due to there already being courses out there that have been made an grants received. $20k is a lot for what is essentially being replicated here, and I believe by some of the same team?

Can we have some context as to how this will add more benefit than what has already been done isn’t he past in terms of The Graph Academy and course 101.

I don’t see a reason why these grants need to keep coming up when we can build on what has already been made previously and been awarded as a grant.

[pdiomede]

@fanjum is interesting the on-chain verification but I would like to see maybe some new original content.

Do you think the course structure can encompass different content? And I believe that one of the reason why this grant is not receiving a high consensus is related to the requested amount that is too high as the content is already too well known and can be found already in so many places.

My suggestion is to reduce the requested amount and propose a different content. It is hard to fund a grant for something that is already available. I’m not talking about the on chain verification that is cool, but about the content.

[fanjum]

Hi @GRTDataHub and @pdiomede ; thanks for your comments. We appreciate your time looking at our proposal and providing feedback. My responses below.

1. The courses on Graph Academy and 101xyz (I assume you meant this) were missing the important component of on chain verfiication. I did complete those course when I started out on my journey as a Graph Advocate but had to use other resources to figure out how to get GRT, how to delegate etc. Many newbies I believe will have a similar experience. To address this either you got to have a friend to show you the ropes or have a software app that can replace the friend. LEOS is focused on being the software app so that you can have a scalable solution. This can accelerate the onboarding of new users to The Graph ecosystem.

Content - We are open for other suggestions related to the course content. Our current modules are focused on getting the wallet set up, GRT in wallet, delegation and curation for which we plan to verify the actions on the blockchain. We can add other modules based on the experience and feedback of the community. Once we have the basic software framework (the UI frontend and backend software with hooks into the blockchain) it will be easy to add other content. We strongly believe that a course like this will make the process of getting newbies into this community seamless.

Cost - At this time, the bulk of the costs are due to the software development and testing efforts. If cost is the only reason for concern we can look at paying for some of these costs from our own pocket. This is because we strongly believe in the LEOS approach to help onboard new non-technical people into the community.

[GRTDataHub]

Thank you for taking the time to answer the above questions however if you have completed these courses then you would have completed the following curriculum.

I won’t be commenting on this forum post again. Thanks for your time, I will hopefully support you in the future or maybe you can collaborate with other unsuccessful grantees with similar grants to this that were also deemed to be duplicating the work already carried out.

[juliannaMLN]

The majority decision of the Grant Committee concludes to not recommend this proposal for DAO funding. Please recognize that this is not a statement on the proposal itself, but rather an aggregated reflection by committee members taking into account a number of factors, such as alignment to The Graph and web3 ecosystem, budget available to support grants and prioritization relative to other proposed grants.

Below you find brief feedback prepared by @pdiomede and brought up within the committee which may help you submit successful grant applications in the future:

The concept itself is interesting, but is missing some original content. The Grant Committee would like to see more courses and more content about the world of curation, or some courses/content about indexing/Firehose/Substreams, which can be intro courses. There is so little content about Firehose, collaboration with Pinax would be also a very good idea to start with.

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 support from the committee.

Sincerely,
Graph AdvoatesDAO