Grant Proposal: POMA Institute

Community Grant Applications
#1

Grant ID: 8685ueqr9

Summary:

POMA Institute is the only Italian platform that helps web2 developers to upskill into Blockchain Coding, From A to Z, connecting developers, blockchain companies, software houses and enterprises in Italy.

With the support of the grant, we will creare a whole page within our platform for The Graph which would include:

  1. pre-recorded technical course (3+ hours) in italian language
  2. Webinars, Interviews and live coding sessions on a monthly basis
  3. news, and articles, written by our team
  4. activation of a community on telegram, with our moderators
  5. Live events in special locations around Italy (mainly Milan) with Blockchain industry-leading experts related with The Graph
  6. Job openings on our portal for enterprices and developers to meet and collaborate.

The aim is to create a stable partnership to extend the awareness of Aptos in the Italian developer’s community.

GRANT DETAILS
We’d have two different grant requests, depending on the activities to include:

  1. STANDARD - 15,000$
    #Education:
    -Dedicated pre-recorded and complete course on POMA Platform (3+ hours) with top professors
    -1 dedicated Webinar / Month

#Communnity
-1 dedicated Webinar / Month
-Dedicated channel on Telegram
-Dedicated News and Articles

#Recruitment
-Dedicated Job Positions

  1. ADVANCED - 20,000$
    -Everything included in “Standard”
    +
    -2 live community events in person / year
    -1 Live Coding Session / month

We would be happy to review these activities with you and identify different solutions together.

I have read and agree to the privacy policy:
true

Describe what your project does or is aiming to do in 50 characters or less:
Community driven Italian E-learning platform for developers

If available, please enter a link to your project below:

How far along are you?:
We organized a series of online and physical event for Solana Foundation, impacting 500+ people. We did qualitative and quantitative research on them and understood their key needs and their willingness to pay and attitude. 3 companies sponsored our events, 500+ people attended. Some pictures related to these activities can be seen on our website.

At the moment we are building the platform which will be ready in January/February

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 was born together with Vincenzo Rana, who is Co-founder (with his Blockchain VC), and Professor and Researcher at the University of Milan. We identified this market as highly in need in Italy in particular.

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)?:
ABOUT THE MARKET:
In the Italian market, there’s a shortage of Italian-language blockchain content, despite a sizable developer community of over 500,000. There’s a lack of affordable courses, community events, webinars, and news in Italian. Currently, the Italian The Graph ecosystem relies on English content, lacking local events and community engagement.

ABOUT COMPETITION:
Regarding educational content, our main competitors primarily offer expensive live courses, mainly targeting non-professional developers. Conversely, high-quality content is available in English, limiting accessibility.
Moreover, no other companies in our space have a comprehensive approach delivering complete support and developer tools like live events, webinars, community channels, and provide Italian courses for the community.
This distinct strategy distinguishes us from both direct and indirect Italian competitors, including MasterZ, Aulab, Boolean, Digitazon etc.

What’s your vision for how your project will impact The Graph and/or web3?:
We believe that training developers is the first and most important step to do in order to support the mass adoption of the Web 3 applications and our activities are oriented toward creating a significant positive impact in the developer community by raising awareness of The Graph ecosystem

How will you measure success?:
Success will be measured by the number of developers who complete our courses and actively participate in our community through events such as webinars, live gatherings, and community channels.

What milestones will you achieve in the coming weeks/months, with or without the grant?:
Here the detailed milestones after the grant has been successfully awarded:

Milestone 1 (1-2 months) includes: Course design/ content prep./ Professors/ Coordination.
Number of people: 3-5 Professors, 1 product owner, 1 POMA CTO

Milestone 2 (1-2 months) includes: Course recording & post-production.
Number of people: 3-5 Professors, 1 product owner, 1 Recording agency & post production

Milestone 3 (1 month) includes the dev. Creation on the platform: website page, github space, integration.
Number of people: 1 POMA CTO, 1 Dev. partner company

Milestone 4 (12 months) we go Live with all the following activities: News & Articles, Webinars & Interview, Live events, Community channel creation activation & moderation, Live coding, Recruiters activation.
Number of people: 1 POMA CMO, 1 webinar presenter, 1 news&article copywriter, 1 event presenter, 1 community manager, 2-3 developers for live coding sessions, 3 POMA recruiters

Please select who you think will benefit from your project?:
Subgraph Developers, Other

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

Provide a breakdown of your requested funding:
Course design/ content prep./ Professors/ Coordination: € 5,000
Course recording & post-production: € 3,000
Dev. Creation on the platform (website page, github space, gen. integration): € 500
News & Articles – x 12 months: € 1,000
Webinars & Interview - x 12 times: € 2,000
Live events - x 2 times: € 4,000
Community channel creation activation & moderation – x 12 months: € 1,000
Live coding - x 12 times: € 2,000
Recruiters activation – x 12 months: € 1,500
Total- Request for Grant: € 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 from Solana Foundation 30,000$

Can you share any information about current/past web3 experience?:
For Solana Foundation 30,000$ we have done the following activities:

  1. A 1-week 40h bootcamp in Milan for developers to learn how to code with Rust and to use Solana blockchain
  2. A series of webinars and interviews with expert developers about Solana technical aspects
  3. Live coding sessions with 100+ developers joining
  4. 3 online full day workshops about different aspects of Blockchain and with a strong focus on Solana

Some pictures related to these activities can be seen on our website.

Why are you interested in contributing to The Graph and/or web3?:
We choosed The Graph because we are looking for a trusted partner to build a strong Italian community and together with our CTO we identified some solid and advanced blockchain projects to do that

Are you applying as a team or individual?:
Team

What type of grant are you pursuing?:
Long-term (continuous)

Please select the category your project best fits into:
Education




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

0 voters




Grant Committee Vote

Do you recommend this grant to the DAO?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

#2

Greetings!

Thank you very much for your proposal, glad to have you in our community. So the proposal described pretty well, but I still have some questions and points, that I want to clarify.

Goals:

  • How will you measure the success of your project?

Implementation:

  • What are the key milestones for your project, and how will you achieve them?
  • What is the timeline for your project?

Why did you choose The Graph specifically?

Also, I would like to see more information about you and the team, as alas the link to the site does not work. Or rather the site itself is empty.

Also, I don’t quite agree with what you said about The Graph developing in Italy. At this stage, there will be ETHRome, one of the biggest events of this year, with a lot of different projects, where The Graph will also be presented. Also, there is already an official community set up for The Graph in Italy, as the core developers run it.

So to summarize, I disagree quite strongly with a lot of things about education and low knowledge about web3 and The Graph exactly. I would also like to hear @pdiomede thoughts here.

Thank you!

#4

“Dedicated pre-recorded and complete course on POMA Platform (3+ hours) with top professors”
So one of the professors who are a part of this project will learn about The Graph and then create courses about it?

#5

Thanks so much for the proposal. I see you have connection with universities? If I understand correctly Mr. Vincenzo Rana is linked with Politecnico Milano?
The Graph is active on a worldwide Campus Tour and we may cooperate together on this initiative.
Can we hop on a call? My telegram is: pdiomede

Coming back to the grant, it is not clear to us, like my colleagues mentioned, if you have already experience building on The Graph. As you stated correctly, we need for sure to onboard more quality developers, and I would like to understand if you have already experience working with The Graph.

Thanks for your replies

2 Likes
#6

Thank you for your application:
In addition of the previous questions I would like to know:
1.- How you plan to connect developers, blockchain companies, software houses and enterprises?
2.- Are you looking for a grant for recruitment ? Do you have any agreement with any company for recruitment?
3.- Could you inform us the name of the professors that you mentioned in the application?
4.- What topics will you include in each milestone of the course?
5.- What type of community event wlll you include in the application ?
6.- Could you mention the number of people in the team and the experience in this kind of proposal?

#7

Hi,

Thanks for the time spent to review our application.

Re to the “How will you measure the success of your project?”
Basically our goal is to encourage as many developers as possible to utilize our courses, attend webinars, contribute to channels, and participate in live events and coding sessions. We do not identified a target for that. If needed we could work on it and come back with an estimation

Re to the key milestones and timeline of the project, please can you let me know what additional clarification you need?

Regarding why we choosed The Graph, there are not many advanced and solid projects like it atm. Thus, we prioritize featuring trustworthy blockchain projects on our platform to provide visibility to the most reputable options.

Re to the the link to the website, the one posted is correct. You only see the past events and courses as our platform will Go Live in December/January.

Re to the Italian community and events, I agree with you that there are existing events and a community in place. Our objective is to establish a central hub for this community which is completly in italian and for italians. Our team will handle this professionally, not only for The Graph but also for other few top blockchain projects, fostering a broader network and collaboration between developers and the industry.

#8

Hi! We’ll need to identify the most qualified professors/developers to get involved for each technical topic. While we can handle most blockchain technical aspects, if there are specific topics where our expertise falls short, we’ll collaborate with our CTO to find the right Italian expert to create the course content.

#9

Hello @pdiomede, Correct, Vincenzo Rana is Professor of Blockchian at Politecnico of Milan, founded a Web3 Software house (KNOBS) and a VC (which owns some equity of POMA). I’ll write to you on telegram so we can discuss it further.

In regards to our experience with The Graph, up to this point, POMA has exclusively collaborated with Solana, thanks to a grant that facilitated numerous activities over the past year. In terms of technical competence, to work with The Graph won’t entail additional difficulties as we have the appropriate professors and developers to address the technical aspects, our focus will mainly revolve around marketing efforts, organizing live events, and effectively managing the community.

Thanks

Hi @Lorena,
1.- How you plan to connect developers, blockchain companies, software houses and enterprises?
We’ll include certified development firms for The Graph in Italy into our platform, enabling enterprises to connect with them. Additionally, during our live events, we’ll offer opportunities for software houses and projects associated with The Graph, as well as enterprises, to gain visibility. Our recruitment platform will serve as a bridge connecting developers with both of these entities mentioned above.

2.- Are you looking for a grant for recruitment ? Do you have any agreement with any company for recruitment?
Recruitment is included already in our grant request. Our in-house team of recruiters will engage with enterprises and software houses, collecting their job requests. Subsequently, they will post these job positions on the platform, where developers can then submit their applications.

3.- Could you inform us the name of the professors that you mentioned in the application?
You can find some of the experts in our network at this link: Chi siamo - POMA Institute.
This network is quite diverse, comprising mainly developers, but it also includes professionals such as lawyers, marketers, and influencers.
Furthermore, our technical partner, KNOBS, has a team of 40-50 developers but we have also the option to collaborate with DVERSO (an italian web3 software house) to source additional technical resourses, ensuring comprehensive coverage of any technical aspects related to The Graph.

4.- What topics will you include in each milestone of the course?
The course will include the Context, Architercure, Differences with other chains and Key use cases. On top of this there will be more courses available ont he platform to help developers to learn the basis of blockchain coding (EVM; Rust etc)

5.- What type of community event wlll you include in the application ?
A detailed list is reported in application. They will involve webinars, interviews, live coding sessions, live events (mainly in Milan).

6.- Could you mention the number of people in the team and the experience in this kind of proposal?
THE BOARD
Poma Institute Board includes the two co-founders and one technical parter (which is also an investor).
-Paolo Medici is co-founder of Poma Institute. He has an engineering backgroud and he’s also founder of Proxima Int., which owns different brands sold on Amazon EU and USA.

-Alessio Oriolo is co-founder of POMA Institute. He was innovation Manager at Accenture with a 8-year experience in innovation projects, also in web 3
Alessio has a business background, with a MSc in Marketing Management.

-Vincenzo Rana is CEO of Urania, an Investment fund owning some equities in POMA.
He is also Co-founder & CEO at KNOBS, Co-founder at BCode, and Professor and Researcher at the University of Milan.
Urania and KNOBS are technical partners of Poma Institute.

THE TEAM
The key team is made of:
-CTO & QA - Giacomo Cavicchioli (Already CTO and founder of Vyper protocol and italia Defi platform)
-CMO & coordinator - Daniela Cedele, experienced digital marketer
-Community manager - Nikola Mavrov, former Crypto.com italian community manager
-Live presenter - Lucrezia Van Stegeren, experienced speaker and event’s host
-Webinar presenter - Saveria Spezzano, blockchain social media content creator
-Product Owner – Angela Mensi, former Maths teacher, now blockchian developer

#10

Greetings!

The presentation of the project will be in the public-voice-chat channel on the Graph AdvocatesDAO Discord server on October 10th at 10:00 UTC. Entrance is open and everyone is welcome to come in and ask their questions during the presentation!

Thanks everyone for your attention!

1 Like
#11

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 brought up within the committee to not recommend DAO funding that may help you to submit successful grant applications in the future:

At this stage, alas, the proposal has been rejected, because the grant committee cannot support this proposal due to some of the factors that the proposal sets for itself.

If we talk about suggestions, it is to carry out a more comprehensive market research for this kind of activity and to take into account all the factors that can directly affect the operation. Further, it is a budget in the area that the requested funding is quite risky, we recommend to conduct more small-scale activities to understand what the audience likes and what you can focus on in order to achieve the expected results. Also in the future it is to create everything in different languages, mostly English (recommended for these kinds of large grants), for a higher level of engagement amongst the community.

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 AdvocatesDAO