[READY][GF: Phase 1 Proposal] Bankless Academy v2

With the weekly cycle deadline approaching this afternoon I would like to move this proposal from [Draft] to [Review] by OP delegates. We welcome non-delegates to continue the conversation.

Feedback summary:

  • We have responded to questions regarding level of Optimism focus in the lesson by providing a breakdown of lesson content party exposure.
  • There were requests to detail planned marketing events, to which we have responded with a complete list of planned events.
  • Our team has split its build approach into two parts, to account for collaboration availability for the Optimism Collective:
    1 - Our team manages lesson production, handling marketing events entirely on our end.
    2 (OPTIONAL) - We invite the Optimism Collective to assign a team member to be our L2 subject-matter specialist, joining our Iterative Learning Sessions to teach Academy users, identify their learning bottlenecks, and refine the lesson content. The subject-matter specialist is also invited to both a Twitterspace event and a text AMA event, focusing on the collaborator’s story, L2 technology, and the lesson build process.
  • While it appears that our proposal might be more suited for RPGF when available, we would like to request consideration as an edge-case proposal to begin building our collaboration lesson in the immediate future.
  • We have responded to questions regarding internal distribution of requested funds, explaining that this grant would have ~50% allocated towards the lesson build (as contributor compensation), and ~50% allocated to the Bankless Academy treasury.

I am 100% for allowing this funding proposal to move through this pipeline. It’s well put together, every question was answered, and elaborated on.

This proposal has the potential to generate a very high ROI. In addition, the risk is limited given the relatively small amount of $OP requested.

Personally, I think if Optimism is to win the L2 wars we need to find more proposals like this: low initial investment, potential outsized returns

Additionally there is time this week is actually still community feedback week:

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I like this proposal

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Ah pardon me, I misunderstood the cycle process. It looks like delegate feedback begins Sept 15th.

Thank you for your support!

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Thanks for the proposal! If you plan to have this reviewed in Voting Cycle 6, can you please specify which committee should review your proposal (NFTs and Gaming, Tooling, or DeFi) under the grant category field in the updated proposal template for Cycle 6?

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Hi @lavande,

I have added the following to the main proposal post:

Grant category:
Tooling

We missed this update. Are you expecting the entire grant to be updated to the linked format, or do you just want to see this edit?

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This is a great initiative. I have used your resource and think it is a great tool. However, I am inclined to say that your objectives aren’t exactly concrete.

Could you expand on what you expect to build in the future for the academy since 50% of the tokens are being reserved for that?

Bobbay, Tetranome provided some detail in this reply back to me. Hope this helps a bit.

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Hi @Bobbay_StableLab, thanks for your question. Sharing our vision and roadmap with the community is something we’re considering in our current website update, where we will be making our user journey, product and content roadmaps more concrete and transparent.

Our infrastructure objectives for 2022 and 2023 are as follows:

  • Finalise our soul-bound badge implementation and minting mechanism.
  • Finalise our Gitcoin Passport integration for sybil resistance.
  • Build a statistics dashboard for monitoring lesson, quiz and quest progression.
  • Present lessons with a branching navigation UI (think skilltrees from gaming) that provides users with an overview of their learning journey and the areas of exploration available to them.
  • Gauge lesson interest for upcoming lessons and topics as an early form of community governance.
  • Improve our content management system and migrating the content to decentralized file storage.
  • Multi-language support to open up the Academy onboarding experience to explorers across the globe.
  • Explore avenues of community-driven content creation (permissioned writing).

These are paralleled by our content goals:

  • Continue launching independent (non-sponsored) lessons focusing on theory, best practices, web3 culture etc.
  • Increase user learning research and the refine our existing user journey.

I hope that the items I’ve included here give you a clearer idea of where we’re headed. :astronaut: :rocket:

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looks good, I appreciate the detailed response.

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Hi all, my understanding is we need one more delegate approval on our proposal.

If you have read our proposal and would like to see this move forward, please state your approval in the following OP-requested format:

“I am an Optimism delegate [Delegate Commitments - LINK] with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.”

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Our proposal has been updated to the new OP proposal format outlined here.

You will find the previous version of the proposal in a collapsible segment at the top of the first post on this thread.

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I am an Optimism delegate [Delegate Commitments - #65 by mastermojo] with sufficient voting power, and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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I am an Optimism delegate [Delegate Commitments - #18 by katie] with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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hey, beautiful project; just one question, do you plan to launch Bankless Academy in Spanish?

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Hi @Jadmat we have multi-language support on our product roadmap for next year :rocket:
We will likely launch this feature with translation bounties.

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While this proposal is out of scope for Governance Fund (more suited to RPGF as others have mentioned) which is focused on incentivizing direct usage of Optimism through migrating L1 dapps and promoting novel L2-specific apps, Bankless has done plenty of very important education, and the tokens requested is reasonable enough for me to make an exception. I hope to see hjgh-quality Optimism-related content.

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Voted: Against

Difficult decision for sure. I agree that this is a public goods project and as per new guidelines we should consider public goods projects as well but to me this must only be focused on Optimism.

Bankless is leading the education frontier and would love to see such projects in RPGF round.

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1. Presentation

We are an officially recognized Tooling Governance Committee, responsible for assessing proposals related to tooling and infrastructure (wallets, bridges etc.).

2. About the project

This project addresses perhaps one of the most important and neglected sectors of the ecosystem, education; it does it in a very clean, clear and precise way; inviting to a creative and entertaining experience, which motivates to continue learning in each new stage that is completed; also encouraging with tokens that define the level of learning, being perhaps, for many, the first interaction with them.

Something important that I add, as a personal conclusion; is that Bankless Academy is a leg of Bankless DAO, the latter being very inserted the ecosystem, the content is created and goes directly to the consumer; we see many educational initiatives, where the generators “take” the information from the web, order it and adapt it; Beyond the lack of quality that this generates, that the content is “direct” is key in an industry so tied to changes.

3. About the following

The proposal was published from August 23 in a previous format (now called v1) then being adapted to a v2 with the current system. Under the process, we saw a very explanatory and detailed proposal; and we celebrate their active disposition to precise and fast answers with the delegates and community interested on it.

As a Tooling committee, the project was also cataloged as “Tooling” in the Grant category, we have decided to take the responsibility of issuing recommendations on it, while defining if proposals like these also oriented to education/content can be approached in another way with the current committees or not.

4. About the proposal valuation

  • Added value (good to bad): good. Education in Web3 and access to tools is currently a recurring problem on which it is easy to fall into the wrong methodology and ethos. Bankless has a reputable track record of addressing all of these topics on behalf of the community. The use of mintkudos is understood as a plus that the Optimism ecosystem may be interested in trying and taking note of.
  • Impact or expected usage (high to low): high. this aspect can have an unlimited impact, or better said, not directly tied to the grant - being an educational initiative, it reaches a range of interested parties that are not included in the average of the proposals that are normally addressed - This project is of use for free and with almost zero entry barrier (prior knowledge). Its impact is clearly dependent on how many users it can reach and high expertise, managing high attendance.
  • Current Status [Development stage/Open Source?] (early to ready): in development. The project is open source and free; some content specific to Optimism will be built or improved in the process.
  • Expenditure plan and distribution (appropriate to inappropriate): appropriate. The incentive must be where the value is, and in this case the value is in the construction and future development, such as contributors. A portion will go to the community treasury, which means that ~13,200 tokens will be independently managed by this initiative.
  • Amount requested (high to low): medium. Amount requested seems reasonable for the team members in the stipulated period.

5. KPIs and impact tracking

As detailed in the proposal, a series of activities are contemplated that we will be happy to find out when they take place, please communicate in time with focus to the Optimism community any event that has been possible thanks to the approval of this proposal.

In details, we ask Bankless Academy responsibles to provide statistics on at least the following aspects:

  • How many users started at least one of the materials releated to Optimism
  • How many users finished the different modules
  • Attendance at scheduled events
  • Relevant experiences in the process, proof-of-personhood, use of mintkudos and others relevant to Optimism and its ecosystem.

6. FINAL RECOMMENDATION: Yes

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I have voted against this proposal and the recommendation.
My reason for voting against is the allocation of simply providing a team with working capital.
I agree with others in echoing this proposal is better suited for RPGF.

I refer to…

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