Web3 Builders Alliance X Flow

[DevonMartens]

Web3 Builders Alliance Flow Division

Grant category

• Educational Material/Programming

Description

The Web3 Builders Alliance trains aspiring lead and senior developers to serve projects across Web3. Juno Network funds the current 2 cohorts students are selected via an advanced, highly selective application process. For the upcoming cohort, there are close to 90 candidates signed up to participate. A partnership between the WBA and Flow creates immense potential to train developers to build the next wave of leading dApps in the Flow ecosystem.

The WBA model, a tremendous value added over traditional bootcamps, learning tutorials, and other commonly used self-directed learning approaches, developers complete factual and conceptual development asynchronously. In addition the class meets for three 90 minute live building sessions each week. These sessions maintain a minimum of a 5:1 student-to-teacher ratio and focus on building authentic projects that are relevant to the partner ecosystem. An example of a project that is in progress, developers learning at the institute funded by Juno are currently building twin test chains, and connecting them with IBC relayers.

The course is currently a 10 week session that culminates in a capstone project. These PoCs and MVPs projects are then reviewed by a panel of experts. That means that the course also directly contributes to the ecosystem with the capstone projects. In addition, during the duration of the program our cadets are also improving developer tooling, creating PR’s for code improvements, and working on documentation. Upon graduation developers are awarded a non-transferable an NFT which is a WBA Certification. The metadata displays their work, skills, and interests.

These NFT’s then become part of the WBA Developer Marketplace where projects can recruit and hire vetted professionals, while reviewing their portfolios that reflect work that was completed under the supervision of the WBA.

Problem statement

• The shortage of professional, vetted developers with a known quality of preparation continues to bottleneck the growth of Web3. Further, hiring an unqualified developer for a project can cost 30K or more, and the lost time of 1-2 months before discovering the poor hire.
• There is a lack of professionalism, collaborative skill set, and focus on serving the public good amongst the community.
• One of the many articles describing the need for more talent in web3.

Proposed solution

The Web3 Builders Alliance would like to offer an eight week long course to give developers deep knowledge about successfully building on Flow. The course would inject a high -level of developer quality specifically trained to build on Flow, and Flow would have input on curriculum development, cadet projects, and capstone review during the course.

Impact

• In what ways does this benefit the broader Flow developer ecosystem? The one sure hedge in Web3 is to bet on great developers. This is what we will deliver. Expertise, collaborative-mindset, and professionalism injected into the Flow ecosystem, while also building public goods and developer tooling during the course will lift the Flow developer ecosystem.

Milestones and funding

The WBA proposes that we enter an agreement wherein we will run four quarterly sessions (2 cohorts each of 12-15 cadets). Based on the below breakdown by quarter, Flow will grant the WBA $600K for a year of training developers. This agreement will follow the below milestones, and be contingent upon Flow supporting the recruitment process by directing those who have completed the entry level training currently offered on Flow to the WBA institute. NOTE: The current per cohort fees are $150K per session. We offer a significant discount for the commitment to the WBA.

Milestone 1: InfraFlow

• Time: 4 Weeks

• USD Cost 50k

• Identify/ Orient Instructors

• Process Canidate Applications

• Prerequisites Acceptances - Give out prerequisites to accepted applicants and track progress

• Cohort Engineering - Prepare best cohort materials.

• Launch Course - Ensure google class room and all tools are in order.

Milestone 2: Source

• Time 7 Weeks

• USD Cost (70k)

• Module Clusters 1-2 (RUST and Cadence Foundations) - 2 Weeks

• Module Clusters 3-4 (Building and Capstone Proposals) - 3 Weeks

• Module Clusters 5- 6 (Capstone Building and Finer Points) - 2 Weeks

Milestone 3: Educate & Place

• Time 2 Weeks

• 30 K

• Goal: Ensure all educated students are placed in a job where they can build on flow and utilize thier skills

Team

Name	Role	Bio	Contact
Devon Martens	Lead Smart Contract Instructor	Former bootcamp instructor at the University of Minnesota, Curriculum Engineer for a Blockchain program at 2U. Currently is the principal blockchain engineer at Sweet. 6 years of development experience at multiple reputable companies.	dev@web3builders.dev
Richard	Lead Smart Contract Instructor	Richard is a senior blockchain engineer with almost 2 decades of professional engineering experience, and 5 + years working with Rust. Most notably, he developed the first Cosmos <> Solana multi-chain NFT mint with the HeroNFT collections, a project he was a the center of building.	richard@web3builders.dev
Richard	Lead Cadence Instructor	Richard is a developer with Dapper Labs, where his expertise in Cadence and intimate familiarity with the Flow platform will allow us to deliver a masters level course that prepares certified graduates to step directly into productive roles on existing project, while also supporting the process of grooming emerging founder/developers in the Institute to spawn new projects.
Jeff Rothstein	Co-Founder and Program Architect	A retired professional educator and curriculum designer of 30 years, turned hacker & Web3 evangelist. He spends his days building learning experiences to prepare the next wave of world changing developers.	Jeff@web3builders.dev
Chauncey St. John	Co-Founder, Impact	After a successful operational leadership career with GE, Chauncey founded and serves as CEO of Angel Protocol, harnessing the power of Web3 for charity endowments, social entrepreneurship & impact investing.
Nathaniel Hughes	Co-Founder, Strategy	Nate is a professional blockchain strategist & researcher. He advises many blockchain projects including Concordia, Wisdomise, Medici & Loop.
Daniel Mirantz	Co-Founder, Operations	Instilling a sense of community & culture within the WBA, Dan’s quality background and cross-functional expertise ensure the WBA’s goals remain clear and in sight.	dan@web3builders.dev
Uri Ferruccio	Advisor, Partnerships	Uri is a partner at Tabiya, a cyrto venture fund. Uri combines entrepreneurial, executive, and investment experience across web3 and web2. Prior to Tabiya, Uri was a VP at Binance & founding Executive Director at BNB Chain Foundation, founded JD.com’s (Nasdaq 100) AI division and blockchain accelerator, founded a fintech co and venture builder, and worked at DE Shaw ($60B AUM) in research and investments.
Jimmie Jeremejev	Advisor, Operations	Jimmie is a partner at Tabiya. Jimmie brings extensive experience as an investor and operator active in web3 since 2014. Prior to Tabiya, Jimmie co-founded a China-centric asset management co ($100M+ AUM), an early-stage blockchain investment firm (avg ~140x MOIC), was MD at PE firm Lehman Bush, & founded an energy financial modeling co exited to Siemens.

Links:

Website

Twitter

GitHub

[chrisackermann]

Thanks @DevonMartens! We'll review and get back to you shortly.

[DevonMartens]

Thank @chrisackermann please feel free to reach out any time or schedule a call with the team

[Japarjam]

Thanks @chrisackermann and @DevonMartens for your efforts on this process- excited to bring the WBA to FLOW!

[chrisackermann]

Hi @DevonMartens, thanks for your patience!

We've reviewed your proposal and would love to better understand how we can orient things around how the program leads to intended outcomes. The plans for the course are quite impressive, but it would be helpful if we can scope this more as an MVP and build towards a larger program if we can demonstrate impact (i.e. developers actively building, deploying to mainnet, etc).

Are there more thoughts/details you could share on this front?

[Japarjam]

Thanks @chrisackermann Would love to set up a call to share what we have done, how we do our course and the results our cadets produced in the form of meaningful, ecosystem projects.

[Japarjam]

@chrisackermann some simple metrics for our last cohort: 60 applicants. Accepted 25. 21 started the course. 15 finished and we have 10 MVP/PoC projects (capstone requirements) pushed to testnet. We will certify 13. Every applicant who was deferred or dropped has asked to be considered for a future cohort. We are over 100 applicants and start our pre req assessment process this coming week. Looking forward to discussing further.

[DevonMartens]

Hello @chrisackermann we would love to do this long-term on Flow and have several cohorts. In terms of intended outcomes: we offer developers building meaningful projects, and deploying to them to mainnet.

It is important to note:

The students that get certified create live projects. The projects reflect ecosystem needs as we work closely with our sponsors to develop a menu of needs, and have an open-door for ecosystem professionals to engage as guest instructors and in our lively discord. Currently, our cadets are all actively interviewing and we are sharing their MVPs/ PoCs this week (happy to share samples directly to you if you would like). We will have more data on the past cohort at that time including long-term plans and dApps released. They are also actively engaged in making contributions to FOSS for significant emerging technologies. This last point is central to our service mindset.

Another important note is, we are selective about who we certify. This means that a certified student should be able to exceed placement expectations in a senior or mid level developer role.

Outcomes

1. Jobs

• We actively work to place students in jobs that are beneficial for the ecosystems long-term throughout the duration of the course and afterwards.

• We build long-term partnerships and have several great connections.

• We also have worked with grantors on how to place students in the most meaningful way.

2. Live projects

• Ten dApps ready for mainnet from the first cohort that has ended.

• It is a requirement for a certification to complete a unique dApp that reflects their learning, acument, creativity, service, and leadership.

We would like to cater these to the needs of Flow

This is where a call would be good - we would like to scope these things out with your team for both the program and curriculum to maximize impact and align goals. Please let me know if your team has any availability this week or next.

[chrisackermann]

Thanks @DevonMartens - reaching out directly to schedule some time to chat

[chrisackermann]

Hi @DevonMartens! We're going to close this proposal for now since we are aiming to fill more specific gaps in the ecosystem in the near-term, but will re-engage when the timing is better for a solution like this.

Please feel free to reach out in our TG chat to discuss some more if you have further questions, thanks!