alxflw
commented
1 year ago Hi @austin-yao, we reviewed your proposal in detail and decided to pass because it is unclear if the impact on the developer ecosystem will be high enough.
Thanks for taking the time to submit your proposal and feel free to reach me directly on Discord in case you have further questions: alx-flw.find#6198.
Penn Blockchain/FranklinDAO Research
Grant category
Please select one:
Description
We hope to research a robust analysis of Flow that highlights its fundamental workings and future opportunities or research areas. Our findings would then be published in long-form format, Twitter threads, as well as in media formats such as podcasts and social media video clips, by FranklinDAO.
The first part of our analysis would be a quantitative and qualitative dive into how Flow works. This would begin with a high-level overview of the history, goals, and basic functionality of Flow, before launching into a rigorous explanation that explores each detail of functionality. Quantitative details through on-chain analysis and data oracles like Dune would provide additional support to the impact of Flow and the design choices made by developers. The goal of this section is to go beyond the original white paper by providing an additional analysis of how design choices have shaped out in practice once deployed on-chain.
The second part of our analysis would be a gaze into the future of Flow. We would give recommendations for areas of improvement in future versions of Flow and findings for how Flow fits into the broader picture of Web3—in particular, how it is important to trends and innovations in the spotlight at the moment, such as developer and user-friendliness for Web2 onboarding. This portion of our analysis is slightly more subjective, and we would tailor it to highlight the strengths of members of our research team. For example, in the past, we have produced research on the philosophy between App-specific Rollups versus Chains for scaling; this is something that we could connect to the future of Flow and the benefits it offers to consumer-wide applications in a sustainable manner.
The final section of our project is releasing the publication in a variety of media formats to maximize the traction that it gains. Like our previous research, we typically release in the format of a long-form piece, Twitter thread, podcast, and social media clips. These are published by our FranklinDAO accounts, as well as the accounts of our individual researchers.
Problem statement
One of the biggest bottlenecks to growth is the bootstrapping of new users and earning the trust of users in the underlying technology or governance. This is especially profound in Web3, as many Web3 users are onboarded through very niche channels — we haven’t seen waves of the average Web2 user become actively involved in this space — and due to previous exploits in Web3 that have left consumers rightfully doubtful of certain technologies. Being an EduDAO school, our target audience is undergraduate innovators at top universities (Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Oxford) around the world and students looking to adopt new technology. We hope that our work will compel these groups to become more actively involved in Flow, whether as a developer or user.
About
Penn Blockchain/FranklinDAO is the student-run Blockchain organization at the University of Pennsylvania. Our team regularly publishes research, investment theses, and governance recommendations and hosts hackathons and conferences to promote the education of Web3 across campus and in the greater Philadephia area. Many of our past & present leadership, both undergraduate and graduate students, have been inspired by their involvement in FranklinDAO to work on Web3 ventures full-time and are prominently involved in the ecosystem.
In particular, our research team is comprised of students from both the School of Engineering and Wharton School with diverse interests in Web3. This past semester, we published long-form pieces on crypto regulation, the thesis behind app chains versus rollups, undercollateralized lending, maximum extractable value, and decentralized identity. We have also become more involved with promoting our work to the mainstream public by recording podcasts and social media clips.
Here is our DAO Substack: https://franklindao.substack.com/ (consider subscribing!) and work samples: https://tinyurl.com/2p9wcddr
The FranklinDAO Research team is led by Erik Zhang and Cindy Jiang, who are both undergraduate students at Penn. Erik is a Pear VC Fellow and incoming summer analyst at Bridgewater and, and Cindy previously interned at Galaxy Digital’s ventures team.
Other members of the team have majors ranging from Computer Science, Mathematical Economics, Data Analytics, Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, as well as Finance and Business Analytics. We’re proud to have a team that can produce both rigorous quantitative and qualitative research.
Impact
The goal of our project is two-fold. The first goal is to provide a meaningful analysis of the state and future of Flow As stated above, our team will rigorously dive into Flow and its analytics to paint a multi-dimensional picture of its design and provide recommendations for why Flow is important and where it should focus on in the future. We take pride in the quality of our analysis and are confident in the quantitative and qualitative soundness of our findings, and we believe that our research will be helpful to developers and the governance community moving forward as Flow continues to grow.
The second goal is to promote Flow from both an engineering and investment standpoint, given the skillset make-up of our research team. By producing a technically advanced explanation of how Flow works and justification for the design choices in the protocol, we hope that this will increase the confidence of users in the ecosystem to rely on Flow or find opportunities unavailable on other platforms. Our analysis into why Flow relates to key trends in Web3 supports investment theses into Flow and provides additional support into Flow’s utlization in the future.
Beyond the quality of our analysis, we believe that our position as a fully-student run organziation puts us in a unique position to make an impact on those that follow our content. As a member of EduDAO, our biggest audience are other college blockchain enthusiasts at EduDAO schools (Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Oxford) or Penn students. Both of these populations are rife with talent in a multitude of skillsets, and given the age demographic, are most likely to be first mover adopters of decentralized applications. As such, we have an impact to reach not only other Web3 innovators, but also students who are not familiar with Flow but would be able to make a solid contribution to the community.
Milestones and funding
Total funding proposed: $2750
Team