dAcademy - Protocol for a Decentralized Education

Project Description:
dAcademy was born from MetaGame. Through several raids and iterations, MetaGame was creating playbooks for web3, DAO, and gameB onboarding. From MetaWiki to MetaLibrary to the Academy.

dAcademy has since began to expand on the meta implementation.

While dAcademy is built using IPFS, smart-contracts on Optimism, with Soulbound completion NFTs - the focus is not to just provide web3 focused content.

We offer a web3-based platform for communities, creators, organizations, and individuals to provide signed content with verifiable submissions of completion. These can then be used for further token-gating and permissions elsewhere.

The platform can be adapted to meet requirements of many new use-cases. (onboarding, hackathons, community tutorials, bounty pre-requisites, online courses, peer-reviewed papers…)

We are integrating meeting/workshop spaces via Huddle01 and MeetWith for further learning and collaboration beyond written playbooks.

We hope to also help bridge the on-ground and online communities. For example in ReFi/Regen communities, on-site action sometimes needs guidance - whether this is onboarding volunteers, spreading knowledge within a ZuCommunity or village for skillsharing, or documenting keynotes, workshops, and work-parties.

Skill badges on-chain do not necessarily need to focus on blockchain/web3 skills.

We see the value in building off the tech without an over-focus on the tech. Some ways we are addressing this is account abstraction via Reown Appkit, allowing new users to sign in with Discord, Farcaster, X, etc. We also plan to have all transactions under a Optimism/Biconomy Paymaster.

dAcademy is open-source and a public good.

Currently the build back-end is serverless and when the front-end UI is complete we may also deploy on Fleek.


Public Repository:

GitHub Project Board - Milestone v0.2

Project Status Updates on GitHub

GitHub Repo


Budget Breakdown

Milestone 1: $16k USD ~4.20 ETH

  • Expected Outcome:
  • Finish our v0.2 Milestone from our GitHub project board.
  • Includes UI/UX builds, new indexing…
  • Core stipends
    (we have already met our v0.1 milestone and are within our v0.2)

Milestone 2: $11k USD ~2.69 ETH

  • Expected Outcome:

  • Complete our milestone v0.3 on GitHub project board

  • Expand features and continue new partnerships

  • Upgrade contracts

Milestone 3: $9k USD ~2.22 ETH

  • Expected Outcome:

  • Community management outreach/marketing

  • Pay for new supportive role

Funding Requested: 9.11 ETH

Plans should you fall below, reach or exceed funding goals:

Fall below - Keep building.

Reach- Keep building.

Exceed - Expand team, incentivize collaboration and new use-cases.


Impact Measurement and Reporting

Short-term Outcomes (0-3 months):

  • Completion of Milestone v0.2 and also some of Milestone v0.3

Mid-term Outcomes (3-6+ months):

  • Finish Milestone v0.3
  • Grow community
  • Marketing

Long-term Impact (5+ years):

  • Expand contracts, use-cases, chains, storage solutions, etc
  • Encourage IPFS nodes, decentralization of data and shared knowledge
  • Collaborate with hardware projects
  • Become a norm in the space while normalizing the tech without blatantly having to fly a ‘web3’ flag.

Outcomes Measurement:

  • We will continue to track our progress via our GitHub discussions and project boards for version milestones. As we move forward with expanded contracts and indexing, we are releasing new features such as Community Curated Bookshelves. Some measurement will come from increasing new content from multiple new collaborations and sources. In addition to new content, we will create flows for using verified Soulbound NFTs after reward.

  • We can gain insight from contracts, subgraph, and IPFS uploads.


Interim Reporting

Regular Updates:

  • We have been building steady. Our GitHub issues, project boards, and repos show our milestones and completions as they happen. We track daily, weekly.

Milestone Verification:

  • We will translate milestones from GitHub to Karma Gap and also make updates there.

Sustainability Plan

Currently we are operating on lean budget and low overhead. Grants, donations via Octant, Gitcoin, Giveth, Juicebox are some funding options we are currently exploring… We will also continue to form partnerships and collaborations to grow the platform. We currently do not have plans for a subscription model as we would like to continue to offer the open-source, public-good free of cost. This may in time transform into some middle ground.

We have discussed offering white-label solutions of the stack for a fee.


Case Studies and Testimonials

Gathering Feedback:

  • We have some Tally surveys, a GitHub discussion board, and will continue to have direct calls with new partnerships and collaborations.

Showcasing Success:

  • We will be starting a newsletter for updates via Paragraph/Mirror. We will become active on Lens/Farcaster.

Advancing Values of Freedom and Privacy

IPFS and Blockchain allow us to create censor resitant, serverless content exchange with verifiable authorship etc.

Supporting Decentralization

We are built on IPFS, Optimism, and currently use theGraph. We use Soulbound NFTs. We are building to be serverless.


Team Information

While we focus head-down on the build, our current working team is small. Part of seeking funding is to expand our team with fair compensation.

Omka- Project Management. Dev. web3 space 4-5 years.

Dys- Lead Dev. Writing code for the last twenty plus years. Web3 for about four years. MetaGame OG developer.

Social Proof

Our project has been endorsed by MetaGame and has completed previous milestones successfully, as detailed in our GitHub repository and from the growth from previous repos.

Transparency

Octant funding will help us continue to build and expand our team. Funds will be in our mainnet multisig.

Other funding

  • MetaGame Microgrant via Optimism RetroPGF - ~10k OP
  • We will also begin a Giveth, Juicebox, and participate in the next Gitcoin Round.
1 Like