The College DAO Hub: Rallying the University Blockchain Ecosystem
Learn more about the university blockchain space, and how we can shape it for the future together!
We've grown a whole lot since initiating College DAO just over a year ago. After running education events like hackathons, pairing joint student-company projects, and rolling out student ambassador programs all around the world, a couple of trends have surfaced.
Here’s a recap what our community has learned, as well as the blueprint for how we plan to catalyze the mass adoption of web3 on college campuses worldwide.
The University Blockchain Space
University blockchain clubs are at the forefront of innovation in this space, significantly influencing the future of the industry.
This is not an over-exaggeration.
Blockchain clubs collectively hold 52% and 46% of a16z crypto’s Uniswap and Compound tokens respectively, raising proposals and making votes that shape how core protocols operate as part of a16z’s token delegation program.
Additionally, some of the biggest blockchain protocols such as Algorand, Starknet, Avalanche, and Osmosis have their origins in academia and higher education, coming from founders at universities such as Cornell, MIT and UC Berkeley, and we want to empower more early talent to do the same.
Founders come from a wide range of backgrounds, from professors and Ph.D. students at the cutting edge of research to undergraduates pushing frontiers while exploring their passions. There’s an active community of budding students in engineering and research roles who are standing toe-to-toe with industry professionals transitioning from traditional companies since they are native to these technologies.
We have seen student teams crush the competition at hackathons with millions in prize pools, engineer complex systems at an early age, and build as core contributors at some of the largest protocols.
Students are both the most valuable but also the most undervalued demographic.
Challenges Faced by the Community
There's a lot of energy and top-tier talent, and they are the fastest early adopters of new technologies. However, many frictions on campus lead to sluggish adoption of these technologies.
Operational Overhead: The high overhead of running a club is a barrier to entry for many as student communities are mired in the logistics of getting approval from universities, securing speakers, managing finances, and navigating complex sponsorship structures without proper tools.
Fragmented Coordination: There’s immense difficulty in coordinating large-scale and inter-college initiatives in a fragmented ecosystem, leading to high overhead costs and complex operations. This is reflected in the rollout of initiatives such as regional student hackathons, university workshop tours and student ambassador programs.
Continuity: Leadership transitions as seniors graduate also compound the problem. Student clubs and companies experience poor continuity in partnerships and sustained club growth as new leadership onboarding can be a choppy process.
High Attrition: Clubs see high attrition rates as engagement falls off as the semester progresses. Speaker sessions, workshops, and events are great for getting students interested but see limited effectiveness in retaining students. Instead, longer-term hands-on projects see more success.
Minimal University Support: Universities are understandably cautious in providing education infrastructure, funding, or exposure for blockchain clubs due to a lack of legal clarity. However, clubs need compensation systems for resources to sustain themselves without this support. This introduces a complex process to set up LLCs and contracts for clubs.
Funding Misallocation: Mishandled budgets in student ecosystem initiatives have led to distrust among key stakeholders. This is especially true in an industry that is already struggling with legitimacy. This makes it challenging for protocols to form long-term partnerships and university administrations to support more comprehensive initiatives.
College DAO - The Network College
College DAO connect students, universities and protocols through our platform and joint initiatives that empower students to build in Web3 as part of their curriculum.
We are on a mission to build robust educational infrastructure tackling these critical problems in the higher education space.
Our community is driven by the belief that there is immense potential in uniting universities, blockchain protocols, and student communities. Getting this right can catalyze the mass adoption of blockchain technology, and help develop talent across campuses worldwide.
But coordinating purposeful connections and spurring ecosystem growth is a herculean task. That goes two-fold for the university space with limited systems to properly manage multiple points of contact.
This is why we are launching the College DAO Hub in Q1 2024. It is a collaborative platform for protocols and students to reach their dream contacts with modular partnership requests for joint initiatives. It will be both community owned and built hand-in-hand with the ecosystem.
It is composed of two modules - the Partnerships module and the Foundry. Let's dive into both and learn about what you can do with the hub.
The Partnerships Module
The partnerships module provides a comprehensive workflow to manage and send partnerships for both clubs and blockchain protocols.
Student organizations can take charge of their education, proposing initiatives that fit the needs of their communities best. Additionally, they can update their profiles to showcase their history, key personnel, and past partnerships. This also offers a comprehensive view of their activities and impact over the years.
As for why this is significant, blockchain clubs and protocols will now have a unified workflow to create and manage partnerships, streamlining communication that tends to break down over other channels like Telegram messages. The Hub’s dashboard and project builder is also equipped with budgeting and milestone tracking tools to help teams stay on top of deliverables.
The College DAO Foundry
The Foundry module helps boost student engagement and innovation in blockchain through a project program that matches student teams with relevant technical/research projects.
Blockchain protocols can also use the Foundry to create and manage projects that act as open bounties for students to build with their products and technologies. Teams at protocols can also view blockchain club applications and their profiles to shortlist clubs with the best fit.
On the other hand, blockchain clubs can browse and filter through a variety of projects to develop their skills and unlock opportunities for sponsorships and grants for their club.
From there, they can apply to projects from a detailed window displaying deeper information such as clearly defined project specs, milestones and deliverables.
These projects get students immersed in the ecosystem through hands-on experiences, while also providing compensation for their contributions - going beyond workshops as students learn by shipping projects that they know will benefit the wider ecosystem.
The College DAO Hub
The Hub will be developed in collaboration with the university blockchain community to foster a culture of contributing and resource sharing in the College DAO ecosystem. It’ll be built as a platform that is both owned and continuously enhanced by the community.
We would like to thank all of the people and organizations that have contributed to the development of our platform and the community, especially Hedera, an early sponsor of the College DAO Hub.
If you would like to contribute to College DAO or help out with the development of the Hub, feel free to contact us or give at the following link:
This is just the beginning and there's a long journey ahead - Students and blockchain companies will be able to propose desired features and student clubs can be sponsored to build out exciting features such as:
Ecosystem Maps and Social Graphs: View how the ecosystem is connected through visual maps of which clubs and blockchain protocols are working together. This can surface key opportunities that will shape education strategies.
Community Analytics: Tools and metrics for blockchain clubs and protocols to take a data-driven approach towards partnerships and education.
University Admin Accounts: Universities can now back initiatives by students, and launch their own proposals together with clubs and industry partners.
Talent Pipelines: A job board built for students and recommendation systems with rich candidate information and verified experiences. This would be supported by partnerships with venture capital firms, their portfolio companies, and other major employers.
There’s a lot to be done and we'll need all hands on deck, so definitely give us your feedback and share this with universities, blockchain companies and student clubs you would like to bring on board the platform.
Let’s work together and power humanity at its inflection point.
College DAO is the largest and fastest-growing network in the university blockchain space, integrating Web3 at 100+ colleges worldwide to expand the talent pool for the next decade. We bridge the gap between students, higher education and blockchain protocols through our platform that empower students to build.