What we want to do
- Write articles introducing Cardano that targets audiences from different backgrounds. Including basic introductory articles for people with no prior blockchain knowledge. Advanced articles with in-depth explanation of unique features of Cardano (Ouroboros, Delegation Mechanism, eUTXO, Hydra etc.) and projects built on Cardano that targets people trying to develop a deeper understanding of Cardano.
- Create engaging educational\instructional infographics and blog posts. For example, how to create wallets, how to become Community Advisors targeted specifically at the audience of the student hub.
These will allow us to achieve the goals of the Student Hub (Fund 7 winning proposal)
- Create a scholarship for selected students to learn Plutus or Prism over the summer.
- Introduce students to decentralized governance and help them participate in Project Catalyst as Community Advisors.
- Help interested students apply for Project Catalyst funding
Why fund this project?
The University of Oxford hosts some of the world's brightest students. In order for Cardano to truly get a competitive edge over other blockchains is to have competent developers. That is why focusing on providing scholarships to students at top institutions such as Oxford is important. These are students who have not yet developed a niche and have no particular preference over a particular ecosystem. A scholarship could therefore be the nudge that makes the choice easy for them.
All other things equal (one might argue that Cardano is less accessible), a scholarship stipend providing a substantial economic incentive would surely tip over the critical group of computer science students thinking about becoming a blockchain developer to the Cardano ecosystem.
These scholarships should be regarded as investments into the long-term growth of Cardano. In order for Cardano to truly succeed, all that is needed is 100 superb solutions developed on Cardano. For this to happen, we need the best minds and these are students with that potential. This is a very small investment relative to the cost it would take to sway the very same students once they have entered the job market. At that stage, they would be earning six-figure salaries, and incentivising them to go for one company over another would require remuneration of a magnitude far exceeding the few hundred dollars of these stipends.
Why we will succeed
Our key to success is to partner up with existing student societies in Oxford that will help us get a foot in the door. For example, the Blockchain Society, Mathematics Society, Economics Society, Computer Science Society and Africa Society. We then hope that the value proposition of blockchain on Cardano will be enough to make them want to learn more. We have already established relationships with all of the societies mentioned above, and are discussing details for community events. We have held our first event in collaboration with Oxford Blockchain Society: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lxPCgUNb9BC6E8BJlKYCqqaXBPeQA_95?usp=sharing
We may also possibly reach out to relevant Societies at Imperial College and at Cambridge for this scholarship opportunity.
We have recognised that facing the different audiences from the different communities, we will have to create interesting and insightful content with specific targets in mind. After catching their initial interests in Cardano at our in person events, we need to continue to provide opportunities to keep them actively engaged in Cardano and learn more knowledge. Allowing everyone to participate to the best of their ability, whatever level they are starting from. These include running Discord channels that post learning materials, updates of Cardano community and chat about Cardano, article series on ‘Medium’ platform, guides on becoming Community Advisor and so on. We have a detailed plan: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AjRqAPDEIosDec4_nICMCzFIWVHAi3sQ/view?usp=sharing
We have created the aforementioned Notion page: <https://cardanox.notion.site/3aadf76a910e493894a5aa8dc4308ac6?v=dece0ab21e6d4b059eed7ba1db9b0722>
We have created fact sheets comparing different L1 blockchains: <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x7xsdDIF6CT37-1jFV5hzoNjme6rEoz1/view?usp=sharing>
When we then launch a competitive scholarship, people will want to prove their interest and invest some time into researching Cardano. This means that even if only 5 students will receive the scholarship, all of the students who applied will inevitably have invested a lot of time and effort into learning more about the ecosystem in order to make their application stronger (as we select on the basis of interest and competence).
Assuming each community event gets 30 attendees and we manage to get 1/3 of attendees to apply, we would get 30 people who now have a Cardano wallet (as we will ask for a public address) and be more invested in the ecosystem.
One of the main challenge is to reach out to our target audiences and allow more people to learn about the Student Hub. To address this challenge, we collaborate with societies in the University of Oxford and promote event through their social media channels. This has proven to be successful in our collaboration with Blockchain society.
Another challenge is we have audiences from vastly different backgrounds. Our potential audiences range from people who have not have prior knowledge of blockchain to people who are heavily engaged in blockchain activities. To address different audiences, we create content suitable for audience of different knowledge level and provide guide on how they should access the knowledge.
Finally, there is a lack of incentive for audience to participate in Cardano. We have decided to provide food and drinks at our in person event as an incentive and also introduce them to CA award and scholarship.