by 0x8d61957962ac11ecb570d5b2c809129f7fd92328
Should the following Tier 4: up to $60,000 USD, 6 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Community category be approved?
Abstract
We strive to create a training and recruitment hub in Decentraland. With the Open Metaverses evolving, there’s a need to educate talent to obtain first-hand Metaverse experiences. With an educational hub in Decentraland, EkoLance will bring together talented people and companies to foster collaboration and thus true adoption of Decentraland’s vision by eventually onboarding millions of students globally to Decentraland.
EkoLance makes the blockchain space easily accessible to millions of people from emerging countries by offering free training on specific blockchain professions and connections to employers.
Our goal is to enable 50.000 people to work in Web3 by the end of 2023. Decentraland will be the first entry point to our ecosystem.
Grant size
30,000 USD
Beneficiary address
0x8d61957962aC11ecB570D5B2C809129F7Fd92328
Email address
Description
After the initial feedback on the 1. version of the grant, we made changes to reflect the feedback.
EkoLance www.ekolance.io is a training and recruitment platform that helps professionals start working in web3.
It has two core functions:
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Cohort-based Training Programs to train professionals to work in specific web3 professions such as content creators, community managers, blockchain developers
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Recruitment function, where companies can select from the talent pool and hire
Free training programs for people from emerging countries
EkoLance focuses on educational inclusion for people from emerging economies. We offer our training programs for free to people from emerging countries (currently from Africa and Southeast Asia), who otherwise cannot afford blockchain education. We connect them to employers with whom they would otherwise not have any touchpoints. This is how we foster educational and financial inclusion.
We have educated more than 650 people in the past 6 months and 30% of them were hired directly after our training. More than 2000 people have subscribed for training and recruitment with us. Currently in our talent pool we have:
- 250+ Solidity Developers
- 700+ Content Creators
- 550+ Community Managers
Strong Partnerships in the Web3 Space
EkoLance currently has 8 sourcing partners with a total community of over 20.000 people from which we regularly get talented professionals to subscribe to our training programs. We partner with universities, Blockchain, and Tech Hubs, which promote our training programs and services to their members.
We cooperate with corporates, who train and recruit from our talent pool
We invite blockchain professionals to train our talents, so they have the most up-to-date and practical training experience possible. Companies, which have participated in our training programmes are: Ankr, Blockdaemon, Blocksize Capital, Pillar Foundation, HER DAO, Metagamehub DAO, ReCheck, AuditOne, Quantstamp, Basenode.io, YieldGuildGames, Luna Vision, BeInCrypto.
Companies, which have recruited from our talent pool are: Quantstamp, Micobo, ReCheck, O2k.tech, Getonboard.gg.
Benefits for Decentraland
With Ekolance in Decentraland, we will have the first training and recruitment center in the Metaverse, bringing together companies and talents from all sectors to the Metaverse. This center will offer innovative opportunities for talents to get trained to work for Web3 companies and become part of the communities as well as for companies to recruit the right talent for them. This will provide proper and retentive user engagement via true utilities which are constantly pushed via weekly initiatives such as educational trainings, events, quests, job matching, socializing and more taking place on top of the LANDs. Decentraland community members also benefit from direct access to talents, who are familiar with Decentraland and are trained to work in the Metaverse apart from the user and adoption growth this provides. Since most of the trainees will have zero to little experience with web3 before this, it will serve as a major boost for adoption and to onboard the masses to Decentraland and thus foster mainstream adoption.
Furthermore, it will allow Decentraland to position itself as the entry point and “home” for everyone’s Metaverse journey and strongly place itself at the center of metaverse adoption via a strong focus on education - something that is often neglected in the web3 space.
Specification
Our first installment is going to be a minimal experience on 2 LANDs, that already covers the basic structure for a good learning experience and job placement:
- an info reception / welcome area
- a learning board and video screens with learning material covering several topics
- guided learning - incentivized by a proper engagement model, NFT certificates, and other rewards
- live training sessions
- partner placement
- job board
- search dashboard for employers
The experience will consist of a building with several different areas serving the above purposes on different floors.
We will implement a learning board that is connected to a server backend serving dynamic course content. This includes creating a web interface for managing the learning contents. The learning board is meant to be used for self-studying. Its contents will grow over time - initially, it will cover basics around Community Management, Web3 Content Creation and Solidity Development. Further learning content can be streamed as video on screens inside the Ekolance building.
The solution we are implementing could also be used by other educational content creators in Decentraland.
For guided learning, we will be implementing an engagement model that incentivizes and supports the learning progress of the students with a specialized UI showing course progress, learning milestones, course certificates (users gain POAP certificates as proof for attending a course), and further information.
Live training sessions will be held over a video stream in regular intervals. Contents of the live training sessions will be added to the learning board contents.
Finally, there will be an area for partner placement including a job board, with additional screens that partners can use for presenting.
Employers will be able to browse and search through available talents and check their on-chain certification, and be able to directly contact them.
This grant is meant to cover the costs of developing a basic technical infrastructure for the above learning experience. It will be the foundation for further development.
In future steps, we plan to drive knowledge transfer between students by a more sophisticated engagement model and will improve the overall learning experience by refining course material and the underlying UI. Organizing information in a 3D space yields many possibilities that need to be explored for optimal education.
Ekolance Grant Event
We are hosting an event in Decentraland this Thursday, December 15, 4pm CET with one of our partners (MetaGameHub DAO). We’re introducing Ekolance to the Decentraland community and we’re going to do a live training about hosting and development for an event in Decentraland. Be sure to come visit us there!
Personnel
MetaGameHub DAO
- Backend Developer (Content Server)
- Frontend/UI Developer (Learning Board and Guided Learning Logic)
- Modeller & Scene Builder
MetaGameHub DAO has a pool of experienced developers and modelers with expert knowledge about the Decentraland SDK and the overall process of developing and modelling for Decentraland (most notably DCL-Edit).
Here’s a link to a the currently active experiences that were developed by MetaGameHub DAO:
EkoLance
- Content Manager
- Project Manager
Maria Eneva-Olms (https://www.linkedin.com/in/menevaolms/), Founder at EkoLance. EkoLance has conducted 6 training programmes with 20+ blockchain professionals as trainers and content creators resulting in the education of 650+ professionals to work in the web3 space in the past 7 months.
We expect full-time effort for the backend and frontend developers. Content Management will most probably take a bigger portion of the overall effort as well. Modeling / Scene building is expected to take considerably less time.
Note that $5K of the $30K are meant for covering the cost for the land acquisition (2 Lands).
Roadmap and milestones
February 2023 - Prototype
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Prototype building with a learning board covering a first topic: Decentraland Development
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Backend prototype server with interface for course content management
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Video walls with tutorials on different topics such as Tokenomics (https://www.ekolance.io/youtubelive) , Game Development (content will be created), Solidity Development (https://www.ekolance.io/solidity-developer-training), Web3 Content Creation (https://www.ekolance.io/blockchain-content-creator-training), Web3 Community Manager Training (https://www.ekolance.io/blockchaincommunitymanagertraining), Smart Contract Auditor Training (content will be created)
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First live events: live training sessions on screen, Networking, After-parties to socialize
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NPCs handing out POAP certificates for courses
March 2023 - Improvements + Guided Learning
- Basic version of guided learning measures: basic UI showing learning categories, lessons, and progress through the courses
- More learning content
- Further development of learning board and backend server
April 2023 - Finalizing
- Reception and info-center
- New area for partner placement and job boards
- More lessons, more courses for further topics
- Final building
- Polish, Testing and QA