[DAO: QmZwoCD] BEN Decentraland Intercollegiate Meta-Delegate

by 0x66aa8bee5366b6b48811ae0dac9fe5e1eefe1621

Should the following Tier 3: up to a 3 month vesting contract of $3000 - $5000 USD in MANA, with a one month cliff grant in the Community category be approved?

Abstract

The BEN Decentraland Intercollegiate Meta-Delegate is an initiative to enable students from any and all universities to participate in Decentraland governance. During our meta-delegate meetings, students from around the globe come together to present, discuss, and debate new and existing Decentraland proposals. Afterwards, students from every university in our network get to vote on the proposal, and the BEN meta-delegate casts its official vote in the direction of the majority. This way, BEN can bring representation and engagement from smaller universities who may not have the time, experience, or resources to operate their own delegates.

Grant size

5,000 USD

Beneficiary address

0x66Aa8Bee5366b6b48811AE0Dac9Fe5e1EEfE1621

Description

BEN has done a lot of collaborations with Decentraland in the past. We’ve hosted several workshops with 50+ attendees in partnership with Decentraland University inside their Crypto College campus, including with Polygon, Gitcoin, and Uniswap. Our leadership team and students also own MANA and LAND that they’ve delegated to BEN for some voting power and for land to build BEN’s virtual academic headquarters.

BEN currently runs meta-delegates across Uniswap, Compound, Gitcoin, Ampleforth, and Aave. Through the BEN Decentraland Meta-Delegate, our hope is to engage students and professors from universities all around the world with Decentraland governance.

Specification

We started with a discussion group on the BEN Learn for the Decentraland Meta-Delegate. We collected interest from our students across various universities and various countries and hosted some virtual events in Decentraland. We also already hosted our first internal poll for our meta-delegate to get thoughts and consensus from our students on the recent proposal on whether wearables should count for voting power.

Our next steps are to accrue voting power from our students, alumni, and community supporters that own MANA and LAND for the Meta-Delegate. That way, it becomes more attractive for students to participate.

As an example, we recently were one of the grantees for the Aave Grants DAO as well as receiving 2.5m in UNI voting power to use for our Uniswap meta-delegate per a16z. Since then, BEN’s Uniswap Meta-Delegate has gone on to participate in the currently active Arbitrum deployment proposal. We pushed an internal vote to over 40+ student representatives from various universities across the globe and then cast the official meta-delegate vote in the Uniswap voting portal according to the internal result. This initiative has not only showcased effective decentralized governance execution but also demonstrated how a community that rallies together can have their voice be heard hundredfold.

We also plan on hosting monthly events and workshops with our students to bring in and educate them about the different projects in the Decentraland ecosystem.

We’ve currently been running such an event series with all the UGP grantees in the Uniswap ecosystem and have seen much success thus far.

Personnel

Erick Pinos is the President of the Blockchain Education Network (BEN). Erick is also the Americas Ecosystem Lead at Ontology Network. Erick has a BS in Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was the President of the MIT Bitcoin Club.

Kate is the founder and former President of the Concordia Blockchain Club. She is currently the community lead for Axelar, a cross-chain blockchain startup based out of Toronto, Canada. Kate has been involved with BEN since 2019, originally as the Ethereum teaching assistant.

Antonio is the past president of Gator Blockchain Club and a 2020 graduate of Warrington College of Business at U of F. With a proven talent for aligning business strategy, Antonio worked for over a year at Oracle Inc headquarters, as part of the ISV BDC Team. He now focus in enabling students in developing nations to acquire educational opportunities in blockchain technology.

Jeremy is the Founder and past President of Mount St. Mary’s University’s Blockchain Club. He is the Founder of Mass Adoption, a DeFi education & onboarding company that aims to be the catalyst for DeFi adoption. BEN’s Meta-Governance structure, BEN’s Intercollegiate Crypto Fund, and multiple Meta-Delegate committees.

Ashton Barger is a Past President of the Miami University Blockchain Club and a 2020 Graduate of Miami University of Ohio. He currently works full time as an Account Manager for Zebu Digital, a Crypto and Blockchain Marketing Agency.

Roadmap and milestones

September:

  • Hold monthly Decentraland meta-governance calls, where we review and deliberate Decentraland proposals, discuss Decentraland’s latest developments, host internal polls with the students, and cast votes. Initial goal is to get a minimum of 20 students from 2 different countries.

  • Work with BEN Ambassadors to improve & scale reach of Meta-Delegate.

  • Tweet frequently about Decentraland proposals and the discussions our students have been having around them.

  • Publish a monthly recap on our Medium and BEN Learn with a link to a recorded meeting published on our YouTube channel

October:

  • Hold our monthly Decentraland governance call, where we review and deliberate Decentraland proposals, discuss Decentraland’s latest developments, host internal polls with the students, and cast votes.

  • Goal is to get at least 20 students from 2 different countries.

  • Cast first vote on use of treasury funds.

  • Feature university chapter Decentraland delegates set up by our university chapters on the BEN podcast.

November:

  • Hold our monthly Decentraland governance call, where we review and deliberate Decentraland proposals, discuss Decentraland latest developments, host internal polls with the students, and cast votes.

  • Goal is to get at least 20 students from 2 different countries.

  • Assist at least one emerging university chapter set up their own delegate and receive delegated voting power

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