One of the initiatives that the Blockchain Education Network (BEN) prides itself on is assisting student blockchain clubs who are chapters of our network to set up delegates for various DAOs. However, there is still a participation gap for the thousands of university students in our network who donāt have a blockchain club at their school yet or donāt have the experience, time, and resources to run their own delegate.
Thus, BEN has launched the Meta-Delegate initiative to enable any and all the universities within our network to participate in DAO governance. The BEN Idle Meta-Delegate presents a framework in which students can intercollegiately come together to present and discuss Idle governance proposals.
BEN will host educational sessions with and about Idle and Idleās ecosystems projects to educate students and make them more knowledgeable when voting and discussing proposals. Internal votes are conducted across all participating universities, and the BEN meta-delegate will officially vote in the direction of the internal majority. This way, BEN can bring representation and engagement in Idle governance from students at smaller universities around the world.
Goals
Our vision is to decentralize and democratize DeFi governance power into the hands of the young people across the world, enabling them to have a say in how these blockchain products that will revolutionize society should be built.
We define success based on galvanized interest and participation from the students within BENās network. We are targeting a high diversity and representation from universities from around the world.
We measure our success based on how many universities and countries are represented in our Idle governance calls, as well as how many university chapters we are able to set up with their own delegate.
Obstacles
One of our obstacles has been coordinating between our 80+ different university chapters around the world. Weāve been tackling this issue by growing our organizing team and establishing committees focused on addressing the different initiatives of BEN (ex: education, tech, alumni, events);
Another one of our obstacles is occasional periods of low engagement from students in the past during bear markets. By listening to their feedback, weāve been able to iterate upon our initiatives and tailor our efforts to provide real value to them. Weāve become very familiar with our studentsā needs and interests and thus engagement for our initiatives has been proliferating.
Governance Flow
The BEN Idle Meta-Delegate is set up and a campaign to accrue voting power starts (per this proposal)
BEN reaches out to its network and gathers all students interested in Idle governance into a group in its governance forum (https://learn.blockchainedu.org) - most communication is held on Telegram.
The Meta-Delegate meets regularly to discuss and give feedback on existing Idle proposals.
When it comes time to cast a vote, the Meta-Delegate will conduct an internal vote across all participating universities.
After the internal voting period ends, the Meta-Delegate will officially cast its vote in the direction of the internal majority.
When reaching the meta-delegate, BEN will require chapters to delegate their $IDLE to the BEN Delegate in order to submit the off/on chain vote.
The BEN meta-delegate will submit the vote via Tally.
Additional ideas and future plans
Eventually, when we plan on adopting the IDLE Governance arrangement where there is the overarching Governance DAO and subsidiary DAOs (subDAOs).
I believe by executing this architecture, weāll continue to operate each respective committee as is, but escalate the conversation(s) into a more organized and inclusive manner.
Implement Gnosis Multisig wallet to decentralized vote execution and the custody & deployment of treasury funds.
Assist at least one emerging university chapter set up their own delegate and receive delegated voting power.
Meta-Delegate meetings will be held in two different languages with the help of our student ambassadors assisting with event coordination and translation.
Initial Goal is to get 20 students from two target countries (USA, Italy).
If successful, will re-apply for more funding to expand BEN Idle Meta-Delegate to more regions (Turkey, Africa, LatAm, Caribbean).
Hi @Guzman, thanks for proposing this initiative!
Iām glad to see that an international university association like BEN is working to foster studentsā engagement
With the aim of getting 20 students involved in working groups, is it possible to estimate the outcome of those activities? What would be the focal point? (new strategies, financial reports, new third-party integrations, legal analysisā¦)
And do you think that returns from the protocolās point of view could be measurable, in terms of TVL or other protocol metrics?
Lastly, I see that you launched the BEN Uniswap Meta-Delegate, can you please give us some insights on activities, expectations, and results?
Thanks! Looking forward to learning more about you
Hi @Guzman thank you for reaching out to the idle community with a āreal worldā initiative.
Idle protocol protocol can offer very interesting investment and passive income opportunity for university students. Itās UX is second to none in easiness, offering a great starting point for teaching about DeFi.
That being said, thatās a lot of $IDLE that you guys are asking and I would like to see some numbers before I can support this proposal:
. What universities?
. What courses?
. How many educational events?
. 20 students is too little. Cost of acquisition is too high in my opinion. And the fact that your initial objective is so low makes me think that you might have to go back to the drawing board and come up with something more scalable.
. Metagovernance is serious business and IDLE+Ben should always promote best practices. What I mean is that metagovernance and BEN delegation MUST use a multisig from day 1. Using a wallet and understanding delegation/multisig should be a mandatory point for students to successfully pass any course.
The overarching goal is to stimulate more student (collegiate) participation in governance processes/practices. We measure the outcome of these activities by engagement generated within the respective meta-delegate channel weāve created, along with the quantity of votes we collect during internal polls. With this in mind, the focal point is the inclusion of all the mentioned categories youāve stated (new strategies, financial reports, new 3rd party integrations, legal analysis, etc.). Students should not be limited to a particular topic of discusssion, rather the contrary. In fact, students have conducted/participated in the creation of new strategies (āproposalsā) via Uniswap as well as creating financial reports via our Intercollegiate Crypto Fund (albeit this being a side initiative apart of governance).
The intention of creating the BEN Uniswap Meta-Delegate was to provide students with the opportunity to be a part of a burgeoning community, offer an educational experience on how to utilize the Uniswap protocol, and most importantly allow these students to dive into the mythical waters of Uniswap Governance.
As stated within our Uniswap Meta-Delegate press release, we define success based on galvanized student interest and participation from various chapters within BENās Network. Being one of the largest, oldest, and most diverse collegiate networks in the crypto-arena we pride ourselves in targeting representation from universities from all over the globe.
This said, success is primarily measured by:
Number of universities and countries represented in our governance calls.
Number of university chapters weāre able to assist in setting up their own delegate.
Number of proposals our Meta-delegate(s) have voted on.
For the sake of consistency, we hold bi-monthly committee calls to review any & all active proposals, temperature & consensus checks, proposal submissions, and trending discussions within the forum.
Great questions @unicorn. Below I have responded to all in the order that youāve submitted.
What universities?
The Blockchain Education Network supports over 200+ blockchain clubs worldwide (and growing).
Please feel free to check out our āClubsā page to see how many University clubs are comprise our network.
& 3. What courses? | How many educational events?
Via our BEN Learn portal, weāve been able to create courses ranging from Blockchain & DeFi basics to more technical works such as Solidity Development. We have also held live introductory workshops with: Near Protocol, Polkadot, Substrate, Polygon, Tezos, Decentraland, Chainlink, and Terra (to name a few).
After the completion of our courses, students are rewarded with blockchain-based certificates that are compatible with Linkedin (bolstering the studentās skillset and improving job-prospect opportunities).
