Encode Club

Polkadot Treasury Proposal

Our Proposal

A cross-university programme to build student involvement in the Polkadot ecosystem.

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Education series and curriculum

Hackathon

Accelerator

About

Encode

We educate, support and back university and hacker talent in blockchain.

Our core team (7 in total, expanding to 10)

Anthony Beaumont�CEO��Anthony is CEO and a co-founder of Encode Club. He was previously Operations Director at Columbus Capital and StakeZero Ventures. Before that, he studied PPE at Oxford.

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Damir Bandalo�Projects��Damir is a co-founder of Encode Club. He is an angel investor into the blockchain space and a member of Metacartel Ventures and Cluster Capital.

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George Benton�Operations Lead��George is the Operations Lead at Encode. He has a degree in Economics and Finance from the University of Leeds, where he founded the UK's first undergraduate-led student blockchain club in June 2017.

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We’ve designed a process to bring the next-generation of talent to blockchain

Educate • Support • Catalyse

What we do

Hackathons

Accelerators

Workshops

Invest

Talent

AMAs

Educate Support Catalyse

Our university community

We partner with student clubs and societies at over 75 universities across six continents.

These clubs and societies have direct access to students interested in particular areas like blockchain, computing and entrepreneurship.

Why universities?

• Students are a vast, untapped developer audience.�
• They are smart and keen.�
• They are time-rich and incentive driven.�
• Open minded and willing to try new tech.�
• Proven source of talent and early-stage projects.

We’ve worked with the best in blockchain

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Our universe

We’ve built an ecosystem to help find the next big startup

Engaging the community

Scouting the community

Partner with university societies, �academics and departments

Track every hackathon and approach the best performers to join our community

�Hackathons

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�Talent/Recruitment

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�Accelerators

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Invest

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Our online community

all in one place, 24/7.��A place for hackers, academics, students and enthusiasts to come together.

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Our work with Polkadot

• Gold sponsor of 4th university hackathon, alongside Avalanche and Binance Smart Chain.�
• Over 100 teams and 500 people taking part in Polkadot challenges.�
• 4 workshops delivered by Dan Forbes, Phala, Moonbeam, Plasm, Acala and attended by 50-100 people each time.

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Finalists from Encode Hack with Polkadot

Sub Auction�NFTs marketplace

Loot�Gaming assets

Layercake�DEX

Problem description

Universities are the best source of digital native, passionate and untapped talent.��The Polkadot ecosystem needs a dedicated approach to onboard this next generation.

Our Solution

A 12 month university adoption programme into the Polkadot ecosystem

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Education series and curriculum

Hackathon

Accelerator

Wide impact (1000s)

Catalysing the passionate (100s)

For best projects (10s)

Timeline overview

Total programme length: 48 weeks

16 weeks

16 weeks

16 weeks

Education

Hackathon

Accelerator

End result for Polkadot

Greater student awareness of Polkadot

New, untapped developer talent

New talent working for Polkadot ecosystem companies

Exciting startups, new protocols and companies

Stage 1:�Educational series

Introduce Polkadot to students worldwide and educate them about how to get involved.

Core details

16 weeks in duration

8 events and content delivered

Content created and delivered by Encode team

Open to all 75 universities within Encode

Fully online and recorded

Background of students

• In general, 18-25 years old.
• Ranging from undergrads to postgrads.
• Most technical but also significant numbers of scientists, lawyers, economists, humanities
• Most have working knowledge of blockchain but mainly Ethereum.
• Usually been through at least one of our programmes already.

Distribution/promotion

• All programmes will be advertised primarily via the Encode website and Medium.
• Our partner university student clubs and societies have mailing lists, social media and access to mailboards.
• They promote the events and programmes to their core audience and more widely at their universities.
• Encode also has an online audience, mailing list and wide social media presence used to advertise programmes.

Event list

Content delivery

• Sessions led by the Encode team.
• Technical events led by Encode’s in house developer. Non-technical events led by Anthony Beaumont.
• For certain sessions, speakers from within the Polkadot ecosystem will be invited including:
• The Polkadot dev/dev relations team (e.g. Dan Forbes, Urban Osvald)
• Polkadot ambassadors
• Prizewinners and success stories from the hackathon Polkadot sponsored with Encode.
• Other community partners such as Hypersphere

Event execution details��

• A dedicated webpage with all event details and content will be set-up.
• Events take place on Zoom and are recorded and published on YouTube/medium thereafter.
• The course aims to start with a general level introduction to blockchain before proceeding to explaining Polkadot in depth over the course of the 10 weeks.
• Duration of each event is 60-90 minutes.
• A dedicated Discord will be set-up with support for participants to ask questions and for general organisation.

Universities involved

Full list available but to include:��Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, KCL, LSE, Imperial, Edinburgh, Manchester, Melbourne, Adelaide, Santa Barbara, Malaga, Rome, Milan, Bombay, Istanbul, BITS Goa, Penn, Cape Town, Michigan, NTU Singapore, Bahcesehir, Morocco, Berkeley, Nairobi.

Schedule

Promotion plan

• In general, we promote through two methods:
• Encode community mailing list, socials
• Student club networks (over 150 across 75 universities)
• Student clubs advertise on the ground via mailing lists, social media and notice boards on campus.

Certification

Students to receive a certificate based on their attendance:��Gold: 7+ events�Silver: 5+ events�Bronze: 3+ events

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Attendance will be cross-referenced with the attendees on a zoom and a short quiz for all participants to fill based on the workshops.

Educate targets

�50 universities participating

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�8 events delivered with associated content

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Funnel developers into the hackathon

Create new ambassadors for the ecosystem

�1000-2000 students attending

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Ambassadors

We will work closely with Urban Osvald from the Polkadot team to help onboard new ambassadors to Polkadot.

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Once students have gone through the education process, they are the perfect candidates to evangelise Polkadot at their universities.

Educational Workshop track record

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Over the last few years, we have delivered 100s of educational events with students, universities, clubs and societies around the world.

Stage 2: �Hackathon

Polkadot-only 10 week hackathon for students, particularly those that did the Education Series.

Structure

Whole process takes 16 weeks

10 weeks for hacking, the rest judging and promotion

Run entirely by Encode team

Students answer challenges

Rewarded by prizes (ranging from $100-$5k)

The hackathon will be judged by Encode and invited Polkadot representatives

Example challenges

Weekly schedule

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Welcome + team forming

Workshop

1-1s with Encode team

Workshop

1-1s with Encode team

Workshop

1-1s with Encode team

1-1s with Encode team

Workshop

Submissions

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Learning

Building

1-1 Calls with hackers every 2-3 weeks

Schedule

Example projects

Hackathon targets

�Programme delivered in full

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�500 individuals participating

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Funnel best into accelerator

Create new ambassadors/hires for the ecosystem

�100 finishing teams

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Hackathon track record

FoB 1 18/19

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FoB 2 19/20

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Spark Summer 20

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People

Teams

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Unis

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PhDs

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450

550

800

60

70

110

6

15

40

10

20

30

Encode Hack

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1500

200

75

60

We’ve run four hackathons to date, sponsored by the leading projects in blockchain.

Stage 3: �Accelerator

10 week programme to take great hackathon and researcher projects and help them become startups.

Life of a startup: we’re bridging the gap

Bright Ideas

Stage

Full Polkadot grant

Side Project

Stage

Full-Time Job

Stage

Quit job to work on this

Token/Seed Investment

The ‘moment before take-off’

Stage

Passion

Project

The

Club

Hack

Projects

Research

Projects

Weekend

Hackathons

Hopes and Dreams

How it works

• We source the best Polkadot projects from the hackathon and our community.
• 10 teams are selected by Encode to take part in the programme, which lasts 10 weeks.
• Each team receives a weekly 1-1 session with our team and a group educational workshop.
• We help them with everything from idea formulation, technical building, design, product building and entrepreneurial coaching.
• Sponsors support the hackers technically and see their progress every week.
• After the Club, we help them raise and go full-time.
• There is an option to give each team a small grant (£3k) to cover their living costs during the Club. This is paid on successful completion of the programme.

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Why projects love it

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• Free support, guidance and fundraising help.
• Freedom to iterate and experiment without the pressure of full-time commitment and investors.
• YC-style support week-by-week our team through a workshop and one-one session.
• Like-minded people working together towards a common mission means greater synergy, collaborating and a constant positive feedback loop and competitive environment.

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Case studies

Fred Siyu Lupeng

Cambridge PhDs, winners of Tezos, Arweave and ThunderCore bounties in hackathons 2019 and 2020.

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Vasilis Kari

Senior Scientist

ETH Zurich, UCL PhD, winners of our hackathon 2020.

Anish

18 year old, 100% win rate at 10+ hackathons.

Daniel

Top of year at Imperial, 2nd in winter hackathon. Building a cross asset transfer platform.

Stefan

Founder, Reflexer Labs - came 3rd in our winter hackathon. Raised $6m led by Paradigm.

Michael

Post-doc researcher Oxford, building Euler, won our summer hackathon. Raised $9m led by Lemniscap.

Course content

Schedule

Post-accelerator

Raise from Encode Invest

Raise equity/token funding elsewhere

Grant from Polkadot

Accelerator targets

�Programme delivered in full

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�50 applying teams

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At least half to go on to become funded startups

10 projects chosen

Accelerator track record

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Thundercore�Summer 2020

Algorand�Autumn 2020

Avalanche�Spring 2021

DeFi�Spring 2021

• 2 programmes delivered to date with over 50% going on to receive follow-on funding and become startups.

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• 2 programmes happening in the coming weeks.

Structure of costs

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• Total cost for year programme, up to £140,000 across 48 weeks.
• Split £90k to Encode for organisational costs.
• Encode burn rate is £30k+/month (due to increase).
• Running this programme will take up roughly 33% of our team time depending on the stage.
• £50k across hackathon and grants
• £20k in hackathon prizes
• £30k (£3k x 10) for accelerator teams.
• Funding released across 5 tranches
• £30K up front to pay for Educate Series.
• £30k after a successful Educate Series to pay for Hackathon.
• £30k after a successful Hackathon to pay for Accelerator.
• Up to £20k to hackathon prize-winners.
• Up to £30k for accelerator grants.
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Costs and milestones

Thank you

anthony@encode.club�