Porium - Grant Report #2

Porium — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 16:56:46 +0000

We’re excited to share updates for Porium, an online learning platform for Web 3 enthusiasts, developers and communities. One of our objectives is to make distributed technology more accessible through education resources and creating a learning environment.

Project Update

Based on user survey findings, referenced in our grant report #1, we’ve developed beginner-friendly courses for learners who have developed an interest in web 3 and its supporting technologies.

Blockchain Basics

This course is an introduction to decentralized and distributed computing. It constitutes an overview of layer one governance systems, open APIs, introduction to neutral computation description languages, and fundamentals of virtual machines like EVM.

Cryptography & Encryption

When finished, this course will enable learners to differentiate consensus algorithms and their corresponding hashing functions, including SHA, and understand how private and public keys govern distributed networks.

Token and Crypto Economics

The learning objectives for this course is to enable students to deconstruct state machines by understanding UTXO and account models. They learn how transactions and blocks are confirmed on different protocols.

Communication & Marketing

To support our community of learners, we launched Wengi, a Web 3 community with the aim of building around community data, democracy, internet-freedom and mobile~specific solutions. Additionally, we’ll support users and growth of new opportunities through research, collaborations and community engagement.

Events

We hosted several virtual and physical meet-ups with our growing number of community members. Using these sessions to discuss concepts of distributed technology, web monetization and digital currencies.

Forums

In addition to regular events, we’re maintaining multiple community forums on Slack, Telegram and Notion which as platforms, enable us to provide miscellaneous support to developers, learners and students getting started with blockchain technology.

Next Steps

Pilot Porium v1

In January 2022, we’ll be making the beta version of the learning platform available to registered learners. For this pilot students register for each course in successive order introducing them to blockchain, on a journey to develop a decentralized application.

Applications just closed for interested learners and we’ve received over 100 applications. Some lessons in each course will be self-paced, and instructors will be available to facilitate additional topics during the learning period.

Develop Intermediate and advanced learning paths

Through the workshops and hackathons we’re offering, we’ll continue to provide courses, bootcamps and training through intermediate and advanced learning paths to develop tech skills applicable in real world business environments.

Deepen partnerships to grow onboarding funnel

Over the course of 2021, we’ve developed various partnerships with Web 3 companies. In 2022, we aim to deepen these partnerships to widen access to various communities and frameworks within the ecosystem.

Host physical and virtual meetups for community events

We’ll continue to host community events which are an extremely powerful, galvanizing force to engage community members, expand our global audience and increase the number of people who are deeply invested in and committed to the success of Web 3.

What community support would benefit our project

Introduction to community engineers, and Web Monetization advocates to develop content, audit courses and speak at events introducing the community to Web monetization standards.

Porium — Grant Report #1

Porium — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 02:44:05 +0000

Project Update

Hi all - we’re excited to share updates for Porium a distributed online learning platform designed to maximize learning by integrating a reward system using various web monetization standards.

Addressable Problems: Online education is built on a broken business model with consequences like theoretical vs practical skills gaps. Another problem we identified is the minimal number of web 3 developers in contrast to web 2 developers.
Executable Solutions: To build a better internet we need to grow the pool of not just web 2 developers, collaborators and builders with career goals linked to web decentralized. To meet this objective we are designing a distributed online learning platform specialized in the web 3 education ecosystem.

Tech Stack Evolution

We spent a lot of time streamlining our back-end architecture to create a tech stack that reflects the distributed nature of the platform, along with possible Interledger Protocol integration options. Our high level architecture overview of the Porium software runs as a powergate + filecoin client on Lotus. Refer to porium-specs for more details!

Using various Web Monetization standards, we believe a better online learning business model can be built into the web itself. By monetizing one of the critical components of our business model i.e partner course providers, we’ll create an earnings model where partner course providers earn micropayments for every course taken and completed by participants.

Progress on objectives

UX Design Hypersprint

Building on our user survey findings and draft user personas, we ran a User Experience hypersprint session to design the user journey and create the user map on the platform.

We identified two possible user journeys the protocol developer and the dapp developer. For both the protocol and dapp developer they’ll start their learning journey with an introduction to blockchain fundamentals for beginners and a deep dive into blockchain frameworks for intermediate and advanced learners.

We then created clickable figma prototypes based on these user journeys which form the baseline for the application frontend build.

We welcome feedback on our prototype, tell us if you like our mascot, the learning giraffe as well. You can find the prototypes here.

Curriculum Development

Once we had a clear user map and user journey, we were able to identify the courses that we need to start writing. We have a three tier learning path that will take each learner through the levels in incremental difficulty.

We are developing our courses on three critical values that will maximize the participants learning experience:

Learning Paths: We provide the best way to learn a web 3 technology quickly.
360 Learning: We combine reading, videos and hands-on-labs to give an all-rounded learning experience.
5+ Frameworks: We are starting with courses on Interledger, Coil, Filecoin, IPFS and blockchain fundamentals.

Some great beginner courses we've started developing for the pilot include: Overview of Layer One Governance Systems, Introduction to Protocol-Extensible User-Interface, and Decentralized Data Structures. Each of the courses will cover various sub-topics and practice activities.

Communications and marketing

Go-To-Market

Client acquisition: Reach out to Web 2 developer groups on Discord & Slack
Digital Marketing: Create social media groups to start on boarding potential users on Twitter, YouTube etc
Partnership: Explore partnerships with RareBirds, Semsm, Blockchain Education Network & protocol networks.

What’s next?

Create the app boilerplate and start building the MVP components.
Experiment a badge/reward system created with tokens that can unlock benefits from the "sponsor" side.
Refine the user management and wallet integration workflow. Also determine the best wallet for the pilot.
Define a post-pilot community building plan.
We’ll be reviewing capstone ideas and taking course feedback from a members of each networks dev-community.

What community support would benefit your project?

Connect with mentors, advisers and experts to provide feedback on the critical components of the project including:

building a commercial model into an open source project,
incentivization of learning to create a circular earning model between course partners and participants
optimizing the technical architecture of the platform

The Interledger Community 🌱: Porium

Porium - Grant Report #2

Project Update

Blockchain Basics

Cryptography & Encryption

Token and Crypto Economics

Communication & Marketing

Events

Forums

Next Steps

Pilot Porium v1

Develop Intermediate and advanced learning paths

Deepen partnerships to grow onboarding funnel

Host physical and virtual meetups for community events

What community support would benefit our project

Porium — Grant Report #1

Project Update

Tech Stack Evolution

Progress on objectives

UX Design Hypersprint

Curriculum Development

Communications and marketing

Go-To-Market

What’s next?

What community support would benefit your project?