 welcome you all to today's session. This is secrets to collaborating with makers to co-create tech for civil society. And so we're really thrilled to be here to have all of you leaders from civil society with us today. Today's session is really about how can you find the right makers for your projects, how they work understanding their methodologies, how they do processes, and then how can you communicate effectively with this segment of people to ensure that your project actually goes smoothly and you achieve the outcomes that you're looking for. So today you're going to get practical advice on how to get your organization ready to successfully implement decentralized applications and then also how to collaborate with different startups in the tech space. So I just wanted to say a huge thank you to the Filecoin Foundation. They're the ones that have supported this session and the other sessions that TechSoup has been putting on. My name is Ann Connolly and today I'm going to be your event host. So today I'm really excited to introduce our guest expert, Michelle Wukar. So Michelle Wukar is head of ecosystems at Octant. She recently co-authored the state of Web3 Grants report and created the Protocol Party game as a researcher in Ethereum Foundation's former protocols program. She's a Forbes 30 under 30, a two-time TEDx speaker and has won many hats in prior years including being a media entrepreneur, a community builder, and a writer. Michelle, thank you so much for joining us. I will hand it over to you. Yeah, let's get started. I wanted to start with something a little bit more personal. I think this session is going to be pretty, I really want to share a bit about my own journey and how I got into this space and then the second part of it is going to be focused on how you can really learn more about the space, really get involved, and then how you can benefit from a lot of what's going on in this space. So a little bit about my Web2 journey. So I've been an entrepreneur a few times. I used to run a media company, have done DTC and just really been in tech. And along the way built an accelerator program helping founders go from early stage to revenue in 60 days. And in short, I really had no business being in Web3. I do have a technical background, but I have not coded in a long time. And you would wonder what someone like me was doing in Web3. And so this was like a snapshot of Web2. And I entered this, I really started, I'd say, when everyone was talking about NFTs and monkey JPEGs, there's a time when you couldn't escape the internet, especially if you're like chronically online like me on Twitter, you would hear the word Web3 every now and then. And so I started getting curious because a lot of my friends who I consider the smartest people around me were starting to build in this space and were pretty active. And I've been loosely involved in the sense that we'd give Bitcoin workshops years ago and would be organizing them. But just from an awareness perspective, there's no actual building going on. And it really was just helping people understand this new tech that it started and started getting involved with NFTs and wanted to understand what all this hype was around. It felt a lot of, especially if you're not in the industry, there's so many misconceptions and there's just all this buzz. And you just wonder, you see these headlines that I think a lot of times really exaggerate and misrepresent a lot of the actual development that's going on in the industry. And so I was just curious and started getting involved with some communities, started dowing in the space, which really means working with a bunch of different dows and the way the space goes and I'll explain a little bit more. There's a lot of flexibility in terms of what you can do. And so I started working with some of the top dows, including seed club, thankless Dow, Protein, Gitcoin and She-Fi, from there ventured into heading a product studio in Web 3. And a lot of it was exploring curiosities, right? So I'd say like a big part of this industry is really just choose your own path. And there aren't a lot of binaries in that traditional way. And over the course of from last year to this year, I just really wanted to explore more around the research side of things. And so part of like essentially was part of this program called Summer Protocols, where we had a bunch of different folks who were in Web 3 and then had a different background that wasn't just technical from the arts, social sciences, entrepreneurship, and just a few different areas come together to figure out what protocols are and to figure out how we can make this accessible. And so what I created was a game called Protocol Party. And what it is, so this is going to be published in a few months time, but it's essentially a game where I wanted my friends to understand what protocols are. And no one in my actual life really understands a lot of what I do, which I feel like is something a lot of folks in the space share. And so this is the board name and it's a card game where there's a gifting scenario where you are at a housewarming party in Dubai. And there's different social scenarios. And you choose your own path in terms of what you would do in each scenario before the party, during, and then after. And it is supposed to be a fun game, but what it does is you end up at your protocol persona. And this is based on a larger research paper by this researcher called Angela Walsh, and she did on your journey in the protocol system. And so this felt like a fun way, or probably the only way, and you my friends would be reading a lot of these papers or essentially just doing a lot of the technical stuff that we were working on. And I felt like a good breaker into them understanding a little bit about the space and just about protocols. But let me, and the other part was I, to really get into the space and be more, to learn more about dows and stuff, actually a joint two different programs. One was Kernel and the other was She-Fi. And She-Fi is a program that helps women understand more about Web3 and get into the space. There's a lot of technical stuff. There's a lot about understanding the space and there's a lot of sessions by different dows and protocols and layers and just a lot of the top organizations in this industry. And then Kernel was a very different one because it's a very humanities approach. If you can call that, there's a lot more, and you'll understand this as we go into this session, but there's just a lot more focus on connection, on introspection, and just on reflecting on the world and how that makes sense. And it all connects to tech in Web3 and Pacific. And it's a really cool way of really getting to know people. And you'll understand why that's so important in this space because people and connections are really how you can grow and even how you can ultimately help the org that you're a part of or that you've started or the project that you're trying to build. And then Bankless Dow has been on a mission to help more people understand dFi, Web3, and just a lot of the technologies and just to demystify them. And so that's been the final part of my journey. And a few things around the research side have done research on token models, community building, I've written a bunch of stuff. So if you're interested in anything specific, just reach out after. I can send you a couple links on any of these things if you want to learn more about them. I think y'all had Azim in one of the last calls, and he was speaking a little bit more about Gitcoin and quadratic funding. So I've actually known a couple of case studies as well on some of their success stories with QF and QV and how community votes help decide what the space is. And that's been pretty cool as well. But grant programs as well, which make up a really big part of this industry and are very crucial, I'd say pillar almost in helping the space grow. And let's start off a little bit with where I currently am in my role. And so this might be of relevance, especially if you're building a public good project or essentially any, if there's any part of your project that's a little bit more open sourced, and it's going to be accessible to folks, this could be relevant for you. So at Octant, we fund public good projects and we help folks earn ETH rewards. And how we do that is oops, here we go. So every 90 days, we've got folks where we select different public goods projects along with our community. And Golden Foundation is really the parent company that Octant really spun out of. And what folks can do is lock in GLM, which is our token. And through this, they receive ETH rewards and they can donate to projects. And from this epoch, which is going to be essentially from January, any donation is matched and multiplied. And so it's a pretty straightforward platform. We've actually state 100,000 ETH and a lot of these rewards go into funding public goods projects. There's a QR link here. So if you're interested in learning more, feel free to scan it. And we can help you on that journey. So if you're a project that would qualify, happy to chat about that later as well. But yeah, I'll take a few seconds if you want to scan this and then we can move forward. Sweet. So we'll get right into it. Like how do you work in this space, right? Or let's actually start with culture first. Vibes. And I know that sounds really silly, but that's really what the space is. I think a big part of what might make this space feel scary is not understanding how it operates. I think a few especially if you come from like a Web 2 context where things are pretty in a professional setting, I think everything's super proper. But I think the best way to explain Web 3 culture is it's just not. And I think the more you interact with it, you'll understand a lot of it is just based on vibes. And it's almost like a meme or a running joke at this point. But I'm going to try my best to help break that down, especially if you're new to the space and to make it seem a little bit less scary. It took me at least six months of really being part of a few different core communities to even feel like I was a part of the space. And it can feel a little bit different, right? If you're just starting off and it can feel overwhelming. So there's a lot of unlearning that happens as you realize, wait, like it's actually super chill. And how a lot of it operates. And I think just in terms of the culture, right? There's a lot of flexibility. This is something that's just across the board, you will be working with folks that are most likely in probably there's, I'd say every part of the world. There is a lot of focus on decentralization and permissionless ethos, right? There is just this general understanding that this is what we stand for. And there's a lot of belief in public goods and a lot of focus on community run decision making and a lot of shifts in terms of power. This space is supposed to signify, really, I'd say almost like a utopian reality. And I don't know how much of it is true essentially, right? Because we're so far from reaching there. And of course, there's like pros and cons with everything. But a lot of it is shifting the power and the balance back to community stuff. There's a lot of good organizations, but community is at the heart of almost everything that we do in this space. There's a lot of focus. And because so much of the space is online, there's a lot. There's a running joke, actually, which is like Web 3 is really just an events industry. And that's because there are so many events. But because it's so online, we events are really the best way to build credibility. And I'll go into that into a little bit, but like hackathons conferences, I mean, there's like a hackathon almost every day, if I'm not wrong, just like in some part of the world in Web 3. There's conference weeks, there's one after another. And there's just so much that's always going on. I'd say like the best, I guess the best parallel would be a month or like a few months in this industry feel like years in any other industry. That's just how fast-paced it is as well. But just in terms of the general culture, a lot of focus on open-source software and a lot more on, I think, building together, collaborating versus being competitive. And that's really what I've always appreciated. And one of the reasons I got into this space is I really just appreciated that part in specific, and how it was just different, right? Instead of feeling like you're going to, there's almost like this Web 2 mindset of protect your IP, but in Web 3, it's really just open-source everything and get more people to build on top of what you're building. And so how do you work with folks in this space? I'd say pick an ecosystem and deep dive into it. I'm not going to call myself an e-maxi, but I think that's really what I am. I'm super, super into the Ethereum ecosystem, but the reason I say pick one and stick to it is because there are so many different things happening in almost every single ecosystem. You're just going to overwhelm yourself if you're trying to reach every single one. So pick one, start with it, and there's a few different signifiers. Like, for example, the number of developers to learn and to understand better, but I'd say like an easier one to understand and be, and that's super accessible is the Ethereum community. There's probably an ETH meetup group or like an ETH community wherever you are geographically, and if there isn't one, there's a lot of support to help you get started to bring people together, and that's really how a lot of the biggest events in this space also started. There's a couple, if you haven't been to any Web 3 events before, like there's a couple that are coming up, that should probably be on your radar. ETH Denver is happening in February, DEF CON is happening most likely in the, no, I think, oh, I think we still have to finalize this location, but it's going to be in Southeast Asia. And so DEF CON is going to be another really big one. And these are two where there's a lot of builders. And what typically happens in these events is it's going to be like a week long event. And there's a lot of side events. And that's really where it's not just about attending, it's really about connecting with people. And that's where a lot of stuff happens. There's Cosmoverse, there's Solana Breakpoint, these are different ecosystems, of course, but you can look at the bigger events that are happening, plan out your schedule. And this is one of the best ways to make things happen, especially in terms of partnerships and collaborations. This is really the key. Join a community. And the best part is that because a lot of these communities are online and accessible, it's really easy to join one and to start getting to know people. You can join a program, what I did, and that makes it a lot easier to connect with people. Another one is participate in a hackathon. There's a really big hackathon culture in this space. And we'll get into that in a little bit as well. And finally, get active. Can you maybe, sorry, Michelle, just for the audience who may not know what a hackathon is, can you just explain really briefly what that would look like? I have a whole slide on explaining it. So I'd say, but I can give, of course, like a quick up. So a hackathon is essentially like a short, I'd say like an event where you build something. So you form a team, you can also do the solo, you have a time frame that's very limited and very intense. So in 48 to 72 hours, sometimes can be max a week long, you build something and you present it. And it's almost like a demo day that startups have, but really, that's the best equivalence to this. But you really just get together, very intensely, build something. And yeah, that's really what a hackathon is. And you can get prizes. There's a lot of main prizes. There's a lot of side ones too. But yeah, it's very intense, but so helpful in terms of really just building something and getting it off the ground. That's awesome. We have one question also from Joe. He says, if you pick one, I think one community is what he's talking about, and find that your organization doesn't fit in, can you switch to another one that fits better with your organization? Oh, totally. Yeah. Really, a lot of it is choose your own path, right? So if you feel like you can't align, oh, there probably will be some form of project or something or the other that is relevant to what you're doing. But if there isn't, you can go from one to the next, and it's probably going to grow your network as well. And sometimes people do switch. Like, there was a switch to polygon projects. There's a lot of projects that work together as well, depending on which part of the ecosystem you're in. There's like a different answer to that. But yes, you can totally transition, switch from one ecosystem to the next. I would still say give an ecosystem enough time, because initially it is overwhelming, and it might feel like you're not making progress. But of course, with any industry, it takes time to build connections, to build credibility, and to build trust. And a lot of this space is very trust-based. Key to success, I'd say if you're going to do one thing right now, download these three apps, Discord, X, or Twitter, and Telegram. This is how this industry operates, like DMs over emails, deals are done through DMs, like you're going to have tens of millions, or sometimes even hundreds of millions of dollars that are being transacted through in terms of partnerships and collaborations, and just projects that are being built all through direct messaging. And so this is one thing that's really different. It's very online. It's very casual. It's very normal to not even see. There's a lot of focus on an on a MIDI actually. So you might actually never know what the person's real name is, that you're speaking to, and who you're working with. You'll just know their username, and that's just about it. And unless you've met them at an event, that is likely how it'll stay. So there's a lot of folks who you'll be chatting with, and you'll literally just call them by their username, because that's what they prefer. But that's very normal in your space. There really is a very online identity, it's like world almost, that you're going to be diving into. It's very normal. And this is why that's also like the beauty of it. Because it's all online, everything is accessible. If you commit yourself to really getting to know people, you really can. Just by joining different Discord communities, almost every project has a Discord or Telegram that's active. Anytime there's events, Telegram groups pop up as well. And that's one of the best ways to see what's happening to connect with other people. Be very careful of scams though. That's one thing, especially if it's a really big Discord, users are always the weakest link. So if anyone asks you for money or ether, even if they seem legitimate, please don't click links without looking at what it is. And just as a general rule, don't accept DMs from people you don't know. Keep chats online unless someone is directly messaging you from their profile. But yeah, just be generally cautious in terms of social stuff. Some of the best people sometimes have had their profiles compromised. And so just like a disclaimer that I would like to give. But yeah, this is how it is. Sorry, one more question here from Trina. If a person is not on Twitter or LinkedIn, is there another way to connect with a speaker by email or phone? Oh, sorry. Trina, are you trying to get in touch with Michelle? I think, never mind. I think she's trying to get in touch with you. So we can, we'll make sure that you're able to connect by email or something like that. Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Whatever platform you message me on, whether it's Instagram as well, I will respond. I'm fine. But a lot of folks, especially in the space, Twitter, Telegram and Discord, that's really what you're restricted to. I've worked with a lot of people who didn't even want to do meet or Zoom calls. They legit just wanted to have calls on Discord or on Telegram. And I still don't know their real name, even though I've worked with them for months and months. And so that's just Web3 life. That's just the reality of it. So just get very comfortable with that. It's very normal. One thing people do at events, and this really might be new to you if you haven't been to a Web3 event, but the minute you meet someone, you exchange your Telegram username and you take a photo and you send it to each other just so you remember who the person is, because you're going to be connecting with so many people. So it's very normal for just, this is almost like a, it's almost like intuitive at some point once you've attended enough events, right? If someone does ask you for a photo once you've connected with them, just keep that in mind, totally normal for that to happen. So this was my first, I went to my first Web3 conference last year. It was DevCon. And DevCon is one of the largest or the biggest Ethereum conference, it's a developers conference. And I'd say it was the first time I really experienced Builder culture. Before that, I had been to crypto events and those were different because I think they were just so commercialized. It wasn't until I went to this event that I just realized what Web3 culture is like. And so the first thing that stood out to me, no one was talking about price. We were in the middle of the bear market. I know the prices are great right now, but just at that time, it really was as terrible as it could have gotten with FTX and everything else that was happening, but no one cared. And in the kind of conversations that were happening, were around the tech development and the kinds of the future of a lot of the stuff around zero knowledge proofs and a lot of the layer twos. And there was just a lot of really, a lot of conversations with a lot of substance. And that was really interesting. There's a, we are going to make it culture. Wagne, this is like a, it's like a Web3 term. We tweet out and we'll just share similar to GM culture. So one of the things that happens in a lot of communities, and then started right when the space started started picking up, but people will write like GM for a good morning and GM for good night. And so whenever you're online and you're up, you're just like GM. And it's just like a sweet way of greeting one another, like a, hey, how are you doing? And Wagne's similar in that way where there is this, you almost want to be bullish on things getting better in this space really picking up. And everyone talks about onboarding the next billion, but there is a lot of focus on, even if it has nothing to do with onboarding people, that's just sort of part of the ethos and the culture of it. And so a few things that I picked out here, when you go to a Web3 event, that's actual, it's got actual builders, it's just going to be like, there's a quirky culture element. There's a lot of memes and a strong meme culture. And these were some posters I saw at one of the boots with Vitalik. And that was like an Uncle Sam version of it. There's a lot of wristbands that you're going to collect as you go to different events. And that's, there's a lot of swag, there's a lot of focus on that. And it's on like very quirky things. And I'll show you what that means, but just some of the things to expect in terms of that. This is from DevConnect and Assemble that happened last month. And to verify identity, there was this thing called ZooPass where you had to show your identity. And it was related to ZK technology. And it just picked up. So these are the kinds of things, whack things that can pick up essentially, where if you collected a frog NFT, and you could do this every 15 minutes, and what it would do is it would help make the network stronger. But essentially, when you did this, you would get your score would go up. And once you had collected like 60 frogs, you could get a frog cap. And like people loved this. And this is like what the cap looked like. And it became so popular that they ran out of frog caps. And they actually had an actual frog going around. And people got really excited. So this is like one example of a random thing. But these are the kinds of things that you can expect to be totally normal. A bunch of people started adding a frog emoji to their Twitter names as well, just to show that they've got a frog cap and just that they're part of this inner joke almost. But yeah, we had a bunch of events and parties and people wearing these frog caps. And it'll it's like one of the most it might seem really weird, but that's Web3 culture in a nutshell, where it's just that's fun. It's almost like an inner joke where you're part of this and you get excited. And yeah, that's just a big part of this space. So how do you really plan it? Sorry, one question before you move forward. Joe is wondering if you can tell us the difference between Web2 and Web3? Totally. So the best way is Web3 is supposed to be antithetical to big tech. And what I mean by that is Web2 is pretty extractive, right? You've got a handful of companies that make a lot of money essentially based off of our usage, right? So companies make money on ads and they're extracting from users in a way where we don't get anything back. We don't have power on how our information is used and how a lot of our usage is really helping companies get rewarded. But Web3 is like the opposite side of it where it's people and you essentially have control, power, and understand what's happening. So transparency is a big part of Web3. Open sourcing things, right? Where it's really instead of a lot of development, but in a way that's super collaborative. And yeah, that's I guess that's like an easier way to talk about it. But decentralized technology where yeah, it's not centralized. That's the core difference between Web2 and Web3. And then you can go into different directions with it, but that's the simplest way to explain it. And so how do you grow in this space? Community at the heart of everything. There's a really strong focus on community online and offline. And understanding the culture really helps you become a bigger part of the community. Most of the time people are super, super friendly and are welcome to onboard and welcome you. It's totally okay to ask questions and not understand. People are willing to make a lot of time to even like basic things like what is a wallet? How do you buy your first crypto? Like for the most part, if you are just joining this industry, like people are going to be really excited that you are and are going to go out of their way to help you and connect with people. And I'd say we have a community mindset. There's this whole we all grow together mentality. That's a big part of the space. And so keeping that in mind, even as you're thinking about how to collaborate with other folks is going to be key. And what are strong elements of this culture? So there's hacker culture, bounties, grant programs, and governance. And we'll go into those. So let's start with hacker houses and hackathons. So they're typically 48 to 72 hour long. And what happens is you're typically participating to build something. So this is an example of put a screenshot of ETH Global. So this is just from one event where they had over 625,000 available in prices in assemble and look up ETH Global. And they typically have periodic events and hackathons. So there was also virtual hackathons that you can participate in. You don't need to be somewhere in person. But essentially, there's different objectives depending on what the price is. And you build something. So if it's I'll give an example if it's like, let me see who are the sponsors or ENS. So ENS, if ENS had a price for 10,000, they would typically have, hey, this is what you need to build and they'd give some sort of direction in terms of the kind of projects they want to see. And so you gather a team or you come up with an idea or you join somebody's team, you build a project, and then you present it when the demo part comes in. And that's how, yeah, that's essentially a hackathon is you just meet people and you build with them. And typically most hackathons also have information sessions, so they will give sessions on how to pitch, what to build, what to focus on, what they're looking for. There is a whole guide into how you can really excel at hackathons and a lot of even experience and super DOGs in this space who still participate in hackathons just because it's intense and it's just such a big part of the culture. I participate in my first hackathon in DevConnect, which was another event that happened and was organized by the Ethereum Foundation last month. And it was super intense, but I'd say just like that experience is worth it, right? Because you're just so under pressure in, yeah, it's just like a fun experience to fun and intense and might be something that may not always be for you, but it's really one of the best ways to meet other people in this space and to see how projects evolve and just like to understand the different mindsets as well. A few things that happen, right? You meet people, there's a lot of fun swag, which is another way. Once you start getting a lot of the swag and merch that you get at events, people identify you, like I'm wearing a shirt from DevCon, but whenever I've worn it and I'm at an event, people immediately, it becomes like a point of connection where you're like, oh yeah, like I was at this event too, that was cool. And so it becomes like a really great way to break the ice and go to just connect with people. And yeah, you can ship fun projects. Another thing that happens once you do try to build in the spaces, you can get that company's attention and two, you can win a prize, right? So even if you don't win a prize, you can still connect with key people that are part of that company during the hackathon and you can understand what they're looking for. If they would be interested in something outside of what the hackathon scope is. And so this can be another way to meet a lot of people in a short amount of time and just to be, yeah, just like speeds up your process of being in the industry. The other part is there's multiple prices as well, right? So you don't, you could be building one project and apply to a few different ones and could make it work. So that could be something as well. Now bounties are really just the simplest way to describe them is it's really just a task that you complete and it can take different forms, but you get rewarded for it. And so an example of a bounty on Banquet's Dow, for example, is that you set up your socials and you go through their guides for socials and their social media platforms. And then they might ask you to retweet something or to create something or there's different asks depending on if it's a Dow or if it's a company or whatever it is. There's a lot of, for example, a lot of protocols put out security bounties for folks to test from the security side to make sure whatever they're launching is secure enough. And so that's like a security bounty, but there's a lot of social bounties as well. And what they really are meant for is to get people to do small tasks and to participate and engage. So they can take different forms, but that's a big part of the spaces in getting people to rally up together. And then grant programs. So this is what was a big part of the research that I was doing over the summer. So me and other researcher Eugene published the State of Webtree Grants Report. This is an 86 page report. So there's a deep dive into programs, but some of the highlights. So we studied 13 programs, spoke to folks on the operational side and stuff, but there was over one billion that had been committed in grant funding. And over 68, 61 million deployed within 2018 to 2023. That's a lot of funding. And there's still a lot of funding. We still haven't even covered all of the programs that are in this industry. But before our report, and the reason why we even did this is because grant programs have been a black hole. They are such a big part of this industry, but no one had done research on identifying how these programs are run, how impact is measured, and just generally how they operate. And so we took a deeper dive into understanding that, breaking that down to make it accessible to people. And again, we got a grant for that as well from Gitcoin to be able to do this and from another private donor who wanted to support this. And it's why it's open source and it is a public good where people can really understand it. Another fun fact, close to 6,000 projects that had been funded by the time this report was published, these numbers have obviously gone up since then. And the programs that we focused on, so there was Avi Granstau, Compound, Ethereum Foundation, Mantle, Solana, Tom, Uniswap, Elgarand, Polygon, Protocol Labs, Filecoin Foundation is a part of Protocol Labs. And so that's like a fun fact as well. Then we had quadratic funding grant operators like Clear Fund and Gitcoin. And will we broke down and what the, and please do read the report if you really want to solve understanding, but we broke it down into each of these different parts where we looked at the stats, community, and how transparent each of these grant programs were and how much of the community say was a part of the decision making, the kind of challenges that they faced, what they did well, the history, the process ops, review structure, and most importantly, the impact measurement side, which we were most interested in. And we were able to bucket these programs into a few different categories, so there was the active programs. But then there's a lot of programs at Sunset and had an exit to Venture, where it used to be a grants program and now instead of a grant, what you get is an investment and there is an exit to Venture. The other part being there's an exit to community where the grant program went from being centralized to having the community run the program. And then the final part being this is completely shut down. And so how can you benefit from a grant program? There's a few different, I think a very basic step to it here is understanding the kinds of options available to you. There's a few different ways. There's quadratic funding and Kitcoin uses quadratic funding a lot, but what it is essentially a way for communities decision making to help decide how a bigger pool of capital is split up. And if you're thinking about quadratic funding, a few things you want to think about is building community support. There are so many projects that apply to Gitcoin rounds. And so if you're applying to Gitcoin round and you don't have a community strategy in mind, you're not going to get a lot of funding. So a few things to keep in mind, connecting with people, really marketing your project and gathering community support to get people to donate a dollar. It doesn't have to be a lot of funds in terms of numbers. Of course, bigger funding helps, but with QF, so much of it is numbers and community numbers. And so keep that in mind, same with clear fund, where it is going to be community voting that really helped decide how the funds are allocated. There's prospective grants, where these are really more rolling grants and applications. And these are typically a little bit larger, where they're for bigger, like just a time frame for them is a little bit longer. And they get a lot of applicants. And so that's why they require a lot of resources. But if you're going to go for something of this sort, you really want to be super detailed. And some of the learnings on our end were that like, there's a difference between being just like a generic project versus one that's really looked into the grant program objectives and mission and looked at what's when you speak to someone from the grant program side and are able to get their feedback to really craft your perfect application, that can be super helpful. And so being able to go onto a forum and really get feedback on the appetite for funding of this sort can be helpful. And then keep that in mind as you take that feedback into account. Then there are some programs like Solana and Ave. And what they do is they have requests for proposals or RFPs, and there's typically going to be certain kinds of projects that they want to build in their ecosystem. And so what they do is they'll have RFPs that they send out, and then projects can apply to get grant funding and to build out that project. And this is becoming increasingly popular, especially one thing to keep in mind, almost every ecosystem wants to attract builders and developers. And so if you've got a project that's going to bring more activity to, for example, their ecosystem, they are going to want to give you funding. That's just like the baseline metric. And think about that as you think about your project. Think about how many people could enter their ecosystem. And think about that perspective as you think about what kind of project to recommend. And another part of it where it doesn't need to be like what your full project is about. It could be an aspect of the project that you want getting funding. But keeping that in mind can really help. For example, there's a lot of companies that are media companies and are full-fledged typical media companies like Misari or Blockworks, but they've got an aspect or project that they've open sourced. So with Misari, I think there's like trackers for tokens with Blockworks. They've got like a grant. I'm forgetting what it's called, but they've essentially listed all of the grants that come up. And so they received funding from a few different ecosystems to build these out. And so even if your project, again, is not related to whatever it is that the grant program is about, you can still build a component and get funding for that. Research grants, they can be technical as well, but there's a bunch of research grants that do exist. The theorem foundation takes the most risk from what I've observed in terms of the kind of projects that they fund. And they will sometimes be the first ones to okay a project that other ecosystems would not want to support. Like the protocol research one where I created a game and it was really just a more social aspect. But the summer protocols was essentially funded by the EF. Protocol labs, Molecule, MediGov, each of these have a research grant perspective. And so just something for you to keep in mind, even if you're not looking to do research, you could still get funding for a component that kind of brings this forward. And then some of the findings from the grant report that we did, and this could be a potential project for you to pitch to these ecosystems, right? And then there's a few different ones really here. But again, for a lot of programs, we felt like the alignment wasn't there in terms of intention and then how they were running the program. And so there's still a lot more that they want to do. But again, a lot of these grant programs are super underutilized. And so I'd say like the impact measurement part has not been something that they've done very well. There's a sense of fear around ROI reporting. And I'd say there's very few that are actually reporting how they're doing from an applications and operations perspective. So AVI Grants DAO is one example I like to give because they have consistent reporting and they started this a few months ago, but they report how many applications they get, they report on how the funding is allocated, and there's a lot of transparency they bring to the community. But just overall, there's a lot more that could be done in terms of tooling foreground programs. This is something we felt like was missing a lot of things. There are some tools, but there's still so much more that could be done even around consistency, right? There aren't a lot of ways for programs to check who's got what kind of funding. So one issue that came up was grant farming. Grant farming is when a project will apply to 10 different grants and they're really operating through getting grant funding. And this was something that kept coming up and the projects weren't able to verify who else this project had gotten funding from just from a grant program perspective. And so that could be something to build on systems of support for grantees. It wasn't just financial support, but when we spoke to grantees, we realized that they really appreciated promotional support, partner support, tech support, financial roadmap planning support. And so there's so many different ways for your project to step in and actually help programs on the grantee side or on the grant operator side. Like that in itself can become a potential project that you could get funding for. And then how can you benefit from running a grant program? So I'd say especially in this industry, typical marketing activities don't work. If you're running an ad on X or Twitter, it's not going to get you the kind of results that running a grant program or in bounties will. So if you want to attract the best kind of people to your project and you want to get the best eyeballs, run a grants program. That's really the best it can become your best marketing tool. And this is like an unspoken rule of the industry. A bunch of programs started grants programs because they wanted to market to builders and just to people in general. And again, this is one of the best ways to attract the best people to build the community as well. And it can even be focused on your needs. It doesn't need to be a technical grants program, right? One of the things we're running at Octant are community rounds where folks can actually talk about content creation and whatnot. And they can get a grant for that. And it can be like a really small mini grant rate. But look at what your needs are and think about how you could spin up a grants program focused on them to solve that problem. A big misconception is that you need a lot of funding to run a grants program. You can do two things. One, you can run a grants program even with a small number of GeoWeb recently did a get coin round with 4Eath. And then we recently at Octant have been running our first, we did our first community round with G5 for 6Eath as well. And don't feel like you need to look for hundreds of thousands of dollars for grant funding. You can start with smaller amounts too. You can still get your community needs and just build a stronger community as you market the program. And then finally let your community decide. There's a big part on community building and that's why I keep saying community, but it's not a buzzword. When you run a program, especially if it's on a tool that's going to help you market it, you can actually get more people to learn about what you're doing. So think about that and just take it a step further and really to build that whole cycle. And then finally, again, you can scan this link if you want to learn more about Octant, but also you can reach out to me on any of my socials if you have any questions and want to get in touch. That's great. Thank you so much. We have one question from John that came in a little bit early. So you've addressed this a little bit, but I did want to reiterate it again. But John says, if we are interested in launching a DAP for the public good, are there any DAOs or hackathons out there that we should target specifically in order to kick start such an initiative of this nature? This would be only to begin a conversation and bring a greater awareness about our initiative and get to know and connect with more people in the Web3 community. What's the first DAP that organizations should take if they're interested in doing that? EVE Global is a really good one that you can think about and they've got that focus. It depends on what kind of public goods you're focusing on as well. Bitcoin and Clear Fund have internal grants programs too, so those could probably work for you too. Great. So if anyone else has questions, definitely feel free to drop them in the Q&A. I'm curious, Michelle, if you've seen a lot of adoption within these grants programs towards traditional nonprofit programs as opposed to Web3 open source type programs, have you seen that shift from the Web3 foundations into supporting more traditional charitable initiatives? Yeah, totally. The thing is, it depends on what kind of community you've built with your own initiative. It doesn't need to be a Web3 community. If you've gotten people to rally around and have shown interest in your Web2 project, you can figure out a way for these companies to partner with you. They care about end users. In terms of end users, what you want to think about is, if your product or service is going to be used, how can they get to know the grant program that you're applying for or that you're thinking about, right? So that can become a really good way. And I'd say another part of it is a lot of orgs really don't know how to work with Web3 companies, right? So we work down a bunch of these things. But what you want to do is connect with the head of ecosystem or someone who runs in is on their grants program side to chat with them and figure out how can we work together. Part of it might be they have the technical talent to help your project grow. And it's a really good press for them. And it's good awareness for them if they go into an actual use case. The face of the industry that we're in is everyone's trying to figure out their product market fit and are trying to figure out use cases, like actual use cases. If you feel like there's a way that any of these ecosystems could support you, and it's like a win for both of you, that's what you want to be thinking about and chatting about. And you may not have all the answers, but this is something you could probably work with each of these ecosystems to figure out. Yeah, I noticed one of the things that I noticed in the change from when I went from a nonprofit career to a crypto career is the change in pace and speed. So the Web 3 space is, I'm sure you can speak to this, Michelle, it's just like you can spin up projects in 24 hours. And so I would be questioning what are your thoughts around how can nonprofits actually pick their pace up to match the pace of the Web 3 space? All of us constantly feel like we are not on top of our stuff. Yeah, there's no kidding around how fast space this space is. Don't take too much time for decision making and the perfect strategy. The best way to learn is dive in. Done is better than perfect. And so spin out whatever you can. By the time if you're spending months, kind of figure out your strategy, it's going to be out of date and out of touch by the time you put it into implementation. Because the industry may have changed and sentiments change and everything else changes around that. And so even with the grants programs, what they were looking for and the kinds of projects changed with each iteration of their grant grant. And so keep that in mind. Now and done is better than perfect. And just key that mentality in general, right? Experiment and keep an open mind as you're thinking about what you want to do. And you can start with lower risk projects, right? Maybe you don't want to do a full transition, but you want to start like step by step. And that way you're building credibility. You're testing things out. And you also figure out what kind of team or ecosystem you want to build in. One thing that is very true is that the more developed ecosystems may not give as much support from the core organization perspective as compared to newer ones. So the newer layer twos, for example, that are launching, they want to attract the best builders and projects. And so they have funding specifically to attract projects to help them build in their ecosystem. That's the only trade off, right? So that's another thing. The Starbucks deal, I believe they gave 7 million or 22 million to Starbucks. That was Polygon, right? So for that partnership, they were paying such a big corporation to include a what through component into their app, right? Just like that's the mindset that you want to be thinking about. And their end goal was all these users that Starbucks has because of their, the app usage and stuff, right? So that's one example, but a lot of the newer ecosystems, they've all got funding specifically to grow their ecosystem. And that's what I'm saying, connect with ecosystem folks, because it will really help you figure out how you can get and enjoy their community and their ecosystem. I think that's maybe a perfect spot to land on is this idea of, yeah, done is better than perfect.