BUIDLing Momentum | Justin Moskowitz, Ellie Li, Del Titus, and Austin Griffith

all right thank you for joining us today guys so uh today we're going to talk about something that a lot of people a lot of questions people have as soon as they finish a bleon like eth Denver what do I do next you know where's this going and uh you know often times uh it's great to learn by doing and and have that start but what can you do if you actually want to take your idea to the next level what can you do if you want to see how far you can take it does your idea have legs uh is is this a real thing so one of the ways that you can do that is of course to start applying it in the real world and um so a lot of people are at different points in their journey and so uh we have a number of people joining us today that are going to help us explore kind of the directions that this can go and how you can figure out uh what to do what to do next here so Ellie Lee Dell Titus and Austin Griffith um and I want to give each of you a chance to just say kind of how you got into web 3 and um you know how you took it to the next level where how did you go from I'm interested in this I'm building my first pilot project to uh you know being being industry leaders where you're at so Ellie if you want to start us off yeah sure uh hey everyone uh my name is Ellie um So currently I'm one of the core team members was U East the University of ethereum focusing on product um but yeah it's actually a long story how I got into web3 so uh after college I took a leap of Fai to work on my own startup um so that was when the Netflix um you know binge watching was still a thing um I think nowadays know people just think oh like you know I'm just going to binge watch something but back then that was a cool New Concept so uh my co-founder and I built a clipping technology that lets users clip any moment from any uh streaming any videos online so we grew that to about 150,000 monthly active with um millions of traffic and then we got very lucky after 2 years the product went viral and we got acquired by an atte company so I was head of product there for a couple more years till they got acquired by Pub native which is an uh a bigger attack player in the space um then Co happened so I took a bit of time to um just think about what I want to do because um you know like social media and uh attech they're all very like attention and revenue driven you feel like you're always asking for valid from Outsiders versus you know what do I really want to build that you know that like that that's impactful um you know for other people and for myself um then because of Co I actually joined a later stage CC tele medicine company because of covid um so I was there for about a year but ultimately realized um you know I'm more interested in building starting something earlier stage versus being in a mature company like a series C stage to to um to to you know build products then um co uh so later later in Co you know that's when the whole web3 culture nft started exploding uh even though I've been buying crypto since 2017 that's like when on the product level especially on the consumer Mass adoption level um I finally realized oh this is something that makes sense to me I could start building something so I got connected to a Founder friend who back then was building on a social token uh startup so they just closed their series a and then the founder asked me to help out on the product stuff so we actually did um a few months kind of try and run pilot projects to see one if I'm actually interested in the space and then for me to learn more about um you know basically just Building Products in web 3 because there are still a lot of new Concepts that I I needed to catch up back then so after a couple month and then it made sense on both both sides and then I started my full-time journey into we3 and then never looked back awesome thanks Ellie and Dell how about you what what got you into the space in the first place and uh you know what please tell us your journey um and yeah thanks for that Ellie it's really um amazing journey uh so I mean I I initially you know my background was in retail banking real estate and then I joined a music uh Tech startup um and that was in the era where you couldn't necessarily share um music to one another from different streaming platforms so was quite disruptive at the time um unfortunately with that startup there was a um hostile takeover and then it eventually got sold to one of the big streaming companies and you know during that period I had a lot of um should I say uh companies uh that were based between the UK and the US very interested in seeing how I could assist them cuz we managed to drive that valuation quite high at the time so you know I got often approached by companies to see whether you can help us with fundraising Business Development and during that period Bitcoin landed on my Des um so it was around maybe 2 14 and I had a really close power who's a genius at Dev all the dev work and you know having come from the real estate background it became very clear especially like following the financial crisis that there was an issue in our economic system right and so when I saw Bitcoin I thought hm this looks very interesting and basically we figured out a way to start mining it um and so we mined it um um you know we mind quite a few got I think we went as far as like we got maybe close to like 30 to 40 coins at the time um so it's quite aggressive and then um unfortunately we had the destiny of holding our coins of Mount G and the rest is history from that point but we never thought the value would be as it was we didn't really go into it with that mindset and really started to think of how would could be involved in this um and so I would say bit similar to ear uh pre pandemic post pandemic um I had an unfortunate experience of losing my father so I had to spend time I had to go to um Ghana um in Africa and whil I was there you know it just kind of had this epiphany of you know what could be done here in the tech space and if you know you look at Africa um from my perspective you have a GDP that was you know significantly underperforming um you know close to I would say 1.5 billion people 70% of that being youth um and most of them not really capitalizing on their productivity and so when you look at the way cryptocurrencies had performed in the last 10 years in terms of asset value it just made sense that web 3 was a place to go in Africa and it wasn't a luxury it was actually needed right there's you know there's people that were unbanked um there were so many systems that the government had that just needed assistance and so my journey there was I was going to set up an incubator which is web3 arra um before actually building a product where we are today and that web3 arra was designed to bring together the community in Africa the institutions um Regulators to sit down and figure out out what kind of projects we should be looking at um building out there um and so we hosted a bunch of conferences um a lot of hackathons and actually we're fortunate enough to actually host vitalic last year for two weeks in Ghana um well he was he was all over Africa but he he came he headlined our conference um last um last year and with that you know with that incubator we managed to build a very very big community and then from there we secured a um partnership with the central bank which leads us to the product that we've now we've now launched but ultimately you know the objective for the Central Bank when they approached me to see how we could help them was based on the fact that a huge amount of cryptocurrency had been going through West Africa and there was no real oversight over it and so that kind of led to to our partnership which is where we are today and so I have we have web through arra which is community building focus on bringing regulators and policy makers together and partners outside um of the region and then we have the network state that we're building which I'll get on to further down the line so thank you thank you Dell and then many of you know Austin but you might not know his journey into web 3 so uh yeah let's let's hear it Austin vitalic is hard to get that's awesome you guys got metallic I know surprise so I am a builder I'm a product Builder I'm a teacher uh I went to school north of here a couple hours um I was building Facebook games for a long time I had a lot of games in the Facebook app store then Docker came along and I built like an infrastructure layer over top of Docker that would let you your organization spin up services first locally and then to the cloud all very seamlessly uh but within that company it was all closed source and I would put on a bow tie every Friday and I would show off some cool technology and one of those was ethereum and like 6 months later I was out and into ethereum right and uh obviously there's lots of nights and weekends a lot of the people that are in the build Guild are nights and weekends and that's how it started for me lots of nights and weekends building trying to prove out certain things I built this game called G there was this hand painted onchain like age of sale game and I brought it to eth Denver in 2018 and that was really like this moment for me that shifted from I've been lurking in the shadows to I'm going to go ship at this hackathon and we built a pogs game at that hackathon and I kind of got more into the ecosystem and found that doing Devil Type work where I would go like find some interesting concept and then kind of like hit record and just like build something with it and kind of teach it to people that started resonating and I did like burner wallets and meta transactions and then in 2019 we did the burner wallet here at e Denver where you got a coin you scanned it you had the wallet you walked up to the food truck you scanned that you bought some food and that was kind of a magical experience that catapulted me more into the space uh and then since then I built uh e. build which is like a teaching platform and then that led to SC eth which is like a prototyping platform and now build Guild is like this organization that I'm helping run around all of that where we do education with speedrun ethereum we do prototyping and building with scaffold eth and then we give a ton of Grants and I think we'll talk about that more as we go into this awesome yeah thanks uh so I mean you know what's really cool is there are a lot of different ways to get into this space but I think um there there's something consistent here is you just have to keep on building so so you might be at different places in your journey keep moving forward but uh the thing to note is that there might be some things you can do to be a little more efficient in your journey to move to move quicker towards uh the goals that you have so depending on where you're at there's different things that you're going to need to do so um as part of the University of ethereum um uh Ellie and I work together on this project uh we have some introductory content that you can consume depending on um your knowledge uh there's a lot of people out there who yourself possibly included you might have 75% of it or you know 90% of it but there might be something that you're missing just in terms of those Basics and so there's basically about a 15-hour course that you can go through uh from start to finish uh depending on where your knowledge level is some people have speedrun it in about 3 hours as well uh um and then uh if you if you go beyond that there are plenty of other resources like some of the things that uh Austin and other people in in the space uh offer as well so I just want to kick it off first with depending on where you are education can help you get uh get good bearings on um uh get getting to the next step more quickly if you're missing something it's hard to get there so are there any resources and anyone feel free to take this that uh our panelists particularly recommend for people to um get up to speed uh well I guess I I'll go um so I'm not technical um I've always been in the product background so I guess I learned more about web 3 or like you know what crypto is from more of like a general understanding perspective um I will say resources um that you have access to is so much better nowadays versus even two three years ago or even back in 2017 um so when I was getting um just educated on ethereum with Bitcoin was back in 2017 it's more um mostly from the financial perspective oh like if you're getting early you know you can uh make some profits so that didn't really resonate with me um but I think given um the ecosystem growth and everything now we have the opportunity to set set the right narrative why this technology this under uh under um this you know fundamental layer of this technology is important how it's revolutionary how that's different from you know web 2 um and from how that how that's different from fromont web too so uh I'm a little weird so like I kind of learn from just reading about a bunch of different things and create this knowledge graph in my mind uh and then was chat GPT uh you can actually create his knowledge graph just ask Chad GPT to generate that for you and then you can ask questions about um you know each area uh to do a deeper dive so that's how I learned um for example like the l2s um when it was um like the op stack the ZK sync like all these um you know type of um you know uh L2 layer uh but you know at the University of um uh the at the University of ethereum we offer this interactive kind of dingo style to really simplify the complex blockchain concept into something interactive fun um for you to uh ease into it uh which I personally find very helpful as well uh when I was building the product um and then outside of work I'll say I listen to podcasts um follow you know industry thought leaders like Austin uh on on Twitter um and then also obviously balic uh read his blog posts um so those long form content uh content I think in general it's a bit lacking in the industry but when you see good content like this you have a good broad understanding of what's going going on in the ecosystem and you can always dig deeper with the help of um you know what we do at U and then with chpt so I think that uh like to quickly speedrun it uh first do you want to get the syntax down you want to understand how solidity if you're a builder you want to understand how solidity Works uh and then I point people toward speedrun speedrun.com and there you'll get a bunch of the AHA moments that we've compressed into the curriculum and then go to hackathons and build things and the first six things you build are going to suck and you're you're going to think they're awesome and they're going to land and you're going to get into the ecosystem and everyone's going to love you and you're going to get rich but you got to throw away a few projects first and you got to get through a lot of those things and a second thing is don't ask for permission this is a permissionless ecosystem almost everything is open source the best way to contribute is just go find issues that people have and solve them whether it's in their repo or whether it's a product and just do that over and over again out loud and you kind of give a shout out to like crypto Twitter and warp cast too like watch what other people are doing and get the vibe and understand the context and what what's good to build and what's not good to build so basically your project sucks yeah it's G to S it's G to suck I just got to warn you like the judges might not get it like it's okay you got to keep building do it over and over again yeah no for sure uh so I I guess uh if you if you look at a lot of the things that actually finally uh hit that product Market fit in the world they they don't just come out and nail it day one usually right so that that's a big piece of uh why we're here talking with you today is to to kind of figure out um you know what what are different ways that you can actually take this idea that you have and try to get closer to product Market fit try to turn it into an actual sustainable company or organization um so there's there's a lot of different ways to go about that you you could build a company you could partner with uh other people um you could uh go open source you could look for Grants there's a lot of these things that we can we can dive into um i' I'd like to start with um i' I'd say uh the the uh pilot project approach of uh reaching out to people um who have problems in the world and how we can um help and then also I want to talk about in terms of um maybe as an ecosystem for uh the blockchain community there could be a way for us to um make that make that bridge a little bit more accessible um to to new projects so um actually Dell I want to come to you for a minute so with with the bank of Ghana obviously there's some pretty interesting opportunities um that that could be that maybe some of the projects here could help solve um so what what would be the best way for a project here at eth Denver to approach the bank of Ghana and and uh you know kind of understand what those problems are and see if their their uh project might be able to help out or their team yeah that's a great question um Justin so I mean when we when we started the journey or maybe 2 3 years ago we could foresee that these kind of questions would come up right so if you have like a very interesting project on this side of the world and they see expansion opportunities in Africa how did they go on about it and sometimes is as basic as not knowing the right people to network with um and so that's why we created the web 3 Acra so that it was a community- based project is nonprofit right and the objective is to bring together the ecosystem um and one of the things I personally did is I did seek grants so I was doing the trips to the West Coast frequently every other month um and I also joined a network State um one called afropolitan um which is based between um the west coast and um I would say the African ecosystem and by joining them I met other builders as a matter of fact I actually met them at e Denver two years ago so you know that that that shows you the power of what you guys are doing and as a consequence of that you know we built web3 arra and then started creating this kind of network effect where we were talking to builders let's say like Austin and say hey just come out you know when we're doing our next conference or our next town hall do you want to come out of Africa some people haven't been right so it's an opportunity to see the continent while also meeting Builders and other ecosystems and then what we also did is rather than going to the bank of Ghana and say hey you need to take this product we realized a problem they were trying to fix which was building a digital currency right and so we started inviting them to our conferences and our town halls and really having conversations with Builders and people that were using these assets right and make no mistake some of these people in these institutions actually do use crypto and so they were giving us insights on some of the you know crypto that they were buying and how it was performing as tests right um and I would say in Africa the benefits are it's not as rigid of a system where if you are working within an institution you can't a financial institution you can't buy crypto you can buy it they'll cap it and say how much you can buy but they don't mind you kind of like playing around with it to understand how it works and so there were questions back and forth between us and the community and eventually the Central Bank launched the ecd which is the digital currency which they are testing out in rural areas um and they've that program has been going for um just just under a few years now um and then that led on to our partnersh ship with them which focused on actually putting a policy together um and by then as I said you know we'd had a few protocols come and then you know the coin bases reached out um you know vitalic came the binance has got got in touch and they they set up shop um on the continent and then now here we are in a situation where by May Ghana would actually officially announce his policy Nigeria's done so a few months ago and other African countries and central banks are doing that at the moment um and then now we're in a position to actually launch um a network state that is very much focused on kyc for blockchain and allowing citizens to get some sort of utility against that awesome awesome and so if a project wanted to come in and support that and and connect with you obviously uh coming to events either uh you know coming and meeting you maybe right after this for example would be a a good first start right yeah could connect with me um we to invite you to events that we're hosting out there and then some of the initiatives that the central bank is creating um I we we have a good enough relationship to you know invite people outside the ecosystem who want to be involved and then can kind of take it from there that's great that's great uh so Austin and I were talking a little earlier about grants uh and in fact uh still one more question for you D so um in terms of pilot projects um to to help move some of those initiatives forward there are a lot of uh ecosystem uh organizations that uh contribute to helping Builders uh take on pilot projects um so it it can sometimes be hard for a builder to get one of those grants uh if there's not momentum or something meaningful assigned to it so um it's an interesting way that uh the builders could collaborate with you to get some of your initiatives done or at least create more of these pilot projects that um you know you could say wow we did 20 pilot projects one of them worked really well the rest of them didn't do a whole lot whatever but um it I think there's uh there's just not enough uh pilot projects that are connected to real world use cases and to organizations like yourself that yeah absolutely you know so uh I guess from that perspective um if if some of these Builders wanted to propose things to you and then partner with some of these organizations um what what would you say uh would be good way to to get in touch yeah so sometimes um you know like with the builders on ground some of them have some really really great ideas but they need they needs guidance in terms of how they formalize that is the best way to put that and so best way is really understanding the organizations how they wish to what is what what is their culture on issuing grants right and then creating some sort of intermediary formality that allow the right Builders to kind of connect to that and that's where web three comes in to work with the organizations and the builders on the ground to ensure that there's a should I put it um a pragmatic system um and then hopefully we Pro we will provide the oversight to ensure that that's expanding in the right direction um and as I said we've done most of the leg work on the ground and so it makes it very easy for an organization to come to us and say okay how many Builders do are good on solidity you know is there any AI Json um web 3 projects that we can look at what's happening in the gaming um area and they just literally tap into the community and we we we help integrate that awesome awesome yeah so um we'll we'll uh we'll we'll provide some follow-up information for Builders that want to get in touch with you for sure and then um Austin maybe we can talk a little bit about just some of the ecosystem opportunities uh that can help Builders uh you know start off with a grant maybe don't jump straight into VC funding or like P pursuing like a full round for something uh other other kind of approaches what what kind of things do you recommend yeah I I don't know what to do at the VC level I'm GL glad we have like more input on that because once it gets there I'm I'm out but uh I try to keep Builders as like free agents for a while and let them explore what they think is going to have the most impact in the space and the way we do that is with like streaming grants and the way to get a streaming Grant is kind of a nebulous process but it had to do with going through speedrun ethereum building lots of things showing them off and then eventually I would like we would find folks that were building cool things and then we would open up a stream to them on chain and they could withdraw from that stream and turn in what they're working on uh but I but I think more more generally like grants are available all over the ecosystem for open-source software you don't necessarily have to go straight to a VC you could find things that are uh where you could have impact maybe you're building a new library even if there's already a library that exists for one language you're building it in Rust instead and you know that's a new hot thing and it's more efficient and doing those kinds of things like builds up a really nice infrastructure within ethereum and a really good ecosystem so I think that like it still goes back to stop asking for permission start doing things start providing value uh but also like build guilded open for Grants like if you like we'll have a grants website that we're going to launch within the next couple weeks that are sort of like these small oneoff grants before you get like a streaming smart contract so there's programs all over the ecosystem for the these kinds of things and also like public goods programs if you're already providing value you'll get a retro airdrop from optimism or octant or gitcoin so there's lots of different funding mechanisms but then when when you're ready to go pro you have to talk to the VCS do do you want to shout out uh maybe all your favorites uh from the grant side for uh pilot projects I uh I mean it's more like pick the protocol that's most interesting to you right like if you're kind of getting into ZK go look at the ZK like Aztec and all of the ZK stuff I'm old so I'm thinking there's probably like so new ones that I don't even know the name of right uh but I would say like find the thing that you're interested in and then go start paying attention to those repos look at their starter kits go build something with it show it off and try to get their attention that way and apply to those grants programs awesome um and then I'd say uh just talking Ellie you have a lot of experience on more of that VC side of uh heading heading towards um you know if depending on the stage of your project uh if if if you feel like that's the direction you're going um what what do you recommend in terms of uh next steps and and how projects can uh possibly um do something that is Le let's say more more on that um in between getting funding like full full funding but what do they need to do to be prepared to to to get themselves to that point right um so it's it's interesting before I jump into web 3 um I actually uh did something on the side helping run an accelerator in the web 2 world so the reason why I quit um was because one I was not that good of an investor and two I just felt like you know this the pass to success is very narrow and really predefined for a company or startup pretty much if you want to be known in the startup world you only have you know access to VC funding and that's boring and then and that kind of turns the ecosystem in a very unhealthy way and almost like you know if you get VC funding you know then you get recognized um but what I really like about web 3 is there are so many different paths to success and this in in between stage um or like you know the ultimate Success is Not defined by the VC world anymore right it's by this greater ecosystem and then the product that you are actually building that's advancing um you know this whole industry I think that's you know the narrative or paradigm shift that we're seeing in the web 3 world so in this in between stage uh I think it's interesting from the pr side once you have some sort of prototype you know the question is always you know who are your target audience like who like who are you targeting right like is it defi you know is it you know the DJ world is it more Community Driven you you should be able to answer these questions before even you know taking a step further from just a passion project or something that comes out of hackathon or um you know from from East Denver project you should be asking yourself these questions before start you know navigating what the next step is and at the University of ethereum I think what we're doing is is interesting we're creating this navigation system or at least trying to to help people um you know navigate what's next for them right um so and it's also awesome that the fact that we are we are like having a panel talking about all the resources available and setting the right mindset that everything is almost open source it's almost available for you all you have to do is just start doing taking the initiative yourself um but from you know the basically the support system we offer at the University of ethereum if you have a good idea uh come to you know come talk to us we'll Provide mentorship support and um um you know and then basically give you all the grand opportunities that's that's available out there with all the l2s with build Guild uh with um you know uh web3 uh Acra um so we know these resources uh exist will help you navigate you know what's available to you um and then also depending on you know your target audience you know will give you product support will help you put together a team through uh all of our University and chapter Network so that we really creating our own ecosystem of Builders who are passionate about building something um you know doing real world use cases then we can group the right people the right resources together and really help you navigate and you know maximize um help you maximize your your effort to to build something that's really meaningful for for our space awesome yeah so I mean you've probably heard a lot of uh consistent messages here are around put yourself out there start start connecting with people don't be afraid to talk to them um and if if you you know may maybe you feel a little bit shy you need someone to help you out um in that that Journey that that is one of the places where uh the mentorship team at University of ethereum and a lot of other organiz ation can help so uh to Austin's Point pretty much every protocol has a team that's designed to help you figure that out so if you have an area that you're particularly interested in reach out to those teams and get going um so uh back to this whole idea of your your idea sucks um uh like you've heard these things like fail fast and um you know uh I think that's really important because you can put years of time building something that's already out there and you know been open sourced and um you know I I I've had some experiences of my own uh working in a direction uh just just having this Focus thinking hey this th this is amazing this is the best idea ever and then um is it really though right is so I want to take a minute to just talk about maybe maybe you could share uh some stories of your own uh of you know uh maybe not not putting enough time into or putting too much time into something without connecting with the community and uh in particular how connecting with the open- source Community can help you really understand how important your idea is and like how you can tap into that community so whoever wants to take it feel free I I felt like that was an Austin one yeah yeah yeah yeah uh so and and kind of going on that you're looking for validation as a builder when you have a good idea and a lot of times you'll see names and faces up giving talks and you'll go try to get some kind of validation from them hey I'm building X like we suck at knowing what the future is too right don't try to get validation from us try to get validation from users try to solve a problem that people are going to use and so your idea still might suck and we might think it sucks but you have to prove it to the World by going out and building it and getting users and seeing how they use it I think um yeah took all the words out of my mouth but um I think you know also in our case right don't be afraid to take the long road in my opinion because sometimes you look at you know for example had I looked at the hearings that some of the crypto companies were having in the US you know with the SEC and I would have never done anything right cuz I was like well it's pretty toxic there so maybe it's not even worth pursuing my central bank but when I had a conversation with them they were quite open they were very clear that the world is moving in that direction their problem wasn't um working with us or allowing us to test what we were building um their issue was around education and so they were very receptive to whether it was an Austin or vitalic or Justin or Ali who wanted to come and teach so um you know I would say yeah don't be afraid to take the long road and and and also be bold and be very open to the idea of looking at new territories because I genuinely believe that decentralization isn't successful unless unestablished territories can participate that's when it's truly successful right um and and that for me is like what kind of like you know it's like my North Star when I think of what we're doing um in Ghana and when you were asking Dell how people could solve his problems his problems are the same as a whole world of users right like smart contract wallets there's there's no one building good ux on top of smart contract wallets yet but that's what everybody is going that's how everybody is going to custody the funds in the next couple years so building a good smart contract ux where you can swap as your smart contract on Unis Swap and it's just one button click and it approves and it transfers all of that ux is coming but no one's really building it in a like no one has become the shelling point of that thing so by building that thing you would solve the problems for like worldwide users um yeah I mean I was going to say um because we work with a lot of students coming to us with uh good ideas maybe they're early um but you know our first advice is always go talk to your users like go test right and then it's not the end of the world if the market or like whoever you talk to doesn't like your idea it just means you know this hypothesis doesn't work maybe try something else but as long as you have this keep biding mindset I think you will find something uh that that you know resonates with people I I built like a hand painted fishing game age of sale it had commit reveal fishing for Randomness it had land tiles that you could buy there was a market it was all on mobile it was super responsive and I showed it off to a few people at eth Denver and a couple of in 2018 and a couple of them were like wow that's really cool but then the people that I really looked up to I went up to them and I showed them and they were almost like a little bit annoyed and they didn't get it and so just know that like it's tough and you have to build things and don't worry about what the figureheads on the sign say go get users feedback and put something in someone's hands and see how they use it and iterate on that well said awesome um so we we've talked about uh grants a little bit but um I I do think that that's a really interesting way to kick off your project and get a little bit of resources to help get access to some of those users uh if you can partner with a project um or organization that's a great way because because they have uh built-in users that you can iterate on your project with um can we talk for a minute about uh getting grants like what what what are people looking for in the grant process so uh when when putting something together um when applying for a grant what kind of information is important to the organization uh reviewing and approving that grant for me I want to oneliner like my my grant process is actually go speedrun ethereum go build a token vendor and a staking app and a DEX and a multisig and work your way through my curriculum but if you get that far and then you show up give me a oneliner of what you you want to build next and that's usually good enough for a small Grant do that two or three times and if that's successful and you're having impact that's going to lead to a bigger Grant or stream of eth um so um at the University of e uh ethereum we actually um have recently invested in and are currently incubating a project called Ace um so I wish the founder Colton is here on the stage with me so the reason we really liked his project was because it really resonates with our mission to bring the next 20 million or however much uh you know millions billions of users into web 3 so Ace is essentially a trading card game that's using the web 3 narratives that's very relatable to to folks um and then it's a really fun game kind of like Hearthstone um and then with the quality of the cards it creates it collects with people in a different way that we think there's potential to bring more people into into web 3 um so I mean it resonates with the dingo model that we created so we're trying to bring people from you know a creative perspective so that you know there's a chance to to include more people so just on I guess you know essentially ueast is our own ecosystem so when we think about you know projects to partner with or even investing we want to make sure that we're ethos align you know in on that right um so I think for a lot of l2s like when they're giving out grants they're probably looking the same things so when in your application you should talk about you know the potential for um you know the the possibility for all users that you can potentially bring onto this chain and then why you're doing it so um you know if there's any synergies so I think at the end of the day um this ecosystem is great because everyone's looking for a wing-wing um situation and as long as you can kind of establish that uh you always have a chance to uh get those grants yeah I'd add in one more thing um I do think choosing a public goods focus at first can be very beneficial for getting a grant if you can if you have an initiative that is going to do good in the world that's a great way to iterate on your project while exploring um you know the feasibility and how how users adopt it uh so one of the things that through University of ethereum we hosted a workshop with the princess of Sierra Leon and uh one of the things that we're uh moving forward now and actually is an opportunity for students and and anyone here is building a better process for managing wells in the country so um it it's interesting how that that developed and kind of moved along initially it was hey this is a conversation and um you know this is a cool idea but then one one thing led to another now we're talking with the government there and we have a pilot project that's being put together and uh Grant is uh just about um approved for that uh and the idea is that uh you know just building a well I mean that that's great you know that's helpful but is there a way to build a sustainable way for people to essentially buy Bonds in a well can you can you turn this well into a business can you can you take that water and sell it to nearby uh artisanal mines or or Farms or uh can you package that water and resell it can you attach um Wi-Fi and uh can you attach solar panels and like other things that are needed in a lot of these rural areas that are just not costeffective for people to to buy themselves and create a sustainable model um so a as a result um now that's become a relative relatively interesting project that uh that has um a lot of legs and and if if it can be proven as a pilot that can that can go anywhere right um if it was just purely hey let's just build a well and there wasn't more to it maybe that wouldn't be have been as interesting but um you know if if you can pick a public goods approach to um a pilot project and work with an organization that you say hey you don't need to spend any money on this um um I I just want to work with you as my partner and um apply for this Grant and let's let's see what we can do when we work together it can be a very effective way um to to take your idea out in the world and see if it has legs so um any any other thoughts on that I I would just like put the other side of that too and be like watch out for the fact that the the term public goods is kind of overloaded in our space a little bit already uh but building something that that even you can't stop that anyone can use that is somehow expansive with some fee system so it brings LPS in uh you you create this hyper structure that is useful for everyone so there's definitely like ways to make public goods but a lot of them still include Financial mechanisms I think we see a we still see lots of financial mechanisms and it's okay like I I was a computer guy and I didn't even really care that ethereum was money I thought it was just like this Unstoppable Ultra composable censorship resistant platform where I could deploy my apps but I think if if you look at it as a traditional technology like this goes really nerdy but there's a thing called a Cron job it's basically a service you want to run every night to roll your logs or compound your entrance or something in web 2 you kind of just set up a server and write the rules for every day I want this thing to check in but if you want that to work in web 3 if you want that that to be fully decentralized you have to understand that there's there needs to be an incentive mechanism yes you write the rule that says someone has to check in every 24 hours and only one person can but you also need to say whoever checks in gets paid and you need to have like some system of money flowing into that to be able to pay those operators to be a checking into your contract but once you do build that you build this system that's like literally Unstoppable which is really cool so I think that like yes public goods are awesome try to build things that help the whole ecosystem and are credibly neutral and fully accessible from everyone but also like don't be afraid of incentives and understanding uh mechanism design and how to use incentives to get a certain Behavior out of your users and that also brings up for me something interesting that came up talking with uh princess Sarah brother hindo uh which was that um there's actually maybe not as much of a need to build new wells in a lot of ways but to repair the wells um you know so it's like if there's not a incentive mechanism for people to learn those skills or or be like if the well does not make money eventually it will break and there may not be funds to replace that and so like creating like a creating a sustainable model with with proper incentives is is one of the best ways that you can you know create a public good actually well uh just to quickly add you know this is what we call regenerative pipeline at the University of ethereum awesome um so we have about 2 minutes left here um I want to give uh some closing thoughts from each person um so yeah why don't we uh kick it off with you Ellie any any closing thoughts or uh next next places that you'd like uh people to um go if they want to um talk more and tap into some of the things you've talked about yeah yeah so um you know obviously on the project and project level and engagement level with students we always welcome students to come you know take our one-on-one course to uh at least develop this General understanding of blockchain then you will feel confident and well equipped to you know navigate this ecosystem and will provide you know all the necessary support that you need to keep navigating keep buling in this space um and then just on the University level we're actually doing something really cool um so we put out this one-onone course um kind of as the fundamental layer to show this world what's possible but we are actually doing open call um to work with all different protocols projects you know if you're interested in providing educational content will give you this wide label solution that you can just take from us to create your own um interactive content targeting your your community and then the next bigger vision is really open sourcing this content creation where everyone one could come and co-create content with us so that we can build more Content Library as a whole in this ecosystem then it's really open accessible so that everyone can come into the space and start navigating with confidence um I mean as I said personally and commercially I've definitely um benefited from E Denver and the ethereum ecosystem so you know make no mistake some of your biggest opportunities will come from this place if you apply yourself um and as I said over the years the relationships have been kept we've watered the seed and now you know we have a flower that's growing into a tree eventually and so I would definitely say um you know engaging with an ecosystem like ethereum is very very good um in addition to that um I think you know don't let's not underestimate the e EOS system in Africa and how it contributes towards some of the large volume of transactions that's happening globally um we just use it differently we don't use it for the same um things that it's been used over here and so I would really advise Builders to really challenge themselves and stretch your Consciousness to see what ways your products could be used in different ecosystems and you might just crack something you haven't even thought about and I've seen that happen so many times and so you know I would definitely say you know that's super important um and last but not least with us um we are you know with web 3 arow we're solely there to be the partner um on ground uh uh uh supportive intermediary that can give you very good insight to how things work um in that side of the world and we can actually save you a lot of time as well and introduce you to some really really good Builders um and projects and institutions out there if interested that's I'll I'll double down on the same thing uh I think that like you like find your customer first and walk work backwards from them if it's an emerging market like figure out what kind of cell phones they use figure out what it how it works and build a product that works for them and get it in their hands and see what happens for for developers my call to action is to go speedrun ethereum uh go to speedrun ethereum and and go through that curriculum uh and a lot of the notes that we hit on today don't ask for permission just go build things uh don't don't ask for uh you know not advice but don't look for a good uh adab boy for me you get the adab boy when you build something and get users and that's what that's what the most important thing is I think awesome thanks everyone uh and if you want to follow up with us and get a little more help on some of these things you can drop by UI UHC org and we'll be happy to help you find uh get get oriented so thanks so much for joining us today [Applause] guys