Dear community members,
Let me first thank you for your active engagement throughout the past six months. I would like to start with the fact that our token distribution campaign engaged more than 5000 crypto enthusiasts and we successfully launched our EDU token, the fuel behind OS.University distributed platform.
DAY 2 of Blockchain EXPO 2018 has just started and Jordan (@JordanJambazov) and Momchil (@MomchilJ) are excited to share the news around https://t.co/2omC89h1aj token sale and business development. Go and say hi to them at stand 47!#ICO #expo #blockchain #education pic.twitter.com/toClvEfUsB
— OS University (@OpenSource_Uni) June 28, 2018
What we did right:
We managed to develop a viral distributed community throughout geographic regions, social groups and online networks. More than 50,000 community members on Telegram, more than 5,000 across Facebook, 2000 following us on Twitter, hundreds of supporters subscribed to our latest updates on YouTube, Medium, Steemit.
We managed to build a solid network of blockchain-centric partnerships — from appraising our token to auditing our smart contracts and integrating our system with others to bring more value to the key stakeholders in mind, i.e. our community of users and contributors.
We managed to receive an industry-wide recognition for our project — on the academic side (best doctoral research of 2017); on the development side (top 3 in youth-led IT projects of 2017); and on the blockchain side of the project (runner-up in 2018 global blockchain awards — most innovative use of blockchain for social good).
https://t.co/2omC89h1aj Advisor, Aly Madhavji (@aly_madhavji ) is now live at iBlockchain Summit 2018 in Shenzhen, China. He is speaking about the social impact of #blockchain and transforming higher #education along with the implementation of the technology. #smartcontracts #ICO pic.twitter.com/gVj4iKETjY
— OS University (@OpenSource_Uni) May 19, 2018
For a reflection to be truly useful, we need to be as honest as possible about our short ends as well. Here’s what we did wrong:
We were slow to spread out the word. A billion people in China understood about our project by reading about it in their native language just days before the end of our token distribution campaign due to the slow process of finding and on-boarding a community translator. We still have our site translated in less than 10 languages, limiting the number of people who can join the project significantly from what is needed for a truly global initiative to strive.
We were too restrictive in what counts as a bounty/contribution. We didn’t incentivize enough the organization of local meetups, webcasts, etc., apart from just a few ad-hoc initiatives. We didn’t run creative campaigns to the extend that we could have done it (e.g. a mascot contest, stickers’ design challenge, etc.). Having a bug bounty is important for a software development project, but is not enough for a global social-entrepreneurial open source venture — there are so many people who can contribute and deserve an equal recognition of their contributions beyond coding and awareness building.
We were slow to on-board new colleagues into our ambassadorship program and to work with the communities on the ground. We still haven’t managed to answer all of you who offered to join the team for which we are truly sorry and will get back as soon as possible. As a result of such delays, the participation in our Medium, Steemit and other online networks was geographically disproportionate. While we have community members, coming from more than 100 countries throughout the world, people from less than 20% of these locations were actively participating in the program. There we categories with less than 20 people engaged. And while every contribution counts, we can do better and can reach further if there is a bigger and more diverse community of education and crypto enthusiasts behind the project!
Being part of the Open Source University project gives us a lot - knowledge, experience and new opportunities. One month before the crowdsale starts, our CTO shares his personal #learnings from the #ICO campaign in a blog post #blockchain #edudaction https://t.co/EowRtS8Edb
— OS University (@OpenSource_Uni) May 17, 2018
Having counted our strengths and weaknesses, here’s what we decided to do going forward as far as our bounty/contributors’ program is concerned:
We will keep our bounty/contributors’ program open , instead of discontinuing it as foreseen back in November 2017. It would make no sense to discontinue an initiative that works well. We call this bounty 2.0 — ‘Proof-of-Care’, because this second phase will be for those who really care about the project in the long run.
We will distribute 33,3% of the EDU bounty token supply with an immediate effect (i.e. 33% of 960,000 EDU). The distribution will happen through this smart contract, which should be called individually by each contributor. Zero ETH should be sent to the contract address from the wallet of each contributor in order to receive his/her EDU amount. Approx. 100,000 gas will be enough to process each “call”. This way we will keep the process as transparent as possible. Practicing what we preach, we will record and distribute the shares immutably over the blockchain in order to ensure full traceability.
The remaining 66,6% of the bounty tokens will be distributed on a bi-quarterly basis at the end of Q4 2018 and at the end of Q2 2019. All new contributions as of July 2018 will be counted towards the next two rounds. Previous bounty contributors will benefit from a 33,3% higher weight of their stakes in recognition of their dedication, similar to how early backers of our token sale were incentivized with discounts for their contributions.
Why the 3 x 33,3% split of the bounty program?
To reflect the actual amount of tokens in circulation as of today (approx. 33%), the same percentage of the bounty will be distributed without changes in the shares earned. As of June 8th, we have about 66% of the EDU token supply undistributed. This post-token sale reserve will be spread in tiny fractions throughout academic institutions over the world with whom we intend to partner with. The more institutions that join us — the better for OS.University’s mission to reach more learners and provide the credentials wallet as a free, open tool to enable self-sovereign educational identity.
By implementing this staging approach, we achieve the following outcomes:
Fair Distribution — if we distribute a bigger percentage or even the entire portion of the bounty tokens today, we will disproportionately benefit one group of contributors vs. another. Those who bought EDU tokens will see the value of their token diluted, due to the disproportionately bigger percentage of bounty-tokens in circulation (vs. crowd-sale tokens).
Sustainability — we cannot sustain our community strong and healthy without a meaningful way to reward individual contributions going forward. As we have stated, approx. 1 mln. EDU tokens will be used for that purpose and we need to make these tokens as broadly distributed as possible. The time spent on community outreach and engagement thus far was useful, but not enough — more people need to get access to the bounty/contributors’ program over the next two ‘proof-of-care’ rounds.
That’s about enough reflection thoughts for a Monday morning. If you have any comments, ideas or you would like to join the community, reach out in the comments section or write us at [email protected].
Cheers! — Hristian
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