PEP-71: POKT Network x Encode Club 2024 Programming

Proposals Ecosystem
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Author: Katerina | Encode :sparkles:

Recipient: Encode Club

Category: Contract

Asking Amount: $25k, paid based on a trailing average (7 days) of the $POKT/USD price from the date of payment.

Background

Encode Club

Over the past five years, Encode Club has been at the forefront of building a vibrant educational community for developers, with the mission of helping people progress in their emerging tech careers. We have a proven track record of delivering successful educational programmes (bootcamps, hackathons and more!) in the web3 space. With a wide and diverse community of 100,000 developers, we strive to onboard the next generation of developers, while also helping existing projects get the support they need to raise and therefore increase project retention in your ecosystem. We are committed to encouraging developers to learn, build and advance their careers in emerging tech!

POKT Network x Encode Club

Last year POKT Network joined us as a Silver Sponsor of our Quarterly Bootcamps, intensive 6-week training sessions designed to select and nurture the finest talent from both web2 and web3 backgrounds. These developers are selected through a rigorous application and interview process to delve into the core aspects of Solidity, ZK, and all the bits in between. At the end of the bootcamp we have a dedicated time for workshops by our partners, allowing POKT Network a dedicated slot of 30 minutes to engage with attendees on all things POKT Network.

Through this initiative we raise brand exposure and drive POKT Network’s market positioning while driving developer adoption and retention within the network. We achieved this by educating our community about the practical applications of Pocket technology to allow participants to get a hands-on experience of the tools and services available.

Our approach is data-driven and we’ve observed notable success with Pocket’s involvement in our Bootcamp series, particularly in introducing new developers to the network. We strive not only to sustain this momentum, but to also further enhance it. Additionally, we place great value on the feedback received from participants regarding POKT Network, which serves as a cornerstone for refining our curriculum, ensuring that our collaborative efforts remain impactful and beneficial for all stakeholders involved.

2023 Bootcamp Stats

  • 1463 developers engaged across 12+ bootcamps supported (including Solidity, Expert Solidity, ZK) and involvement in the curriculum.
  • 65% from Web2, 23% from Web3, 12% students by interview background.
  • 45% now employed in Web3 after the programme.

Pre-Proposal: POKT Network x Encode Club 2024 Programming
Our Pre-Proposal post is linked here. After taking feedback we have decided to amend what our 2024 proposal, more details below!

What’s next? Our 2024 Proposal!

For 2024, we’re excited to propose an enhanced partnership with POKT Network, positioning it as the preferred RPC for the bulk of our educational initiatives, our Quarterly Bootcamps. This move not only equips our developers with top-tier RPC services but shines a year-long spotlight on POKT Network’s capabilities. Our plan includes engaging workshops that demonstrate the power of POKT technology to our cohorts, offering them invaluable insights and skills. This partnership will significantly boost POKT Network’s visibility within our community, fostering greater brand recognition and appreciation throughout our extensive educational activities.

Contributors

Anthony | CEO and Co-Founder

Katerina | Bizops Lead

You can find more info about the Encode Club team here!

Budget

Preferred RPC: $25k

Establish POKT Network as a preferred RPC provider for Encode’s educational endeavours (e.g. Bootcamps), showcasing POKT Network’s robust infrastructure to our developer community.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

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Are there any kind of metrics available for how many of those 45% working in web3 of the ~1500 Devs/students to have gone through the program are now paid users of Pocket?

It would be good to get some metrics on the ROI of the previous sponsorship. How many paid relay clients did the DAO get for $25k.

Given the ~700 devs end up working in web3, the DAO paid ~$35/dev to get a chance to educate them on Pocket. I’d be interested to see how that stacks up against other opportunities to spread Pocket.

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Hey @Cryptocorn, thanks for your comment.

Last year’s partnership primarily centred around establishing brand exposure, fostering early education, and enhancing awareness of POKT Network within our developer community. The initiative served as a great platform to showcase POKT Network’s features to an audience ready to learn and engage.

However, it’s important to highlight that our initial collaboration was not explicitly designed with the direct conversion of participants to paid users as a primary goal. Instead, we focused on integrating POKT Network into our educational ecosystem, providing foundational knowledge and hands-on experience with the technology.

Recognising the importance of your points, we have now addressed this with the POKT team, ensuring we can now focus on these metrics, acknowledging it as a priority moving forward. We’ll be working closely with POKT team to define and follow through on these metrics.

We appreciate your questions, as they help us refine our approach and ensure we’re delivering value to both our partners and participants :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks for your reply.

Could you possibly:

  1. Share any metrics you have from the previous $25k engagement? Or do you not have any metrics tracked from the last year?

  2. Share what metrics you will be tracking going forward if this proposal passes?

I appreciate that the initial engagement was introductory and Pocket’s side may not have pushed for as much data as we would have liked. I’m cautiously optimistic that this is being addressed, but would like to see some more concrete information before deciding on my vote.

I do understand that some data may be hard to collect and quantify- if a developer goes on to a new project 6 months after their course and pushes them to use Pocket for their RPC needs, it may not be quantifiable. However, we should also strive to make our decisions as data driven and positive-ROI as possible and so having a clear and transparent path of action to do this now would give Pocket more security and make voters more likely to vote in favour.

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Thank you for your follow up message @Cryptocorn! We love being data-driven and are excited that the POKT Network community would like to be too!

From our 2023 bootcamps, we’ve gathered some key statistics: engaging 1,463 developers across over 12 bootcamps, with a background distribution of 65% from Web2, 23% from Web3, and 12% students. These figures underscore the extensive reach and positive impact of our initial collaboration, highlighting not just numbers but a meaningful transition and active contribution of developers to the Web3 space, potentially benefiting POKT Network.

While specific follow-up data on developers’ engagement with POKT Network post-workshops is not available, the sessions themselves were met with enthusiasm (I’m happy to share the closed links with you below so you get a sense of things). Here’s a broader look at the feedback received, complementing our earlier summary:

  • Participants praised the workshops for being clear, concise, and informative, with most ratings between 7/10 or 8/10 and comments appreciating the insight into POKT Network’s role in the ecosystem.
  • The diversity in feedback, ranging from “wonderful solution” and “excellent” to more critical views regarding topics like the pace, technical depth, and presentation style, highlights the varied impact of our workshops.
  • Interest in POKT’s decentralisation goals was evident, with many attendees noting the network’s potential and expressing a desire to learn more or even integrate POKT into their projects.
  • Critiques and suggestions for improvement, including requests for more hands-on demos and clearer explanations of complex concepts, have been noted. These insights are incredibly valuable for refining future sessions to better meet developer needs and interests.

POKT Network workshops for 2023 bootcamps

Moving forward, we’re committed to working closely with Adrienne and the POKT Network community to define and track the specific ROI metrics you’d like to focus on. While we recognise that some data may be challenging to quantify—such as the long-term influence of developers on their projects’ choice of RPC—we’re ready to explore all avenues to make our decisions as data-driven and positive-ROI as possible.

We understand the importance of providing concrete information to support decision-making. Therefore, we’ll ensure to align our data collection efforts with Pocket’s goals, especially regarding engaging a large audience of new Web2 developers transitioning into Web3. This approach will help us outline a clear and transparent path of action for assessing the value and impact of our partnership.

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Its great to see this data! Thanks for keep tracking (and @Cryptocorn for asking :stuck_out_tongue: )

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This proposal is now up fro voting on Snapshot

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Hi Katerina. Can you please give some more detail on the planned workshops: time length, topics & who delivers them? How many workshops per bootcamp (of which there are four, correct)? How many bootcamp participants do you anticipate at each workshop?

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Hey @zaatar, thanks for the question! Please find the answers below:

Workshops will look similar to the ones provided by POKT Network last year (so tried, tested and approved!). The TLDR is,

  • Workshops are +/- 45 minutes long
  • The topic is usually an introduction to POKT Network’s tech but this is always something that is up to POKT Network to decide - we’re happy to support any educational content that you see fit in highlighting to newly interested devs.
  • In the past we had the Head of Marketing, POKT Network developers as well as the Director of the POKT Network Foundation lead the sessions. Sometimes the workshops were split between a marketing representative and then a technical representative. These worked nice but we’re happy to follow your lead on who is best suited depending on the content you want to showcase. I’ve linked some of these past examples in the post above as well if you’d like to deep dive into how they were previously structured.
  • As our preferred RPC provider we’d love to have POKT Network run at least 1 workshop per quarter!
  • The average cohort size of each bootcamp is about 200+

Hope this gives a clearer idea of things!

Katerina :sparkles:

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Hi @katerina, thanks for taking the time to submit this proposal and respond to the questions.

My main question is: Since the last boot camps, do we know of anyone who is now actively participating in the Pocket community as a result?

Thanks again!

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Hi @steve, thank you for your question!

While directly tracking each individual’s post-bootcamp engagement with the POKT Network community was not something we directly reviewed with the POKT Network team last year, we do have encouraging signs from the feedback we got from the bootcampers that many developers are exploring the POKT Network’s resources and technologies as a result of the sessions.

In having POKT Network as Encode Club’s Preferred RPC provider in the bulk of our educational programmes we’ll be happy to introduce follow-up surveys that specifically ask about participants’ engagement with POKT Network and their use of its technologies perhaps a couple weeks after the workshop sessions (this will be on top of the existing feedback we will continue asking for straight after the bootcamps finish). This will help us gather more concrete data and better understand the long-term impact of our educational efforts.

Thanks for emphasising the importance of tracking this engagement—it’s crucial for fostering an larger engaged POKT Network and we’re excited to make this process more robust!

Thanks!
Katerina :sparkles:

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Thanks, @katerina. I was just hoping maybe there was someone we knew—not necessarily as a result of tracking. Maybe just one person who mentioned the boot camps on Discord or here in the forums? It seems to me that even without the monitoring, we might see mentions of the BootCamp on our side.

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