#269: What Could the Future of Alumni Donations Look Like?
PLUS: 🦍 ApeCoin conducts a RFP for ApeChain
Texas Tech’s Web3 Acceleration Association
Yesterday afternoon I stumbled across this post from 6529:
Texas Tech? NFTs? Web3 Acceleration Association? Must investigate!
What’s Web3 Acceleration Association (WAA)? It’s a student-led nonprofit at Texas Tech focused on onboarding fellow students through education and hands-on projects.
What caught my eye is that the ‘First Semester Drop’ is a digital membership into the WAA ecosystem:
Price of 0.008 ETH (~$20) on Base
Open edition until the end of the semester, about 3 months
Mint proceeds go to WAA
University blockchain efforts have proliferated over the years, with Cornell recently approving Bitcoin-focused study, USC hosting industry conferences, and even my personal encounters chatting with students at conferences or hackathons.
WAA stuck out to me though because of how they were creating awareness and fundraising.
How do universities and student orgs fundraise and how might that evolve?
As a millennial, my impression of university fundraising efforts has always been somewhere between telemarketing and an activity reserved for rich alumni.
I’ve fortunately avoided most of this, probably because my net worth suggests that I’m not worth targeting 😂 That does beg the question though: What would get me to donate to my alma mater or the student organizations I was a part of?
When I saw WAA’s mint, I immediately minted the NFT to support their efforts because of the novelty and the purpose. It sparked an interest in a university I had no affiliation with. Hell, I’m not sure if I even know anyone who graduated from Texas Tech.
True to what NFTs could be, this isn’t just a ‘receipt’ of donation. This digital membership allows for more functionality and the potential to build a deeper relationship with the supporter. WAA has already thought about this with their inaugural mint, sharing an overview of their plans:
Minters gain access to workshops, networking events, and future airdrops
There will be 4 semester pieces, and wallets that mint all 4 will receive the “Graduation Piece” as a reward
As a brief thought exercise, what else could these student orgs do?
Partner with emerging digital artists at the respective university to release and promote their artwork
Provide token-gated updates to holders and supporters
Grant early access to projects and products that the org is working on
Extending the ‘alumni’ concept further
Another category of alumni that could benefit from this would be company alumni groups. There are some parallels here university alumni groups across the dimensions that would result in some sort of relationship:
Temporal: working at a company for X years
Financial: ownership in company options or shares, starting new companies with former colleagues or being referred opportunities
Emotional: Maintaining relationships built up from working together
Typically, these company alumni groups keep in touch through alumni groups on various platforms like Slack, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and similar to collegiate alumni, activity slows down or dies off as time passes.
What if HR airdropped an ‘alumni’ token for every employee when they leave the company?
If I started a new company or product, I could provide exclusive beta access to my former colleagues based on the token. They could check out the product and provide valuable feedback and follow along for progress updates.
We aren’t at the stage to support this at scale yet, but it may be a concept for large web3 or crypto-native companies to explore in the near future.
It’s exciting to see collegiate blockchain organizations explore new fundraising mechanisms, and I look forward to WAA experimenting with different ways too keep supporters involved.
And for my alma mater, USC: If any student orgs are fundraising via mint, I will awaken from my alumni slumber 👀
ApeCoin conducts a public RFP for ApeChain
When I was scrolling through the Spaces on X earlier this morning, one caught my eye:
What’s all this hubbub about? TLDR and refresher:
ApeCoin (APE) is Yuga’s ecosystem token that was airdropped to holders in March 2022
The token has already been integrated into various Yuga games such as Dookey Dash and Legends of the Mara. Brands like Gucci accept APE as a form of payment.
The Yuga ecosystem is currently on Ethereum L1, which is cost-prohibitive if the games and ecosystem want to scale. Because of this, the ApeCoin DAO has proposed the development of an ApeChain.
Last week, the DAO held a vote to confirm whether the community wanted to build an ApeChain. The vote concluded yesterday with 95.5% of APE voting ‘For’ it.
In parallel, the DAO held a RFP (request for proposal) for a partner to build ApeChain. 4 proponents responded:
A-Team: A group of individuals with blockchain backgrounds that would build on Optimism
Horizen Labs building on Arbitrum
Matter Labs building on zkSync
Polygon Labs building on Polygon’s Chain Development Kit (CDK)
Voting for which proponent to move forward with to build ApeChain is live and will conclude next week
For anyone familiar with this space, these are BIG names, and these proposals have been cosigned by the executive teams of each of the respective organizations.
Although Yuga may not be regarded with the same reverence as they were a couple years ago, they’re still one of the top brands and NFT collections in the space and can still drive significant existing and new transaction volume to the blockchain ApeChain will be built on. Oh ya, did I mention that ApeCoin DAO has almost $500 million in its treasury?
This isn’t just an exercise in transparency. There is a lot of stake for ApeCoin, the future of ApeChain, and the winner of the DAO vote.
Takeaways from the Space
Although the topics discussed were interesting, the way that the conversation went down was arguably more interestinkg. If you work in BD or are an executive, I recommend you listen to at least some snippets of the Spaces recordings (part 1, part 2). What stuck out to me?
The pitches happened in an open forum
When I think of a business deal, it’s something like this:
Ok not that old school lol. However they typically involve conversations behind closed doors, a small circle of decision-makers, and meeting each potential partner separately.
We had the top dogs in some of the biggest names in the same ‘room’. The only other time you’d see this type of lineup would be at a major blockchain conference.
These execs are undoubtedly comfortable speaking to public audiences, but this isn’t your typical audience nor environment.
Access to the conversation
The Spaces was available for anyone to attend or they could listen to the recording if they missed the live conversation. 1400 users tuned into the Space, and I imagine many of them won’t even vote on the proposal.
The recording has significant implications today (ApeChain vote) and has ripple effects for the future with impressions being made to other builders tuning in.
Put all the parties into one Space and you get something more like this:
Preparing for the sliding scale of formality
Because of the informality of the traditionally formal process, the breadth of how the conversation transpired was interesting as well.
Each of the parties came with a relatively formal pitch, but Machi from the A-Team brought some spice to the conversation. At one point he called one of the other individuals a motherfucker. How do you respond to that on the spot in front of hundreds of listeners as the CEO of a multibillion dollar company? Responding to a nasty post is one thing. Holding your composure (even if it’s just voice) in front of hundreds of listeners while trying to gain votes for a massive partnership is a whole different can of worms.
Is this the future of business in web3?
For the most part, no. This ApeChain Spaces is an outlier in the world of business, even in web3. That said, the way business is being conducted is becoming more transparent, community-informed, and informal. The industry we’re in is arguably one of the best ways to hone soft skills in a way that is more adaptable across varying environments.
If you want to follow along with the ApeChain vote, check it out here.
See you next week!
It's a shame successful businessmen can just constantly get away with bad actions, just because their money (and often controversy) makes sure people want them around.
Let's hope "A-team" doesn't win that one.