Academy graduates, let's build together this Defi project!

[Basem_Alasi]

Graduated from the academy as an Ethereum developer?
Congratulations!

As many of you know finishing the Ethereum programming course is just the beginning of a long road towards success in crypto. Employers are looking for top candidates and to be at the top you have to showcase your achievements in written-code not just with your certifications.

That’s why I’m inviting all of you to #BUIDL

Alef: A Defi Scholarship Funding Program

The idea is to provide a platform for sponsors to lock in their capital in Compound and fund the tuition fees of smart and dedicated students with the generated interest.

Which is by the way, how many scholarship programs work in traditional finance except this protocol won’t require any approvals from bureaucrats and financial institutions AND of course, it’s gonna be global!

Let’s take this example:
We want to fund a lucky student with a one-year premium subscription in Ivan on Tech academy costing us $34/month x 12 = $408/year

If we assume that Compound will have a stable interest of 7.5%*, then we can determine the amount of capital that sponsors should lock-in using this formula:
Principal = Tuition fees / Interest rate = $408 / 0.075 = $5400 (DAI)
*Interest in Compound is not stable but we can worry about that later.

Here’s what we’re written on Github so far:

Participants:
• Sponsors
• Academies
• Students //Not needed to be included in the smart contract

Dynamics:
• Students are chosen by academies. //Off-chain
• Academies present their offers to the sponsors.
• An offer contains: The academy’s name, the online course, and the amount of capital to be locked (The principal).
• The principal is calculated using this formula:

Principal = Monthly tuition fees / Interest rate

Since Compound’s interest rate changes over time, the principle has to also follow and be updated each month.

• Once an offer is accepted by the sponsor, the funds will be transferred from his address to Compound and a scholarship is officially granted to a student. //In the future, sponsors could raise funds by joining pools and fulfilling academies’ offers collectively.
• Interest in Compound is generated in real-time and transferred to an academy’s address.
• To ensure that the student is worthy of the scholarship, she has to take a quiz each month.
• If she fails a quiz she gets a warning from the academy. After a certain amount of warnings, the academy can choose to close the contract and lockout the sponsor’s money. //Quizzes and warnings can be done off-chain I suppose
• After passing a certain amount of quizzes and maybe a final exam she will graduate and the sponsor’s funds will be locked out of Compound and transferred back to the sponsor’s address.
• Sponsors can also choose to close the contract and lockout their funds at the end of each month.

Now, before you get discouraged thinking about the lengthy and complex code that has to be written, just know that we are all noobs here. I myself don’t have a degree in computer science and can barely define what a “mapping” is. This is an opportunity to put what we have learned into practice and learn by failing.

Here is how I would imagine the roadmap is going to look like (feel free to correct it):

1- Constructing the blueprints of a simple smart contract.

2- Writing the contract.

3- Making it interact with Compound (which might be the most difficult part).

4- Adding more functionalities and abstractions like dynamic arrays and stuff.

5- Developing the backend of a fully functioning Defi protocol.

6- Developing a user-friendly frontend for our Defi app.

7- Give this startup a name?..

If you’re excited as I am, join the discord and Github

I pitched this idea to the Compound community and they liked it. They shared the relevant resources to code on top of Compound so please join their discord they’re super nice

They directed me to a similar project you can check out

[gabba]

Great idea, i love it, i will join the discord ! Setting up a collaborative github repo will be good to start

[Basem_Alasi]

Thanks for joining us gabba

[ivan]

Hi Basem this is amazing.
Truly revolutionary, it changes the whole perspective on fundraising for smaller amounts - like academy tuitions. You should get in touch with Ethereum Foundation and get a grant for this!

I will cover this on the channel and tell people to write here if they are interested to work on this!

[Basem_Alasi]

I’m glad you liked it
We need to schedule our tasks and deadlines using Trello and calculate the budget needed so we can apply for a development grant from the Makerdao foundation https://community-development.makerdao.com/grants

So guys this is going to be a one-time opportunity to be involved in a bleeding-edge tech.
Please join our discord

[Paultier]

Hello @Basem_Alasi this idea is incredible. I really love it.

You basically want to fund the students scholarship which the interest rates of sponsors, right?

Since a few weeks I myself worked on a concept of the exact same topic. “How can it be possible to finance the academy for students who have little money?” But I got a different possible solution. I think both have pros and cons but honestly, I find your idea more sympathetic. But here is my basic concept, if you are interested in.

Participants:

• Students
• Academies
• (Investors)

This concept is based on an income share agreement somewhat you can find it here, for example. https://lambdaschool.com/isa

But of course, written as a smart contract and with extra features. It requires a new risk management system as investing is always coupled with risk. Either the academy or the investor will take the risk to get back a long-term reward.

Let’s assuming following as an example:

An academy is offering students a track to become a web-developer to finally to get a good job. The regular costs for the student is 100 $ per month (with monthly payment).

With FSISA (flexible smart income share agreement) the academy is offering the student following financing model. The student can choose if she/he wants to participate on the agreement. If so he/she agrees on, that as soon as she/he is getting a job which is paying him/her 2500 $ or above, he/she is paying back 10 % of his/her salary back to the academy, for the same period she/he have learned at the academy.

B2C Model

Bob was 12 months subscribed in the academy and finally got a job with the help of the academy. He now gets 2800 $ per month from which he is paying back 280 $ back to the academy each month for 10 months. So, he is paying back 280 $ * 12 months = 3360 $ in total instead of paying 1200 $ with regular financing.

Sounds quite a lot interest rates for the academy, right? Maybe yes, these number are just illustrative purposes. But you should consider the risk which the academy is about to take, and the maximal flexibility which the student is paying for. That’s the matter of the risk management. The academy should get rewarded for taking this risk.
In the students perspective I would definitely be willing to pay back such a high interest rate. On the one hand, it is a quarante for the student that the academy doing a good job, on the other hand, I would love to give something back, when I see that someone was helping me. (I’m sure others feel the same? A psychological survay would maybe be interesting at this point)
Of couse, this is not a solution for all. As soon as you are able to pay the regular payment with own money, or students low you should probably do that. But as long as nobody else is financing you, or you don’t want hard restriction, FSISA is providing you an option more.

Let’s move back to the moment where Bob is about to subscribe. Bob has 60 $ left over each month with which he could finance the academy partly. He decides to make the share agreement FSISA40. That means that he is financing the remaining 40 % of the academy costs with the FSIS-Agreement. Each month he is paying 60 $ to the academy. And he agrees on, that he is paying back 4 % of his income as soon as he gets his job after 12 months. So, he is paying 12 month * 60 $ + 12 month * (4 % 2800$) = 2064 $ in total.

Notice: Which each 10 $ you pay as upfront to the academy; your payback rate will decrease with 1%. Therefore, Bob also could choose to pay 10 $ each month and pay back 9 % of his salary.

B2B Model

If interested, there is also a B2B model which theoretically could be implemented. Basically, it is the model of investors and academies.

What I love most on your idea is, that it truly is a decentralized finance model. But I also see that both of our ideas serve slightly different niches. Maybe we can merge our ideas together and build something. What do you think?

[Basem_Alasi]

Nice I read about this idea just yesterday as I was googling scholarship programs! Right now I’m mainly focused on devolving my defi coding skills. Maybe we can implement something like that in the future

[Turbinesurgine]

I would Enjoy helping this project

Have a look at some Developments in this
0x73cC407fbAE89D69F20Cf15D51aA98171DC5703C

Some really nice Features here!

[Basem_Alasi]

You can join our discord here https://discord.gg/A8aHvb6

[Basem_Alasi]

Hey Paultier we developed a really unique way of hiring students who will be granted these scholarships. Check out this post and if you wanna build with us please join the discord https://discord.gg/A8aHvb6

[Turbinesurgine]

My computer was fully jacked after that discord group.

Would better prefer any other type of interactions.

Ok?

[Basem_Alasi]

You can just download it on your phone, switch-off the notfications or install the Great Suspender plug in if you’re using chrome to suspend the discord page automatically after a certain amount of time

[Basem_Alasi]

Check out our new post/update guys https://forum.toshitimes.com/t/running-the-academy-on-defi/13490