Secret University - Community Spend Proposal #2

Secret Governance
1

Milestone 2 Proposal Summary:
Secret University successfully delivered on Milestone 1: Platform Launch and is asking for community support for Milestone 2: Knowledge Expansion based on the following deliverables:

  • Knowledge expansion: Intermediate learning for developers
    • Secret pathway course for privacy components (viewing keys, permits) for secret contracts
    • Secret pathway course for front-end interfacing with secret contracts
    • Secret pathway course(s) for launching secret applications in Web3
    • Secret box mini-project to build a secret application using viewing keys / permits
    • Secret box mini-project for logging into secret applications using Secret NFTs
  • Platform improvements based on community feedback
    • Content management and organization
    • User experience based on milestone 1 feedback
    • Usage data metrics and analytics
  • Secret University student relations
    • Developer onboarding into our community
    • Establishing developer touch-points with professor office hours
    • Preparing content for workshops and hackathons

Total Ask: $93,350

  • Human capital: 1178 hrs x $75 per hour = $88,350
  • Additional resources: $5,000

A) What has Secret University accomplished so far?

Secret University officially launched a native education platform and web application for Secret Network developers at scrt.university. In our completed first milestone, we accomplished the following:

Launched the Secret University platform:

  1. Compiled key resources and repositories

  2. Established structure for “Secret Pathway” courses that allow for quizzes and accreditations

  3. Integrated Gitpod deployments of “Secret Boxes” mini-projects for developers to start coding

  4. Compiled bounty list that will be used to host CCBL and SLABs developer bounties

  5. Contributor portal for creating own content and learning courses

We launched the first introductory lessons for developers to:

  1. Understand the value proposition of building on Secret Network

  2. Complete pre-requisite tooling required prior to development

  3. Build their first secret contract using the Secret Dices pathway

We also launched the first introductory Secret Box mini-projects:

  1. Implement and deploy a basic secret contract to a local secret blockchain

  2. Develop the front-end functionality for contract interaction

94 unique wallets have connected to the platform, 13 accounts have requested access to become knowledge contributors, and 1 contributor (Codemonkey) has posted the first organic developer knowledge article for our network. We have received postive feedback to improve the experience:

“I love the secret counter box because of how clear and easy it was to read/understand the code and used that smart contract as a template for a smart contract I’m building.”

And in our delivery, we learned that many developer tutorials and environments are outdated and require updates and ongoing maintenance. We spent many additional hours upgrading the Secret Counter template from cosmwasm v0.1 to v1, being among the first to go through the process of troubleshooting the gitpod developer environment and automation task and working with beta testers to resolve issues.

B) So what’s next?

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In our next Milestone 2: Knowledge Expansion, our primary objective is to expand the knowledge content to make Secret University the go-to resource for developer education on Secret Network. Currently on the platform, we have introductory content for developers, but this does not suffice for developers who intend to dive deeper into learning.

Knowledge content expansion

This milestone will focus on adding a few more courses and mini-projects that are tailored for intermediate-advanced learning. Our goal is that by the end of these courses, developers will have an end-to-end view of how to launch their own secret application. We have prepared two hands-on Secret Boxes mini-projects for our students to further solidify their understanding of viewing keys / permits and to expose them to building secret contracts in the DeFi and NFT verticals. The topics we are focusing on is as follows:

  • Incorporating privacy components (e.g. viewing keys, permits) into smart contracts
  • Interfacing with the secret contracts from the front-end
  • Preparing developers to launch Secret Applications using Web3 tools (i.e. Secret Toolkit, unit testing, integration tests, web hosting)

Secret University student relations

Finally, with efforts from the Secret Agency, we have over 400 students from college universities who have expressed interested in Secret Universities educational courses. To adequately support these students, we will be establishing the human component of the university to onboarding new developers into our developer community. We will work closely with both Secret Agency and Development Committee in their existing efforts across the network to host “professor” office hours and learning workshops for this inbound class of Secret Network developers.

C) Detailed Breakdown of deliverables for Milestone 2: Knowledge Expansion

I. Secret Pathways educational content: 200 hrs - DDT and Alex | Sinplea

Coursework to launch secret applications

  • 40 hrs - Enabling privacy with viewing keys and permits for Secret Contracts
  • 40 hrs - Getting started with Secret Toolkit
  • 40 hrs - Launching a Secret Application (i.e. unit tests, integration tests, web hosting)

Coursework to interfacing with secret applications from front-end

  • 40 hrs - Interfacing with Secret Contracts
  • 40 hrs - Example application using Three.js & secret.js development

II. Secret Boxes development: 284 hrs - Laura | Secret Chain Girl

  • 84 hrs - Create Richie Rich - showcases keys, permits, gas and optimization, and privacy
  • 92 hrs - Create Log Me In - showcases how to use SecretNFT as token gated access
  • 24 hrs - Establish LocalSecret Gitpod docker image for Secret University
  • 84 hrs - Maintenance and support of Secret Boxes

III. Platform enhancements: 458 hrs - Alex | Sinplea

Content Management - 228 hrs

  • 12 hrs - Host external articles and videos (e.g. Youtube, Medium, Secret articles)
  • 60 hrs - Edit, delete, and preview support for content contributions
  • 30 hrs - Internal metrics setup and statistics integrations for community reporting focused on recording user experience and user behavior.
  • 18 hrs - Integration for SCRT Labs bounties
  • 28 hrs - Improved filtering and indexing for community resources and repositories
  • 80 hrs - Administration UI & tooling for core team efficiency

User Experience - 230 hrs

  • 80 hrs - Improved integration with Secret Badges and Certup certifications
  • 80 hrs - Add mobile support for all developer content
  • 40 hrs - Time for general refactoring, internal documentation, and design revisions
  • 30 hrs - Allow for bookmarking secret boxes, repos, pathways, and videos. (Will be displayed in user dashboard)

IV. Secret University student relations: 236 hrs

  • 40 hrs - Business operations and coordination for Secret University
  • 20 hrs - Leads generation with university outreach (with Secret Agency)
  • 24 hrs - Set new student orientation for developer onboarding
  • 32 hrs - Managing developer relations and feedback
  • 20 hrs - Establish sustainable professor and mentorship structure
  • 80 hrs - Provide office hours and mentorship with 5 professors (with Dev Committee)
  • 20 hrs - Setting up workshop and hackathon materials based on Milestone 1 materials

V. Additional Resource Ask: 5K USD

Total Ask: $93,350

  • Human capital: 1178 hrs x $75 per hour = $88,350
  • Additional resources: $5,000

D) Team to deliver on Secret University milestone 2

  • Darren | Fuzzy: Secret University business development and student relations
  • DDT: Secret pathway course creation and professor mentorship
  • Laura | Secret Chain Girl: Secret boxes creation and professor mentorship
  • Alex | Sinplea: Platform enhancement and professor mentorship
  • Lumi | Trivium: Secret University professor mentorship
  • Srtdrk | Sandman: Secret University professor mentorship
  • Melch | Secret Agency: Onboarding funnel and college university relations

E) Ongoing funding strategy

We fully intend for Secret University to become a resource for sustainable funds for core team funds. We have already launched a validator on the network, and while this is not currently sufficient to support our human resources, we plan to pursue additional more sustainable funding mechanisms including entertaining a community tax, student tuition for structured learning, and delegations for our validator.

Summary - Why voting “yes” is a strong future for Secret Network

Secret University’s mission is to provide value to Secret Network developers the best way we can. We believe we have initially addressed the need for a curated education platform in our first delivery. We are now working to expand the knowledge in milestone 2 to fill the gaps in educational content to support more advanced learning that will allow developers to launch an application with privacy-preserving components, end-to-end. Secret University fully intends to be the one-stop-shop for new developers to get ramped up quickly and efficiently - wasting little time in finding the right resources they need to build powerful dApps on our network. We will continue to work with the many stakeholders involved in developer education, including Secret Labs, Secret Foundation, Secret Agency, Development Committee, and many talented developers across dApp teams and in the community. Secret University strives to onboard, nurture, and curate talent entering our ecosystem to support our already thriving developer ecosystem.

If anyone has any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to the team. We will be addressing this proposal in the governance call on January 23 and January 30. Again, we sincerely appreciate all the support the community has already shown us both in the past and in planning this proposal!

6 Likes
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I’m amazed at what the SU team has already delivered and has live! https://scrt.university

All 52 universities the agency has worked with have asked for exactly what SU is building (and what you’ve outlined in this proposal.) I believe projects should build what the market wants and that’s why we already have 400+ leads signed up for this platform.

Having this dev training fully functional will help keep developers on scrt and ensure long term success.

I support this proposal and appreciate the SU team making this happen during rough market conditions.

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Pleasure to work with you guys so far, it’s great to finally have some resources to point new devs towards when we meet them. Getting good feedback from dApp team leaders who want to onboard their projects to Secret too.

I’m excited to see how we can develop these onboarding funnels & make the most of the more non-traditional content devs like @Codemonkey have added. Would love to spend some time with you guys and work out how we can best approach these different schools of development.

Looking forward to developing the email campaign with @melch18 & I know @Lucafortes7 has some unique ideas for onboarding too that he wants to share with you all.

Hat’s off to the SU team for the effort put in so far, and here’s to the future.

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I’m really excited about Secret University and I’m happy with the progress so far. However, I think a lot of the time estimates here are far too conservative (some borderlining unreasonable). A 50% reduction of the total cost is an easy yes from me, but the current ask is almost certainly a no. Somewhere in-between feels right.

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As an International Growth agent and working with the agency, Secret University will be very important for our work and future possibilities. Very excited and already working to onboard the biggest number of South American Devs to build with us the next wave of secret dapps.

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The content seems very shallow, it is concerning that people are learning about viewing keys and permits on phase “2” after we spent 27k on phase “1”. The hours dedicated towards building learning content aren’t even half of the total which, considering the depth of the material, shows signs of unnecessary bloat.

I think Secret University is a good idea, and I’d like to see it succeed, but I don’t see it succeeding at all like this.

1 Like
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I usually tend to be negative against spending proposals. I really hate the idea paying a lot of $SCRT for something that could be a total waste of them. There are several cosmos projects that did not use their Community Pools really well.

However, I believe that having University relations is a strong “asset” for the network and the foundation as well. The team seems to be consisted from great people that proved themselves in Secret Network ecosystem. I am not the best person to evaluate if the SCRT asked are many or not, but I think the amount asked is a fair one.

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I’m absolutely in love with the idea of SU.

It’s exactly what we need for bringing new talent into our ecosystem. Educate them, and get them building.

With the amount of interest in “web3 developers” coming from the brightest minds in our colleges, it just makes sense to snag that talent, cultivate it, and set it loose in our network.

I know in the depths of the bear market a large portion of the community as a whole voiced the sentiment that dev onboarding should be very high priority. I agree, and I believe this is a big step in that direction as a sustainable long term value.

I see some concerns for the dollar amount, and I understand those concerns.

However:
Human capitol is the most valuable form of capitol in most sectors, and ours is no exception. Focus on building that, and the rest follows.

I look forward to seeing further growth and perfecting the methods used to funnel talent into the university. As well as perfecting the process of education in the university. Let’s continue to collaborate among the communuty, full speed ahead, and let’s make SCRT a go to for dev power.

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9

Thank you for all the feedback we have received! Our team places a lot of value in the input of the community, and we understand there are many differing perspectives. We have begun reaching out to the few individuals who have expressed their concerns with content / approach and will take time to review this feedback internally amongst our team.

I do want to remind the community that the vision of Secret University was never to operate as a company. We have always envisioned Secret University as a community driven project that organically grows a sector of the ecosystem that can support incoming talent. We see success being a program that supports key network contributors to contribute knowledge and feed back into an ever growing developer community. The last thing we want is to extract value from a community that does share in this vision.

Milestone 1 was our initial effort to kickstart this program. It was scoped to design and establish the main structure in place to deliver on an MVP platform, introductory material, and launch mini-projects to get developers interested. A lot of hard work was spent on design, planning, and delivering on the content currently on scrt.university.

This proposal now includes areas for improvement for education, user experience, and developer onboarding. That said, we hear the need for additional emphasis on more advanced educational materials. The courses laid out in this proposal mimic the same learning path used in the Decentralized Netflix workshop that SLABs has been using to help Web3 developers launch secret apps. However, we are flexible to other approaches and welcome ideas that help us better narrow down the areas that need additional focus.

Please feel free to reach out to me or any of the Secret University team with your thoughts. We will be available on the governance call on Monday!

3 Likes
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I really love the project that you all put up, I’m even using it myself for learning when it comes to smart contract development on secret.

But I have to agree with @cow.level here. Could you please try to reduce some hours here and there to reduce overall amount (around 20%? seems possible) and the resulting strain on the community pool ? The estimates seem a bit big at times (e.g. at the Secret Boxes Development the estimates are quite big for some parts).

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I feel like you feel .

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Community spend to build community is SCRT well spent .

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We have taken this last week to review and assess community feedback for the proposal and made some changes to the initial ask. To summarize, we shifted resources to prioritize deeper, more advanced educational content at the expense of user experience and business development hours. Our adjustments results in a -20% reduction from 93K to 76K based on the following decisions:

  1. Adjusted education focus for deeper secret specific learning content (Snip-20s)
  2. Reduced hours focused on user experience for the platform and secret boxes
  3. Reduced hours for student relations (as developer relations is now covered by agency)

The new breakdown for Milestone 2: knowledge expansion proposal is as follows:

I. Secret Pathways educational content: 240 hrs - DDT and Alex | Sinplea

Coursework to launch secret applications

  • 40 hrs - Enabling privacy with viewing keys and permits for Secret Contracts
  • 20 hrs - Getting started with Secret Toolkit’s storage solution
  • 100 hours - SNIP20 pathway with contract architecture overview
    • Description of how SNIP20 tokens are created, wrapped/unwrapped, transferred, etc; walk through most frequently used functions and queries (won’t deep dive into vk and qpermits theory since it is covered in other pathway); SNIP20’s design for storage/state management; walk through the receiver interface and the mechanics of SNIP20 contract-to-contract interactions

Coursework to interfacing with secret applications from front-end

  • 40 hrs - Interfacing with Secret Contracts
  • 40 hrs - Example application using Three.js & secret.js development

II. Secret Boxes development: 220 hrs - DDT and Laura | Secret Chain Girl

  • 64 hrs - Create Richie Rich - showcases keys, permits, gas and optimization, and privacy
  • 72 hrs - Create Log Me In - showcases how to use SecretNFT as token gated access
  • 84 hrs - Maintenance and support of Secret Boxes

III. Platform enhancements: 268 hrs - Alex | Sinplea

Content Management - 228 hrs

  • 12 hrs - Host external articles and videos (e.g. Youtube, Medium, Secret articles)
  • 60 hrs - Edit, delete, and preview support for content contributions
  • 30 hrs - Internal metrics setup and statistics integrations for community reporting focused on recording user experience and user behavior.
  • 18 hrs - Integration for SCRT Labs bounties
  • 28 hrs - Improved filtering and indexing for community resources and repositories
  • 80 hrs - Administration UI & tooling for core team efficiency

User Experience - 40hrs

  • 40 hrs - Time for general refactoring, internal documentation, and design revisions

IV. Secret University student relations: 220 hrs

  • 60 hrs - Business operations and coordination for Secret University
  • 20 hrs - Leads generation with university outreach (with Secret Agency)
  • 40 hrs - Establish structure for student orientation and professor mentorship
  • 80 hrs - Provide office hours and mentorship with 5 professors (with Dev Committee)
  • 20 hrs - Setting up workshop and hackathon materials for Milestone 1 content

V. Additional Resource Ask: 5K USD

Total Ask: $76,100

  • Human capital: 948 hrs x $75 per hour = $71,100
  • Additional resources: $5,000

Thank you again for all those who have provided feedback to help us make changes that more accurately reflect the sentiment of the community. We understand the desire to spend community resources more efficiently. Our team will continue to work with the developer community to better understand the gaps in education, so that we can deploy our resources in the most effective way possible.

@mumuse @SecretSaturn @cow.level @AnewbiZ007

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Looks good! You may want to edit the original post’s summary with some of the key changes to the proposal by using this for example, and then go deeper into the reasons in the comments section like you did. This way, it would be easier for people coming back at the post to see the changes :slight_smile:

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Wow, it sounds like Secret University has already made great strides towards its goal of becoming the go-to resource for developer education on Secret Network. Your commitment to continuously improve the platform and user experience based on feedback is commendable. It’s exciting to see the focus on intermediate-advanced learning in Milestone 2 and the emphasis on hands-on mini-projects. The establishment of human capital for student onboarding and professor office hours will surely make a huge difference for students and the Secret Network developer community.

In addition to what’s already planned, you may also consider incorporating gamification elements such as badges, leaderboards, and rewards to engage students and drive motivation. Another idea is to collaborate with other organizations in the blockchain space to co-create educational content and host joint events, such as virtual hackathons or workshops. This would help increase visibility and credibility for Secret University, while also fostering a wider developer community.

3 Likes