Secret University was launched with the goal to provide a platform for developers to leverage to create open-source content and get funded to create educational materials, learn new topics, and find opportunities within the ecosystem to build. Since the funding of the Secret University Milestone 2 proposal, we are certainly in a different financial landscape, but our team has been busy delivering on the promises of the community proposal, so that we can continue to reference and utilize these materials when we capture greater developer interest in the future.
Knowledge expansion: Intermediate learning for developers
As requested by the community, we shifted our initial vision of platform improvement to focus more heavily on providing developer educational content. Since the proposal was funded, we have released 3 detailed tutorials that describe how to implement viewing keys and permits for smart contracts, interfacing with Secret dApps from the front-end, and how to utilize the Secret Toolkit for storage solutions. We have also launched 2 projects “Richie Rich” and “LogMeIn” which showcases viewing keys / permits and a proof-of-concept that allows communities to use Secret NFTs to log into dApps.
- Secret pathway course for privacy components (viewing keys, permits) for secret contracts:
Implementing Viewing Keys and Permits | Secret University - Secret pathway course for front-end interfacing with secret contracts: Leveling Up Your Front End with Secret University | Secret University
- Secret pathway course(s) for leveraging secret toolkits and storage solutions: Using Secret Toolkit's Storage Solutions | Secret University
- “Richie Rich” Secret box mini-project to build a secret application using viewing keys / permits: Richie Rich | Secret University
- "LogMeIn” Secret box mini-project for logging into secret applications using Secret NFTs: LogMeIn | Secret University
- New in scope: Secret pathway course for migrating CosmWasm contracts to Secret: Migrating CW Counter Contract to Secret | Secret University
With these efforts, we had to pivot and adjust with various network upgrades - updating contracts and templates, rewriting materials to stay consistent, and ultimately decided to release our 2 newest projects on the local environment rather than on GitPod as there were too many issues with Docker and contract upgrades to keep the project functional without consistent overhead.
Platform improvements based on community feedback
Even with our focus prioritizing developer education, we still made progress on various platform initiatives. This included changes to the platform to allow for reporting and analytics (pdf report of metrics attached), adding of a new bounties board for SLAB bounties (in which 4 Keplr bounties were sourced / funded), and improvements to how content is posted in our efforts to launch the additional Secret Pathways and Boxes.
- Content management and organization
- User experience based on milestone 1 feedback
- Usage data metrics and analytics: Secret University - Analytics 23.pdf - Google Drive
Secret University student relations
Finally, time was spent adapting to changing situations throughout these last months. We as a team, engaged Lumi and Sandman, as Secret Professors to support the first HackSecret event back in April and also recorded 2 workshops sessions with DDT. We sponsored the team in Brazil to design, participate, and build a working smart contract solution for the hackathon (albeit did not win), coordinated with SeanRad to continue “Developer Community Hour” to keep the community up-to-date and engaged with network.
Finally, with the help of Melch, we were able to conduct workshops at local college universities and curate a list of 400+ developers that the Secret Agency and foundation members has access to, in addition to the organic visitors on our site.
- Developer onboarding into our community
- Establishing developer touch-points with professor office hours
- Preparing content for workshops and hackathons
What’s next
We have since made a few adjustments to our strategy as market conditions change. We have reallocate resources budgeted for video editing to Haseeb (winner of HackSecret) to create a new Secret Pathway for migrating CosmWsam contracts. And utilizing the remaining Milestone 2 budget to continue maintenance of the platform.
Looking back, we have set a strong foundation of asynchronous content that can be leveraged for the future, established a bounties board and sourcing process that has led to multiple developers getting funded by SLABS, and helped out with a Secret Hackathon sooner than expected.
However, at this time, do not realistically see a demand for continued funding for developer educational materials at these prices - especially from community pool that has been diverted to the successful Secret Surge funding that has brought much needed TVL to the network. We look to continue to stay engaged with Developer Community Hours and sincerely hope that in the future, when developers flock to Secret to learn how to implement PaaS and permits into their smart contracts for EVM/Cosmos/Secret dApps, we will be ready to continue on the same vision that we set forth to accomplish since the start of Secret University back in 2022 with Milestone 3 and 4!
