Hi everyone,
I’m Angela, founder of Token Engineering Academy. TE Academy is the first educational institution for this crypto-native new engineering field. Since July 2020, more than 700 students from 21 timezones participated in our programs.
I’d like to propose a collaboration with NEAR!
In November 2021, we’ll kick-off a community research initiative on Rewards Systems. The goal is to bring together 20-30 researchers from various backgrounds to work on Rewards Systems for DAOs. The work will be based on real DAO cases.
The NEAR Community Fund can be part of it! Read more below.
Thanks for your support - happy to answer an any questions! 
Fact Sheet
Website: TokenEngineering Academy | Token Engineering
Twitter: @tokengineering
NEAR Address: conectopia-te-academy.near
Point of Contact: akrtws / TE Academy
Category: Analyzing Community Funded DAOs on NEAR
Funding requested: $20K in NEAR (total funding ~60K, program will be co-funded by several DAOs)
ROI Metric: Grant Efficiency → Responsibility → Culture
Our Proposal in a Sentence
We will analyze data from the NEAR Community Squad DAO and other v1 Sputnik DAOs to improve NEAR Community Fund governance and inform development of a v2 Community DAO on Astro, as part of a community research initiative led by Token Engineering Academy.
The Problem We Address
Rewards Systems are a key element for DAOs to grow the ecosystem value, reward contributors and grant decision making power (governance tokens) to those who provide value to NEAR communities.
We’d like to invite NEAR to be a case partner:
- we’ll analyse your data
- we’ll explore the expectations of your stakeholders
- we’ll come up with metrics to measure your reward system healthiness
Additionally, the research group will contribute to your ecosystem:
- grow confidence in your reward system
- provide insights on sensitivities, benefits, and value flow
- make recommendations on how to improve your reward system
- support crypto public goods, gain reputation, and get access to token engineering teams
Launching a Community Research Initiative
A core token engineering research team will work on NEAR research questions. Additionally, TE Academy will facilitate a community research program to onboard co-researchers to learn Token Engineering methods and apply it to a self-defined research goal and actual DAO cases.
For this initiative, we’ll collaborate with the following DAOs:
- NEAR (as proposed here)
- TE Commons and CommonsStack
- Ocean DAO
Furthermore, we are in the proposal process with Gnosis Zodiac for open standards and DAO tools accessible to any DAO in the world!
Relevant Experience
TE Academy has led similar research groups with partners like Balancer, Gitcoin Grants and Ocean Protocol.
Learn more about TE Academy Research Groups here.
About the Governauts
Incubating Governauts is an initiative to establish a dedicated branch in Token Engineering focused on decentralization and governance. We organize workshops and discussions, provide a platform for collaboration and bring research programs to life with TE Academy.
Deliverables / Milestones
Category: Improvements to NEAR Community Squad DAO
Milestone 1 / End of October 2021
Core research team confirmed
Milestone 2 / End of October 2021
1-3 co-funding partners confirmed
Milestone 3 / End of November 2021
min. 20 TE Community Researchers onboarded
Milestone 4 / End of December 2021
Educational program delivered: 8 public lectures provided on topics like computer-aided governance, game design, behavioral economics, currency design, monetary theory, and token engineering
Milestone 5 / Mid January 2022
Check-in with TE Community Researchers, review research plans (NEAR Community DAO and research group)
Milestone 6 / End of February 2022
Presentation of research results
Milestone 7 / Mid March 2022
Workshop with the Community DAO team / NEAR Data Center for follow-up proposals, implementation etc.
Team
Along with our core team below, we’ll have mentors and governance researchers on board from DAOs like Gitcoin, CommonsStack, BlockScience, TE Commons, and more.
NEAR involvement will be coordinated by James Waugh with support from NEAR Data Center Guild and other stakeholders.
Angela Kreitenweis
Role: Host, organizer
Twitter: akrtws
Discord: akrtws (TE Academy) #4246
Background:
Angela has worked in early stage startups since 2008. Between 2016 and 2018 she established venture development at innogy Innovation Hub Berlin, and in 2018 she co-founded the Token Engineering Community, which has quickly grown into a global network. The main goal is to establish a new engineering discipline for successful and sustainable cryptoeconomic systems.
In 2020, she founded TE Academy, the first educational institution for token engineering. Since its inception, more than 700 students across 21 time zones have participated in TE Academy courses. TE Academy is part of the TE Commons ecosystem to fund and grow Token Engineering public goods.
Livia
Role: Research Lead
Twitter: _liviade
Discord: liviade #1387
Background:
- member of the Commons Stack team
- leading the Cultural Build of the Token Engineering Commons where
- she stewards the Soft Governance and Culture working group
- guided by the concept of self sovereignty to nurture environments that
- can promote individual agency in collaborative settings.
- having a theater and performance background, Livia believes in the
- development of everyone’s subjective expression and embodiment of intrinsic motivations as a key element for participatory decision making
Shawn Anderson
Role: Research Lead, Data Scientist
Twitter: ygg_anderson
GitHub: LinuxIsCool
Background:
- MSc.
- founder of Longtail Financial
- steward of the labs at the Token Engineering Commons, and teaching
assistant at the Token Engineering Academy - passionate crypto-economic entrepreneur that is applying rigorous
data science techniques to token engineering and actively participating in the scaling of decentralized institutions for incentive alignment around sum positive economies
Andrew Penland, PhD
Role: Mentor, Educational Formats
Discord: Octopus #5508
Background:
- Associate Professor at Western Carolina University
- awarded with MAA Teaching Award 2021
Peter Hacker
Role: Educational Programming, Facilitation
Twitter: phacker_3
Discord: heater #9765
Background:
- Bachelor degree in Economics and Mathematics
- four years in eCommerce data analytics and
business strategy - active TE community member (TEC, cadCAD,
BlockScience, Commons Stack)
Jessica Zartler
Role: Educational Programming, Lectures
Twitter: jessicazartler
Discord: JessicaZartler #2263
Background:
- Governance Researcher (BlockScience, CommonsStack, TE Commons)
- Governauts Ground Control team member
available at the Token Engineering YouTube channel!
