The Catalyst School - NFT Rewards

Experiment with NFTs as rewards for participation within Catalyst School to determine their effectiveness to increase engagement

Veteran advisors and proposal mentors, education professionals, very active Catalyst community members since early Funds and more.

This is a side proposal to the Catalyst School - https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/The-Catalyst-School/367842-48088

What is the Catalyst School?

The Catalyst School is a place to enhance the impact of Catalyst as a whole by improving the contribution of all its different players and roles.

We help onboarding and help improving the skills of:

• Proposers
• Community Advisors
• Veteran Community Advisors
• General new Catalyst members

Our main proposal in Fund 5, with more details about the scope and goals of the Catalyst School, can be check here: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/The-Catalyst-School/367842-48088

During Fund 6, the Catalyst School has already helped onboarding more then 200 new Catalyst members in our live sessions and platforms (Telegram, Discord, YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIPvRvMoxhmHLUuPPcsMmmg ).

Overview

There are plenty of ways to explore for trying to increase participation and engagement within the Project Catalyst community. Experimenting with different types of solutions will help highlight what the community values and give support to using effective solutions that drive the participation and engagement the ecosystem needs to thrive.

NFTs have proved increasingly popular across the whole of the crypto market. Collectibles of NFT art pieces started a large movement in the crypto space. NFTs are effective for scarcity, being a verifiably owned asset and can be used as a potential reward or gift for someone's contributions or participation within a community.

As part of the Catalyst School we want to experiment with NFTs as rewards to determine their effectiveness to help encourage meaningful participation within Catalyst School.

If successful the Catalyst School would then look at taking this approach and applying it to Project Catalyst itself so that as a community we can increase participation and create an even more engaging experience and an increased sense of belonging within the community.

Objectives

• Increase involvement from students and motivate a constructive environment in the learning phases
• Provide a form of proof that a student has participated in courses / workshops
• Engage new participants using NFTs as an advertising and brand strengthening vehicle for the Catalyst School
• Determine the effectiveness of NFTs as a reward system and whether it encourages the right behaviours and not ones that could be disruptive or distracting to the educational purpose of the Catalyst School
• Determine people's response and preferences towards NFTs as a reward in the process of learning and participating to help provide a case study towards both Catalyst School and other projects considering a NFT rewards model

Initial NFT ideas

The following are some initial NFT ideas we are considering to use within the Catalyst School:

• "Attender" NFT - Distributed free of charge to all attendees of Catalyst School live events, such as workshops in the after town hall and Swarm sessions.

• "Share the Love" NFT - Distributed to students who bring people into the school through referrals.

• "Catalyst Builder" NFT - Distributed to students who help improve the Catalyst School experience by providing feedback and suggestions about the documentation, workshops or any part of the process.

Other potential NFT ideas

The following ideas are ones that require more reflection and time. We may use them alongside of or instead of some of the initial NFT ideas if we believe they may be more impactful:

• "Top Learner" NFT - Distributed to students who complete quizzes or competitions after a workshop or on the website. We are looking at where quizzes or competitions may make sense before introducing this NFT.
• "Serial Asker" NFT - Reserved for particularly active students (asking questions / offering new ideas and perspectives) during workshops or on the school's Discord channel. A key thought to this idea is whether the reward could drive disruptive behaviour for the sake of receiving the NFT.
• "Perceptive Learner" NFT - In the resources produced by the Catalyst School (documents / video / live events) there will be hidden links, unique for each resource, which can be used to obtain the related NFT. Where possible, like for the resources served by the website, these links will be randomly placed. On this idea we are still thinking how it may be implemented and also how we could prevent it being gamified.

Future scope

If the NFT ideas are successful within Catalyst School we would look at exploring the following areas to produce some NFTs as a reward. We would be looking to help Project Catalyst and helping with the following type of participation and engagement:

Proposers

• Creating quality proposals
• Increasing collaboration and combining proposals or teams when that makes sense

Community advisors

• Leave quality assessments
• Complete more assessments

Voters

• Read proposals thoroughly and vote on what will help grow and improve the ecosystem
• Delegate their vote to an expert to help ensure votes are used well

Auditability

• Open source repository for any development and the process used to mint and integrate the NFTs as a reward system
• A completion report with our findings from the feedback for the reward system looking at whether it had any meaningful impact to community engagement

Development roadmap & milestones

1 month after funded:

• Document the reward process for School members to understand the reward system
• Finalize the NFT selection and process for distribution

2 months after funded:

• Produce graphic designs for NFTs
• Mint NFTs
• Open source any development work or minting process used to create NFTs

3 months after funded:

• Integrate the NFT reward system in fund 7 workshops and any courses
• Issue NFTs over the the course of a future Catalyst School funding round and gather feedback to measure against KPIs

KPIs

• Percentage of students who request to have the participant NFT after completing a workshop
• Number of students who had heard about the NFT reward system before joining a workshop or course
• Asking students to rank the reasons they joined the Catalyst School and ensure NFTs is part of that list to determine what the key drivers were for their involvement.
• Which NFT rewards the students were interested in receiving.
• What other areas in Catalyst School or Project Catalyst that students think should also receive rewards and whether they believe NFTs were a suitable solution after receiving them.

Budget

• NFT minting and distribution - $2,000
• NFT Design - $1,500
• Management and admin - $1,500
• Total: $5,000

The Team

We believe that collaboration is the key for the success of Catalyst… and it couldn't be different with this project!

We are a group of 11 people of diverse backgrounds, but two common passions: Catalyst and education.

Go on and get to know our team:

• Alejo Escrivá: Product & Growth Marketing consultor, business analytics MBA, Industrial Designer, and Entrepreneur with 8+ years shaping lovable products and communities. Founder @Cardano-Hispano.
• Dominik Tilman: Community Advisor, funded proposer, Catalyst Swarm core member, business background
• Felix Weber: enthusiast & community networker, T&M's elected representative for the 1st Catalyst Circle, co-founder of Catalyst Swarm, co-initiator & coordinator of the Eastern Hemisphere Town Hall, initiator of the Catalyst Alliance.
• George Lovegrove: Web / mobile developer, active community member and projectcatalyst.org creator that helps improve Catalyst resources and tooling.
• Kerstin Nobel: Digital education researcher, university lecturer for digital education in Germany and Luxembourg, academic peer-reviewer, Community Advisor (CA).
• Lucio Baglione: Web / mobile developer with 9+ years of experience. CA and vCA, co-creator of the Community Tools (Proposer/CA/vCA/Voter Tools).
• Raz Samsudin: Interdisciplinary trained academic, educator and mentor, sustainability professional with 13+ years of multi sectoral experience, experienced curriculum and course designer, independent researcher and writer, proposal mentor, UN SDG coordinator/education, curriculum advisor - WADA, co-founder - Sustainable ADA, education and sustainability lead - Global Policy House, founder and publishing editor - Bona Fide Info.
• Simon Fleck: Catalyst Swarm core member, Cardano enthusiast since 2018, IT background.
• Stefan Montalbetti: Certified Educator (Canadian B. Ed.), Facilitator (7+ years of experience), Disruptor - Member of the Catalyst Swarm with a keen desire to unlock the potential of individuals and bridge gaps to that potential. Foundations: Empathy, Inclusion, Communication, and Critical & Creative Thinking.
• Stephen Whitenstall: Stephen Whitenstall has 30 years' experience in organizing academic, community and business projects. He develops, maintains documentation and provides technical project management support for Catalyst Swarm. As QA-DAO he tracks and documents the Catalyst Circle and maintains 'Ekphrasis' a repository of academic content from across the Cardano community.
• Tevo Saks: I enjoy documenting systems and procedures that will achieve specific goals in an efficient way. Active participant in Catalyst since Fund 1, Catalyst Swarm core member, experienced Proposer and Veteran Community Advisor.
• Victor Corcino: Veteran Community Advisor (vCA), Proposal Mentor, CAs' elected representative for the 1st Catalyst Circle, co-creator of the Community Tools (Proposer/CA/vCA/Voter Tools), Catalyst Swarm core member, engineering/science/developer and 'hands-on' teaching background.

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