**Requested Allocation:** $90,000 (hackathon for Polkadot)

**Proponent:** EasyA 5FQqvRHgBEUZG17qs9cNFH6ZSSVyAwhb7D6dKjGWb8xgKFkP

**Short Description:** EasyA is organising a hackathon for students to raise awareness of the Polkadot ecosystem among the developers of tomorrow. Our event will attract students with or without prior coding knowledge and support them so that they can hit the ground running. We aim to get 200 new students developing on Polkadot through this hackathon.

**Objectives:**
- Produce 25 new projects on Polkadot by end of hackathon
- Create a highly-vocal, trained student base who will become powerful advocates for Polkadot as they mature
- Engage with teachers/professors to show them what their students could be building on Polkadot and how they could easily fit it into their curriculum
- Increase awareness and adoption of Polkadot
- Introduce individuals to programming on Polkadot

**See the proposal link** [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XiSxoItunp2rrKxXhrJVVg4ANohRwIdLUiELK2Hp448/edit?usp=sharing)!


Proposal: Polkadot Hackathon for 200 Students and Educators

**Requested Allocation:** $439,000 (hackathons and crash course for Polkadot)

**Proponent:** EasyA 5FQqvRHgBEUZG17qs9cNFH6ZSSVyAwhb7D6dKjGWb8xgKFkP 

**Short Description:** EasyA is developing a crash course for developers educating them on Polkadot and its parachains/projects. EasyA will then hold 2 in-person hackathons in world-leading hubs London, UK and Boston, US for developers to participate in the final showdown and showcase what they’ve learnt. We aim to get 1,000 developers completing the crash course fully, and 400 developers to our 2 in-person hackathons. The goal: educate thousands of developers on Polkadot, reach millions on social media, and get #60DaysOfPolkadot trending in developer communities worldwide!

This builds on the massive success of the original ['Hello World' Polkadot Gitcoin challenges](https://gitcoin.co/hackathon/polkadot/), which kickstarted the whole Polkadot developer community.


**Objectives:**
- Educate 1,000 developers on Polkadot and the ecosystem
- Produce 100 new projects on Polkadot and parachains by the end of the hackathon series
- Maximise the quality of submissions at Polkadot hackathons
- Increase awareness and adoption of Polkadot and parachains
- Introduce individuals to programming on Polkadot and parachains
- Create long-lasting content to benefit newcomers to Polkadot and parachains

**See the proposal link** [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyip_eVdevsjijQQSkL_GPOE5YF-AEGgE_xhwCFLnt0/edit?usp=sharing)! 

Proposal: Polkadot Developer Hackathons and Crash Course for 1,000 Developers (#60DaysOfPolkadot)

Hey Everyone!

We’re thrilled to announce our successful completion of Milestone 3!

**Progress Summary**

As an executive summary, we have now successfully achieved Milestone 3 (holding the **two in-person Polkadot hackathons in the US and UK**) including surpassing our KPIs! As outlined in our [Milestone 1 and 2 report](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/treasury/232#r86qRZjawwaL5113MjzU), by the end of those two milestones we had collected key feedback from developers and parachain/project teams, and created the challenges to get developers building on them in the EasyA app! 

In this milestone, we held two spectacular hackathons at [Harvard University](https://twitter.com/easya_app/status/1670132876711723008) (in Boston, USA) and in [London](https://twitter.com/easya_app/status/1672712646230003714) (UK) which attracted top developers both from within the Polkadot ecosystem and beyond, with Web3 enthusiasts keen to learn more about Polkadot attending and hacking.

![Absolutely packed auditoriums at the hackathons, with hackers hard at work learning about Polkadot, parachains and more! ](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/642ed403044d8378fabb82a6/64afd59491b959274f7cd159_polkadot%20hackathon.jpg)

Our #60DaysOfPolkadot campaign (which we’re continuing to run) has to-date brought over 20,000 developers to build in the Polkadot ecosystem via the EasyA in-app crash course. The sheer number of builders meant we were in the fortunate position to be able to select the very best developers to attend our two IRL hackathons. As a result, at the hackathons we had founders backed by a16z and YC, with multiple previous exits under their belts, as well as professional software engineers all coming together to create some of the best projects we’ve ever seen. In addition, we had a strong focus on students too, who came from nearby Harvard, MIT, Yale and Brown, and even as far away as from UChicago, Georgia Tech and Stanford. These students are the key to unlocking the next generation of Web3 builders, and they were inspired by the opportunities unlocked by Polkadot. Many of these brilliant teams are continuing to build on Polkadot after the hackathon.

What did it look like in numbers? In summary:

**Polkadot x EasyA Hackathon at Harvard (17-18 June, 2023):**

1. Hackers: 300
2. Final projects created: 35
3. Colleges/companies represented: 45
4. Social media impressions: 1.5M+

Check out the final video summary for the hackathon at Harvard [here](https://youtu.be/zWLqGfw09wk)!

**Polkadot x EasyA Hackathon in London (24-25 June, 2023):**

1. Hackers: 250
2. Final projects created: 36
3. Colleges/companies represented: 38
4. Social media impressions: 1M+

Want to see the lines for the hackathon that stretched all the way down the road? Here’s the wrap-up video for the London hackathon [here](https://youtu.be/fNH5SAN95UM)!

At both hackathons, participants attended world-leading workshops held by Polkadot experts such as [Kevin Neilson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinneilson/) (Developer Relations at Moonbeam), [Dave Bean](https://www.linkedin.com/in/davebean51/) (COO of Gear), and [Kahori Razzell](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kahori-razzell-8213634b/) (UX at Astar). They received 24/7 support, both at a code-level and also in preparing for their presentations at the final round of selection!

We were keen to involve as much of the ecosystem as possible, so in addition to the Polkadot parachains and projects whom we got developers building on around the world via the EasyA app, we also had the pleasure of hosting Moonbeam, Gear and Astar in-person. Each of them held their own track at the hackathons too, which was a massive success; this enabled developers to see the strength of the Polkadot ecosystem in-person as well as the vibrant technologies they could leverage beyond just the Polkadot relay chain itself.

In conclusion, the excitement created about Polkadot by these two hackathons was incredible. We put a huge amount of effort into encouraging developers to continue building in the Polkadot ecosystem after the hackathon, and are currently supporting several teams with making connections within the ecosystem so that they can thrive (e.g. get technical expertise, know-how and funding)! This will ensure these two hackathons support the long-term growth of the Polkadot ecosystem!


**Full Progress Report**

If you want to dive into the details of the hackathons, we’ve put everything together into this full report [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dpy4e9JqiFiWaljAb_TttDF8JSzUEvgxl7BwuprrXkU/edit?usp=sharing)!

This includes the projects, budget allocation, pictures and everything else! 


**Milestone 3 Requested Allocation Breakdown Summary**

Demonstrating EasyA’s commitment to the Polkadot ecosystem and respect for treasury spending that fully benefits the community, we have already paid for the costs of hosting these two hackathons ourselves; this was required for them to go ahead as scheduled and to create hype amongst builders in the run-up to Polkadot Decoded.

Once the community has had time to review and discuss our proposal, we will then make a treasury proposal to request reimbursement for our costs in holding the two hackathons of $220,000. As EasyA have already paid for the costs of the hackathons, this is a request for reimbursement, in accordance with the community’s wishes for proposals to achieve their goals first and request reimbursement retrospectively.

Details for this milestone were discussed in our original discussion post [here](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/post/1585), with the precise milestone and allocation breakdown [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyip_eVdevsjijQQSkL_GPOE5YF-AEGgE_xhwCFLnt0/edit#bookmark=id.x3kscjjklocs). Our first milestone was approved [here](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/motion/353) and our second milestone was approved [here](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/motion/417). This third milestone is to cover the costs EasyA incurred in hosting the in-person hackathons at Harvard and in London.

If you have any questions at all, please do feel free to comment them here! We were thrilled to host these hackathons for the community, and would love to share more about their success with everyone!

 -- Phil, Dom (EasyA Co-Founders) and the EasyA Team!

Milestone 3 Report: Polkadot x EasyA Hackathons at Harvard and in London (#60DaysOfPolkadot)

Milestone 4 Report: Polkadot x EasyA Hackathons at Harvard and in London (#60DaysOfPolkadot)

Short Description: <a href="http://easya.io">EasyA</a> builds on the massive success of its 2023 #60DaysOfPolkadot campaign which educated 40,000+ new developers on Polkadot and launched over 100 new projects. How? By running a 6-month long Polkadot educational campaign in the EasyA app and hosting two dedicated in-person Polkadot hackathons at Harvard University (USA) and in London (UK).
Requested Allocation: USD $740,000 (in-person hackathons and crash courses for Polkadot)
Supported by:
This proposal is supported by the Acala, Astar, Bifrost, Composable, Crust, KILT, Moonbeam, OAK, OriginTrail, Phala, Polimec, Tanssi and Unique Network parachains, as well as ecosystem projects including Subsquid, SubQuery, Gear and others. We will open the opportunity for all ecosystem teams to get involved too since this is an ecosystem-wide project.
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/SXZ7StB/180-Days-Of-Polkadot-Supporters.png" alt="" width="751" height="347" />
As we did in our hugely successful <a href="../referenda/371">2023 Polkadot campaign</a>&nbsp;(#60DaysOfPolkadot) where we partnered with 8 parachains/ecosystem projects, we will educate our massive community of 750,000+ developers on Polkadot and its parachains/projects both online and in-person. This ecosystem-wide campaign will build on the huge success of our #60DaysOfPolkadot initiative which went viral, bringing 40,000 new developers into the Polkadot community. EasyA will then invite the best of these developers to two in-person hackathons to build and pitch their ideas in front of ecosystem teams and enthusiasts.
Location: Harvard University (USA) and London (UK) as well as virtual (via developer educational challenges in the EasyA app)
Timeline: February to July, 2024
Target Metrics:
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-left: 0pt;" align="left">
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<tbody>
<tr style="height: 27pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 700; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">KPI
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 700; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Target 🎯
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 27pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Developers starting crash course
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">48,000
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 5.797852pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Developers completing crash course
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">40,000
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 5.797852pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In-person hackathon attendees&nbsp;
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">500
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 5.797852pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Participating Polkadot parachains/projects
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">8
</td>
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<tr style="height: 15.75pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hackathon projects
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">100
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<tr style="height: 25.095703pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Social Media Impressions (LinkedIn/Twitter/TikTok/Instagram, YouTube etc)
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10M+
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
We have put together our full roadmap into a highly-detailed, 24-page proposal here: <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oa9jWLlNHd24YF_WyHFCIrPoBvMFASqbgvzcfzW8Vd0/edit?usp=sharing">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oa9jWLlNHd24YF_WyHFCIrPoBvMFASqbgvzcfzW8Vd0/edit?usp=sharing</a>
We have created this proposal by listening closely to the Polkadot community (including developers, parachains/projects, network participants and more) and targeting the key goals (as well as pain points) with which they explained that they need support. We are posting this proposal as a discussion post before making a treasury proposal so that we can hear even more feedback! If you have any questions or suggestions, please do let us know!
&ndash; Phil and Dom (EasyA Co-Founders) and the EasyA Team

EasyA x Polkadot: Developer Growth Proposal via In-Person Hackathons and Crash Courses (#180DaysOfPolkadot)

<img src="https://i.ibb.co/b5bG2n5/polkadot-finalists-harvard.png" alt="" width="640" height="254" />
Polkadot x EasyA Harvard Hackathon Finalists!
Date of Report: August 2024
Allocation Requested: $370,000 (retroactive funding for Milestone 2, as agreed in our EasyA #180DaysOfPolkadot <a href="2127">discussion post</a> and approved in <a href="../referenda/503">our masterplan referendum</a> with a huge 88% AYE vote).
Short Description:
GM Polkadot family!
By now you&rsquo;ve probably already heard about #180DaysOfPolkadot, which took the Web3 developer community by storm. We worked day and night to make this dream a reality, and couldn&rsquo;t be prouder at having finally pulled it off. In our work across Web3, EasyA alumni have been funded by top VCs like a16z, YC, Founders Fund and many more. We&rsquo;ve now laid the foundations to recreate this success in the Polkadot ecosystem.
This is our proposed referendum for successfully completing the final milestone (Milestone 2) in EasyA&rsquo;s #180DaysOfPolkadot.
Executive Summary:
For context, the #180DaysOfPolkadot builds on the huge success of our 2023 <a href="../referenda/371">#60DaysOfPolkadot developer education campaign</a>. After last year&rsquo;s success, all our stakeholders (Polkadot ecosystem teams, parachains, developers, founders and more) wanted us to build on this momentum and go even bigger. So we took on the challenge and did! We even hosted Indy500 racer Conor Daly at the hackathon so he and his team could see it in action and learn more about the Polkadot developer ecosystem! Safe to say, Conor&rsquo;s now an EasyA fan too, saying: <a href="https://x.com/easya_app/status/1824385548779245976">&ldquo;Learning about EasyA and going to their hackathon in Boston was incredible&rdquo;</a>.
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/S50hPFc/polkadot-official-retweet-100k-milestone.png" alt="" width="640" height="615" />
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/jTYbTq8/easya-polkadot-challenges-graphic.png" alt="" width="640" height="360" />
First, <a href="https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/easya-learning-app-educates-over-100000-developers-on-polkadot-3588470">as reported by Investing.com</a>, in the EasyA app we created massive buzz and excitement, with:
<ol>
<li>Developers starting crash course: 110,000+</li>
<li>Developers completing crash course: 88,000+</li>
<li>Completion rate: 80%</li>
<li>Participating parachains: 12</li>
<li>Impressions: 6M+</li>
</ol>
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/8sLYHhh/easyaxpolkadot-hackathons-app-pics.png" alt="" width="640" height="312" />
These Polkadot challenges in the EasyA app created so much excitement amongst builders that our 2 landmark in-person hackathons were highly oversubscribed. We had lines stretching across London and all over Harvard campus to get in!
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/pWGmbnj/easya-x-polkadot-hackathons-crowds.png" alt="" width="640" height="326" />
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/MGG7Lhq/easya-x-polkadot-testimonials.png" alt="" width="640" height="1039" />
Polkadot x EasyA IRL Hackathon in London (20-21 July): 
<ol>
<li>Hackers: 350</li>
<li>Final dApps/projects created: 56</li>
<li>Colleges/companies represented: 51</li>
<li>Social media impressions: 3M+</li>
</ol>
Want to see the video highlights from London? Feast your eyes on our wrap-up vid <a href="https://x.com/easya_app/status/1816417684004728913">here</a>!
Polkadot x EasyA IRL Hackathon at Harvard (27-28 July): 
<ol>
<li>Hackers: 300</li>
<li>Final dApps/projected created: 55</li>
<li>Colleges/companies represented: 46</li>
<li>Social media impressions: 3M+</li>
</ol>
Seeing is believing, so check out our video summary from Harvard <a href="https://x.com/easya_app/status/1821100285345091738">here</a>!
We want to say a massive thank you to everyone from the Polkadot ecosystem who came out to welcome these builders to the ecosystem. We couldn&rsquo;t have done it without you! Acala, Astar, Bifrost, Subsquid, Composable, Crust, Gear, KILT, Moonbeam, OAK, OriginTrail, Phala, Polimec, Tanssi and Unique Network, your work in guiding us to build the #180DaysOfPolkadot was invaluable!
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/1XyM3xm/easya-x-polkadot-hackathon-speeches.png" alt="" width="640" height="355" />
In addition, we would like to give a special mention to (in no particular order):
&mdash; Angela Dalton (Co-Founder &amp; CGO of Dot Play, CEO &amp; Founder of Signum Growth)
&mdash; Christopher Wade (Head Ambassador for Polkadot North America)
&mdash; Luca Auet (Developer Relations at PaperMoon)
&mdash; Conor Daly (Professional Motorsports Driver &amp; Polkadot Global Ambassador)
&mdash; Andrew Stallings (Founder x President of Athelo Group)
&mdash; Charu Sethi (CMO at Unique Network)
&mdash; Max Andreev (Senior Developer at Unique Network)
&mdash; Filip Filipovich (Developer Relations Manager at Unique Network)
And of course to Leemo for dropping by and auditing!
Winning projects
As stakeholders in the Polkadot ecosystem ourselves, the most important thing for us is that these hackathons drive long-term results. This all starts with getting the smartest brains into the ecosystem, and it&rsquo;s safe to say that the developers we brought to Polkadot with #180DaysOfPolkadot are some of the smartest people in the world.
These founders came from the world&rsquo;s best universities at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Yale and top companies like Google, Meta, Coinbase and many more.
Want to see the projects they built? We&rsquo;ve summarised them in our Twitter threads:
London: <a href="https://x.com/easya_app/status/1816109001546829924">https://x.com/easya_app/status/1816109001546829924</a>
Harvard: <a href="https://x.com/easya_app/status/1819302381177258073">https://x.com/easya_app/status/1819302381177258073</a>
We&rsquo;re connecting these incredible builders with mentors in the ecosystem. So far, Angie Dalton (from Dot Play) has been fantastic in connecting with the builders. We&rsquo;ve also funnelled these people into the available grants programmes. A key highlight was our success in converting the winners into applying for the <a href="https://unique.network/blog/your-access-to-nfts-2-0-codecraft-grant/">Unique Network CodeCraft grants</a>. We&rsquo;ve been working closely with Charu Sethi and Filip Filipovich from Unique Network on utilising these grants to support with the launch and marketing of the winners&rsquo; games.
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100.06%; height: 147.041px;" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">KPI</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Target 🎯</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Actual</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Achieved</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Developers starting crash course</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">48,000</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">110,000+</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Developers completing crash course</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">40,000</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">88,000+</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">In-person hackathon attendees</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">500</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">650</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Hackathon projects</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">100</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">111</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Social media impressions (LinkedIn/Twitter/TikTok/Instagram/YouTube etc)</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">10M</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">12M+</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Participating Polkadot parachains/projects</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">8</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">12</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Full Progress Report
We&rsquo;ve been absolutely thrilled with the success of #180DaysOfPolkadot, and have put together a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1svDdSFjBeYtQ0PxvNP-Y2Lz0BTV5xnFr6LQYj8BJklI/edit?usp=sharing">full report here</a> on our outcomes from Milestones 1 and 2. We know you love seeing the projects that come out of the hackathons, so we&rsquo;ve included them in the report, along with further context on the EasyA in-app developer challenges! This full report also includes the precise budget allocations.
Milestone 2 Requested Allocation Breakdown Summary (Retroactive Funding)
Our original proposal for #180DaysOfPolkadot split our costs into two phases. Milestone 1 (approved <a href="../referenda/503">here</a>) covered the creation, technical implementation and distribution of the in-app content, as well as the venue/logistics deposits. Milestone 2 (this milestone) is retroactive funding to cover the final costs of the in-person hackathons, prize money and educational campaign.
This retroactive funding after the successful completion of our proposal reflects EasyA&rsquo;s deep respect for the Polkadot treasury and OpenGov. Rather than the community needing to take any risk with EasyA, we take on the responsibility ourselves of delivering on the KPIs and targets which we set out for the community originally.
The full breakdown of the costs and budget is available in <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1svDdSFjBeYtQ0PxvNP-Y2Lz0BTV5xnFr6LQYj8BJklI/edit?usp=sharing">our full report</a>.
What&rsquo;s next?
EasyA has played a key role in growing the Polkadot developer ecosystem since 2022, and we intend to continue building on our successes. Our philosophy has always been to start small, prove ourselves and our results, and then double down on the key areas of success. It&rsquo;s this approach which has enabled us to drive such big results with our #180DaysOfPolkadot.
In keeping with this guiding philosophy, we&rsquo;ve already been assessing which areas we should double down on next, and have been discussing our key learnings with our Polkadot ecosystem partners/parachains, Parity and Web3 Foundation. We have detailed these in our full report. However, in summary, our core next step is to get the top teams and builders whom we&rsquo;ve already recruited, to continue building on Polkadot. The huge EasyA developer community is filled with founders and entrepreneurs and we are excited to get them launching their startups in the Polkadot ecosystem.
We have already started working towards this. We&rsquo;re working closely with the Unique Network team to funnel builders using NFTs on Unique Network towards their CodeCraft grants programme, which supports builders with launching and marketing. A record number of teams have already now applied for the programme. We&rsquo;re connecting top games developers with Angie Dalton, who has been welcoming them into the Dot Play initiative. In fact, we have personally introduced all the gaming winners from our Harvard hackathon directly to Angie Dalton. We&rsquo;re also mentoring teams ourselves, inspiring them about all the opportunities coming up in Polkadot, such as JAM and Plaza. There&rsquo;s so much more we&rsquo;re doing too, and we&rsquo;re currently planning a whole suite of post-hackathon support for our builders, all the way up to getting them funded. We&rsquo;re very excited to share more on this next month.
Builders who have joined Web3 through EasyA&rsquo;s in-app challenges and hackathons have gone on to get funded by a16z, YC, Founders Fund and many more top VCs. We&rsquo;re bringing the top talent who will be able to do that on Polkadot.
Rome wasn&rsquo;t built in a day, and there are many different areas of the technical and ecosystem-wide funnel in Polkadot which we need to fix. However, we&rsquo;re working night and day to get these builders launching the next big thing on Polkadot. This includes aligning efforts with Parity, Web3 Foundation, and other ecosystem support teams like Papermoon. Together, we&rsquo;re nurturing a whole new wave of builders to breathe fresh life into Polkadot!
Thank you for taking the time to read our proposal for retroactive reimbursement. If you have any questions at all, or would like to get involved with our work bringing the next wave of builders to Polkadot, please do feel free to comment here! We&rsquo;ve never been more excited about our work in the Polkadot ecosystem; it genuinely feels like we&rsquo;ve started a renaissance here, hand in hand with the rest of the Polkadot ecosystem parachains, projects and stakeholders.
-- Phil, Dom (EasyA Co-Founders) and the EasyA Team!

EasyA x Polkadot - Developer Growth via In-Person Hackathons and Crash Courses (#180DaysOfPolkadot): Milestones 1 & 2 Report

Background context
The EasyA x Polkadot University is currently being established with the support of the Web3 Foundation by means of a <a href="https://medium.com/web3foundation/decentralized-futures-introducing-easya-8fc56b65306a">Decentralized Futures</a> grant. Its purpose is to attract top university talent to build on Polkadot. Universities are a priceless source of blockchain innovation. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Polkadot&rsquo;s own co-founder Robert Habermeier were both students when they left academia to build two of the world&rsquo;s most successful blockchains.
The purpose of this bounty is to fund the microgrants programme for early-stage builders on Polkadot, as envisaged in the EasyA x Polkadot University&rsquo;s founding mission. This will be modelled on <a href="https://earn.superteam.fun/grants/">Solana&rsquo;s fast-grants</a> model with a similar goal, but for Polkadot: anyone who wants to build on Polkadot can get initial funding to do so.
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/VxsVhGX/Easy-A-Polkadot-Builders.png" alt="" width="640" height="326" />
Hundreds of incredible EasyA builders have been inspired to build on Polkadot at our hackathons. Now, let&rsquo;s get them funded!
The problem
This bounty is a response to the following problems in the Polkadot builder funnel:
<ol>
<li>Polkadot doesn&rsquo;t have clear funding opportunities for very early-stage builders; and</li>
<li>There is no fast way for developers inspired about Polkadot to get funding to build.</li>
</ol>
These are both holding back the Polkadot ecosystem, and other blockchains that have solved this are rapidly growing their developer base.
The solution
The good news is that the answer to the above problems is simple:
<ol>
<li>A clear programme for early-stage builders to get funding (up to $10,000 each); and</li>
<li>Approvals made as fast as within 72 hours</li>
</ol>
Curators
The multisig will be a 3 out of 5:
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/otarshakarishvili/">Otar Shakarishvili</a> from JUST Open Source</li>
<li><a href="https://linkedin.com/in/philip-k-building">Phil Kwok</a> from EasyA</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dom-k-b73381100/">Dom Kwok</a> from EasyA</li>
<li>TBD*</li>
<li>TBD*</li>
</ol>
*The remaining two curators are currently being finalised, and will be invited for their complementary skills - in particular their development expertise, and investment expertise. These curators will be proposed once they have agreed to join the curator set.
Conclusion
Everyone in the Polkadot ecosystem can feel that we&rsquo;re at an inflection point. As contributors to the Polkadot ecosystem since 2022, we can sense this more than ever. <a href="https://www.rob.tech/blog/plaza/">Plaza</a> is right around the corner, agile coretime has arrived, and we&rsquo;ve inspired a record number of developers about Polkadot&rsquo;s potential. Whereas previously Polkadot itself was only open to chain builders, it is now opening up to smart contract builders. This is a once in a cycle opportunity. And the EasyA x Polkadot University Microgrants programme is set to capitalise on this.
This bounty will benefit the whole Polkadot ecosystem, including programmes further downstream, producing top talent for bounties like the Dot Play and Open Source Developer Grants Bounty, with whom we are collaborating closely.
Thank you for taking the time to read our proposal. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do comment them here!
Our <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gv7Xus4x-PcNd6gwfYpC02MS-DTgNn3RkCYLiiu-ovI/edit?usp=sharing">full proposal is available here</a>. This includes more detail on the differences between this Bounty and the others that already exist, how it will work with those ecosystems, success metrics, budget, the Bounty manifesto, and other important information.

EasyA x Polkadot University Microgrants Bounty

Hey Polkadot frens!
We&rsquo;re super excited to be embarking on the next phase of EasyA x Polkadot, after a hugely successful 2024! The name of this next phase? The awesome #360DaysOfPolkadot. We&rsquo;ve crafted this after doing a deep dive into this year&rsquo;s successes, as well as where we can do even better. We&rsquo;ve talked for hours with members of the Polkadot ecosystem to gather their visions for where we should focus next, and have incorporated this into #360DaysOfPolkadot.
For ease of reading, here&rsquo;s the summary:
Requested Allocation: USD $785,000 (including prize money for hackathon winners, travel costs for mentors etc)
Short Description: <a href="http://easya.io">EasyA</a> doubles down on the strong success it has already brought to the Polkadot ecosystem via the EasyA app and in-person hackathons. In this proposal for #360DaysOfPolkadot, EasyA will upgrade the in-app EasyA Polkadot course to Polkadot 2.0, and host the next 2 landmark hackathons in-person at Harvard University and in London.
Live in the EasyA app:
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/xm7vXjB/Easy-A-App-Polkadot-Partners.png" alt="" width="639" height="275" />
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/7tvM07H/Easy-Ax-Polkadot-Harvard-Finalists.png" alt="" width="640" height="254" />
Polkadot x EasyA Harvard Hackathon 2024 Finalists!
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/PhZ4df8/360-Days-Of-Polkadot-Crowds.png" alt="" width="320" height="309" />
Location: Harvard University (USA) and London (UK) as well as virtual (via developer educational challenges in the EasyA app)
Timeline: November 2024 - April 2025
Target Metrics:
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100.052%; height: 138.024px;" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 32.9941px;">
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 32.9941px;">
KPI
</td>
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 32.9941px;">
Target 🎯
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 21.0059px;">
Total developers starting crash course
</td>
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 21.0059px;">
120,000
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 21.0059px;">
Total developers completing crash course
</td>
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 21.0059px;">
100,000
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 21.0059px;">
In-person hackathon attendees
</td>
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 21.0059px;">
600
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 21.0059px;">
Hackathon projects
</td>
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 21.0059px;">
100
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 21.0059px;">
Social Media Impressions (LinkedIn/Twitter/TikTok/Instagram, YouTube etc)
</td>
<td style="width: 48.0375%; height: 21.0059px;">
10M+
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/MV2QWn8/360-Days-Of-Polkadot-Testimonials.png" alt="" width="640" height="1039" />
We want to make these discussions as open as possible, and would love to hear the broader Polkadot community&rsquo;s feedback so that we can build this into our final proposal! We are very much open to suggestions, for example, on the content for the brand new Polkadot 2.0 crash course, as well as themes for hackers to build on at the two landmark in-person hackathons. In particular, we&rsquo;re eager to hear from you if you have suggestions about the topics for the updated content - please do share with us your ideal framework/syllabus in the comments here!
For the feedback we&rsquo;ve received so far in our open discussions with the community, please see the <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pnYZU8HCGiGgPvtch93ZKLUFK77mus87SDvNZ0WEioY/edit?tab=t.0#bookmark=id.66ydmpxfx8">summary</a> in our full proposal.
Given we are actively taking suggestions on additions/changes to our proposal, the costs are currently estimates. These are based on the feedback we have received already from the ecosystem, and we will finalise the costs based on the additional feedback/suggestions we receive.
The full proposal is available <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pnYZU8HCGiGgPvtch93ZKLUFK77mus87SDvNZ0WEioY/edit?usp=sharing">here</a>!
&ndash; Phil, Dom (EasyA Co-Founders) and the EasyA Team

EasyA x Polkadot: In-person hackathons and in-app Polkadot 2.0 crash course (#360DaysOfPolkadot)

Hey Everyone!
We&rsquo;re honoured to propose the Polkadot Fast-Grants Bounty.
The purpose of this bounty is to fund the fast-grants programme for early-stage builders on Polkadot. This will be modelled on <a href="https://earn.superteam.fun/grants/">Solana&rsquo;s fast-grants</a> model with a similar goal, but for Polkadot: anyone who wants to build on Polkadot can get initial funding to do so.
The problem (summarised)
This bounty is a response to the following problems in the Polkadot builder funnel:
<ol>
<li>Polkadot doesn&rsquo;t have clear funding opportunities for very early-stage builders; and</li>
<li>There is no fast way for developers inspired about Polkadot to get funding to build.</li>
</ol>
These are both holding back the Polkadot ecosystem, and other blockchains that have solved this are rapidly growing their developer base.
The solution (summarised)
The good news is that the answer to the above problems is simple:
<ol>
<li>A clear programme for early-stage builders to get funding (up to $10,000 each); and</li>
<li>Approvals made as fast as within 72 hours</li>
</ol>
Curators
The curators have deep, sector-specific experience across the Polkadot and builder ecosystems, and are strongly positioned to steward this bounty. The multisig will be a 3 out of 5:
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/otarshakarishvili/">Otar Shakarishvili</a> (Project Advisor and Governance Specialist at JUST Open Source, ex-Parity Project Manager)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-sacha-lansky/">Sacha Lansky</a> (Developer Relations at WebZero, ex-Parity Engineering)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/flbi/">Flavio Bianchi</a> (Polimec Foundation Council Member, Polimec Marketing and BD)</li>
<li><a href="https://linkedin.com/in/philip-k-building">Phil Kwok</a> (Co-Founder of EasyA and the EasyA x Polkadot University)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dom-k-b73381100/">Dom Kwok</a> (Co-Founder of EasyA and the EasyA x Polkadot University)</li>
</ol>
Community feedback
Thank you to everyone who helped shape this bounty, from the discussions we had on our previous post, to those who gave feedback live when we presented on AAG for that earlier discussion post (the recording for which is available <a href="https://x.com/TheKusamarian/status/1852636778336760314">here</a>).
We&rsquo;ve reviewed it all in detail as curators, and are delighted to have updated our proposal taking into account your feedback.
The main points/questions from the community were:
<ol>
<li>How will success be measured</li>
<li>How many projects will be funded (and for how much)</li>
<li>What expertise the curators have to manage the bounty</li>
</ol>
In summary, we have:
<ol>
<li>Reduced the bounty size by half (to demonstrate success first)</li>
<li>Clarified the definition of what success looks like</li>
<li>Made clear that this is not an EasyA bounty, but an ecosystem-wide one which will benefit the whole community and has a broad base of support (EasyA is just one of the proponents)</li>
<li>Confirmed the types of projects which will be funded</li>
</ol>
Executive summary
Summarised in 5 points, this bounty is:
<ol>
<li>Fast: Because we don&rsquo;t want people to dismiss Polkadot for other ecosystems</li>
<li>Retroactive: So builders can&rsquo;t leave with the funds without delivering</li>
<li>Milestone-based: So we can ensure developers are building what we want to see on Polkadot</li>
<li>Low-risk: If there aren&rsquo;t enough satisfactory projects to fund, the bounty will simply be returned</li>
<li>First point of contact: Designed to open opportunities and a way into Polkadot (not designed to be the last point of contact).</li>
</ol>
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/MpSvVgq/image.png" alt="image.png" />
Full proposal
As curators, we&rsquo;ve brainstormed together and refined our approach to maximise the success of the bounty. This is now reflected in our updated full proposal <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hat9Mtj5lnTfySb8wMYj3m_EilBSuL5orwa5LxusDq4/edit?usp=sharing">here</a>.
This includes more detail on the differences between this Bounty and the others that already exist, how it will work with those ecosystems, success metrics, budget, the Bounty manifesto, and other important information.
This bounty will benefit the whole Polkadot ecosystem, including programmes further downstream, producing top talent for bounties like the Dot Play and Open Source Developer Grants Bounty, with whom we are collaborating closely. Importantly, this bounty is synergistic with, and different from, the other active bounties.
We will be presenting on the upcoming AAGs to share more about our vision for the Fast-Grants Bounty as well as answer any questions the community have, and we would also be delighted to have your feedback here.
We&rsquo;re looking forward to attracting the best talent to Polkadot with these fast-grants! Especially with smart contracts coming to Asset Hub, JAM on the horizon and so much more coming for builders on Polkadot, the time is now!

Polkadot Fast-Grants Bounty

Background context
The EasyA x Polkadot University is currently being established with the support of the Web3 Foundation by means of a <a href="https://medium.com/web3foundation/decentralized-futures-introducing-easya-8fc56b65306a">Decentralized Futures grant</a>. Its purpose is to attract top university talent to build on Polkadot. Universities are a priceless source of blockchain innovation. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Polkadot&rsquo;s own co-founder Robert Habermeier were both students when they left academia to build two of the world&rsquo;s most successful blockchains.
The purpose of this bounty is to fund the microgrants programme for early-stage builders on Polkadot, as envisaged in the EasyA x Polkadot University&rsquo;s founding mission. This will be modelled on <a href="https://earn.superteam.fun/grants/">Solana&rsquo;s fast-grants model</a> with a similar goal, but for Polkadot: anyone who wants to build on Polkadot can get initial funding to do so.
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/GkydxsN/Easy-A-Polkadot-Builders.png" alt="" width="640" height="326" />
Hundreds of incredible EasyA builders have been inspired to build on Polkadot at our hackathons. Now, let&rsquo;s get them funded!
The problem
This bounty is a response to the following problems in the Polkadot builder funnel:
<ol>
<li>Polkadot doesn&rsquo;t have clear funding opportunities for very early-stage builders; and</li>
<li>There is no fast way for developers inspired about Polkadot to get funding to build</li>
</ol>
These are both holding back the Polkadot ecosystem, and other blockchains that have solved this are rapidly growing their developer base.
The solution
The good news is that the answer to the above problems is simple:
<ol>
<li>A clear programme for early-stage builders to get funding (up to $10,000 each); and</li>
<li>Approvals made as fast as within 72 hours</li>
</ol>
Curators
The multisig will be a 3 out of 5:
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/otarshakarishvili/">Otar Shakarishvili</a> (Project Advisor and Governance Specialist at JUST Open Source, ex-Parity Project Manager)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-sacha-lansky/">Sacha Lansky</a> (Developer Relations at WebZero, ex-Parity Engineering)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/flbi/">Flavio Bianchi</a> (Polimec Foundation Council Member, Polimec Marketing and BD)</li>
<li><a href="https://linkedin.com/in/philip-k-building">Phil Kwok</a> (Co-Founder of EasyA)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dom-k-b73381100/">Dom Kwok</a> (Co-Founder of EasyA)</li>
</ol>
Conclusion
Everyone in the Polkadot ecosystem can feel that we&rsquo;re at an inflection point. As contributors to the Polkadot ecosystem since 2022, we can sense this more than ever. <a href="https://www.rob.tech/blog/plaza/">Plaza</a> is right around the corner, agile coretime has arrived, and we&rsquo;ve inspired a record number of developers about Polkadot&rsquo;s potential. Whereas previously Polkadot itself was only open to chain builders, it is now opening up to smart contract builders. This is a once in a cycle opportunity. And the EasyA x Polkadot University Microgrants programme is set to capitalise on this.
This bounty will benefit the whole Polkadot ecosystem, including programmes further downstream, producing top talent for bounties like the Dot Play and Open Source Developer Grants Bounty, with whom we are collaborating closely.
Thank you for taking the time to read our proposal. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do comment them here! Further context from our discussion post last month can be found <a href="../post/2485">here.</a>
Our <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gv7Xus4x-PcNd6gwfYpC02MS-DTgNn3RkCYLiiu-ovI/edit?usp=sharing">full proposal is available here</a>. This includes more detail on the differences between this Bounty and the others that already exist, how it will work with those ecosystems, success metrics, budget, the Bounty manifesto, and other important information.

<img src="https://i.ibb.co/b5bG2n5/polkadot-finalists-harvard.png" alt="" width="640" height="254" />
Polkadot x EasyA Harvard Hackathon Finalists!
Date of Report: September 2024
Allocation Requested: $370,000 (retroactive funding for Milestone 2 including prize money for winners, as agreed in our EasyA #180DaysOfPolkadot <a href="../post/2127">discussion post</a> and approved in <a href="503">our masterplan referendum</a> with a huge 88% AYE vote).*
*DOT amount calculated via EMA7 on 4 Sept 2024 at GMT+0 0930hrs: 1 DOT ~ USD$4.226. USD$370,000 ~ 87,553.24 DOT.
Short Description:
GM Polkadot family!
By now you&rsquo;ve probably already heard about #180DaysOfPolkadot, which took the Web3 developer community by storm. We worked day and night to make this dream a reality, and couldn&rsquo;t be prouder at having finally pulled it off. In our work across Web3, EasyA alumni have been funded by top VCs like a16z, YC, Founders Fund and many more. We&rsquo;ve now laid the foundations to recreate this success in the Polkadot ecosystem.
This is our proposed referendum for successfully completing the final milestone (Milestone 2) in EasyA&rsquo;s #180DaysOfPolkadot.
Executive Summary:
For context, the #180DaysOfPolkadot builds on the huge success of our 2023 <a href="371">#60DaysOfPolkadot developer education campaign</a>. After last year&rsquo;s success, all our stakeholders (Polkadot ecosystem teams, parachains, developers, founders and more) wanted us to build on this momentum and go even bigger. So we took on the challenge and did! We even hosted Indy500 racer Conor Daly at the hackathon so he and his team could see it in action and learn more about the Polkadot developer ecosystem! Safe to say, Conor&rsquo;s now an EasyA fan too, saying: <a href="https://x.com/easya_app/status/1824385548779245976">&ldquo;Learning about EasyA and going to their hackathon in Boston was incredible&rdquo;</a>.
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/S50hPFc/polkadot-official-retweet-100k-milestone.png" alt="" width="640" height="615" />
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/jTYbTq8/easya-polkadot-challenges-graphic.png" alt="" width="640" height="360" />
First, <a href="https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/easya-learning-app-educates-over-100000-developers-on-polkadot-3588470">as reported by Investing.com</a>, in the EasyA app we created massive buzz and excitement, with:
<ol>
<li>Developers starting crash course: 110,000+</li>
<li>Developers completing crash course: 88,000+</li>
<li>Completion rate: 80%</li>
<li>Participating parachains: 12</li>
<li>Impressions: 6M+</li>
</ol>
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/8sLYHhh/easyaxpolkadot-hackathons-app-pics.png" alt="" width="640" height="312" />
These Polkadot challenges in the EasyA app created so much excitement amongst builders that our 2 landmark in-person hackathons were highly oversubscribed. We had lines stretching across London and all over Harvard campus to get in!
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/pWGmbnj/easya-x-polkadot-hackathons-crowds.png" alt="" width="640" height="326" />
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/MGG7Lhq/easya-x-polkadot-testimonials.png" alt="" width="640" height="1039" />
Polkadot x EasyA IRL Hackathon in London (20-21 July): 
<ol>
<li>Hackers: 350</li>
<li>Final dApps/projects created: 56</li>
<li>Colleges/companies represented: 51</li>
<li>Social media impressions: 3M+</li>
</ol>
Want to see the video highlights from London? Feast your eyes on our wrap-up vid <a href="https://x.com/easya_app/status/1816417684004728913">here</a>!
Polkadot x EasyA IRL Hackathon at Harvard (27-28 July): 
<ol>
<li>Hackers: 300</li>
<li>Final dApps/projected created: 55</li>
<li>Colleges/companies represented: 46</li>
<li>Social media impressions: 3M+</li>
</ol>
Seeing is believing, so check out our video summary from Harvard <a href="https://x.com/easya_app/status/1821100285345091738">here</a>!
We want to say a massive thank you to everyone from the Polkadot ecosystem who came out to welcome these builders to the ecosystem. We couldn&rsquo;t have done it without you! Acala, Astar, Bifrost, Subsquid, Composable, Crust, Gear, KILT, Moonbeam, OAK, OriginTrail, Phala, Polimec, Tanssi and Unique Network, your work in guiding us to build the #180DaysOfPolkadot was invaluable!
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/1XyM3xm/easya-x-polkadot-hackathon-speeches.png" alt="" width="640" height="355" />
In addition, we would like to give a special mention to (in no particular order):
&mdash; Angela Dalton (Co-Founder &amp; CGO of Dot Play, CEO &amp; Founder of Signum Growth)
&mdash; Christopher Wade (Head Ambassador for Polkadot North America)
&mdash; Luca Auet (Developer Relations at PaperMoon)
&mdash; Conor Daly (Professional Motorsports Driver &amp; Polkadot Global Ambassador)
&mdash; Andrew Stallings (Founder x President of Athelo Group)
&mdash; Charu Sethi (CMO at Unique Network)
&mdash; Max Andreev (Senior Developer at Unique Network)
&mdash; Filip Filipovich (Developer Relations Manager at Unique Network)
And of course to Leemo for dropping by and auditing!
Winning projects
As stakeholders in the Polkadot ecosystem ourselves, the most important thing for us is that these hackathons drive long-term results. This all starts with getting the smartest brains into the ecosystem, and it&rsquo;s safe to say that the developers we brought to Polkadot with #180DaysOfPolkadot are some of the smartest people in the world.
These founders came from the world&rsquo;s best universities at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Yale and top companies like Google, Meta, Coinbase and many more.
Want to see the projects they built? We&rsquo;ve summarised them in our Twitter threads:
London: <a href="https://x.com/easya_app/status/1816109001546829924">https://x.com/easya_app/status/1816109001546829924</a>
Harvard: <a href="https://x.com/easya_app/status/1819302381177258073">https://x.com/easya_app/status/1819302381177258073</a>
We&rsquo;re connecting these incredible builders with mentors in the ecosystem. So far, Angie Dalton (from Dot Play) has been fantastic in connecting with the builders. We&rsquo;ve also funnelled these people into the available grants programmes. A key highlight was our success in converting the winners into applying for the <a href="https://unique.network/blog/your-access-to-nfts-2-0-codecraft-grant/">Unique Network CodeCraft grants</a>. We&rsquo;ve been working closely with Charu Sethi and Filip Filipovich from Unique Network on utilising these grants to support with the launch and marketing of the winners&rsquo; games.
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100.06%; height: 147.041px;" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">KPI</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Target 🎯</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Actual</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Achieved</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Developers starting crash course</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">48,000</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">110,000+</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Developers completing crash course</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">40,000</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">88,000+</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">In-person hackathon attendees</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">500</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">650</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Hackathon projects</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">100</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">111</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Social media impressions (LinkedIn/Twitter/TikTok/Instagram/YouTube etc)</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">10M</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">12M+</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 21.0059px;">
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">Participating Polkadot parachains/projects</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">8</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">12</td>
<td style="width: 23.3317%; height: 21.0059px;">✅</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Full Progress Report
We&rsquo;ve been absolutely thrilled with the success of #180DaysOfPolkadot, and have put together a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1svDdSFjBeYtQ0PxvNP-Y2Lz0BTV5xnFr6LQYj8BJklI/edit?usp=sharing">full report here</a> on our outcomes from Milestones 1 and 2. We know you love seeing the projects that come out of the hackathons, so we&rsquo;ve included them in the report, along with further context on the EasyA in-app developer challenges! This full report also includes the precise budget allocations.
Milestone 2 Requested Allocation Breakdown Summary (Retroactive Funding)
Our original proposal for #180DaysOfPolkadot split our costs into two phases. Milestone 1 (approved <a href="503">here</a>) covered the creation, technical implementation and distribution of the in-app content, as well as the venue/logistics deposits. Milestone 2 (this milestone) is retroactive funding to cover the final costs of the in-person hackathons, prize money and educational campaign.
This retroactive funding after the successful completion of our proposal reflects EasyA&rsquo;s deep respect for the Polkadot treasury and OpenGov. Rather than the community needing to take any risk with EasyA, we take on the responsibility ourselves of delivering on the KPIs and targets which we set out for the community originally.
The full breakdown of the costs and budget is available in <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1svDdSFjBeYtQ0PxvNP-Y2Lz0BTV5xnFr6LQYj8BJklI/edit?usp=sharing">our full report</a>.
What&rsquo;s next?
EasyA has played a key role in growing the Polkadot developer ecosystem since 2022, and we intend to continue building on our successes. Our philosophy has always been to start small, prove ourselves and our results, and then double down on the key areas of success. It&rsquo;s this approach which has enabled us to drive such big results with our #180DaysOfPolkadot.
In keeping with this guiding philosophy, we&rsquo;ve already been assessing which areas we should double down on next, and have been discussing our key learnings with our Polkadot ecosystem partners/parachains, Parity and Web3 Foundation. We have detailed these in our full report. However, in summary, our core next step is to get the top teams and builders whom we&rsquo;ve already recruited, to continue building on Polkadot. The huge EasyA developer community is filled with founders and entrepreneurs and we are excited to get them launching their startups in the Polkadot ecosystem.
We have already started working towards this. We&rsquo;re working closely with the Unique Network team to funnel builders using NFTs on Unique Network towards their CodeCraft grants programme, which supports builders with launching and marketing. A record number of teams have already now applied for the programme. We&rsquo;re connecting top games developers with Angie Dalton, who has been welcoming them into the Dot Play initiative. In fact, we have personally introduced all the gaming winners from our Harvard hackathon directly to Angie Dalton. We&rsquo;re also mentoring teams ourselves, inspiring them about all the opportunities coming up in Polkadot, such as JAM and Plaza. There&rsquo;s so much more we&rsquo;re doing too, and we&rsquo;re currently planning a whole suite of post-hackathon support for our builders, all the way up to getting them funded. We&rsquo;re very excited to share more on this next month.
Builders who have joined Web3 through EasyA&rsquo;s in-app challenges and hackathons have gone on to get funded by a16z, YC, Founders Fund and many more top VCs. We&rsquo;re bringing the top talent who will be able to do that on Polkadot.
Rome wasn&rsquo;t built in a day, and there are many different areas of the technical and ecosystem-wide funnel in Polkadot which we need to fix. However, we&rsquo;re working night and day to get these builders launching the next big thing on Polkadot. This includes aligning efforts with Parity, Web3 Foundation, and other ecosystem support teams like Papermoon. Together, we&rsquo;re nurturing a whole new wave of builders to breathe fresh life into Polkadot!
Thank you for taking the time to read our proposal for retroactive reimbursement. If you have any questions at all, or would like to get involved with our work bringing the next wave of builders to Polkadot, please do feel free to comment here! We&rsquo;ve never been more excited about our work in the Polkadot ecosystem; it genuinely feels like we&rsquo;ve started a renaissance here, hand in hand with the rest of the Polkadot ecosystem parachains, projects and stakeholders.
-- Phil, Dom (EasyA Co-Founders) and the EasyA Team!

Short Description: <a href="http://easya.io">EasyA</a> builds on the massive success of its 2023 #60DaysOfPolkadot campaign which educated 40,000+ new developers on Polkadot and launched over 100 new projects. How? By running a 6-month long Polkadot educational campaign in the EasyA app and hosting two dedicated in-person Polkadot hackathons at Harvard University (USA) and in London (UK).
Supported by:
This proposal is supported by the Acala, Astar, Bifrost, Composable, Crust, KILT, Moonbeam, OAK, OriginTrail, Phala, Polimec, Tanssi and Unique Network parachains, as well as ecosystem projects including Subsquid, SubQuery, Gear and others. We will open the opportunity for all ecosystem teams to get involved too since this is an ecosystem-wide project.
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/SXZ7StB/180-Days-Of-Polkadot-Supporters.png" alt="" width="751" height="347" />
As we did in our hugely successful <a href="371">2023 Polkadot campaign</a>&nbsp;(#60DaysOfPolkadot) where we partnered with 8 parachains/ecosystem projects, we will educate our massive community of 750,000+ developers on Polkadot and its parachains/projects both online and in-person. This ecosystem-wide campaign will build on the huge success of our #60DaysOfPolkadot initiative which went viral, bringing 40,000 new developers into the Polkadot community. EasyA will then invite the best of these developers to two in-person hackathons to build and pitch their ideas in front of ecosystem teams and enthusiasts.
Location: Harvard University (USA) and London (UK) as well as virtual (via developer educational challenges in the EasyA app)
Timeline: February to July, 2024
<p style="font-family: Poppins, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial;">Requested Allocation:&nbsp;USD $370,000 (in-person hackathons and crash courses for Polkadot, including prize money for winners)*
<p class="p1" style="font-family: Poppins, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial;">*DOT amount calculated via EMA30 on 15 Feb 2024 at GMT+0 1830hrs: 1 DOT ~ USD$7.103. USD$370,000 ~ 52,090.67 DOT
Target Metrics:
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-left: 0pt;" align="left">
<table style="border: medium; border-collapse: collapse;"><colgroup><col width="179" /><col width="434" /></colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 27pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 700; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">KPI
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 700; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Target 🎯
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 27pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Developers starting crash course
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">48,000
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 5.797852pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Developers completing crash course
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">40,000
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 5.797852pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In-person hackathon attendees&nbsp;
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">500
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 5.797852pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Participating Polkadot parachains/projects
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">8
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.75pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hackathon projects
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">100
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 25.095703pt;">
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Social Media Impressions (LinkedIn/Twitter/TikTok/Instagram, YouTube etc)
</td>
<td style="border-width: 1pt; border-style: solid; border- vertical-align: top; padding: 5pt; overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background- font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10M+
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
We have put together our full roadmap into a highly-detailed, 24-page proposal here: <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oa9jWLlNHd24YF_WyHFCIrPoBvMFASqbgvzcfzW8Vd0/edit?usp=sharing">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oa9jWLlNHd24YF_WyHFCIrPoBvMFASqbgvzcfzW8Vd0/edit?usp=sharing</a>
We have created this proposal by listening closely to the Polkadot community (including developers, parachains/projects, network participants and more) and targeting the key goals (as well as pain points) with which they explained that they need support. We are posting this proposal after having made a discussion post where we heard even more awesome feedback from the community! If you have any questions or suggestions, please do let us know!
&ndash; Phil and Dom (EasyA Co-Founders) and the EasyA Team

Milestone 1: EasyA x Polkadot Developer Growth via In-Person Hackathons and Crash Courses (#180DaysOfPolkadot)

Hey Everyone!
We&rsquo;re excited to post up our referendum for our successful completion of Milestone 3! We would like to express our gratitude to everyone who gave their feedback on our original referendum. We have incorporated your comments into our report as well as the below summary. If you&rsquo;re new to this referendum, this report is therefore fully comprehensive, but you can also review our earlier referendum and the original comments <a href="101">here</a>.
Background context
This referendum is the third milestone in a detailed, multi-phase initiative that started under Gov1. Details for this milestone were discussed in our original discussion post <a href="../post/1585">here</a>, with the precise milestone and allocation breakdown <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyip_eVdevsjijQQSkL_GPOE5YF-AEGgE_xhwCFLnt0/edit#bookmark=id.x3kscjjklocs">here</a>. Our first milestone was approved <a href="../motion/353">here</a> and our second milestone was approved <a href="../motion/417">here</a>. This third milestone is to cover the costs EasyA incurred in hosting the in-person hackathons at Harvard and in London.
We are committed to bringing more builders into the Polkadot ecosystem and building on the huge momentum we've created with #60DaysOfPolkadot. We have already had huge demand from all the parachains involved to continue our work, as well as from new ones who heard about it along the way. Their only question is: &lsquo;When is the next one&rsquo;! We can&rsquo;t wait to continue working together with all the parachains and Polkadot teams to grow the ecosystem!
We have addressed all the community feedback comprehensively in our full and updated report. However, for ease of reading we have summarised the answers to the two most commonly asked questions here.
<ol>
<li>Where are the hackathon teams now: Case studies</li>
</ol>

We are delighted to share that teams from both our Harvard and London hackathons are continuing to build. In just four short months these teams are already becoming valuable members of the Polkadot ecosystem. Three teams are particularly worth highlighting.
a. Flybloc: <a href="http://www.flybloc.com/**">http://www.flybloc.com/</a>
Created by Harvard PhD Yefei Jin, Flybloc came out of our Polkadot hackathon at Harvard. Since the hackathon, they have successfully recruited even more stellar team members, and now have one of the strongest teams we&rsquo;ve ever seen: their successful previous exits are valued at over $1 billion. Their CTO is a former VP at Algorand, and their team has deep experience building successful startups. They are building the future of Web3 brand engagement, leveraging AI. They have received grant funding from Massachusetts-based non-profit Qubic labs, and will be raising venture capital funding this Fall.
b. DotIAM: <a href="https://www.dotiam.com/">https://www.dotiam.com/</a> 
Led by Tom Rowbotham, a full-time software engineer at one of the UK&rsquo;s fastest growing startups, <a href="https://www.gousto.co.uk">Gousto</a>, DotIAm first launched their idea for decentralised KYC built on Polkadot at our Polkadot hackathon in London. They have now been successfully executing on their roadmap, and have received grant funding from Astar via the Unstoppable Grants.
c. Aegis Protocol: <a href="https://www.aegisprotocol.io/">https://www.aegisprotocol.io/</a>&nbsp;
Harvard Computer Scientists Ethan Tan and Douglas Yang first launched Aegis Protocol at our Polkadot hackathon at Harvard, winning first place. They have continued to build on it since, making huge progress over this summer, connecting with ecosystem teams and projects to iterate on their vision to build decentralized dispute arbitration to safeguard crypto users. They have now added two members to their team (from MIT and Duke) and are planning to raise venture capital funding for their startup, alongside applying to join accelerators. Their deck is publicly available here: <a href="https://docsend.com/view/vihm997vknj43gtv">https://docsend.com/view/vihm997vknj43gtv</a>
We have included more of the hackathon teams in our full report below!
<ol start="2">
<li>Why not go to the events bounty</li>
</ol>

For the hackathons themselves, we recognise that these might fit within the events bounty. However, in consultation with the ecosystem teams (including one of the curators of the Polkadot events bounty) we reached the consensus that overall #60DaysOfPolkadot would best fit as a referendum under this treasury track.
The main reason for this is that our #60DaysOfPolkadot campaign was not purely events. #60DaysOfPolkadot was a fully comprehensive developer acquisition campaign. It involved EasyA&rsquo;s content team creating written material for developers to learn about Polkadot and the parachains, EasyA&rsquo;s engineering team integrating it into the EasyA app, and a full campaign on social media to grow developer awareness. The app was also tightly integrated with the hackathons themselves, such that it doesn&rsquo;t make sense to split the referenda into two different ones (one for the app and one for the hackathons). The full scope of #60DaysOfPolkadot is available in the <a href="../post/1585">original discussion post</a> as well as <a href="../motion/353">Milestone 1</a> and <a href="../motion/417">Milestone 2</a> which were all approved by the Council in a detailed multi-part proposal under Gov1.
In short, the engineering and educational content-creation aspects of this #60DaysOfPolkadot campaign mean that the events bounty is not the best fit. Under Gov1, this was agreed and approved.
Progress Summary
As an executive summary, we have now successfully achieved Milestone 3 (holding the two in-person Polkadot hackathons in the US and UK) including surpassing our KPIs! As outlined in our <a href="../treasury/232#r86qRZjawwaL5113MjzU">Milestone 1 and 2 report</a>, by the end of those two milestones we had collected key feedback from developers and parachain/project teams, and created the challenges to get developers building on them in the EasyA app!
In this milestone, we held two spectacular hackathons at <a href="https://twitter.com/easya_app/status/1670132876711723008">Harvard University</a> (in Boston, USA) and in <a href="https://twitter.com/easya_app/status/1672712646230003714">London</a> (UK) which attracted top developers both from within the Polkadot ecosystem and beyond, with Web3 enthusiasts keen to learn more about Polkadot attending and hacking.
<img src="https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/642ed403044d8378fabb82a6/64afd59491b959274f7cd159_polkadot%20hackathon.jpg" alt="Absolutely packed auditoriums at the hackathons, with hackers hard at work learning about Polkadot, parachains and more! " />Our #60DaysOfPolkadot campaign (which we&rsquo;re continuing to run) has to-date brought over 40,000 developers to build in the Polkadot ecosystem via the EasyA in-app crash course. The sheer number of builders meant we were in the fortunate position to be able to select the very best developers to attend our two IRL hackathons. As a result, at the hackathons we had founders backed by a16z and YC, with multiple previous exits under their belts, as well as professional software engineers all coming together to create some of the best projects we&rsquo;ve ever seen. In addition, we had a strong focus on students too, who came from nearby Harvard, MIT, Yale and Brown, and even as far away as from UChicago, Georgia Tech and Stanford. These students are the key to unlocking the next generation of Web3 builders, and they were inspired by the opportunities unlocked by Polkadot. Many of these brilliant teams are continuing to build on Polkadot after the hackathon.
What did it look like in numbers? In summary, we brought hundreds of new developers into the Polkadot ecosystem through these two hackathons:
Polkadot x EasyA Hackathon at Harvard (17-18 June, 2023): 
Hackers: 300 Final dApps/projects created: 35 Colleges/companies represented: 45 Social media impressions: 1.5M+
Check out the final video summary for the hackathon at Harvard <a href="https://youtu.be/zWLqGfw09wk">here</a>!
Polkadot x EasyA Hackathon in London (24-25 June, 2023): 
Hackers: 250 Final dApps/projects created: 36 Colleges/companies represented: 38 Social media impressions: 1M+
Want to see the lines for the hackathon that stretched all the way down the road? Here&rsquo;s the wrap-up video for the London hackathon <a href="https://youtu.be/fNH5SAN95UM">here</a>!
At both hackathons, participants attended world-leading workshops held by Polkadot experts such as <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinneilson/">Kevin Neilson</a> (Developer Relations at Moonbeam), <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/davebean51/">Dave Bean</a> (COO of Gear), and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kahori-razzell-8213634b/">Kahori Razzell</a> (UX at Astar). They received 24/7 support, both at a code-level and also in preparing for their presentations at the final round of selection!
We were keen to involve as much of the ecosystem as possible, so in addition to the Polkadot parachains and projects whom we got developers building on around the world via the EasyA app, we also had the pleasure of hosting Moonbeam, Gear and Astar in-person. Each of them held their own track at the hackathons too, which was a massive success; this enabled developers to see the strength of the Polkadot ecosystem in-person as well as the vibrant technologies they could leverage beyond just the Polkadot relay chain itself.
In conclusion, the excitement created about Polkadot by these two hackathons was incredible. We put a huge amount of effort into encouraging developers to continue building in the Polkadot ecosystem after the hackathon, and are currently supporting several teams with making connections within the ecosystem so that they can thrive (e.g. get technical expertise, know-how and funding)! This will ensure these two hackathons support the long-term growth of the Polkadot ecosystem!
Full Progress Report
If you want to dive into the details of the hackathons, we&rsquo;ve put everything together into this full report <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ox5kseyv6LRg-RdOdFMVFtmh7uKBcyh7-S29CK51ol4/edit?usp=sharing">here</a>!
This includes the projects, budget allocation, pictures and everything else!
Milestone 3 Requested Allocation Breakdown Summary
Demonstrating EasyA&rsquo;s commitment to the Polkadot ecosystem and respect for treasury spending that fully benefits the community, we have already paid for the costs of hosting these two hackathons ourselves; this was required for them to go ahead as scheduled and to create hype amongst builders in the run-up to Polkadot Decoded.
Now that the community has had time to review and discuss our proposal in our discussion post which we posted up in July <a href="../post/1846">here</a> (as well as our original Milestone 3 referendum <a href="101">here</a>) we are now making this treasury proposal to request reimbursement for our costs in holding the two hackathons of $220,000.* As EasyA have already paid for the costs of the hackathons, this is a request for reimbursement, in accordance with the community&rsquo;s wishes for proposals to achieve their goals first and request reimbursement retrospectively.
*DOT amount calculated via EMA7 on 25 Oct 2023 at GMT+0 1000hrs: 1 DOT ~ USD$4.018. USD$220,000 ~54,753.61 DOT.
As explained above, details for this milestone were discussed in our original discussion post <a href="../post/1585">here</a>, with the precise milestone and allocation breakdown <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyip_eVdevsjijQQSkL_GPOE5YF-AEGgE_xhwCFLnt0/edit#bookmark=id.x3kscjjklocs">here</a>. Our first milestone was approved <a href="../motion/353">here</a> and our second milestone was approved <a href="../motion/417">here</a>. This third milestone is to cover the costs EasyA incurred in hosting the in-person hackathons at Harvard and in London.
Long-term Sustainability
We are strongly committed to the long-term sustainability of the Polkadot ecosystem, and have the greatest respect for treasury spend. This is a bootstrap, where the treasury is helping to fill the gap while the Polkadot ecosystem is still nascent. Since our first Polkadot hackathon in 2022, we have already made great progress towards this long-term financial sustainability. For example, as part of this milestone, we engaged with the ecosystem projects themselves (Moonbeam, Astar, Gear etc). These ecosystem teams supported both with funding (for prizes) and also in their expertise and human costs, covering the costs of both their staff and also their travel to the hackathons (in the case of our Harvard hackathon, even their flights from San Francisco to Boston). This was a very powerful step which saved the treasury significant costs. As the Polkadot ecosystem grows stronger, we see more ecosystem teams like Moonbeam, Astar and Gear supporting these initiatives. In other words, we will not need to rely on Polkadot treasury funding forever.
If you have any questions at all, please do feel free to comment them here! We were thrilled to host these hackathons for the community, and would love to share more about their success with everyone!
-- Phil, Dom (EasyA Co-Founders) and the EasyA Team!

Milestone 3 Proposal: Polkadot x EasyA Hackathons at Harvard and in London (#60DaysOfPolkadot)

Hey Everyone! This submission is a duplicate of [proposal 292](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/treasury/292) and has been submitted unintentionally. 

Please reject this proposal and see proposal 292 as linked above for voting!

Thanks!

Duplicate of #292 (Please reject)

**Requested Allocation:** $104,000 

*DOT amount calculated via EMA7 on 6 June 2023 at GMT+0 1100hrs: 1 DOT ~ USD$5.235. USD$104,000 ~ 19,866.2846 DOT

**Proponent:** EasyA 5FQqvRHgBEUZG17qs9cNFH6ZSSVyAwhb7D6dKjGWb8xgKFkP


Hey Everyone!

We’re delighted to give a full update on our progress so far!

**Progress Summary**

In summary, we have now successfully achieved Milestone 1 and Milestone 2! We started by opening this educational opportunity to more parachains/projects and preparing the full content framework. We have now collected key feedback from developers and parachain/project teams and utilised it to create the content for the challenges. We have also created a totally new design and UX for the Polkadot challenges to make them stand out. We are in the very final stages of approving all the content to go live in the app for release. 

We’re super excited that on the IRL hackathons side, we have also finalised the hackathon dates and locations. We have been inviting key developer groups and Polkadot parachains to attend the hackathon and will be leveraging our connections with core blockchain clubs to ensure a brilliant pipeline of builders at the hackathons!

Our next step is to make a huge push to get everyone building on Polkadot in the run-up to the IRL hackathons. We’re currently working with the participating parachains/projects on a detailed social media and activations strategy!

**Full Progress Report**

We have written up the fully comprehensive progress report for Milestones 1 and 2 [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tvSCM9w8fSKxUBgTIuXNbhrdNWZUzpQHtORZxtyVAKE/edit?usp=sharing) for the community!

**Milestone 2 Requested Allocation Breakdown**

We would therefore like to request our Milestone 2 allocation so that we can proceed to Milestone 3 (hosting the 2 hackathons). 

Details for this milestone were discussed in our original discussion post [here](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/post/1585), with the precise milestone and allocation breakdown [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyip_eVdevsjijQQSkL_GPOE5YF-AEGgE_xhwCFLnt0/edit#bookmark=id.x3kscjjklocs). Our first milestone was approved (and second milestone request discussed) [here](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/motion/353).

We're already seeing huge excitement around #60DaysOfPolkadot and can’t wait to see what everyone builds at the hackathons! See you there!

Milestone 2 Proposal: Polkadot Developer Hackathons and Crash Course for 1,000 Developers (#60DaysOfPolkadot)

**Requested Allocation:** $50,000

*DOT amount calculated via EMA7 on 15 February 2023 at GMT+0 1100hrs: 1 DOT ~ USD$6.27. USD$50,000 ~ 7974.4817 DOT

**Proponent:** EasyA 5FQqvRHgBEUZG17qs9cNFH6ZSSVyAwhb7D6dKjGWb8xgKFkP

**Short Description:** EasyA is developing a crash course for developers educating them on Polkadot and its parachains/projects. EasyA will then hold 2 in-person hackathons in world-leading hubs London, UK and Boston, US for developers to participate in the final showdown and showcase what they’ve learnt. We aim to get 1,000 developers completing the crash course fully, and 400 developers to our 2 in-person hackathons. The goal: educate thousands of developers on Polkadot, reach millions on social media, and get #60DaysOfPolkadot trending in developer communities worldwide!
This builds on the massive success of the original ['Hello World' Polkadot Gitcoin challenges](https://gitcoin.co/hackathon/polkadot/), which kickstarted the whole Polkadot developer community.

This proposal is supported by the Acala, Astar, Composable, and Moonbeam parachains, as well as ecosystem projects including Subsquid, Gear and others. All ecosystem teams are welcomed to get involved too!

**Objectives:**
* Educate 1,000 developers on Polkadot and the ecosystem
* Produce 100 new projects on Polkadot and parachains by the end of the hackathon series
* Maximise the quality of submissions at Polkadot hackathons
* Increase awareness and adoption of Polkadot and parachains
* Introduce individuals to programming on Polkadot and parachains
* Create long-lasting content to benefit newcomers to Polkadot and parachains

**See the proposal link [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dgfiAwKU3cM-2MmWfCkULHNZYlrMU9ayJ5oDKvmZMQQ/edit?usp=sharing)**!

Milestone 1 Proposal: Polkadot Developer Hackathons and Crash Course for 1,000 Developers (#60DaysOfPolkadot)

**Requested Allocation:** $40,000 (milestone 2 hackathon for Polkadot)

*DOT amount calculated via EMA on 9 September 2022 at GMT+0 0845hrs: 1 DOT ~ USD$7.55. USD$40,000 ~ 5,298.01 DOT

**Proponent:** EasyA 5FQqvRHgBEUZG17qs9cNFH6ZSSVyAwhb7D6dKjGWb8xgKFkP

**Short Description:**
We’re thrilled to announce our report on the successful completion of the EasyA x Polkadot hackathon (check out the highlight reel [here](https://youtu.be/vo4McHKpchY))! We held the hackathon on 30-31 July in London and are delighted that we exceeded all our targets. Overall, 27 awesome projects were created by 250 students from 30 universities. We educated them on how to build parachains/dApps in Dotsama, and we raised huge awareness of the Polkadot ecosystem amongst thousands of new student developers while we were promoting the hackathon. We have documented the hackathon fully [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/10GTdZby0vj1qrmmUKrmWpat2XDsB7W38i52gfTdq668/edit?usp=sharing), along with our key successes and learnings for others to draw on when hosting future hackathons. 

As we have completely fulfilled the objectives of the proposal, we are therefore requesting the reimbursement of Milestone 2 (to reward winners and cover final costs). The prizes will be distributed in DOT to the winners. Although the value of DOT has dropped since the Milestone 1 proposal, the participants were aware token prices fluctuate. This is in accordance with our original Milestone 1 proposal which was approved [here](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/motion/215).

We’re looking forward to building on this momentum and bringing more students to the Polkadot ecosystem soon!

Milestone 2 Proposal: Polkadot Hackathon for 200 Students and Educators

**Requested Allocation:** $50,000 (hackathon for Polkadot)

**Date: July 2-3, 2022**

*DOT amount calculated via EMA on 9 June 2022 at GMT+0 1400hrs: 1 DOT ~ USD$10.58. USD$50,000 ~ 4725.8979 DOT

**Proponent:** EasyA 5FQqvRHgBEUZG17qs9cNFH6ZSSVyAwhb7D6dKjGWb8xgKFkP

**Short Description:** EasyA is organising a hackathon for students to raise awareness of the Polkadot ecosystem among the developers of tomorrow. Our event will attract students with or without prior coding knowledge and support them so that they can hit the ground running. We aim to get 200 new students developing on Polkadot through this hackathon.

**Objectives:**

- Produce 25 new projects on Polkadot by end of hackathon

- Create a highly-vocal, trained student base who will become powerful advocates for Polkadot as they mature

- Engage with teachers/professors to show them what their students could be building on Polkadot and how they could easily fit it into their curriculum

- Increase awareness and adoption of Polkadot

- Introduce individuals to programming on Polkadot

**See the proposal link** [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XiSxoItunp2rrKxXhrJVVg4ANohRwIdLUiELK2Hp448/edit?usp=sharing)!

Milestone 1 Proposal: Polkadot Hackathon for 200 Students and Educators

This proposal aims to approve <a href="../bounty/60">Bounty 60</a> proposing the establishment of the EasyA x Polkadot University Microgrants Bounty.
Background context
The EasyA x Polkadot University is currently being established with the support of the Web3 Foundation by means of a <a href="https://medium.com/web3foundation/decentralized-futures-introducing-easya-8fc56b65306a">Decentralized Futures grant</a>. Its purpose is to attract top university talent to build on Polkadot. Universities are a priceless source of blockchain innovation. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Polkadot&rsquo;s own co-founder Robert Habermeier were both students when they left academia to build two of the world&rsquo;s most successful blockchains.
The purpose of this bounty is to fund the microgrants programme for early-stage builders on Polkadot, as envisaged in the EasyA x Polkadot University&rsquo;s founding mission. This will be modelled on <a href="https://earn.superteam.fun/grants/">Solana&rsquo;s fast-grants model</a> with a similar goal, but for Polkadot: anyone who wants to build on Polkadot can get initial funding to do so.
Hundreds of incredible EasyA builders have been inspired to build on Polkadot at our hackathons. Now, let&rsquo;s get them funded!
The problem
This bounty is a response to the following problems in the Polkadot builder funnel:
<ol>
<li>Polkadot doesn&rsquo;t have clear funding opportunities for very early-stage builders; and</li>
<li>There is no fast way for developers inspired about Polkadot to get funding to build</li>
</ol>
These are both holding back the Polkadot ecosystem, and other blockchains that have solved this are rapidly growing their developer base.
The solution
The good news is that the answer to the above problems is simple:
<ol>
<li>A clear programme for early-stage builders to get funding (up to $10,000 each);and</li>
<li>Approvals made as fast as within 72 hours</li>
</ol>
Curators
The multisig will be a 3 out of 5:
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/otarshakarishvili/">Otar Shakarishvili</a> (Project Advisor and Governance Specialist at JUST Open Source, ex-Parity Project Manager)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-sacha-lansky/">Sacha Lansky</a> (Developer Relations at WebZero, ex-Parity Engineering)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/flbi/">Flavio Bianchi</a> (Polimec Foundation Council Member, Polimec Marketing and BD)</li>
<li><a href="https://linkedin.com/in/philip-k-building">Phil Kwok</a> (Co-Founder of EasyA)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dom-k-b73381100/">Dom Kwok</a> (Co-Founder of EasyA)</li>
</ol>
Conclusion
Everyone in the Polkadot ecosystem can feel that we&rsquo;re at an inflection point. As contributors to the Polkadot ecosystem since 2022, we can sense this more than ever. <a href="https://www.rob.tech/blog/plaza/">Plaza</a> is right around the corner, agile coretime has arrived, and we&rsquo;ve inspired a record number of developers about Polkadot&rsquo;s potential. Whereas previously Polkadot itself was only open to chain builders, it is now opening up to smart contract builders. This is a once in a cycle opportunity. And the EasyA x Polkadot University Microgrants programme is set to capitalise on this.
This bounty will benefit the whole Polkadot ecosystem, including programmes further downstream, producing top talent for bounties like the Dot Play and Open Source Developer Grants Bounty, with whom we are collaborating closely.
Thank you for taking the time to read our proposal. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do comment them here! Further context from our discussion post last month can be found <a href="../post/2485">here</a>.
Our <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gv7Xus4x-PcNd6gwfYpC02MS-DTgNn3RkCYLiiu-ovI/edit?usp=sharing">full proposal is available here</a>. This includes more detail on the differences between this Bounty and the others that already exist, how it will work with those ecosystems, success metrics, budget, the Bounty manifesto, and other important information.

Hey Everyone!
The Polkadot Fast-Grants Bounty (<a href="https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/bounty/63">https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/bounty/63</a>) was recently approved. This referendum now formally puts forward the curators for the bounty. These are the same curators who have been involved since the beginning of this process, and whose experience has been detailed in the original bounty documents.&nbsp;
As a quick reminder, the purpose of the Fast-Grants bounty is to fund the fast-grants programme for early-stage builders on Polkadot. This referendum is the formal proposal for the curators of this bounty.
In summary, the curators have deep, sector-specific experience across the Polkadot and builder ecosystems, and are strongly positioned to steward this bounty. The multisig will be a 3 out of 5:
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/otarshakarishvili/">Otar Shakarishvili</a> (Project Advisor and Governance Specialist at JUST Open Source, ex-Parity Project Manager)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-sacha-lansky/">Sacha Lansky</a> (Developer Relations at WebZero, ex-Parity Engineering)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/flbi/">Flavio Bianchi</a> (Polimec Foundation Council Member, Polimec Marketing and BD)</li>
<li><a href="https://linkedin.com/in/philip-k-building">Phil Kwok</a> (Co-Founder of EasyA and the EasyA x Polkadot University)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dom-k-b73381100/">Dom Kwok</a> (Co-Founder of EasyA and the EasyA x Polkadot University)</li>
</ol>
For the full context and bios of our curators, we have put together the <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sAqnViKdZZTzLUjzewdnZAPrYH-JZXZl743SaiD9Oh4/edit?usp=sharing">full Bounty Curator Candidacy Proposal document</a>.
We already have a strong pipeline of talent ready for the Fast-Grants Bounty, so are looking forward to getting the bounty full operational!

Polkadot Fast-Grants Bounty Curator Candidacy

Hey Everyone!
We&rsquo;re honoured to propose the Polkadot Fast-Grants Bounty.
The purpose of this bounty is to fund the fast-grants programme for early-stage builders on Polkadot. This will be modelled on <a href="https://earn.superteam.fun/grants/">Solana&rsquo;s fast-grants model</a> with a similar goal, but for Polkadot: anyone who wants to build on Polkadot can get initial funding to do so.
The problem (summarised)
This bounty is a response to the following problems in the Polkadot builder funnel:
<ol>
<li>Polkadot doesn&rsquo;t have clear funding opportunities for very early-stage builders; and</li>
<li>There is no fast way for developers inspired about Polkadot to get funding to build.</li>
</ol>
These are both holding back the Polkadot ecosystem, and other blockchains that have solved this are rapidly growing their developer base.
The solution (summarised)
The good news is that the answer to the above problems is simple:
<ol>
<li>A clear programme for early-stage builders to get funding (up to $10,000 each); and</li>
<li>Approvals made as fast as within 72 hours</li>
</ol>
Curators
The curators have deep, sector-specific experience across the Polkadot and builder ecosystems, and are strongly positioned to steward this bounty. The multisig will be a 3 out of 5:
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/otarshakarishvili/">Otar Shakarishvili</a> (Project Advisor and Governance Specialist at JUST Open Source, ex-Parity Project Manager)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-sacha-lansky/">Sacha Lansky</a> (Developer Relations at WebZero, ex-Parity Engineering)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/flbi/">Flavio Bianchi</a> (Polimec Foundation Council Member, Polimec Marketing and BD)</li>
<li><a href="https://linkedin.com/in/philip-k-building">Phil Kwok</a> (Co-Founder of EasyA and the EasyA x Polkadot University)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dom-k-b73381100/">Dom Kwok</a> (Co-Founder of EasyA and the EasyA x Polkadot University)</li>
</ol>
Community feedback
Thank you to everyone who helped shape this bounty, from the discussions we had on our previous post, to those who gave feedback live when we presented on AAG for that earlier discussion post (the recording for which is available <a href="https://x.com/TheKusamarian/status/1852636778336760314">here</a>).
We&rsquo;ve reviewed it all in detail as curators, and are delighted to have updated our proposal taking into account your feedback.
The main points/questions from the community were:
<ol>
<li>How will success be measured</li>
<li>How many projects will be funded (and for how much)</li>
<li>What expertise the curators have to manage the bounty</li>
</ol>
In summary, we have:
<ol>
<li>Reduced the bounty size by half (to demonstrate success first)</li>
<li>Clarified the definition of what success looks like</li>
<li>Made clear that this is not an EasyA bounty, but an ecosystem-wide one which will benefit the whole community and has a broad base of support (EasyA is just one of the proponents)</li>
<li>Confirmed the types of projects which will be funded</li>
</ol>
Executive summary
Summarised in 5 points, this bounty is:
<ol>
<li>Fast: Because we don&rsquo;t want people to dismiss Polkadot for other ecosystems</li>
<li>Retroactive: So builders can&rsquo;t leave with the funds without delivering</li>
<li>Milestone-based: So we can ensure developers are building what we want to see on Polkadot</li>
<li>Low-risk: If there aren&rsquo;t enough satisfactory projects to fund, the bounty will simply be returned</li>
<li>First point of contact: Designed to open opportunities and a way into Polkadot (not designed to be the last point of contact).</li>
</ol>
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/p2hjzqD/Easy-Ax-Polkadot-crowds.png" alt="" width="640" height="326" />
Full proposal
As curators, we&rsquo;ve brainstormed together and refined our approach to maximise the success of the bounty. This is now reflected in our updated full proposal <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hat9Mtj5lnTfySb8wMYj3m_EilBSuL5orwa5LxusDq4/edit?usp=sharing">here</a>.
This includes more detail on the differences between this Bounty and the others that already exist, how it will work with those ecosystems, success metrics, budget, the Bounty manifesto, and other important information.
This bounty will benefit the whole Polkadot ecosystem, including programmes further downstream, producing top talent for bounties like the Dot Play and Open Source Developer Grants Bounty, with whom we are collaborating closely. Importantly, this bounty is synergistic with, and different from, the other active bounties.
We will be presenting on the upcoming AAGs to share more about our vision for the Fast-Grants Bounty as well as answer any questions the community have, and we would also be delighted to have your feedback here.
We&rsquo;re looking forward to attracting the best talent to Polkadot with these fast-grants! Especially with smart contracts coming to Asset Hub, JAM on the horizon and so much more coming for builders on Polkadot, the time is now!
Updates
We presented this proposal together as curators on the AAG (9 Jan 2025) to share why it is so important for the Polkadot ecosystem. If you're wondering why this bounty is absolutely critical, hear it from the people who are working day in day out on Polkadot's success (Otar, Flavio, Phil and Dom). Here's the snippet: <a href="https://x.com/TheKusamarian/status/1878396510947475875">https://x.com/TheKusamarian/status/1878396510947475875</a>.&nbsp;

Hey Polkadot frens!
We&rsquo;re super excited to be embarking on the next phase of EasyA x Polkadot, after a hugely successful 2024! The name of this next phase? The awesome #360DaysOfPolkadot. We&rsquo;ve crafted this after doing a deep dive into this year&rsquo;s successes, as well as where we can do even better. We&rsquo;ve talked for hours with members of the Polkadot ecosystem to gather their visions for where we should focus next, and have incorporated this into #360DaysOfPolkadot.
For ease of reading, here&rsquo;s the summary:
Short Description: <a href="http://easya.io">EasyA</a> doubles down on the strong success it has already brought to the Polkadot ecosystem via the EasyA app and in-person hackathons. In this proposal for #360DaysOfPolkadot, EasyA will upgrade the in-app EasyA Polkadot course to Polkadot 2.0, and host the next 2 landmark hackathons in-person at Harvard University and in London.
Live in the EasyA app:
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/xm7vXjB/Easy-A-App-Polkadot-Partners.png" alt="" width="639" height="275" />
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/7tvM07H/Easy-Ax-Polkadot-Harvard-Finalists.png" alt="" width="640" height="254" />
Polkadot x EasyA Harvard Hackathon 2024 Finalists!
<img src="https://i.ibb.co/PhZ4df8/360-Days-Of-Polkadot-Crowds.png" alt="" width="320" height="309" />
Location: Harvard University (USA) and London (UK) as well as virtual (via developer educational challenges in the EasyA app)
Timeline: November 2024 - April 2025
Requested Allocation: USD $392,500
Target Metrics:
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KPI
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Target 🎯
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Total developers starting crash course
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120,000
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Total developers completing crash course
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100,000
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In-person hackathon attendees
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600
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Hackathon projects
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100
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Social Media Impressions (LinkedIn/Twitter/TikTok/Instagram, YouTube etc)
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10M+
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<img src="https://i.ibb.co/MV2QWn8/360-Days-Of-Polkadot-Testimonials.png" alt="" width="640" height="1039" />
We have created this on-chain proposal after opening it up for an extended discussion phase <a href="../post/2565">here</a>. We have been thrilled to hear everyone's support and feedback both in the comments, and live on the two <a href="https://x.com/TheKusamarian/status/1858117890920292374">AAGs</a> where we presented. As you can see from the comments, we have taken this feedback to heart and incorporated it into this final proposal.&nbsp;For a consolidated overview of the feedback which we received in our open discussions with the community, please see the <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pnYZU8HCGiGgPvtch93ZKLUFK77mus87SDvNZ0WEioY/edit?tab=t.0#bookmark=id.66ydmpxfx8">summary</a> in our full proposal.
The full proposal is available <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pnYZU8HCGiGgPvtch93ZKLUFK77mus87SDvNZ0WEioY/edit?usp=sharing">here</a>!
&ndash; Phil, Dom (EasyA Co-Founders) and the EasyA Team

Milestone 1: EasyA x Polkadot: In-person hackathons and in-app Polkadot 2.0 crash course (#360DaysOfPolkadot)

Hey Everyone!

We’re thrilled to announce our successful completion of Milestone 3!

**Progress Summary**

As an executive summary, we have now successfully achieved Milestone 3 (holding the **two in-person Polkadot hackathons in the US and UK**) including surpassing our KPIs! As outlined in our [Milestone 1 and 2 report](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/treasury/232#r86qRZjawwaL5113MjzU), by the end of those two milestones we had collected key feedback from developers and parachain/project teams, and created the challenges to get developers building on them in the EasyA app! 

In this milestone, we held two spectacular hackathons at [Harvard University](https://twitter.com/easya_app/status/1670132876711723008) (in Boston, USA) and in [London](https://twitter.com/easya_app/status/1672712646230003714) (UK) which attracted top developers both from within the Polkadot ecosystem and beyond, with Web3 enthusiasts keen to learn more about Polkadot attending and hacking.

![Absolutely packed auditoriums at the hackathons, with hackers hard at work learning about Polkadot, parachains and more! ](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/642ed403044d8378fabb82a6/64afd59491b959274f7cd159_polkadot%20hackathon.jpg)

Our #60DaysOfPolkadot campaign (which we’re continuing to run) has to-date brought over 30,000 developers to build in the Polkadot ecosystem via the EasyA in-app crash course. The sheer number of builders meant we were in the fortunate position to be able to select the very best developers to attend our two IRL hackathons. As a result, at the hackathons we had founders backed by a16z and YC, with multiple previous exits under their belts, as well as professional software engineers all coming together to create some of the best projects we’ve ever seen. In addition, we had a strong focus on students too, who came from nearby Harvard, MIT, Yale and Brown, and even as far away as from UChicago, Georgia Tech and Stanford. These students are the key to unlocking the next generation of Web3 builders, and they were inspired by the opportunities unlocked by Polkadot. Many of these brilliant teams are continuing to build on Polkadot after the hackathon.

What did it look like in numbers? In summary:

**Polkadot x EasyA Hackathon at Harvard (17-18 June, 2023):**

1. Hackers: 300
2. Final projects created: 35
3. Colleges/companies represented: 45
4. Social media impressions: 1.5M+

Check out the final video summary for the hackathon at Harvard [here](https://youtu.be/zWLqGfw09wk)!

**Polkadot x EasyA Hackathon in London (24-25 June, 2023):**

1. Hackers: 250
2. Final projects created: 36
3. Colleges/companies represented: 38
4. Social media impressions: 1M+

Want to see the lines for the hackathon that stretched all the way down the road? Here’s the wrap-up video for the London hackathon [here](https://youtu.be/fNH5SAN95UM)!

At both hackathons, participants attended world-leading workshops held by Polkadot experts such as [Kevin Neilson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinneilson/) (Developer Relations at Moonbeam), [Dave Bean](https://www.linkedin.com/in/davebean51/) (COO of Gear), and [Kahori Razzell](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kahori-razzell-8213634b/) (UX at Astar). They received 24/7 support, both at a code-level and also in preparing for their presentations at the final round of selection!

We were keen to involve as much of the ecosystem as possible, so in addition to the Polkadot parachains and projects whom we got developers building on around the world via the EasyA app, we also had the pleasure of hosting Moonbeam, Gear and Astar in-person. Each of them held their own track at the hackathons too, which was a massive success; this enabled developers to see the strength of the Polkadot ecosystem in-person as well as the vibrant technologies they could leverage beyond just the Polkadot relay chain itself.

In conclusion, the excitement created about Polkadot by these two hackathons was incredible. We put a huge amount of effort into encouraging developers to continue building in the Polkadot ecosystem after the hackathon, and are currently supporting several teams with making connections within the ecosystem so that they can thrive (e.g. get technical expertise, know-how and funding)! This will ensure these two hackathons support the long-term growth of the Polkadot ecosystem!


**Full Progress Report**

If you want to dive into the details of the hackathons, we’ve put everything together into this full report [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dpy4e9JqiFiWaljAb_TttDF8JSzUEvgxl7BwuprrXkU/edit?usp=sharing)!

This includes the projects, budget allocation, pictures and everything else! 


**Milestone 3 Requested Allocation Breakdown Summary**

Demonstrating EasyA’s commitment to the Polkadot ecosystem and respect for treasury spending that fully benefits the community, we have already paid for the costs of hosting these two hackathons ourselves; this was required for them to go ahead as scheduled and to create hype amongst builders in the run-up to Polkadot Decoded.

Now that the community has had time to review and discuss our proposal in our discussion post which we posted up three weeks ago [here](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/post/1846), we are now making this treasury proposal to request reimbursement for our costs in holding the two hackathons of $220,000.* As EasyA have already paid for the costs of the hackathons, this is a request for reimbursement, in accordance with the community’s wishes for proposals to achieve their goals first and request reimbursement retrospectively.

*DOT amount calculated via EMA7 on 8 Aug 2023 at GMT+0 0700hrs: 1 DOT ~ USD$5.009. USD$220,000 ~ 43,920.94 DOT.

Details for this milestone were discussed in our original discussion post [here](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/post/1585), with the precise milestone and allocation breakdown [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyip_eVdevsjijQQSkL_GPOE5YF-AEGgE_xhwCFLnt0/edit#bookmark=id.x3kscjjklocs). Our first milestone was approved [here](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/motion/353) and our second milestone was approved [here](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/motion/417). This third milestone is to cover the costs EasyA incurred in hosting the in-person hackathons at Harvard and in London.

If you have any questions at all, please do feel free to comment them here! We were thrilled to host these hackathons for the community, and would love to share more about their success with everyone!

 -- Phil, Dom (EasyA Co-Founders) and the EasyA Team!