Learning and Earning on chain with Buildspace
People complain that there aren’t any real-world use cases for crypto. I can understand why. It's become a meme to say that "this NFT gives you access to a community." Who cares about access to this community? What does that even mean?
We know that behind the facade of “access” is the hope that this NFT you bought will increase in price. Sharing the value prop of a community makes people feel better about themselves. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t followed the same narrative and way of thinking at times.
So what are compelling use cases that blockchains enable? Today I'll touch on Buildspace, a learning and hiring marketplace for web3 developers. By highlighting products like Buildpace, I think you will start to see the magic these blockchain-based technologies can provide, specifically why it can be valuable to learn and earn on chain.
History of Buildspace
Buildspace is a learning and hiring marketplace for web3 developers. They have ~55k total users, 200 customers, and ~$2m in total revenue. They just started in September as a Discord channel, have come a long way already, and I think they have room to grow. This is what it means to build a strong community.
The company is founded by Farza Majeed. He previously built ZipSchool.com, a platform for K-5 kids to learn science. They went through YC in 2020 but in late September of 2021, pivoted to create Buildspace. I had a chance to meet Farza a few months ago, and his energy was infectious. He also came across as cheerful and someone who doesn't take himself too seriously, characteristics that provide confidence in his future success. He is truly passionate about building in web3.
Learning & Earning
There seems to be a trend in web3 to tie learning and earning together. We first saw it with Coinbase Earn. Let's say you are a Coinbase user and you want to learn about Avalanche. You see a course on them, take it, and then you can earn Avalanche tokens in exchange. You have these providers using their marketing budget to help educate new users on their product on the backend. Think of it as paid demand generation but for web3.
This trend is starting to occur across the industry. Rabbithole has a similar model, where protocols will pay them to house their content on their platform. Users will earn tokens in exchange for learning. Buildspace is following a similar dynamic but is helping developers tie their knowledge to job outcomes.
Onboarding
Let's say Sam is a developer that just left her web2 job. She wants to get into web3 but has no idea how to start. Her friends tell her to check out Buildspace.
When she lands on the homepage, she sees tutorials that will help her learn how to build an app on Ethereum using Solidity and create a store leveraging Solana Pay.
She signs up for the course teaching her how to build in Solidity. She then sees a "learning path" for her to go through. The content is curated by Farzah himself, so the quality is high.
Getting A Job
At the end of the course, Sam has accomplished the following:
She knows how to build on Ethereum
She’s earned an NFT that she can show to recruiters
The last piece is essential. For recruiters, it is hard to validate if a candidate has the skills they say they have. Because of this, recruiters rely on validating skills based on previous academic or work experiences. This can lead to unconscious bias and omitting diverse candidates in your hiring pool. Buildspace is offering anyone with an internet connection to learn valuable web3 skills, regardless of their background.
Back to Sam. Now that she has more confidence in her skills, she’d like to get a job. Buildspace aggregates companies looking for web3 talent. To date, they have 200+ web3 companies (e.g., Coinbase, Polygon, Chainlink, etc.) and a handful of web2 players looking to enter the space. Recruiters can filter by my skills, previous experiences, and the roles Sam is looking for.
Showcasing Skills
Sam also has that NFT associated with her skill. As a user, that is valuable because she can take that to other platforms and her activity is automatically presented by just connecting her wallet.
You might be asking why it is important to have your skills associated with your wallet? It did not make sense to me until trying out Alpha Backdrop. They are calling themselves the web3 LinkedIn.
Check out below how easy it was to onboard onto their website. I went to the site and connected my wallet. Immediately all of the information that I had associated with my wallet bubbled up on my new profile. Those include the DAOs I’m a part of, the votes I’ve made in those DAOs, and any NFTs I own.
This makes onboarding easier for apps that integrate with Metamask as the data now does not live in the app but on the wallet. This is one exciting example of being able to store your experiences on-chain and have them be interoperable with any other website that accepts a wallet.
It’s hard to imagine today what other use cases can be built on top of this. Just providing this as an option will allow entrepreneurs to build novel products that they could not before.
So what?
Here are a few more ideas I’m reflecting on after studying Buildspace:
NFTs as a credential: I notice a broader trend of having creators or instructors issuing NFTs for completing their courses. Will you earn NFTs in the future for taking a college course? Does it have to be an NFT? Can it just be a token or anything else tied to your wallet? Keep an eye out for this only increasing across multiple platforms in the future.
Paying users to learn about you: It's an open question if protocols continue to have the capital to pay users to learn about them. How do you ensure quality control? How do you make sure the content is relevant for learners? WIll these protocols run out of money?
Your wallet as your new identity: Showing people my NFTs feels similar to sharing photos from a recent trip; there's a story behind it and the people I experienced it with, so you feel a sense of pride while sharing. In the future, your wallet will hold your NFTs and tokens and your driver's license, your employment history, and verification of the college you went to. All this data will live in your wallet for you to showcase, use for your next job, or maybe even get discounts at your local coffee shop. Buildspace is starting to showcase what that could look like with skills and jobs.
If you are a developer, try out Buildspace. I am curious to hear what you think. If you are non-technical, check out RabbitHole or CryptoHunt; both are helping to onboard folks into this space and are following a similar dynamic