Welcome to College DAO

Here's an introduction to College DAO and a brief history of the Network College.

First Principles - Everything that we build serves the mission of cultivating talent for a blockchain-native future. We’re here to empower students who are eager to dive into the world of blockchain and work with the most innovative companies in the industry.

Our goal is to provide the infrastructure that enables driven, passionate students to maximize their potential and unlock new career pathways in frontier technology.

Who We Are Building For

Our network primarily consists of blockchain clubs on university campuses worldwide. Students can get involved in Web3 through their campus clubs and by engaging with College DAO and our core team.

What is the core team?

College DAO's core team is a decentralized group of students from various campuses leading major initiatives. With this role comes the responsibility to build and cultivate the bridge between companies and college clubs. We ensure that the DAO keeps growing, expanding on our core offerings and products to support both the protocols and students.

Dive into our history to see what we have accomplished since our inception.

History

2022 Fall

Our journey began with the US campus tour we hosted for the Neo Blockchain. With just five college students, we traveled the country, developed as a team, and bonded with student clubs everywhere. As we walked through the halls of Yale and the glades of Berkeley, we saw firsthand how there is a thriving ecosystem teeming with opportunity and innovation. Although we had yet to identify major problems, we knew this network is incredibly powerful.

Through the tour, we provided clubs with over $9k in funding, helping them sustain and grow their operations over the coming years.

We also attended our first blockchain conference in Miami during Art Basel, where we experienced the immense value of these events firsthand. As a bunch of young, excited sophomores and juniors, we were thrilled by the Web3 craze. We entered rooms and shook hands with some of the most influential people in the industry—and this was just the beginning.

Unlocking these kinds of life-changing experiences for students around the world soon became our mission.

2023 Winter

In 2023, we returned to our roots at the University of Michigan by organizing the Blockchain Summit. This first-of-its-kind event on campus brought together clubs across various disciplines to explore blockchain and its offerings. We had entrepreneurs, artists, marketers, finance enthusiasts—you name it. This pulled together over 200 people in one room after weeks of planning.

Following this, we organized the University Twitter Tour, consisting of 15 sessions involving 28 clubs with a total reach of 14.6k+. We also started collaborating closely with companies like Chainlink, Arbitrum, and Starkware, working on more complex initiatives like distributing ambassador programs and hackathons. The team gained experience and we were organizing workshops with over 100+ attendees like clockwork.

These initiatives allowed us to uncover significant problems in the space and understand the need for a bridge between students and blockchain companies. Protocols were struggling to reach students at scale, leading to coordination problems and sluggish adoption. We saw a real, critical problem for blockchain’s future and set out to solve it.

2023 Fall

Realizing our potential to solve critical problems hindering talent development in blockchain, we spoke with companies and clubs to ideate solutions. This led to the idea of "education infrastructure," which includes resources and tools for companies to engage students at scale. We began ideating what the Hub would look like and took our first steps to bring it to life.

We had major activations at ETH Denver, Consensus, and Token2049, and organized the very first Schelling Point .edu highlighting the importance of public goods funding. This semester marked a significant expansion—we grew to over 80 university clubs across the globe, and our core team expanded from 5 to 18 contributors.

We also hosted our first-ever hacker house in Istanbul, a huge success that cultivated personal, firsthand relationships. This trip and experience changed the student experience for the builders onboard, and we were incredibly lucky to have had this opportunity.

In the midst of this, we also had major activations, including being invited to Congress to represent the university blockchain ecosystem in discussions with lawmakers last year for the FIT 21 bill that just passed the House.

2024 Winter

We released the Hub Prototype and organized College Fest—an annual event that travels to different conferences and offers a casual space for protocols and student clubs to interact.

The lore is insane. We had help putting this together with support from someone who worked on the CryptoPunks team. The event was a massive success, with over 250 students attending during our time at ETH Denver 2024.

We also integrated with Academy Ventures, marking the beginning of our efforts in building the most effective talent and innovation pipeline for students in Web3. These initiatives have set the stage for ongoing growth and support for our network as we expand our core offerings and build out comprehensive and robust education infrastructure.