KERNEL: A custom educational web
This proposal seeks to establish a GitcoinDAO workstream for KERNEL, a custom web3 educational institution, built carefully to create the conditions to encourage better humans, building a better web. It is a transformative educational experience in web3.
AMENDED TL;DR x2
KERNEL seeks an amended 49K in GTC for Season 14 (a 67% reduction from our original request of 150K GTC), our first as a GitcoinDAO workstream. KERNEL is spinning out from Gitcoin Holdings with ~$100K USDC in treasury, after two years building KERNEL within Gitcoin Holdings.
KERNEL is a unique experience for both web3 newcomers and web3 veterans, allowing KERNEL to guide talented contributors across the web3 ecosystem, whether that is GitcoinDAO, other protocols, or stewarding their own projects. KERNEL ultimately hopes to be an educational institution that is a public good, creating positive externalities for web3, first and foremost, by having a positive impact on the lives of KERNEL Fellows and the communities they are responsible for.
These communities are wide-ranging, including a variety of high potential web3 protocols, projects, DAOâs, and other adventures. Already, seven early stage KERNEL projects are slated to give .5% of tokens/equity to the KERNEL treasury during S14, with a potential for 15 more during S15 and S16. We still have many blocks to come.
Because Gitcoin Holdings already holds 24% of âteam governance rightsâ in KERNEL, and hopes to transition this to the DAO, we think this will serve GitcoinDAO well over time as we collaborate to build a public institution for all.
Our intention is to raise funding for KERNEL in a completely web3-native way (directly from protocols, no venture funding), starting at home with GitcoinDAO. We took inspiration from Nomic Labs, who recently completed a similar fundraise for Hardhat with $2MM in anchor support from the Ethereum Foundation and support from Uniswap, Optimism, Aave, and others for a total $30MM fundraise.
We hope GitcoinDAO will consider being KERNELâs anchor partner. This (shortened and trimmed) proposal describes a bit about our last two years, but focuses on our use of 49K GTC during S14 and our intentions as a GitcoinDAO workstream for S14 - S16.
You can see the original proposal for 150K GTC, which has been now reduced by 67%, by starting here. The section that immediately follows will focus on the amendments to the original proposal, including a brief update to milestones and the thinner budget for S14.
Milestone report
Since this section did not change much, we refer you to the section below from the original proposal.
In early discussions on this proposal, we believe one significant milestone went underrepresented as a feature of KERNEL.
We are very grateful to have the trust of a variety of KERNEL Fellows who have co-created KERNEL with us. Their generosity has led to the potential for a KERNEL Endowment to grow perpetually, over time, and support us in building a healthy educational system into perpetuity.
We will never require a fellow to give back to the treasury, but we will receive these contributions with open arms, knowing that they help us to continue mindfully expanding the play.
We expect, given weâve spent time with hundreds of such projects in KERNEL, that the KERNEL Treasury may be seeded well with tokens or equity from ~20 projects between S14 - S16.
Phases & Use Of Funds
S14 begins with Phase 1, the specifics of the next phases for KERNEL, including our efforts around growing KERNEL steadily, along with educational, financial, and creative infrastructure.
- Phase 1: KB6âs Empty Block (S14)
- Phase 2: KB7, KB8, and a KERNEL Endowment (S15, S16)
- Phase Infinity: The Evolving Infinite Game no funding)
Because Phase 2 and Phase Infinity do not have significant changes in the amendment, you can find them in the original proposal below.
Phase 1: Conduct KB6âs âEmpty Blockâ
49K GTC would allow us to begin with the following phase in S14 of GitcoinDAO.
KERNELâs Block 6 will be a unique one. We will not be opening up new applications for KERNEL Block 6, rather choosing to spend the summer in communion with many of the existing KERNEL Fellows while releasing our progress on a variety of 1) web3 (funding, artistic, and research) experiments and 2) infrastructure for communities of care.
Our intention is to explore fresh conversational spaces we have yet to open together and enter into KERNELâs next phase with strong footing.
- Run KERNEL Blocks 6, an âemptyâ block, focusing on the following projects, artifacts, and activities:
- KERNEL Treasury - establishing a KERNEL Treasury which stewards a variety of tokens from GTC, other leading web3 protocols, and KERNEL projects. Explore legal models for a perpetual KERNEL Endowment.
- Project Unprofile - exploring open and holistic means of connecting peers in KERNEL and beyond
- Convo - a simple web app to organize intentional gatherings and great conversations
- Signature Economies - an essay intended to create âsignificantâ money
- Select KERNEL Block 7, welcoming the next 300+ KERNEL Fellows
- KERNEL Block 7 will begin September 9th, 2022
We also intend to serve in a meta-governance role in GTC, offering our perspective in protocol governance for the first time, using the KERNEL syllabus as a grounding structure.
If this experiment goes well, we may continue to do so in other web3 projects, primarily those who have experienced KERNEL and pledge tokens to the KERNEL Treasury.
A detailed breakdown of use of funds for Phase 1, intended for S14 of GitcoinDAO is below:
Please note in the second amendment, GitcoinDAO is providing funds only for KB6, KB7, and the Infinite Game for a total of 49K GTC. We have left the engineering / creative efforts here for context on what is also being explored by KERNEL during Phase 1.
Closing Thoughts
GitcoinDAO is a schelling point for creators and funders of digital public goods who want to build the common architecture that will allow hundreds of DAOs to succeed in non-extractive, collaborative and complementary ways.
KERNEL aims to be a home for many of those creators. This all means that we value GitcoinDAO as a space where we can safely explore what it means for KERNEL to be a public good.
In providing 49K GTC, and potentially supporting across 2-3 seasons, GitcoinDAO provides the seed in an imperfect garden of giving which may last a generation.
We look forward to being involved as collaborators in GitcoinDAO via CSDO, in governance proposals, and in sharing our perspective around public goods, educational environments, and coordination tools.
Thank you for your kind attention.â We look forward to the many ways we could give this gift forward. After all, it isnât ours to begin with.
=== The original KERNEL S14 proposal: Comments below ===
tl;dr: This proposal seeks to establish a GitcoinDAO workstream for KERNEL, a custom web3 educational institution, built carefully to create the conditions to encourage better humans, building a better web. We seek 150K in GTC for Season 14.
After two years within Gitcoin Holdings, KERNEL is seeking $5mm in total funding from the ecosystem as a part of its transition to a KERNEL Foundation (a Cayman Foundation Company).
GitcoinDAO is our intended anchor co-conspirator, and we would like to join as a workstream for ~3 seasons, S14 - S16. Separate from GitcoinDAO, we intend to explore $2-3mm contributions with a variety of other value-aligned ecosystems within web3, open source, and public goods communities to achieve our fundraising goal.
Starting with Genesis Block in May 2020, KERNEL has run five KERNEL blocks to much celebration internally and acclaim externally, alongside 1,200 KERNEL fellows building 200+ web3 projects (more here).
Along with the steady drumbeat of running KERNEL Blocks, this workstream intends to create a variety of financial, communal, educational and artistic tools for âcommunities of careâ, which we hold to be amongst the most significant public goods web3 can create.
Our intention is to establish an infinite game which would allow KERNEL to be healthily self-sustaining into perpetuity within a few short years, to the benefit of GitcoinDAO, KERNEL, and hopefully, humans interested in a more caring internet.
We first describe KERNEL, then share a roadmap for this infinite game, use of funds, and parting thoughts from the KERNEL Syllabus.
KERNEL as Public Good
Any meaningful shift, within self or society, begins with how we learn and teach.
Valuable knowledge may present itself for free, but it must be given attention, intention, and reflection in order to become personally meaningful. It is this paradox which makes educational gifts the seed around which a community crafting new value models can flourish: âa single flower blooms, and throughout the world it is springâ.
Enter KERNEL: a trust space for talented individuals to use Web 3 as a means to explore their humanity more holistically. KERNEL begins with a KERNEL âBlockâ: an 8 week experience, anchored by 16 lessons which is filled by 250 interested, talented, and diverse peers.
The topics in a KERNEL block transcend web3 - starting with trust, moving through meaning and value, and eventually ending in giving and scale-ability.
These (free and open-source) lessons provide fertile ground for an eight week experience which is ultimately co-created by the KERNEL Fellows who interact with 1) the content and 2) each other. A deepening of personal spirit and the relationships KERNEL Fellows form with each are the primary orientations of the program.
KERNEL aims to be a living example of what it means to live well together. The experience provides questions, not answers, as we explore: how can we build better lives for ourselves as we build a better web for us all?
KERNEL Fellows are builders at leading web3 companies as founders, dancers, technologists, gamers, economists, designers, artists, and musicians. They deeply enjoy each others company and transcend these distinctions every time we meet them again.
What is KERNELâs most fertile path?
âThere are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.â
âThe rules of an infinite game must change in the course of play. The rules are changed when the players of an infinite game agree that the play is imperiled by a finite outcome â that is, by the victory of some players and the defeat of others. The rules of an infinite game are changed to prevent anyone from winning the game and to bring as many persons as possible into the play.â
-Dr. James P. Carse, Finite & Infinite Games
150K in GTC prepares us for our next act â establishing KERNEL as an âinfiniteâ pattern for communities of care by:
- Running KERNEL blocks ad infinitum
- Establishing a perpetual, web3 native funding model for KERNEL
- Open-sourcing peer-to-peer educational tools & patterns
- Creating meaningful, timeless web3 artifacts
Each of these share a fundamental âinfiniteâ, or âperpetualâ characteristic: they avoid short-term outcomes, unhealthy competition, and aim to grow healthier with time.
Funding The Infinite KERNEL
While our approach to growing community and seeding educational spaces also lean upon infinite game philosophy, we outline below how KERNEL uses it to plan for a healthy financial future for KERNEL and to provide value to GitcoinDAO.
Our first step towards a sustainable, regenerative KERNEL are setting up 1) a public KERNEL Treasury and exploring 2) a KERNEL Endowment.
The KERNEL Treasury will begin with $50K in tokens KERNEL has raised thus far through past KERNEL Blocks and an influx of $100K USDC from Gitcoin Holdings, upon spinout. It would grow substantially if our intended $5mm grant raise from GitcoinDAO and other value-aligned protocols is successful, beginning with this workstream.
However, over the next five years, we expect the KERNEL Treasury will grow the most via KERNEL Adventures.
Through the generosity of an initial seven initial KERNEL Adventures who have committed between .5% - 1% of equity or tokens to the KERNEL treasury, our eyes open to the possibility that a KERNEL Treasury can be a continuous stream to draw upon for KERNEL into perpetuity, if given time to grow.
In Phase 1, we aim to use the $5mm in commitments from GitcoinDAO and other leading web3 ecosystems, alongside less liquid tokens from KERNEL Alumni, to give ourselves that time.
In Phase 2, we will consider establishing a public KERNEL endowment. Endowments have had notable success in co-creating some of the strongest public infrastructure in the world, both physically and financially. They are perpetual in nature, âmanaged with consideration given to current and future beneficiaries with the goal of providing the same level of economic support to both in perpetuity.â
Our expectation is this workstream will lead us to answers on exactly how this might support KERNELâs efforts into perpetuity within a new, web3 context.
The effort from here then, for KERNEL, is a simple lifeâs work: give the gift back.
Phases & Use Of Funds
More on the specifics of the next phases for KERNEL, including our efforts around growing KERNEL steadily, along with educational, financial, and creative infrastructure.
- Phase 1: KB6âs Empty Block (S14)
- Phase 2: KB7, KB8, and a KERNEL Endowment (S15, S16)
- Phase Infinity: The Evolving Infinite Game (no funding)
Phase 1: Conduct KB6âs âEmpty Blockâ
150K GTC would allow us to begin with the following phase in S14 of GitcoinDAO.
KERNELâs Block 6 will be a unique one. We will not be opening up new applications for KERNEL Block 6, rather choosing to spend the summer in communion with many of the existing KERNEL Fellows while releasing our progress on a variety of 1) web3 (funding, artistic, and research) experiments and 2) infrastructure for communities of care.
Our intention is to explore fresh conversational spaces we have yet to open together and enter into KERNELâs next phase with strong footing.
- Run KERNEL Blocks 6, an âemptyâ block, focusing on the following projects, artifacts, and activities:
- KERNEL Treasury Models - establishing a KERNEL Treasury which stewards a variety of tokens from GTC, other leading web3 protocols, and KERNEL adventures. Explore legal models for a perpetual KERNEL Endowment.
- Project Unprofile - exploring open and holistic means of connecting peers in KERNEL and beyond
- Convo - a simple web app to organize intentional gatherings and great conversations
- Signature Economies - an essay intended to create âsignificantâ money
- Select KERNEL Block 7, welcoming the next 300+ KERNEL Fellows
- KERNEL Block 7 will begin September 9th, 2022
We also intend to serve in a meta-governance role in GTC, offering our perspective in protocol governance for the first time, using the KERNEL syllabus as a grounding structure.
If this experiment goes well, we may continue to do so in other web3 projects, primarily those who have experienced KERNEL and pledge tokens to a KERNEL Endowment.
Phase 2: KB7, KB8, and a KERNEL Endowment
With a treasury in place, Phase 2 (S15 and S16) will be about running KB7 & KB8, welcoming 600 new people to KERNEL. We will use the infrastructure of Phase 1 towards building a KERNEL Endowment and sprouting new peer-to-peer environments for KERNEL Fellows and web3 communities.
- Run KERNEL Blocks 7 / 8, welcoming the next 600+ KERNEL Fellows
- Continue the build of long-term oriented web3 artifacts and tooling
- Free Learn - a set of contracts and the accompanying React modules required for anyone to create their own educational offerings which generate revenue while remaining free for those who learn from them
- Margins of Meaning - a super secret shadow project to promote meaningful economies
- KERNEL Endowment: Consider the healthiest long term structure between the KERNEL Treasury and a KERNEL Endowment, alongside other fund models
Phase Infinity: The Evolving Infinite Game
We expect, following S16, to be complete with Phases 1 and 2 and to be a self-sustaining ecosystem. KERNEL will continue to orient around 16 principles and sense our way to the most fertile path. We expect these north stars to remain with us:
- Serve as a premier example of a âcommunity of careâ within the broader web3 community ecosystem and internet culture at large
- Create a set of open-source tools, patterns, artifacts, and customs intended to enable peer-to-peer living in other community contexts
- The KERNEL Block: a peer-to-peer learning environment driven by the humans who participate in it, more than any particular piece of content or inspiration
- The KERNEL Endowment: A perpetual funding mechanism, drawing upon endowments and web3 native value structure
- Kernel Artifacts: encouraging the creation of artifacts which blend the artistic with the functional, the beautiful with the organic, the generative with the regenerative
In each of these efforts, KERNEL aims to be a clear container which embeds reciprocity and relationship at its core. It aims to include more and diverse voices within the web3 story. It will deeply nurture a shared experience for KERNEL Fellows and all âcommunities of careâ, so that we might imagine and live our most vibrant present moments in communion with one another.
âThe real truth, the real church is coming to the human being. Ainât nothing in this world gonna get in your way âcause you canât see it or talk to it. All you can do is experience it. Eternity is not a word, itâs an existence.â â Ornette Coleman
Why GitcoinDAO
We choose to make this proposal to GitcoinDAO for a number of reasons. KERNEL was originally created and built within Gitcoin Holdings, which means we have strong ties to Gitcoin, both socially and structurally.
- I (Vivek Singh) served as COO of Gitcoin Holdings for 3 years (2019-2021), and KERNEL was originally constructed in May 2020 at Gitcoin as we looked to find a home for the best and brightest people we met through our work - across hackathons, Gitcoin Grants rounds, and beyond.
- Sachin Mittal (co-founder of KERNEL) and Angela Gilhotra also were employed by Gitcoin Holdings, in roles centered around developer advocacy and both co-created KERNEL
- @cryptowanderer and @sidcode are stewards at GitcoinDAO. Andy expressed his interest in May 2021 and Sid has been involved in the day-to-day operations of the DAO as a tech lead for the MMM workstream for 8+ months now and has contributed across PGF, FDD, and MC in various capacities. Weâve worked closely with various efforts of the DAO (Gitcoin Grants Rounds, Public Goods are Good, Memepalooza, and more).
- Gitcoin Holdings, as a part of incubating and spinning KERNEL out into the ecosystem, holds an ongoing voice in KERNELâs governance and would receive 24% of âteam governance rightsâ if there was a token distribution. The intention is for these rights to move to GitcoinDAO over time, per conversations with @owocki and Gitcoin Holdings leadership
A more expansive lens is that GitcoinDAO is a schelling point for creators and funders of digital public goods who want to build the common architecture that will allow hundreds of DAOs to succeed in non-extractive, collaborative and complementary ways. KERNEL aims to be a homebase for many of those creators. This all means that we value GitcoinDAO as a space where we can safely explore what it means for KERNEL to be a public good.
We look forward to being involved as collaborators in GitcoinDAO via CSDO, in governance proposals, and in sharing our perspective around public goods, educational environments, and coordination tools.
KERNEL As Gift
This brings us back, finally, to the core of KERNEL: the giving of gifts.
Gift-giving has always been the heart of genuine teaching and at the heart of Web 3. Both Satoshi and university endowments play on this same concept.
Weâre asking for a gift that will both allow us to continue exploring the most valuable ways to think about - and live within - web3, and that the gift may bring you into a lively circle of continuous and imperfect gift-giving.
We are looking for the kind of people who understand value in similar ways to KERNEL Fellows, and who want to explore what it means to create sacred transactional spaces by extending human trust within a trustless medium.
Thank you for your kind attention.ââ We hope for comments from near and far and to share much more about this institution for all, one block at a time. We look forward to the many ways we could give this gift forward. After all, it isnât ours to begin with.