DeCo and the Power of Community Initiatives on Ergo

ErgoRaffle, an incentivized crowdfunding platform, had the Ergo community buzzing long before it ever even launched. Winning first place at the inaugural ErgoHack (June 2021), it was apparent that this elegant protocol was set to bring “novel solutions not seen before in the Ergo ecosystem” while adding “a lot of value for future developers to learn from as well.”

When it launched in beta in September 2021, it was immediately apparent that it was set to become a community favorite. In fact, while still in beta, twenty-one raffles were successfully completed for objectives ranging from supporting mining decentralization to philanthropic initiatives.

As Ergo Raffle left beta, more and more crowdfunding initiatives sought out this novel tool, and in the last few months over 4000 ERG has been raised.

Deco’s first fundraising raffle goal was set at 1115 ERG. Within days, this goal was met and surpassed thanks to the community’s enthusiasm and support for this initiative. The Ergo Foundation made a significant contribution and Ergo Raffle also endorsed this raffle by donating the 5% fee. 

So what is DeCo (short for Decentralized Collaboration), and why has it received such a massive outpouring of support from the community?

DeCo (previously ErgoLearn) is a grassroots, education initiative first conceived by the team behind ErgoLend. The purpose of DeCo is to organize and offer interactive courses for anyone interested in learning more about Ergo and ErgoScript.

The first cohort of Deco students graduated the “Layman Course Batch #0” on February 26th and are already helping the ecosystem grow and thrive. Some have dedicated their talents to teaching, while others, like the team behind GuapSwap, are working on deploying their dApps. In the wake of this success, Deco is already welcoming new students in its virtual classrooms and planning an even more ambitious curriculum.

DeCo Curriculum

1. Two “Layman eUTXO design” courses (the list below is quoted from the curriculum overview). These are geared towards novices and cover:

   • Basics of eUTxO
   • Concepts of Boxes, Transactions, Registers and its utilities
   • Designing of Transactions (Simple, Real-life, eUTxO)
   • Basic concepts of Tokens, Script hashes for box retrieval
   • Mindset for designing these systems
   • Group projects to work on

2. One “ErgoScript Developer” course (the list below is quoted from the curriculum overview), focusing on:

   • Basic Functional Programming and ErgoScript Language Syntax and Usage
   • Guard Script design framework
   • Evaluation of existing contracts
   • App kit and its utilization
   • Working with Explorer and decoding transaction data
   • Concepts of Scalability and Design patterns 

DeCo Fundraiser on ErgoRaffle

To continue and sustain their growth, Deco has organized their second fundraising raffle, set to end near the end of April. While the raffle goal is higher than the previous ErgoRaffle, so are the needs of DeCo as the influx of students and breadth of classes offered steadily increases.

The raffle’s 7064 ERG goal is based on the estimate to cover the following costs:

• Education costs which cover syllabus, homework, class materials, student assessments, teaching of the classes itself. Additionally, there is a 500 USD bounty to be given out for the video recordings of each class, for a total of 11000 USD.
• Operations, including planning, scaling, marketing, community management as well as bounties to reward community contributors for a total of 11000 USD.
• Projects for the future sustainability of DeCo. 10000 USD will be awarded to the team that presents a plan for the future sustainability of DeCo.

It has been mentioned on numerous occasions in the weekly AMA’s that education is essential to Ergo’s promotion. Ergo is novel with its native language and Sigma Protocols. It will take detailed and thoughtful education materials to assist in onboarding new developers and community members to help Ergo reach its fullest potential. As a community initiative, DeCo is helping to lead the charge, providing a platform for new Ergonauts to learn about the tools that can help unlock their creativity as they help build the future of blockchain.