Building Web3 as a Student: Insights, Challenges, and Growth

Well, for the next session, it will be truly inspiring for you, and we'll get to hear from the founders who started their Web3 journey as a student. And they overcame some challenges, some obstacles, and now they will be showing some of their success with us sharing their knowledge. So please join me in welcoming two of our co-founders of Catalyst Tech, Whit and Billy, on the topic of building Web3 as a student, insights, challenges and growth. Welcome, guys. Hello.

Right. Okay, I'm a bit excited, but yeah. So, yeah, today we are going to share our journey towards building things in Web3. And also, we'd like to share some insights we have gained, like the challenge we have faced, and also the growth we have experienced along the way. Sure.

But first, let me introduce myself right so I am rich and I'm Billy okay we are software engineers and a third year computer students yeah we currently studying and yep let me tell you about what we do here in web3 and also at Optimism. So we are Catalyst, and actually we do some products on Optimism, and most of our products is in the governance tool category, and there are some products, and I'm sure most of you may not get familiar with it because it quite specifics and the first one retro preserve hub it's about building products that related to the grants and also the next one builder ideas beauty ideas is a place where everyone can find a listed idea and then all the listed ideas were curated from the foundation of the museums and also like builders can pick one of them and build and also those ideas when it built into a whole product it can be used to apply for the grants. And the next one, Impact Calculator, we do some experiments trying to convert quantitative insight into a number evaluation for each project applying for RetroPGF Fund. And yeah, let's start our journey. I'll go roughly on it.

So at first, me and Billy, we met at the university. And at that time, I have some backgrounds in web tool development. I do front-end, do back-end, and sometimes I trade. But most of the time, I don't get any profit out of it. And I don't exactly even know what is blockchain and how about you Billy?

For me so basically I'm just a normal trader who loves coding and but the thing is not going well because I got liquidated from the Binance and I'm transitioning myself into the AdWord Hunter on the Artemis Zooms. Right okay and that's most of our journey and yeah we meet at the university right and then we try to find some side hustles to do yeah make money while studying and with billy insight we stumble upon a repository on github so this one is quite builder specific because most of it contains like the code but this one contains the list ofspecific, because most of it contains the code, but this one contains the list of ideas. And it's the list of ideas that a builder can pick it up and build something out of it. So we stumble upon it, and then we find some ideas that we think we can deliver. And after that, with Billy Insight and my technical skill it comes the first product of us retro pgm hub so the products I said is about funding programs discovering of the application and then we can research through all of it and by yeah by the end of the journey like three months while building it, we decided to submit it to RATO Funding.

So RATO Funding is a funding program made by Optimism, and suddenly we received like 45,000 OP for some reason, and it's far more than we expected. But anyway, we see the opportunity and we think that it's a good way, that there's a good way that we can build and also we can get money from it. So we find much more of our friends and yeah, we scale. And after we scale, currently there are seven software engineers and data scientists, also data engineers, tackling more than half a dozen projects consecutively. So that's roughly our story.

But I think there are some more things to elaborate, and Billy will tell you that. Yes, for sure, Whit. Thank you. So for about, before we go further, I think we want you to take a look into the grants program. And Billy will tell you that.

to the builders because as you might know we are just in the early stage of development right so there are so many chains or many ecosystem that are requiring a builders to build the product or many new innovation on top of them so I think it's a great chance to start building and get funding from that for the example about the super chain ecosystem there are so many grant within a super chain ecosystem like the first one is about a retro funding grant so For the example about the Superchain ecosystem, there are so many grants within the Superchain ecosystem. Like the first one is about the retrofunding grant. So the retrofunding grant is about the program that will reward the project that generated positive impact into the ecosystem, into the things, and they will reward it retrospectively later. The next one is about the Unichain developer grant. The Unichain developer grant is more focusing on the builders who expertise at DeFi and want to focus on this from the beginning until the first.

And the last one about the BaaS builder grant So BaaS builder grant is backed by the KoiBaaS and they will support the early stage, such as many initial prototypes for the small grant and they will continue doing this for ever until your project is successful. So let's dig down into the retrofunding because I think there are some interesting models that you can gain and you can get funding from this. So as you can see here, there are four rounds of the retrofunding this year, and every three months, they will be the ones funding to the builders. So I think it is a good chance for you to get funding within the years and trying to build some product that have a new innovation or something experiment on that with a different category like the on-chain builders, OP stack, governance and dev tooling. So there are many categories and the next question why why they need to funding us because I think we are in the early stage right And this is a win-win scenario because when a user making a transaction, the transaction will generate the demand for the block space.

And when there are a lot of demand for the block space, the revenue will generate from the sequencer and the profit will reinvest back into the ecosystem via the program called retrofundings. And the retrofundings will distribute the reward back to the builders so the builder can build more innovations, more product for the user to try and onboard and it's gonna be looped forever so the builder will receive the funding and the ecosystem will grow up like a new project, new idea, new user and generate more revenues. Okay I think that is all about the grant for now. So let's get back to our journey and our things. Like, as you know, being a startup become like a great opportunity come with a great responsibility, right?

So from the beginning, we are encounter many challenge from the start because it is not smooth like we think at the first but so let's see let's take a look what we have facing now the first one about the competitors since we are startup we are not a well-known project we are no one know us no one trust us there are so many competitors so the things that we can do is try to find the partnerships and the collaboration whenever we can so we can do is try to find the partnerships and collaboration whenever we can. So we can build more strong reputation, more well-known, and more chance to see to the other communities so they get know of us. And the next one, when there are similar project into the market, right, you need to have a unique selling point that the other don't have so the user can Click on your project and oh this this project have but the others don't so you need to have this to make the user remember of your product and the last one those things won't happen if you only think but you don't take an action so You need to take action fast thing deliver fast, and improve fast because the thing is going so fast. So if you are doing slowly, the other competitors will be doing this so fast and no one will see your product. So about the next one, about the next challenge about lacking a resource.

Lacking a resource can be anything like the data source, the funding, investors, or maybe team or contributor to build on of your project. So to slope it, I think you can reaching out to any people who advertise on their domain, or people who is similar to the program that you already want to implement, or someone so you can get a feedback. And about lack of funding, I think you don't worry about this because in the crypto space we are not relying on only VC or the angel investor because there are still many grants program as I mentioned earlier like from the Coinbase, from the base chain, from the Uniswap or something. So there are many opportunity to apply for the GAN program at the first stage. And the last one for the node team and contributor, I think you can start by your own.

And you can find some people who are passionate about your idea later, because the Web3 projects most are the open source, right? So if anyone who is interested about your idea, who is passionate about your idea, you can invite them to join them and you can take them to sing with you. And the last challenge is about turning the idea to the reality. I think this is the hardest one because you want to know that your product will work or not until it gets done. So the things that you can do from the video sale is like asking yourself like, oh, this idea will work.

What is solution that we gonna try to solve this problem? And oh, maybe anyone already solve this problem? If so, what is your unique selling point that you different from each other and what the gap that you can fill? Right? Once you confidence everything, you create some MVP or minimum product to the user to try and test about your ideas, your features, about the things, and you get the feedback to shape your ideas, shape your product to making it better and better.

Okay, so apart from the challenge, we are still gaining a growth. We are growing gaining a growth, like we are growing up every day, like so in many ways, so in a tangible and intangible way. So for the first one, about the people skill, so since we are building a startup, we had to form up a team and have to communication or dealing with the other stakeholders like partnerships or the collaborators. So we again many things so far like a problem solving that we have to solve the conflict within the teams about the leadership that I have to take the ownership and motivate the other like as a team lead and there's something else about the communication with the other about the compromise thing so I think it is intangible when you go into building some startup and the next one is a common thing in technical skill so the technical skill is you gain this when you the builders on the product on or something if you are building something you will gain something you are building more you know more if you are want to building something about it on-chain you will get know more about the smart contract when you are interesting about the governance so you you're gonna get concept more about the DAOs the things that on-chain voting or something so I will I want to say if you the more the more you build the more you learn and the last thing all the things I have mentioned about we can conclude it into the seven key takes away that we have learned and we have gained so far from the, we are working as a startup at the Catalyst. So let's take a look what we have gained so far.

Okay, and yeah, I'll take the stage. So first of all, blockchain isn't DeFi. I think most of the beginners and also the newcomers, they think only in one aspect that in blockchain, it's only related to DeFi and crypto. But actually, for me, I think it's not. Blockchain can be used in various things.

In a large scale, like in country country scale some healthcare system can be built by using blockchain technology and i think that uh you doesn't need to only focus on one thing yeah which is the defy and the second thing feasibility over complexity Like many of the new product launch, they only focus on making things in high tech and also only focus on the technology aspect. But actually, if there are no user, there are no needs from the user, it will not be feasible. So I think most of us, we need to focus on the feasibility and infrastructure over tools. So this one, it's kind of a little complex to digest, I think. But I think in Web3 space, there are two types of tools.

Like the tools and building infrastructure. So something like infrastructure is something bare-bones lean and provide like only basic functions for the ecosystem and the tools is something addition to those infrastructure it's a some it's something that utilized infrastructure in a simpler or in a better way and so from hearing this you may think that building tools may be more beneficial I think it's easier to get start because you only focus in only some aspect of the infrastructure but most of the time infrastructure tends to last longer in the market. And the next one, like a product idea, you can just contribute. There are so many opportunities that you can do and contribute into Web3 space. And also, there are some add-ups that it gave out to the contributor too, like and FLT.

And you didn't only contribute, but you get some reward out of it. And yeah, if you don't want to contribute and just want to own your product, yeah, you can check it out on our product. It's builder ideas, and it's the curated idea from Optimism that they want someone to implement. So if you are a builder and you have technical skills, you can go there and then pick some ideas and apply for retail funding. And lastly, don't be afraid to build.

So it doesn't matter if you are just a student like me, I'm Billy, but I think, yeah, if you don't get started start you won't get ahead and yeah that's quite all from us thank you and yeah if you have any questions feel free to talk with us after the stage all right thank you very much Whit and Billy