Superteam
A web3 talent cooperative supporting the Solana ecosystem
👋 Welcome to the sixteenth issue of The Syllabus from Invisible College – a weekly newsletter that helps you navigate the fast-moving world of web3. To get this newsletter delivered to your inbox, subscribe here:
Invisible College Updates
Token Gating – Our content library will be token-gated this week and Discord token-gating is coming up in a couple of weeks. If you don’t have a Decentralien NFT and want to retain access to the community, events, and our upcoming courses, you can pick one up on Magic Eden.
Our First Course – Filming for our first course continues this week. Check out this sneak preview of the set. All Decentralien NFT holders will get free access to the course once we’ve finished production.
Upcoming Events – We’ve got a packed schedule of web3 learning events coming up. You can check them all out here.
Now onto this week’s post…
Every blockchain has a reputation.
Lately, Solana’s reputation has been associated with centralization and ownership by a small group of elite investors. But, that’s not the full story. Superteam believes that Solana’s low gas fees and ease of use make it an ideal technology to accelerate crypto usage in the ascending world (India, South East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa). They’ve assembled a collective of creators, operators, and investors to make this vision a reality.
The Model
Superteam believes the best way to onboard the ascending world into crypto is to give people opportunities to earn it. Accordingly, their focus is on connecting talent with earning opportunities. Since salaries in their target countries tend to be low, they are prioritizing Solana, due to its low gas fees and ease of use.
The nature of opportunities that Superteam offers ranges from Rust development to content writing and even making memes.
Superteam offers three different types of earning opportunities:
Bounties are small, one-off tasks like candidate referrals or content creation that multiple people can attempt to complete. The best submissions get paid a bounty (sponsored by the task issuer) that average $1,000, with some going as high as $5,000.
Instagrants are larger sponsored assignments that people can apply for. These tasks are less structured than bounties and can offer up to 10,000 USDC.
Missions are team-based projects led by Superteam members. These are usually well-defined sponsored jobs with specific deliverables. Payouts for missions go all the way up to 25,000 USDC.
Superteam also connects its members with full-time opportunities via their job board and shares advice, resources, and earning opportunities on their Superteam Talent Twitter account.
Besides connecting supply and demand of web3 talent, Superteam also creates educational content. For example, they partnered with Questbook to create and distribute content around development on Solana. Members of the DAO launched GroundZero – a website with free content for anyone looking to grasp the basics of web3.
The Superteam YouTube channel is also filled with web3 explainer videos, and a podcast that features conversations with web3 leaders like Balaji Srinivasan, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Brian Armstrong.
The Team
The core team at Superteam consists of Kash Dhanda, Akshay BD, Tanmay Bhat, Neil Shroff, and Devaiah Bopanna.
Kash has over a decade of experience using human-centered design to create products and services. Akshay was part of the founding team of Uber India, as well as its head of public policy. Tanmay is one of India’s top comedians, and is also widely known as an advertising and marketing genius. Neil is the CEO of FTX Superteam. And Devaiah leverages his many years working with Tanmay to run Superteam’s media efforts.
Together, they cover a wide variety of skillsets – product, policy, investing, and marketing – that are all extremely important to building a web3 organization.
The Membership Structure
Superteam’s membership philosophy contrasts with the idealistic views of many other DAOs. They believe that DAOs should be closed by default, only gradually allowing members in when they prove to be a good fit. Accordingly, Superteam has a three-tiered DAO, where members graduate to higher levels based on their proof of work.
Level 1 consists of Lurkers, which encompasses anyone who joins their Discord.
Lurkers who display strong proof of work from other projects get upgraded to Contributors, and can access additional earning opportunities and Discord channels.
Contributors who win a bounty or an Instagrant become Members, and get access to events, preferential treatment for future Instagrants, and the ability to contribute to other member projects.
Membership is limited to 150 people. This number was chosen intentionally, based on Dunbar’s number. Superteam regularly promotes active contributors and demotes inactive members, to make sure that the Member base is always filled with active participants.
Traction
As the competition between layer 1 chains intensifies, Superteam is a powerful case study for Solana’s ability to onboard new crypto users.
This has not gone unnoticed by leaders in the Solana ecosystem. Superteam has managed to partner with power players like FTX to support builders in the ecosystem and the Solana Foundation to fund Instagrants. Despite having never released a token, Superteam has managed to earn over $340,000 since they launched six months ago.
If Superteam can keep the flywheel spinning, they may play a significant role in helping accelerate crypto adoption in the ascending world.
Want to get involved?
Join their Discord and show your proof of work
Check out the list of Bounties on their website
Join their Talent Network to get notified of web3 earning opportunities
Listen to a few episodes of their fantastic podcast
If you’re a founder looking for a remote, temporary web3 workforce, check out their Bounty Menu
Other projects we’re exploring
Space+ – An NFT collection that aims to send members on Zero-G flights and to space on a Blue Origin spaceflight.
Alice – A mobile app that easily gives users exposure to DeFi stablecoin yields on the Anchor Protocol.
Manor DAO – A project from the Poolsuite team that’s raising funds to collectively purchase a mansion.
Recommended Reads
Unbundling venture capital via DAOs
pet3rpan writes about how investment and incubation DAOs have led to the rise of service DAOs and the disruption of the unit economics of VC.Tokengated Commerce
Packy McCormick from the Not Boring newsletter interviews Alex Danco from Shopify about how they’re thinking about web3 in traditional commerce.The Ownership Economy 2022
Li Jin and the team at Variant provide a primer on the current state of web3.
Invisible College, is a learning DAO that helps people learn to build and invest in web3 projects. To access our courses, events, and learning community, you’ll need to hold at least one Decentralien. You can get yours on Magic Eden.