Proposal
This proposal is to outline a possible collaboration and grant between UMA Protocol and an accredited university located in any country.
UMA Protocol is a market settlement mechanism and set of financial contracts build on the Ethereum blockchain. It is designed to provide Universal Market Access. Our mission is to make financial markets universally fair and accessible. More information is available from our website.
Opportunity
UMA is interested in having a student, professor, or blockchain enthusiast group build and launch "KPI Options."
A KPI is a Key Performance Indicator, and it's a metric that can be chosen by the program designer that they wish to encourage. Then, these tokens can be given out to individuals who have the ability to affect this KPI. This program could be run inside or outside the university. Examples could look like this:
- Give tokens to university staff and students. Make their value depend how many freshman return for their sophomore year. Set up the token such that if the return rate matches previous years, they are valueless. But if the rate is 5% higher, they could be worth $100 each; if the rate is 10% higher, they could be worth $300 each.
- Give tokens to students and measure the amount of litter on campus; payout if litter is reduced.
- Award the tokens to highschool students in a particular year, and have the payout tailored to dropout rates.
- Give tokens to a group of students and base the payout around standardize test scores, like the GRE. Notice if this incentive increases likelihood to help each other and results in an overall increase.
- Given tokens to a group of students and create a set of actions you'd like them to complete. Design a verifiable and manipulation resistant way to measure if these actions have been completed. One way to do this might be to tie an account to a student email account, then ask students to complete a series of learning exercises. These could be social education exercises, such as to reduce certain types of prejudice.
You can read more about KPI Options here.
Request for Proposals
UMA is able to offer a grant of up to $10,000-25,000 for the payouts, plus up to $5,000-10,000 for compensation for executing the grant. These ranges are even open to discussion for an ambitious program.
This is an open request for proposals.
Proposals UMA would like to see include:
- Designs that aim to measure the effectiveness of financial incentives using KPI Options, such as from a behavioral economics standpoint.
- Designs that have social impact in mind
- Designs that increase blockchain use and adoption
- Designs that are matched by the university, e.g., a goal that a university is willing to match funds with UMA.