Polkadot Blockchain Academy Alumni Voting DAO: Application for Decentralized Voices Cohort 5
Who we are
The Polkadot Blockchain Academy (PBA) was founded in 2022 by Gavin Wood and Pauline Cohen Vorms to bring developers and entrepreneurs to Polkadot and to equip them with knowledge to build Polkadot, or indeed to build on Polkadot. Our mission is to set the global standard in blockchain education, empowering people to change the world. Since our inception, we have become the single largest and most effective pipeline of talent into the Polkadot ecosystem.
Over the past three years, over 1,000 learners have completed our courses, many of whom now produce significant contributions towards Polkadot or ecosystem projects. Our core of almost 500 PBA Campus alumni come from over 60 countries across all continents, collectively bringing with them a wealth of talent and experience and a global outlook. Many are now employed within Polkadot-based projects, and are becoming experts, founders and leaders within Polkadot.
We have now set up the PBA Alumni Voting DAO to enable our Campus alumni to actively and collectively participate in Polkadot governance.
How do PBA alumni contribute to Polkadot
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Consistent contributors - working on open-source Polkadot related repositories
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According to data collated by the Parity team, in 2024 a little over 70% of our then 409 PBA Campus graduates actively contributed to Polkadot related repos
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60% of PBA6 (Lucerne) graduates are already active on Polkadot related repos to date, since graduating in April (according to Parity data team)
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Trusted by ecosystem leaders – Parity, The Web3 Foundation and other top teams recruit directly from our alumni.
- 10% of PBA6 (Lucerne) cohort were hired into Parity following graduation, across a number of roles
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Technical experts - our alumni have been invited to speak at many flagship Polkadot events such as Sub0 and Decoded and Web3 Summit.
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Polkadot pioneers - our alumni contribute to Polkadot in a wide range of ways:
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2nd biggest source of Fellowship Members (Candidates to Architects) after Parity in 2024 (according to Fellowship reporting)
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8 teams working on a JAM implementation are formed of PBA alumni
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12 Decentralized Futures Grants awarded
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8 Web3 Foundation Fast Founders Grants awarded in Q1 of 2025
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12 alumni teams awarded Web3 Foundation Grants (20 individual grants)
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3 of the last parachain auctions went to PBA grad led teams; Mandala, Laos and Kylix Finance
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Other notable Polkadot projects with Campus Alumni as founder member/s; Peer3, R0gue, Xcavate, Cyborg Network, PolkadotAPI, Cognidex, there are many others.
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In addition to this, many Alumni have started and worked on various common-good and not-for-profit projects which benefit Polkadot such as Paraspell, Dot Code School, Web3Dev and Kudos.
What is our voting philosophy and what are the rules
The PBA Alumni Voting DAO harnesses the collective wisdom that PBA Campus alumni have gained during their time at the Academy and beyond, increasing their participation in Polkadot governance to help steer Polkadot in the right direction.
Voting is open exclusively to alumni who have completed the PBA Campus course—the in-person program representing PBA’s most advanced offering. After passing a rigorous selection process, students receive unparalleled blockchain education from Polkadot ecosystem experts, including Gavin Wood, Shawn Tabrizi, Kian Paimani, and Jonas Gehrlein from Parity Technologies, the Web3 Foundation and the wider ecosystem. This profound knowledge and experience places alumni in an exceptional position to evaluate proposals and contribute meaningfully to Polkadot’s evolution and growth.
While many alumni are already active on OpenGov, this initiative empowers them to become an even more informed and effective, collective voice within the ecosystem. It provides an opportunity for alumni to give back to the community that invested in their education by participating actively in governance decisions.
Each new cohort will enter the ecosystem equipped with deep knowledge and democratic engagement, ready to shape Polkadot’s future with a vested stake in its success from day one.
Decisions on how to vote rest entirely on PBA Campus alumni, independently of the PBA team and are led by these important principles:
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Fairness - recusing themselves from voting on proposals where there is a conflict of interest.
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Impartiality - judging each proposal on its own merit.
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Accountability - explaining to the ecosystem the reasoning behind voting decisions.
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Reliability - always working for the benefit of the Polkadot Ecosystem.
Alumni voting was launched via Discord in early spring of 2025.
In order to ensure that the Voting DAO is built on solid foundations and guided by strong principles, the PBA team sought advice from Polkadot governance experts such as Raul Romanutti, of Just Opensource and Leemo, of Chaos DAO, who formed the PBA Alumni Voting DAO Advisory Committee alongside alumni from each Campus cohort. With their guidance, clear rules of voting were set out. Here are some of the key points:
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Voting will take place on Discord, with a minimum participation rate of 1% of alumni, a threshold of ⅔ must be reached for a vote to pass, otherwise the DAO will abstain.
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These thresholds will be reviewed regularly as participation and engagement increases.
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Alumni must recuse themselves if there is a conflict of interest.
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The PBA Alumni Voting DAO will abstain from voting on proposals put forward by the Polkadot Blockchain Academy.
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Alumni must vote in good faith and must not accept bribes or inducements of any kind to vote in a particular way.
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A disciplinary process has been set out for alumni who break the rules.
The full rules can be viewed here. The Advisory Committee will in future be replaced by the Alumni Voting Governance Committee, made up of PBA staff and Campus alumni, whose role it will be to review the rules, to ensure they are fit for purpose, as well as to oversee voting to ensure compliance.
What are our values
Polkadot Blockchain Academy exists to educate. What started as a program for core developers has evolved over time to include founders, dApps developers and non-developers who seek out an academically comprehensive, challenging and top quality blockchain education.
Many of our alumni share this ethos and have started their own educational programs, such as Dot Code School and Web3Dev, which offer free courses for developers or the Kudos platform, which collates open issues from the Polkadot ecosystem to enable developers to continue their learning.
The PBA wants to foster that collaborative, academic spirit by encouraging innovation, and exploration within its alumni community. We plan to document our journey of setting up the Voting DAO and to publish this to serve as a helpful resource for others wishing to start their own DAOs.
Our continuous alumni education program serves not only to keep our community members abreast of the latest developments in Polkadot, but also to inspire them to lead the way in shaping these advancements. We strive to create a supportive environment where alumni feel they are able to experiment and innovate, explore with the freedom to make mistakes and try things out, in governance as well as other areas.
Our vision for the future
Once voting participation is at a satisfactory level, we plan to enable anyone to delegate their DOT to the DAO, allowing them to participate in governance whilst entrusting the PBA Alumni Voting DAO with their vote.
We also plan to encourage alumni not just to vote, but to actively contribute to the evolution of Polkadot by teaming up with ecosystem partners to work on special projects. One example of this is a partnership with the Polkadot Study Group, with whom we are looking at setting up a working group to look at creating voting mechanisms powered by smart contracts. By providing interested alumni with ideas, objectives and guidance set within a collaborative framework we hope to create an environment where experiments might one day turn into groundbreaking solutions which revolutionise on-chain democracy.
Another side effect of increased democratic activity within the DAO will be an increase in collaborations as Alumni read proposals, become interested and join teams as they embark on projects.
The PBA Alumni Voting DAO is a new initiative but it is made up of enthusiastic, willing and eager participants, and we have big plans for the future. Our community is constantly growing and with each new Campus cohort, we aim to produce alumni for whom voting, participating in governance and taking an active role in Polkadot democracy is instinctive.