Dear Ed3 DAO Supporters, Friends, & Community Members,

This year has been an amazing journey of growth and learning for Ed3 DAO. We've made incredible progress toward our mission to catalyze innovation in education through Web3. Thank you for building this movement with us!

A few highlights from this year:

• 🧠 Ed3 Courses: With our wonderful partner Idaho State University, we launched and distributed two credit-bearing web3 courses for educators with over 1500 registrants. This, along with our partnership with Fordham University co-creating an AI bootcamp, allowed Ed3 to build its first revenue model for the sustainability of the organization.

• 🌍 Global Expansion: We are expanding our presence and reach in Saudi Arabia (KSA), thanks to our partner Aanaab, with a new web3 course for educators launched last week. We also attracted 1,500 KSA educators for an AI webinar thanks to the National E-Learning Organization and community member Scott Meyers.

• 💰 Ed3 Grants: To empower the Ed3 community, we created a micro-grants program totaling $50,000 to encourage facilitation of AI and web3 learning events. Members organized events in Australia, Colombia, Jamaica, Nigeria, and the US. The grant applications are open.

• 🧔🏽 Hiring: With our new business model and a grant from Ape DAO, we were able to engage our most active community volunteers in paid contracts for their contributions.

• 💪🏽 Advocacy: In partnership with Coinbase and Stand With Crypto, Ed3 DAO was selected to join leading web3 organizations to advocate for legal frameworks that support web3 innovation, in Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania.

• ⚖ Governance: As a DAO, our grants program is distributed but our organizational systems are not yet. In an effort to further decentralize Ed3, we started engaging in sprints to build a new hybrid model combining the concepts of DAOs and Holocracies. The plan is to launch a model in the next three months. We invite you to participate!

We’ll continue building on the momentum of 2023. Here are a few more things underway for 2024:

• 🔗 Community Platform: As much as we love Discord, we know how difficult it has been for educators to access our community. Starting January, we are slowly transitioning our entire Ed3 community to Mighty Networks for an enhanced user experience. Look out for an invitation soon!

• 🌐 Ed3 Futures Summit: We are hosting our next summit in the metaverse on April 19-21. It will be bigger and better than ever before! Official announcements and campaign to start in January.

• 🖍 Rebranding: Ed3 DAO is getting a new look! We’re delighted to engage Spark+Mint as our branding and marketing partner for a new Ed3 website and brand. More to come soon.

• ‍🧔🏽 Hiring: We will be announcing the search for our very first full-time roles! More to come soon.

• ⚖ Nonprofit Board & Community Council: In support of a further distributed governance model, we will be announcing the search for our board and community council members in 2024. More to come soon.

• 🌍 Global Expansion: We are launching a partnership with The Circle India, to host AI Forums for Indian educators. Invitations to come soon.

Thank you for believing in educators and our potential to change the world. Ed3 DAO began as a web3 meetup and is now a global non-profit community by educators, for educators.

We’re looking forward to seeing more growth, innovation, and collaboration in 2024. Stay tuned for more updates and invitations to engage!

Warmly yours,

Vriti, Mike, & the Ed3 DAO team