As we settle into our summer season, let's not forget the tremendous progress Vanderbilt Blockchain has made in becoming the Web3 Hub of the South. Throughout this semester, we have expanded our research and development teams, co-hosted our own innovation conference, and traveled the country representing Vanderbilt Blockchain. Lets take a look at some of highlights from this semester and discuss what we have in store for the next!
Some of our goals for this semester included revamping our internal committees, getting involved with partner organizations on campus, and continuing to source quality opportunities for our club members. We had some fresh faces on our executive team as well; Logan Bartee and Max Hamilton joined as the Co-Heads of Research, and Will Owens joined as the Head of Community.
Part 1: Events
In our first GBM, we discussed semester plans, current events, and held an introductory Kahoot with a brand new Trezor One wallet as a prize. The event featured free Boba, and a lot of fresh faces to our community!
We were incredibly blessed to host the wonderful Tegan Kline in person to Vanderbilt’s campus. Tegan Kline is a Web3 trailblazer who has been instrumental in launching protocols like The Graph and Orchid as the Chief Business Officer of Edge and Node. Tegan recently took over Edge and Node as CEO! We would like to thank VINES and Vanderbilt Women in Business for partnering with us on this event. Pizza was provided, and Tegan was generous enough to give out free Graph swag to all attendees.
In February, we hosted a Blockstream Jade workshop in collaboration with Blockstream and Bitcoin Park! It was incredibly nice of Blockstream to fly out from Texas for this event and provide us with a wonderful demo on safe crypto storage and free Blockstream Jade Wallets. Check out Blockstream and the cold storage solutions they offer to Bitcoin holders!
Around this time, our Research and Development Committees had been finalized and were meeting regularly. Our Research team got a guest appearance from Mike Roberts, the COO of Alefi, which is a social investing app aggregating UX from exchanges like Robinhood, Coinbase, and more. We also held our club-sponsored Research Committee dinner as a celebration of their accomplishments.
Lets not forget our involvement in setting up the first student-organized large conference ever hosted at Vanderbilt University. Vanderbilt Blockchain partnered with Vanderbilt Innovation Council, Theta Tau, Change++, VINES, and The Wond’ry to host the Mid-South Innovation Summit! This event took place on February 9th, and had over 600+ attendees. Local Nashville startups in all sectors were represented at this job fair. We would like to thank the Wond’ry especially for making this event possible.
Several of our students had by now completed a 4-week DeFi training program with our partner Metaversity! Vanderbilt Blockchain is looking to make education our main priority next semester with the launch of our cohort program—more on that later. Later in February, we partnered with Binance Academy to bring an Intro to Blockchain webinar to our members in collaboration with VINES. Thank you to Mahmoud Jawwad from Binance Academy for the wonderful presentation!
Our final event of the year was with Noah from Whale Coin Talk in collaboration with Change++. Whale Coin Talk is a leading Web3 Media brand with over 280k followers on Twitter, doing frequent AMAs and hosting discussions around hot topics in the Web3 space.
Part 2: Travel
Vanderbilt Blockchain took the US by storm this semester! We believe that conferences are the greatest way to meet people working in the space and learn more about the overall ecosystem. Lets take a look at our three destinations.
Denver
Our first ever ETH Denver was a blast! We collectively met hundreds of new people working in the industry and got to explore the beauty of Colorado as well. We made plenty of friends from Blockchain at Berkeley, Duke Blockchain Lab, and Shardeum!
Austin
Next, we traveled to Austin for Consensus 2023! Contacts we made there were instrumental for securing summer internships for Vanderbilt Blockchain members. Special shoutout to the BAF crew, Texas Blockchain, and Metagame.
New York
Vanderbilt Blockchain was the only undergraduate blockchain club represented at the prestigious IC3 Blockchain Camp in New York City! The 7-day conference and hackathon was filled with cryptography academics and industry sponsors from leading institutions from around the world. It was truly a fascinating experience to learn with this elite group about up-and-coming breakthroughs in blockchain technology. Special shoutout to IC3 directors Dr. Andrew Miller and Dr. Haaroon Yousaf, and IC3 community manager Bria Han.
Part 3: Future Plans
This semester has been our most exciting semester yet. Next semester, Vanderbilt Blockchain is formally initiating our close partnership with Anchor DAO, which is the first 501(c)(3) non-profit DAO LLC registered in Tennessee. Vanderbilt Blockchain looks to be the vehicle for education and on-campus initiatives, whereas Anchor DAO will be a formal entity connecting students to the Web3 industry.
In that spirit, Vanderbilt Blockchain is collaborating with several other blockchain clubs to create a sophisticated educational cohort curriculum in the fall. We will continue to bring in high-quality speakers, cover current events, and give our students the opportunities they need to excel in the blockchain space.
Anchor DAO is now accepting tax-deductible crypto donations!!
Please reach out to anchordaobusiness@gmail.com if you are looking to make a gift, or for any other inquiries. Donations will go primarily to student conference travel reimbursements and providing food at events.
🐝There’s a buzz around crypto at Vanderbilt. Stay tuned for more!