Meet AgorApp. Your end-to-end web3 developer journey starts here.
AgorApp is currently focusing on two issues: the grueling web3 developer onboarding experience and the high cost of finding and retaining the right talent with the right skills.
The first problem is user-centered: nowadays software engineers are used to interactive coding platforms such as Hackerrank, Codecademy, Leetcode.
The reason behind their success is because they provide a much better learning and onboarding experience than just reading tutorials. However, in the Web3 industry there are no suitable alternatives: sure, there are some online playgrounds but they are usually very limited in scope. Our goal is to deliver an interactive development platform for all-things-web3-engineering: chains, protocols, DeFi, smart contract security etc. and, by doing so, become the go-to web3 interactive development platform for the builders of tomorrow.
We will talk more in-depth about the first issue in future articles. For now, in our first introduction, we will focus mostly on the second issue, which is company-centered.
A Problem Worth Solving
Since 2009 the monthly average quit rate has been rising 0.10% year by year within the U.S. In 2022 45% of developers have quit their jobs within 1 to 2 years. This mass exodus is creating unsustainable expenditures for Web3 and beyond.
On average, it costs $65,000 or higher each time a company adds a new developer. Furthermore, Web3 developers are in high demand in an industry where there are not enough developers to support the available capital for growth. So why is this occurring? How can Web3 companies cope with this trend? It comes down to redefining the hiring process and creating an easy pathway to begin learning Web3.
A tradition that is becoming obsolete
It was always straightforward. Recruit your candidate, onboard, then train for the position. Companies spend on advertising their job, hiring an agency, and using their HR department to manage the process. They go by a skill set they were told was needed, hoping that after three months the candidate fits their exact needs. Unfortunately, this has only exacerbated their problem of higher turnover.
Out of these steps, the last and most important aspect comes down to training their candidate. Will the candidate like the work they will perform? Are their skills qualified to make the leap into the position? The only way to find out is to have both employer and employee satisfied with the fit, which is not easy. This is where AgorApp comes into play.
Our solution
AgorApp’s approach is to flip the hiring process by training first, recruiting, and then onboarding for a fraction of company turnover cost. Web3 protocols on AgorApp have the ability to streamline their hiring process without lifting a finger. Let’s dive into it.
Training
Web3 companies and DAOs make use of a lot of domain-specific tech. New smart contract programming languages, DeFi protocols, you name it. Any DAO, web3 company or protocol that joins AgorApp gets a tailored-made curriculum within our smart editor. This will allow the users read the theory and the instructions to code in real-time. Thus going step by step in learning the fundamentals of the organization’s protocol.
Free for all users, the curriculum is geared to allow users to choose and experiment with the protocols of interest. A first step to getting excited over their preferred Web3 vision they want to be involved in. But this is not just for beginners. AgorApp plans to have a healthy diverse group of protocols where Web3 developers can begin learning on chains they have never tried. On top of courses, which are a series of lessons, Agorapp builds challenges. A challenge focuses on specific complexities a Web3 developer may encounter as a programmer.
Finally, AgorApp’s Course Creator system slated for the end of 2023, is the final execution of this year’s development plans. As an Udemy-style model, skilled Web3 developers will be able to develop their own structured course curriculum directly into the editor and monetize their education.
Recruiting
All protocols on AgorApp will also be integrated with their very own NFT badges to enable them to showcase their own cross-chain on-chain resume. After completing a course, challenge or track, the NFT badge will be acquired by the user from AgorApp as an official certification. The NFT badges will come in different flavors as to distinguish the degree of difficulty the user’s achievements. With their open-source Github portfolio linked within the NFT metadata, AgorApp onboarded protocols will have access to a filtered database. The database will showcase all NFTs given out and the analytics of the developer’s study and activity on-chain. This recruitment stage correlates with the launch of AgorApp’s Workspace board to be fully completed by Q1 2024.
Users will have the ability to discover jobs, events and grants in connection to their chain of study. By applying through AgorApp, partner’s will be notified that you are a user from AgorApp and will see your studied credentials.
Onboarding
Now that the organization has used our training and recruiting system to find the right hire, they can now onboard the new hiree to their company culture. Due to the fact this user spent the time to train for the position, and applied through AgorApp, an organization can sleep at night knowing the hard part of the hiring process is over.
Meet the Team
Riccardo Biosas (Founder): is a security engineer at Procore. Previous to working in cybersecurity, he worked as a full-stack and protocol engineer in the web3 ecosystem for Opium.finance and Livepeer — respectively, a decentralized derivative protocol and a decentralized video infrastructure platform.
Ethan Clime (COO): is a product designer with 5 years of experience in DApp development and project operations. Was the first person ever to raise an ICO in the Czech Republic giving him first-hand experience building a DApp company. He is the former Head of Product at Logictry and previously designed and implemented a DApp from a Polygon sponsored grant.
Jakub Boukal: (Head of Engineering) is a senior backend engineer and open-source enthusiast. His core expertise is all-things-Django & Python, but at AgorApp he plays a key role in maintaining the DevOps stack as well.
Roman Masek (CTO) is a senior full-stack developer with 21 years of experience in software engineering, which he leverages to supervise and contribute to the entire application stack of AgorApp.
Petr Havel (Head of Frontend) is a senior full-stack developer with 15 years of experience. A former colleague of Roman, they worked together for 5 years implementing web and native applications. He is AgorApp’s lead frontend developer.
Introducing our First Partners with AgorApp
AgorApp is thrilled to announce our first batch of partnered chains, protocols and DAOs to support their developer education, adoption and hiring process. Let’s take a look at who they are:
Lisk
AgorApp has been accepted to Lisk’s Foundation’s Grant Program in order to implement our vision for their chain. Lisk is a scalable blockchain utilizing Javascript for the building of smart contracts. DApps building on Lisk are able to create a service layer between the blockchain and the user interface all while managing full nodes intuitively. AgorApp looks forward to supporting Lisk by helping bring more education and developers to their ecosystem.
For more information about Lisk, visit their website and check out all the exciting services and documentation they offer.
DFINITY
AgorApp is proud to be part of DFINITY’s Developer Grant Program. Along with onboarding them into our product, we are also allowing them to embed our IDE directly into their documentation. DFINITY allows organizations to build on the Internet Computer (ICP). The ICP is a blockchain that can host a full dapp — frontend, backend and data. Any users can deploy their dapp as a canister (smart contract) on the Internet Computer using the Motoko programming language.
To learn more visit the DFINITY Foundation website, and see the unique attributions ICP offers to DApp builders.
Ethereum Swarm
AgorApp is proud to be a grant recipient from Swarm’s grant program. Ethereum Swarm is a decentralized storage network which leverages cryptoeconomics to regulate and price the activity of its participants.
To learn more about Swarm check them out here.
The Open Network (TON)
TON is a layer-1 blockchain designed by the Telegram community. AgorApp was a TON Hackathon track winner where we prototyped an interactive course to learn how to develop in FunC — TON’s main smart contract programming language.
Check their website out here.
Want to learn more? Follow our progress!
For the latest news and developments, including course & challenge and track launches as well as our job board, stay tuned. Join the AgorApp Discord and communicate with the team or follow us on Telegram, Twitter or Linkedin.
And don’t forget to sign up to the blog mailing list to not miss our next technical deep dives into smart contract engineering, blockchain security & get notified about fresh job and grant opportunities before everyone else.
