BEN 2020 Year in Review
2020 has been a big year for BEN! We’ve expanded our national chapter programs, launched new educational initiatives, and partnered with industry leading blockchain companies.
Despite the pandemic and major social issues that 2020 brought, we managed to do some good fundraising and help out not only our students but also our entire community. Below we recap some of our highlights of the year.
Year Highlights
In January, we hosted 20 students from BEN USA, BEN Canada, and BEN Italy at The North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, with many more BEN students local to Miami meeting up with us there. Thanks to TNABC, The Blockchain Center, OpenNode, and Rutgers University, we were able to cover flights, airbnbs, and student passes for these students.
While there, a team led by BEN Canada students won first place at the Miami Bitcoin Hackathon!
In February, BEN flew to ETHDenver as community partners. We hosted some workshops as part of the “Learning” track” to teach hackathon participants how to build dApps. We also gave a talk on how blockchain can be used for social impact. Lastly, we participated in judging.
In March, in response to one of the more intense initial outbreaks of the coronavirus in Italy, BEN & BEN Italy together participated in the Helperbit campaign that raised $147,000 to provide medical equipment for the Italian Red Cross. We raised even more funds for #CryptoCovid19 together with The Giving Block, Gitcoin, Brave, Gemini, The Block, MetaCartel, and more.
In April, we launched BEN Turkey with founding chapters at BAU Blockchain Technology Club, Sabancı University Blockchain Club, Kocaeli University Blockchain Club, Bilgi Blockchain, and Istanbul University Blockchain Technology Club. These founding university chapters got right to work in hosting biweekly BEN Turkey educational workshops over Zoom.
Over the rest of April, BEN hosted a series of online interviews with various figures in the crypto space including student-founded companies such as Namebase as well as innovative blockchain initiatives like The Giving Block, Wibson, and The Defiant.
We also got banned from YouTube in the middle of our livestream with The Giving Block for showing users how to donate to COVID relief efforts in cryptocurrency. Fortunately, some short time after raising awareness on Twitter and getting covered by CoinTelegraph, YouTube reinstated our account and we were able to continue on with our livestreams.
In July, we launched the BEN Wiki, a collaborative open source knowledge repository full of blockchain resources, lessons, tutorials and more. The resources are submitted by all of our clubs, students, professors, and partners.
One of BEN’s most important responsibilities has always been maintaining a collaborative repository between its university chapters. In the past this has taken form of a Google Drive, a Udemy-style site, etc. By moving to a wiki format, it’s now easier than ever for club leaders and students to browse and add content from their clubs.
Over the summer and the fall, BEN hosted an Ethereum workshop series in partnership with Blockchain Developers United. We held various developer workshops ranging from “Intro to Solidity” to “How to Become an ETH 2.0 Validator”, all to give students a primer on how to become part of the Web3 revolution.
In September, BEN hosted the annual BEN Global Airdrop sponsored by GDA Capital, Game Credits, and MyCrypto. With the help of 19 of our BEN university chapters, as well as community partners Blockchain Acceleration Foundation and the Midwest Blockchain Consortium, we airdropped thousands of dollars worth of ETH to 214 students from 96 universities and 5 high schools across 21 countries.
In fact, we had such diverse attendance that we had to host the airdrop TWICE — once for the students in the western hemisphere of Earth, and one for the students in the eastern hemisphere of Earth.
Also to kick off the fall, BEN helped CoinDesk put together CoinDesk’s 2020 Blockchain University Rankings. These rankings help universities and companies alike get a stronger sense of the state of blockchain adoption on campuses.
Congratulations to the BEN university blockchain clubs whose hard work put their universities on this list! We hope that more rankings and coverage from outlets like Coindesk will continue to incentivize more universities to teach blockchain to their students.
In October, we officially launched BENcoin, an ERC20 token used to incentivize learning and volunteering for BEN that can be redeemed for travel, visas, conference tickets and more. In the past years, we’ve used a centralized version of BENcoin to keep track of our students’ learning progress around the world. We are excited to be taking this next step into using blockchain to teach blockchain.
In November, BEN hosted our first annual BEN Chapter Excellence Awards to recognize national chapters and university chapters for their outstanding work spreading blockchain education on campuses around the world. This year we had four categories, including Outstanding Chapter of the Year, Outstanding New Chapter, Outstanding Chapter Research, and Outstanding Chapter Digital Presence.
In December, we launched BEN Africa with founding university chapters KNUST Blockchain Hub and CRUTECH. Our kickoff event was an “Intro to DeFi” hosted at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana with guest speakers from DeFi Africa.
New Partners
Over 2020, BEN made several key partnerships focused on getting access to more educational resources as well as reaching more communities.
We partnered with Blockchain Developers United and The Blockchain Center to reach new audiences and share curriculum, resources, instructors, and workshops.
We joined the Celo Alliance for Prosperity and the she256 Coalition for Diversity to affirm our commitment
We brought on new partners like Storj, Extropy, and Rabbithole to teach more about innovate blockchain concepts like decentralized storage, zero knowledge proofs, and decentralized finance (DeFi).
We spoke at many events this year as part of community partnerships, including the The North American Bitcoin Conference, ETHDenver, BlockHash Live, the Virtual Blockchain Conference 2020 and more. We also co-hosted some events with BAF and she256 and were even interviewed by Girl Gone Crypto.
National Chapters
BEN Turkey
After BEN Turkey’s formation in March, the BEN Turkey team got right to work hosting intercollegiate Zoom calls across the five different founding Turkish university chapters. BEN Turkey also heavily participated in BEN Global’s initiatives throughout the year.
BEN India
Thanks to our BEN India team, 5 students from India this year were selected and sponsored to be flown to the 2020 MIT Bitcoin Expo, where they won the Infrastructure track prize at the conference hackathon.
BEN Italy
On December 21st, BEN Italy celebrated their 6th anniversary. This year, they also joined the European Law Institute to consult on blockchain policy and regulations. They formed a new Scientific Committee consisting of top university professors and faculty to assist in blockchain education. All throughout the year, BEN Italy hosted and many events, celebrations for Bitcoin Pizza Day with Satoshi’s Games.
BEN University Chapters
BEN has over 80 university chapters, which is too much to show all of their incredible accomplishments this year. So, here are some highlights from some three of our most active clubs.
Rutgers Blockchain Hub
Rutgers Blockchain Hub sent their students to TNABC with BEN and hosted many events throughout the year, including introductory blockchain courses and diversity and inclusion training for their members.
Miami University Blockchain Club
One of MUBC’s top highlights this year was hosting the Virtual Blockchain Conference, with great student presence from blockchain clubs across the Midwest.
MIT Bitcoin Club
Despite being in March, The MIT Bitcoin Club was able to hold the 2020 MIT Bitcoin Expo right before the pandemic lockdowns went into effect. Students from all over the Northeast attending, including students from BEN’s university chapters in the area and even students as far away as BEN India.
Fundraising
Throughout most of 2020, BEN operated on a $0 budget.
Instead of accepting donations for Gitcoin Grants Round 6 and 7, we worked with The Giving Block and Gitcoin to redirect as many donors to COVID relief and to Black Girls Code, The Justice Committee, Movement 4 Black Lives, The Nashville Bail Fund, and others. Our students felt very passionate about these causes and it’s important for BEN to support our students at this time when the health and safety of people worldwide comes first.
Later on in the year, in a campaign with Cryptograph, we auctioned off an NFT art piece signed by our founder, Jeremy Gardner. The proceeds of the 6.6 ETH sale went to BEN.
During Gitcoin Grants Round 8 in December, we raised $1.3k, which was boosted by a special campaign where Gitcoin Grants donors were airdropped $BADGER by BadgerDAO. Additionally, donations to BEN were also being matched by Jeremy Gardner (Founder, Ausum Ventures) and Peter Smith (CEO, Blockchain.com).
Lastly, we closed off the year with an incredible $400k donation from BEN’s founder, Jeremy Gardner.
Closing Remarks
We’ve had an incredible year across all our national and university chapters despite the unprecedented challenges that we faced.
We look forward to a stronger 2021 with more initiatives and campaigns to onboard even more students from the around the world.
- Best,
The BEN Team
