Gimbalabs: An educational development ecosystem as an entry point to Cardano

Sustainable ADA | Jan 14, 2023

Gimbalabs builds technical, educational, and community infrastructure for people who want to show the world what Cardano can do.

At Gimbalabs they believe that people learn best by doing things. They are providing an entry point into how new community members can participate in Cardano.

Gimbalabs Principles:

Learn by Doing:

When we have experiences, our learning is real.

Collaborate:

New technology always creates new ways for people to collaborate, and blockchain is no different.

Stay Flexible:

We don’t know exactly where this new technology will take us, so we create space for incomplete ideas and we embrace uncertainty.

The Gimbalabs founding team met by engaging deeply in Project Catalyst. During this process “they recognized that by sharing ideas and seeking connections between projects, we could start a process that led to more people solving more problems and building more solutions on Cardano”.

Their original proposal can be found here.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Cardano-Starter-Kits-+-APIs/322195-48088

Gimbalabs is an extraordinary part of the Cardano community and is helping with the onboarding of new users and helping community members learn how to develop on the Cardano blockchain.

The Team:

Gimbalabs was co-founded by James Dunseith, Roberto C. Morano, and Juliane Montag. A global team that has experience in blockchain development, education, and a strong ambition to make the world better for all. Their ambitions and breathtaking work is very much aligned with Cardano’s Mission and Vision “Making The World Work Better For All”.

The Cardano Foundation states that “Cardano is a blockchain platform for changemakers, innovators, and visionaries, with the tools and technologies required to create possibility for the many, as well as the few, and bring about positive global change”.

Gimbalabs is helping unlock opportunities for Cardano. By enabling a portal for the innovators, and visionaries to join the Cardano Community and learn how to build tools to reach the goal of positive global change through the Cardano protocol.

James Dunseith

Juliane Montag

Roberto C. Morano

What Gimbalabs is working on:

Dandelion:

Currently, Gimbalabs is developing Dandelion. Which is both a set of services and a containerized framework for deploying specialized services on Cardano. The team is currently teaching operators how to run Kubernetes to deploy a Dandelion node, and are building ways for those nodes to communicate seamlessly to provide distributed access to Cardano.

The Dandelion APIs are application programming interfaces which are developer tools to help get products integrated into the Cardano blockchain, at a fast pace.

Learn more

Project-Based Learning:

Gimbalabs is piloting a “Plutus Project-Based Learning” (PPBL) team that gives developers a chance to gain hands-on experience with Plutus by working on real projects.

An outcome of PPBL is that they are creating documentation and task suggestions for additional developers to learn Plutus by using it. Another is that Gimbalabs is applying what they are learning about Project-Based Learning to other tools, like Atala Prism and Dandelion.

Currently, for Project Based Learning projects, Gimbalabs has created:

Cardano Starter Kit

Gimbalabs has created videos and documentation to help anyone kick off their learning journey in the Cardano ecosystem. The Cardano Starter Kits are an invitation for you to start learning about how Cardano works. Anyone is able to use the video explanations and documentation to move at their own pace while first entering the Cardano community. Gimblabs wants anyone who has a question and is ready to learn more let them know and join their community. A good place to start is their Discord Server.

Plutus Project-Based Learning (PPBL)

Community members can gain a full stack experience for building on Plutus, by collectively collaborating on projects together. All of this content is open source and open to the public. You can explore more at the Public PPBL repos on GitLab. Also, Gimbalabs holds live coding sessions every Wednesday at 1600 UTC and Thursday at 1500 UTC. More details can be found on the Gimbalabs Discord.

Tokenomics Project-Based Learning

At Gimbalabs you can join a network of innovators committed to creating new models. Currently, they are exploring these models with different groups and communities in the Cardano Catalyst community.

The Plutus-Based Learning courses are about 10 weeks long and are organized in a series of modules so people can go at their own pace. To successfully work through the course it is expected that members spend a total of 10 hours a week to complete the minimum outcomes of the course.

Currently, the projects they are working on are:

Bounty Treasury + Escrow Contracts: A first look at some Plutus primitives
Community Token Dashboard: A first look at querying the blockchain
Credential Token: We will design the tokens that serve as proof of completing this course.

Gimbalabs Playground:

Gimbalabs hosts a weekly meet-up called Gimbalabs Playground. This meet-up takes place on Tuesdays at 5 pm UTC. At the playground, it is an opportunity for community members to come and showcase a project or idea with the Gimbalabs community. This is a chance for anyone to get feedback, further support from the Gimbalabs community, and possibly find people who are interested in your project and want to help and jump on board.

To learn more about the weekly meet-up check out the discord and also their community calendar.

https://gimbalabs.com/gimbalgrid/4

Gimbalabs Connection to the Sustainable Development Goals:

The United Nations’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an urgent call for action by all countries. This enables countries to create global partnerships that work towards achieving these goals. The goal is to achieve the SDGs, which are built upon decades of work by countries and the UN.

Blockchain technology is a key technology for the SDGs because it enables stakeholders globally to have the ability to track, record, and share data that is immutable, timestamped, and verifiable. The traceability of data can only be proven from data that is added on a chain.

At Gimbalabs they are strongly connected to the SDGs and represent a connection to the Goals, SDG 4 – Quality Education, SDG 5 Gender Equality, SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth, Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, SDG 10 Reducing Inequalities, and SDG 17 Partnerships for the Goals.

How their work benefits the SDGs

SDG 4: Through their Plutus Based Learning courses, and through the Cardano Starter Kits series. These two elements of Gimbalabs are enabling people all over the globe to get access to Cardano and have a learning path for their journey.

SDG 5: Supporting women empowerment as developers and helping teach different global groups of Women about Plutus and how to get started with developing on Cardano.

SDG 8: Helping provide community developers with the tools to make their Dapps come to life. This is done both through their PBL, gimbal token, and the development of Dandelion, which will allow developers to get their products onto Cardano in a fast pace. The Gimbal Project Directory and Escrow is another way they are making strides to help achieve SDG 8. Developers holding a Plutus PBL Course Completion token can contribute to projects and be incentivized for helping with the development through the Gimbalabs treasury.

SDG 10: Providing access to learn about Cardano and how to develop on Cardano to a global audience. They work with teams of developers and non-developers creating an open environment for anyone to join.

SDG 17: They support SDG 17 by creating partnerships with organizations both within the Cardano community and outside of it. Which in hand is helping create more collaboration among different stakeholders that have similar visions and missions as each other. From these new forms of collaboration, they are helping create partnerships to further work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Learn more:

Support Gimbalabs through their stake pools both GMBL and PEACE pools. By delegating you are supporting their team and the work of Gimbalabs and Dandelion.

Website: https://gimbalabs.com/gimbalgrid

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/XTvJBj7kzq

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gimbalabs

Updates: https://gimbalabs.com/gimbalgrid/5

Course Enrollment: https://gimbalabs.instructure.com/enroll/3CFNFB