The KERNEL Fellowship is an 8 week program introducing 200 KB3 Fellows to the KERNEL network, a thriving peer-to-peer community of 600 (and counting!) of the most talented and creative crypto-curious builders from around the World Wide Web.

KERNEL Alumni are:

Apply by April 15th to join KERNEL Block III, starting on May 12th. It is free to apply, and $400 (~$1200 for teams) to join the co-op for accepted KERNEL Fellows, with scholarships available for students and underrepresented communities. We can’t wait to introduce you all to each other.

KERNEL started as an experiment. What would happen if we got ~200 incredibly talented builders interested in crypto, from a variety of incredible backgrounds, and put them in a room together for 8 weeks?

The KERNEL Fellowship was designed using the principles we learned from our open-source (given our Gitcoin roots) and peer-to-peer (like Bitcoin, Ethereum) technologies. There are no teachers and no students in KERNEL. There are multi-faceted humans, collaborating on ideas and benefitting from serendipity while we mindfully build Web 3 as an extension of our individual lives.

The results of the experiment have been incredible. We’ve seen budding relationships, extraordinary projects, and plethora of shared conversations all taking shape inside the community.

KERNEL Genesis Block alumni have collectively raised a total of $10MM+ in funding, more importantly, they’ve collectively formed a million more shared memories from the interactions.

The essence of KERNEL is the community we curate for each member. Think of it like

• meeting your co-founder on the first day of the fellowship and raising funds months later.
• looking for a CEO for your pre-seed company and getting 5 introductions in a day.
• playing a different game every week (Among Us, anyone?)
• reading a KERNEL module during a quiet hour, providing a container for your thoughts

With two blocks completed, we can proudly say, KERNEL is already a proven & powerful community that will bridge the gap between you and what you want to achieve in this ever growing crypto-space. It will provide you, first and foremost, with a trust space. It’s a space where you can be sure:

In the KERNEL community, our constraints (like weekly readings, Tuesday build courses, and Thursday Firesides) are meant just enough to let your personal creativity take its course.

Our only ask from you is to show up and allow serendipity to happen. :)

Your KERNEL Adventures¶

With Block 2, we saw a shift in focus towards individual journeys through the collective KERNEL. We saw each fellow’s journey as unique as the human behind it & wanted it represented as such - hence, KERNEL Adventures.

We saw 150 adventures - regularly updated, kept track of with their own deadlines & unique milestones. It was like OKRs on steroids, in a group environment. This quickly became the one reference point to view what each fellow was working on.

Halfway through the Block 2 and we have adventures ranging from writing a phD thesis on crypto-culture to building a DAO to manage and safeguard green areas. There are infinite possibilities in between!

Tracks¶

Setting down a path for these adventures to stride on was what we tried to achieve through the introduction of tracks. While Genesis Block focused on the core of what KERNEL is, Block 2 melded into more focused tracks, focusing on niches in web3 that were a top priority for the cohort.

We saw mini-cohorts forming around these tracks – which were led by DeFi Alliance (DeFi), IDEO (Fairlaunch), YFI / Status (Security), and OP Games (Gaming).

Having leading experts so willing to engage in the community has really encouraged us for the future tracks of KERNEL, based on the interests of KERNEL Fellows.

Juntos & Slack¶

Now, to spark conversation amongst these adventurers (& inspired by Benjamin Franklin), we set two goals for us: Improve ourselves and improve the world - one constructive conversation at a time.

This was a truly heartwarming experience for us, seeing at least 30 scheduled juntos over the course of 4 weeks. Each conversation is structured around one topic and some reading material. This we believe is just the tip of what a peer to peer learning environment might look like.

We are excited to launch KERNEL Block III. With proof of work for two blocks, we are confident this will only continue to strengthen our belief and vision of the talent we see in this space and give us another opportunity to provide for some of the greatest minds in this space.

Our opportunity, collectively, is to create an institution which serves to explore, through lived experiences, what it means to build a better web as it relates to us all.