CORE CONCEPTS
We’ve already introduced the concept of composability -- that is, the power to use open data and source code to build new applications on top of existing ones. The same features that make it easy to follow a user’s activity on the blockchain make it possible to verify one’s knowledge or mastery of a topic. Today, we’ll try out one of the first applications that capitalizes on the ability to view a user’s on-chain skills progression: RabbitHole.
The traditional resume vs the on-chain resume
A resume is a document that provides an overview of your professional qualifications, including relevant work experience, skills, education, and accomplishments. Many professionals spend hours formatting and word-smithing their resumes.
A traditional resume is a heavily curated, one-page synthesis of all the experiences and skills you feel are most relevant and attractive to an employer. Although few employers crosscheck the truthfulness of what’s on your resume, there’s an implicit honor code that anything you put on it should be verifiable.
The idea of an “on-chain resume” is nascent but stands to eliminate much of the curation and verification challenge. You can prove that you attended certain learning events through your POAPs. You can demonstrate that you are capable of performing certain tasks by sharing your transaction history. You can back up your claim to be an active member of a DAO via your voting records on Snapshot.
These are just a few obvious examples; much more is possible. E. Glen Weyl, Puja Ohlhaver, and Vitalik Buterin recently released a paper about non-transferable “soulbound” tokens representing the commitments, credentials, and affiliations of an individual.
Regardless of the mechanism, as more work and social activity start happening on-chain, there will likely be greater value afforded to on-chain credentials.
What is RabbitHole?
RabbitHole is one of the first projects to explore these concepts. From their homepage:
We believe web3 fundamentally reshapes the future of work and talent organization. By curating an on-chain graph of a user’s prior achievements, RabbitHole is creating the on-chain resume for the future of work.
RabbitHole currently has two credentialing tracks for users: Skills and Quests.
- Skills: A Skill is a collection of 3-4 discrete on-chain tasks that you complete to boost your web3 knowledge in a given domain (eg, DAOs). When you “redeem” a skill, RabbitHole verifies your on-chain transaction history.
- Quests: A Quest is a time-bound challenge where you learn how to use a decentralized app, and earn tokens based on your on-chain activity. The proof that you completed a Quest on time is also verified permissionlessly on-chain.
RabbitHole’s Quests are an example of another nascent concept called “learn-to-earn” in which you earn rewards for learning how to use a new product or feature.
Imagine Google paying you a small amount of money to learn how to use its Advanced Search commands. Or the knowledge management app Notion giving you a reward for hosting a page on a custom domain.
Regardless of whether you want to learn-to-earn or just learn, RabbitHole is a great resource for newcomers to explore different projects and gain exposure to the type of work that is moving on-chain.
In fact, several of your recent actions have already qualified you to redeem Skills on RabbitHole. Let’s check it out.
Redeeming Skills on RabbitHole
Start by going to the RabbitHole homepage in your MetaMask enabled browser: rabbithole.gg. Click the button to Use RabbitHole.
As usual, you will be prompted to Connect Your Wallet and sign the transaction on MetaMask. After doing so, the page should update showing that your wallet is connected.
Sometimes I find the RabbitHole site needs to be refreshed in order to establish a wallet connection. If you don’t see your wallet connected, just refresh your browser and hopefully it will update. If not, try re-connecting.
Once you’re connected, you will see a simple dashboard for Skills and Quests. The Skills page currently includes three credential tracks: NFTs, DeFi, and DAOs. Each skillset includes a tracker of how many on-chain tasks you’ve completed.
Your dashboard should appear similar to the one below -- with a 0/3 or 0/4 tasks displayed for each skillset.
We’ll start by scrolling down to Intro to DAOs and clicking that button.
Currently, there are three DAOs Skills available. If you completed the Day 9 activity by voting on Snapshot, then you should be eligible to redeem this task.
If you haven’t voted on Snapshot yet, you can learn more about the process by clicking on the Details button or you can click Start and go directly to the Snapshot page to see if you are eligible for any current votes.
If you have voted before, then instead of seeing a “Not Started” indicator, you should see a button prompting you to Redeem your skill. [Unfortunately I don’t have a screenshot of the Redeem button turning on.] If you’ve performed a vote, but don’t see an option to Redeem, trying refreshing your browser.
After clicking the Redeem button, the dashboard updates to show my task is complete. (Again, sometimes you need to refresh the page in your browser to trigger the update.)
Even if you haven’t been able to vote on Snapshot yet, there’s another Skill you should be eligible for if you completed Day 11, Staking Ethereum on Lido.
Go back to the all Skills dashboard and click on the Intro to DeFi track. It should show that you are eligible to redeem the first of four tasks: Stake ETH on Lido.
Hopefully the redemption works and now you are well on your way to building a basic set of verifiable web3 skills!
Final thoughts
RabbitHole is a great learning resource for beginners. If you want to go deeper, you should check their website often or follow their socials to learn about new Skills and especially Quest opportunities. And, because its aimed at beginners, each activity usually has a good write-up and tutorial for how to earn the Skill or complete the Quest.
I do have a few gripes with RabbitHole, though. First, the website is not super-responsive and doesn’t always capture all the tasks you’ve completed. (The proof is still there, immutably captured on the blockchain; it’s just their backend or integrations with other protocols aren’t updating.)
More importantly, some of the tasks require spending a lot of gas. The remaining DeFi activities in particular are not very friendly for newcomers. We already spent about $12 in gas to Stake ETH. More advanced tasks like lending and borrowing on a DeFi site like Aave will cost you much more than that. In order to rationalize such gas fees, you’d need to be moving several thousands of dollars worth of ETH per transaction -- something newcomers should probably not be doing. Instead, I think RabbitHole should move its Intro to DeFi task redemptions onto another chain like Polygon, where gas fees are much lower and it feels more affordable to experiment with different types of transactions.
Hopefully, RabbitHole will continue to expand its offerings and make learn-to-earn more accessible to newcomers.