I’m pretty excited to share my initial review of The Invisible College with you, as it really speaks to two big goals I’ve had for the first half of 2022:

• Find easy to digest, and fun resources for learning how to break into Web3.
• Start building a point of view on what it might look like to integrate this model into the communities I support with my work.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Web3, and all the potential for disrupting current online publishing models for creators.

That being said, all this possibility is accompanied by a ton of hype, that makes many people want to steer clear completely. I know, because this was my stance for the better part of all last year. It can be really difficult to discern what’s real and useful in a world that’s littered with failed projects and straight up scams.

So, naturally when I found Decentraliens, and The Invisible College, I felt like I struck gold.

The Invisible College bills itself as a learning Dao to onboard builders & creators into Web3. To do this, they are minting 10,000 NFT clients on the Solana blockchain.

Learning + aliens? Sign me up!

First action you should take –> Join the Discord Server (it’s free for now)

I came across this project on doing my daily Twitter review, and Rob Hardy from @ungatedcreative had shared this post:

I’ve had the unwavering sense that Web3 is going to be massive beyond its current reach, and as much as it’s been a thing for a while now for those in the know, there are far more people who have yet to have had their first experience with it.

The promise of a community where someone like me could allow my curiosity to flourish, while building and investing in projects, was enough to earn my click.

Once I had a chance to read their roadmap and vision, I knew I was down for the ride.

True story, I stayed up past my bedtime to get my decentralien minted, and for those of you that know me at all on a personal level – that’s a big deal, as I take my sleep pretty seriously!

Furthermore, the Decentraliens invaded my dreams, as I couldn’t stop thinking about all the future possibilities all night long. I had some pretty strange stuff bubbling up.

Here’s 6 key highlights about this community that really spoke to me and my decision-making process to join:

Learn how to build and invest in Web3

The promise of this community is well-defined, and the message is clear. I love the focused attention on the exact three things I’m most interested in taking part of in a Web3 community:

• Investing in new Web3 projects and NFT’s
• Building my own Web3 community, and learning how to incorporate these business models into existing communities I support as a growth lever for the future.
• Contributing my existing expertise and skills to a community that I can grow with while making new friendships, partnerships, and allies.

A School Owned by the Students

I’ve been reading a lot lately about this model as an alternative to the traditional creator membership model (which I’ve seen from experience is hard and often unsustainable).  The idea of being part owner in a well-focused community committed to sharing Web3 with more people is highly attractive and played a big role in my decision to mint.

It was so strong in fact, that I chose to mint 4 decentraliens without any clear financial benefit for acquiring more than one. It just felt good to support a community with such a clear directive in a space that from my experience often presents as scattered, and all over the map.

It’s unclear if there will be any future benefit to me for that decision, but I’m cool with it, if it helps bring more of this to life. And here’s a quick peek at my guys!

Community of builders and learners

This is everything. I’ve shared before that three of my top values in growing business are fostering more connection, growth, and belonging. For a large part of my professional career I showed up as a bit of a lone wolf, but as I’ve matured in my understanding of what it takes to build something meaningful, and create more impact, it’s become clear to me that I can’t do this in a vacuum or by myself.

I know it’s a tired phrase, but it truly does take a village.

The decentralien mint is the first of hopefully many projects tied to the Invisible College’s vision, which you can read more about here.

I’m truly hoping that I can make some strong connections here that can both support a vision that’s emerging for my own ideas, as well as allow me to contribute to the broader mission that the community is bringing to life.

And of course, finding a community to connect with others who are bit further along in their NFT, DeFi, and blockchain journey is something I’m grateful to have found.

I’m still a bit of a Discord newbie, so it may take me a while to figure out how to best leverage all the opportunities that exist.

Topic Based Deep Dives

On first pass it seems the Decentralien and Invisible College community is super engaged. I found two awesome resources immediately after minting:

• A shared google calendar that shows exactly when events coming up within the community will be happening, and I was encourage to see that there are a lot of them! This is this week’s events alone:

Granted, I know this is Mint week, so the team is probably ramping up the schedule, but it’s my hope to see this sort of schedule continuing to existing in the future.

• They have an awesome library of past town halls & deep dives, going back into last year.

To me this is further proof that the community has legs and they are committed to the actual learning, and not just a big flashing marketing event around this minting process.

I love some of the topics I’m seeing, here are just a few that caught my eye:

• How to build a franchise with a DAO
• How to find new NFT projects Token Investment Opportunities
• Identity & Ownership in Web 3

The list just goes on …

Web3 Courses

This selling point for Invisible college seems to be entirely future roadmapped, however it was a big reason I decided to join. The community plans to create a library of course content specifically for helping people like me get started in Web 3.

I still don’t know what I don’t know, and I want to get conversational as quick as possible so that I can assess what’s possible for me to create on my own, and where I’ll need a little help from my friends. And to do that – I’ll need a clear understanding of the map.

I’m hoping this community can play a big part in fulfilling that goal in 2022.

As a side note, I absolutely love the vision for how they will lay out the online school campus:

Clear Mint Process

As someone who was purchasing my third NFT ever, and also having not operated on the Solana blockchain at all to date, it was really important for me to understand exactly how the minting process would work.

The fact that Paul Searle laid the instructions out so clearly on how to set up your Phantom wallet, and transfer funds really gave me the confidence to move forward with minting not only one decentralien, but four!

It also made me feel that if this is the quality of content we can expect in the future with the Web3 courses, that I’ll be getting great support in my learning journey.

I was also impressed by the fact that immediately after joining the Discord server, I was both greeted there, as well as directly responded to on Twitter when I was unsure about how to view my minted NFT’s (which can be a bit anxiety provoking if you are new to the process).

All in all, I’m super grateful to have found decentraliens and The Invisible College. If you can’t tell already, I’m a bit starry eyed and in full-on fan boy mode at the moment. I can’t remember the last time I got this excited about joining a community.

It’s still a bit early to tell if this will be a great long-term investment of time, attention, and financial resources. The project still feels quite underground, but I’m excited to dig in fully and open myself up to whatever opportunities might unfold.

I’ll post some updates along the way as I continue to explore.

And if you have a similar desire to explore this brave new world, it seems like a great time to jump in.

As of writing this, there are still roughly 6,000 NFT’s still available of the original 10,000. I’m not sure what happens after that, but at 1.5 sol, the community seems like a great value.

Quick Links to Learn More

Decentraliens Twitter: https://twitter.com/decentraliens

Invisible College Website: https://www.invisiblecollege.xyz/

Decentraliens Discord: https://discord.com/invite/invisiblecollege