Cornell Blockchain Club
Founded in 2017, Cornell Blockchain Club (CBC) was the nation’s first official blockchain club. With the misplaced euphoria of the 2017 bull run in full swing, Cornell Blockchain Club noticed a gap in blockchain education throughout the world of academia. To fill this gap, CBC made it their mission to educate Cornell students not only how to use blockchain technology in its current form, but also how to think about the future potential of blockchain technology.
CBC developed a three-tier structure that would serve to develop the world’s next web3 leaders: education, experience, and connections!
Education
Back in 2017, CBC’s founders would hold weekly meetings to educate Cornell undergraduates on the basic principles of blockchain technology. In 2018, the club contributed to Mastering Ethereum by Dr. Gavin Wood and Andreas Antonopoulos, one of the most respected textbooks on Ethereum and smart contract development in the industry.
The growing interest in blockchain led CBC’s executives to create a semester-long, for-credit class called CS1998: Introduction to Blockchain. The course was first offered in Fall 2021 and is taught and TA’d by our Cornell Blockchain members. The class has taught over 500 Cornell undergraduates the foundations of blockchain and covers topics such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, and more. More recently, we offer CS 4998: Blockchain Development which teaches students how to build EVM-compatible platforms using Solidity. Both class encourages hands-on learning and additionally offers a deeper understanding of the technical aspects of blockchain.
During the summer, CBC teaches a 6 week blockchain bootcamp for BIPOC Brooklyn public high school students which is a collaboration with the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation, the New York Department of Education, and the Social Justice Fund. Last summer, the NYC Mayor Eric Adams came and spoke to during one the sessions.
Experience
CBC’s leaders also believe that experience-based learning is critical to a cohesive blockchain technology understanding. CBC runs Accelerator, Consulting, Governance, Engineering, and Trading project teams.
Accelerator: Our accelerator team hosts a six-week program in which we work with early-stage (pre-seed/seed) Web3 startups. This cohort contained 4 startups, 3 of which were founded by Cornell alumni.
Consulting: The consulting team partners with blockchain companies to provide business and research support. This semester, the consulting team is working with the Aura Blockchain Consortium to compare different public and private blockchains networks.
Governance: Our governance team is delegated Arbitrum gokens and actively votes on proposals.
Engineering: Our engineering team works on individual projects in hopes that we can funnel them into our accelerator program the following semester.
Trading: The trading team participates in trading competitions and works on both quant and discretionary trading projects.
Connections
CBC’s last pillar helps students to fully break into the industry after they are well-equipped with blockchain knowledge. CBC has set up recruiting pipelines with numerous Web3 native firms such as Ava Labs, Pantera Capital, Crosstower, Dexterity, Coinbase and more.
At its first annual conference in 2019, CBC was given the chance to ring the Nasdaq bell after hosting a successful conference of over 250+ attendees. Since then, we have again rung the NASDAQ bell in the spring of 2023. Lastly, CBC is the founding member of the Ivy League DAO where we provide support to colleges who want to build out blockchain education. The DAO also functions as a means of creating connections between other undergraduate blockchain clubs.