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Tim Draper, Ed Hesse, and Trent Mc'Conaghy will select five winning pitches for the Startup Society Founders’ Awards. Each winner will receive $2,000 USD plus 1,000 $JUR to support their startup society. Anyone can enter but to win, your society proposal needs to be clear, attractive to others, and realistic to achieve. Let’s talk about how to set up the basic structure to support a winning pitch: To enter, you will fill out a form to describe your startup society concept (which takes less than 2 minutes). In order to craft a winning proposal, you should focus on addressing the following questions: Why would people want to join your society? Does it have broad appeal with values that are common to many people? Or perhaps your society would only appeal to a narrow niche, but your citizens would be passionately committed. Is your goal useful and achievable? How could your society benefit citizens in a way that is realistic? When someone asks “what’s in it for me.” the answer should be something that is meaningful to them and something your group could really deliver.  As you consider your answers, try to imagine what someone could say that would get you excited about an idea like yours. Remember a time when you felt inspired reading about a similar vision? Strive to capture and share that creative energy.  You can also join the Jur community on Discord to talk about Startup Societies in general and get reactions to your specific idea. An Awards Committee will evaluate your concept and assign a score of 1 to 5. The ten highest-scoring proposals will be shortlisted for evaluation by the judges. Each founder on the shortlist will get support from the Jur team to refine their pitch for the judges. The judges will score the pitches on three criteria: desirability, feasibility, and viability. In other words, do people want a society like this? Can the goals of their society be achieved? Do the goals bring substantial benefits so that their society will endure?Pitch your Startup Society now!

The Startup Society is a new concept that offers the potential for rapid social innovation. To fully grasp the significance of the Startup Society concept, it’s helpful to consider the context.  Technology and Social Change  Social change and technological change are intertwined. Tools and techniques for agriculture changed society. Social organization allowed specialization and new technology. The printing press made the mass spread of facts and ideas possible, allowing the creation of a new type of social organization, democratic nation-state republics, which replaced feudal monarchies. Today, distributed ledger technology is making new models of social organization possible.  The Nation State System Works…Slowly  Society and economic activity are currently organized under the nation-state system. Old European cities evolved gradually over time and today are a maze of curving streets, fascinating but not efficient. Analogously, nation-state governments have a complex legacy of existing rules. The processes for creating new rules necessarily balance the interests of divergent factions in the population. The result is often a pluralist deadlock. It can be difficult to test new ideas.  Software Startups - Designed For Rapid Evolution Software startups know they have to deliver fast; after all, runways don’t last forever. But you can’t just deliver fast. You have to deliver what is needed, and it has to work and please users. Many startups don’t get it right. Failure is common. But the software startup paradigm allows Founders who have a vision to test their idea, focusing on delivering a valuable service with a fast, lean approach in order to discover what works and what doesn’t as quickly as possible. Startup companies move faster than larger companies to test and prove the viability of new ideas, then scale. Extending the Startup Paradigm to Social Organization People who have great ideas about society can get frustrated working in the confines of the glacially slow system of existing institutions. The startup model offers an alternative. Founders can establish a set of values as a starting point to rally other people who are closely aligned. People who agree with the values can apply to become members of a Startup Society. Founders can establish criteria for admission to ensure members will find each other to be respectable and desirable colleagues. Founders may also choose to create social cohesion by proposing norms of communication and new traditions to encourage members to bond. The Startup Society can adopt mechanisms for proposing and voting on policies and actions.  What Is A Startup Society? A Startup Society is a social group that uses a model that is analogous to the lean software startup model to evolve rapidly. While Startup Societies could take many forms, Jur focuses on facilitating startup Societies with the following properties.  Led by a Founder Software startups are initially animated by the passion of a Founder. Jur believes the same will be true of most successful Startup Societies.  Online / Location Indepedent Some Startup Societies exist in a particular place in the physical world, but location-independent Startup Societies can offer membership to anyone in the world, offering the potential for more rapid growth.  Closely Aligned & Fast Moving  Startup Societies with clear and specific values are more likely to attract members and thrive. Societies unified by shared values can come to a consensus quickly, test new ideas, assess results, and implement policies that work in a rapid cycle of lean innovation.  Web3 - Trustless & Censorship Resistant Existing social institutions have established (albeit sometimes somewhat tarnished) long-standing and valuable reputations at stake, so people have expectations about how they can trust them. New societies that arise overnight can’t rely on reputation and history. But they can use Web3 to ensure transparency and reliability, providing inviolable trust with distributed ledger technology. Startup Societies can use simple sets of Web3 tools designed to propose, test, vote on, and adopt policies, values, norms, and traditions.  How To Build A Startup Society Broadly speaking, in order to succeed a Startup Society will need to have three properties. It must be desirable; there must be some group of people that wants want the Founder is planning to offer. It must be feasible; there must be some practical way to deliver what the Founder is planning to offer. And finally it must be viable; the benefits that the Society creates must be sufficiently significant to inspire continuing participation so that the society will endure.  So the first step in building a Startup Society is to think of why a group of people would want to join together and what they could create that would be meaningful for them. Once you come up with your concept, apply in under two minutes and your proposal will be added to the Society Lab in Jur’s Discord community. The community, including high-profile advisors like Zane Austen from TheNetworkState.com, will help you refine your idea. But hurry, proposals will be evaluated on March 31 so time is limited to participate.  Watch the below video to help you put together your proposal for the Startup Society Founders' Awards. https://youtu.be/uEiGF47tF_A

Jur is offering five prizes of $2,000 USD plus 1,000 $JUR in the Startup Society Founders’ Awards. The awards focus attention on the opportunity to develop rapidly evolving new societies with the aid of blockchain technology. We live under the influence and control of complex systems of social organization and governance that evolved gradually over centuries. Our world order is created by agreements between nation-states and our local governments' power, which also derives from nation-states. We might assume this is the way things have always been done and the only way to do things, but the nation-state system is only a few centuries old. The nation-state system might change a lot over the next century, but it is not designed for rapid change. Fortunately, if we want to accelerate the rate of social evolution, there is another option.  The Startup Society concept is designed to support the rapid creation of digital-first societies with clear simple rules and values and provide a transparent and auditable system for proposing, voting on, and implementing new features for societies. The Startup Society model envisions multiple opt-in groups that people can freely choose to join. In this model, an individual citizen may belong to multiple societies but does not have to belong to any. People can voluntarily self-organize based on shared values and priorities and experiment with rules that support their own ideals.  These digital-first Startup Societies will exist in the context of the nation-state system. Eventually, some startup societies might crowdfund territory around the world, providing direct physical access to citizens of many or all nations. They might also seek free enterprise zone status and diplomatic recognition, eventually becoming distributed peers to nation-states, a new type of entity called a network state. But even a digital-only society could have a very meaningful impact.  Consider a simple example: a Society for digital nomads who are committed to sustainable development. A Society founder could propose a list of values and priorities and invite people to join a digital community. The founder could then propose rules and invite society members to vote. For instance, everyone could agree to purchase a group health insurance policy for nomads and informally commit to only staying in locally owned lodging and purchasing carbon offsets for travel. Eventually, the Society might choose to crowdfund some co-working and living spaces, but clearly, a Startup Society can provide benefits for its citizens even if it is purely digital.  Now that you understand the Startup Society concept and how it could be useful, Jur invites you to pitch your own Startup Society proposal. How could people who share your values, interests, and priorities freely associate in ways that improve their lives?  Apply now.

Jur, the upcoming Polkadot parachain building the DAO 2.0 stack, invites founders to pitch their Startup Society ideas to notable figures from Web3, including Tim Draper (Draper Associates), Ed Hesse (Energy Web), and Trent McConaghy (Ocean Protocol) for a chance to win a share of the USD 10,000 grand prize, along with the opportunity to launch their Startup Society through a dedicated grant program. Unlike DAOs, Startup Societies are flexible founder-led forms of congregations that are value-based to let communities aggregate easily around a shared purpose. With its’ DAO 2.0 stack, Jur aims to kick off the 1-click Country ecosystem to build the future of governance, enabling Web3 communities with interoperability, growth, experimentation, and evolution into network states.  Jur invites existing online community builders, influencers, DAOs, and innovators to participate in the first cohort of the Startup Society Founders Awards. The Awards will provide a platform for founders to experiment with new societal models and offer USD 2,000 and 1,000 $JUR each to the top five Startup Society proposals.  Web3 technologies are changing the way we think about community and governance. Jur founder Alessandro Palombo states, “Jur believes that Web3 requires simpler structures to enable community building and governance. That's why we are developing an ecosystem to support Startup Societies, designed to be Web3-native communities based on shared values and simple, consensus-based decision-making. In addition, with the Startup Society Founders Awards launch, we want to encourage further innovation and experimentation in this space.”To keep the process decentralized and transparent, the evaluation process to shortlist the top 10 proposals, will be undertaken by Jur community volunteers, along with a panel of experienced advisors including Zane Austen from Balaji’s team at The Network State, amongst others. The Jur team and advisors will refine the shortlisted proposals to be presented to the judges, Tim Draper, Ed Hesse, and Trent McConaghy, who will select the five winners to present their ideas live on Demo Day. “Startup Societies offer an exciting new way for people to come together and work towards a shared purpose,” says Ed Hess, Energy Web’s founder and one of the judges for the award. He adds, “Jur is building the tools and infrastructure needed to power the next generation of Web3 native communities. I’m excited to be part of the Jur Startup Society Founders Awards and see the innovative proposals presented.”The deadline to submit your proposal is 31st March 2023. Take advantage of this opportunity to be a part of the next generation of Web3 Startups Society founders. Apply now!

Jur will soon bid for a parachain slot to connect to the Polkadot Relay Chain. We would like to offer community members a chance to participate and we will be announcing crowdloan terms soon. In the meantime, there are a couple of easy steps you might want to take to prepare. You will need some $DOT tokens and an official Polkadot browser extension and wallet. Installing the Polkadot.js browser extension and creating wallet addresses is pretty easy, but you will need a Firefox or Chrome browser. We have broken it into 13 steps, which might seem like a lot, but each step is just a click or two so you will be done in less than five minutes. Once you have your wallet set up, it's easy to buy $DOT on a centralized exchange like Binance, Kraken, or Kucoin.  Ready? Let’s go! Creating a wallet To install the Polkadot.{js} browser extension for Firefox or Chrome Go to: https://polkadot.js.org/extension/  Click on Add to Chrome and then Add extension Then click on the extension and Understood, let me continue Now you can create an account for your wallet extension by clicking on the big “+” button You will see the seed phrase generated for you. Write it down on a piece of paper and keep it somewhere safe. Don’t store it on your laptop. After you have done this, check the I have saved my mnemonic seed safely box and click Next step Choose “Allow use on any chain”In the Polkadot, the address formats are specific to parachains, but choosing "Allow on any chain" will generate a generic substrate address starting with “5” which is compatible with the entire ecosystem and can be later used to derive parachain specific addresses as well. Then create a wallet name and the password and click Add the account with the generated seed Congratulations! You have created your wallet. You should create and export a JSON file in case you want to access your account from another device. To create and download your JSON file, click on the polkadot.js extension again in the top line of your browser. You will see your account in the pop-up window. Click on the three dots beside your account and then click Export Account to create the JSON file Type in your password and then click I want to export this account After the file is downloaded, save it on an external storage device that is not connected to your laptop. Keep it safe! This is how you will access your account if you want to use it on a different device. To access your new wallet, you need to go back to https://polkadot.js.org/ and click on the link under apps wallet (hosted) or you go straight to https://polkadot.js.org/apps/#/explorer The app will ask to access your wallet, click Yes, allow the application to access Funding wallet with $DOT You can purchase $DOT from Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken with crypto or fiat. You can also buy $DOT on  Kucoin, Bitfinex, Bybit, and several other exchanges but only with crypto; these exchanges don’t offer $DOT for fiat. You will need to withdraw/transfer $DOT from an exchange to your polkadot wallet in order to participate in the crowdloan. Please refer to your preferred exchange’s guide to understand how to withdraw. Due to different address formats within Polkadot, it is likely that the Polkadot address starting with “5” might not be compatible with the exchange. In such case, follow this tutorial to generate a polkadot relay chain specific address that starts with “1”. Use this address in the exchange to withdraw. After you have successfully transferred $DOT into your wallet, it is important to switch back to the original settings so that you can see the original substrate address starting with “5” before contributing to the Crowdloan. Jur chain will only be able to transfer $JUR tokens for crowdloan rewards to addresses beginning with “5”, and the address you use to contribute is also used for your rewards. Please note: VeChain $JUR are VIP-180 tokens so you cannot send them to your Polkadot wallet. You must wait until the token migration feature is available to swap your VeChain $JUR for Pplkadot $JUR and have them sent to your wallet. Some other considerations to keep in mind while preparing for crowdloan Only contribute with a wallet address starting from “5”. It is a must for Jur chain. Otherwise, we will not be able to guarantee crowdloan rewards. Auctions bids can be very dynamic. The market conditions will dictate the reward structure. It will be released close to the auction, please keep an eye out for announcements on Jur's social channels & community on Discord. While the reward ratio and complete reward delivery schedule has not yet been finalized,   Jur has decided that 10% of the rewards will be immediately transferred once Jur chain is live as a parachain. The minimum contribution is 5 $DOT. You will be required to maintain at least 1 $DOT in your wallet. Balances of less than 1 $DOT get purged after the transaction that brings them below the minimum. For example, if you have 106.3 $DOT in your wallet and you contribute 106 to the crowdloan, the remaining 0.3 will be purged. But if you contribute 105, the remaining balance will be 1.3 $DOT. A crowdloan lease can last for up to 2 years. Your $DOT will be locked for the same duration and will not be accessible. Once the lease is over, $DOT will be automatically transferred back to your account. In case Jur does not win the auction, the $DOT will be transferred back to your account immediately after the auction.

Polkadot Parachain Auctions Polkadot Crowdloans are used to increase projects’ bids in Polkadot Parachain auctions. Parachains are parallel blockchains that connect to the Polkadot Relay Chain. To connect to the Relay Chain, projects must lease a parachain slot by staking DOT tokens. Slots are offered in an auction process. Projects that stake the highest amount of DOT tokens win the opportunity to lease a slot for a defined period of time by leaving their DOTs in the staking module. Projects can acquire DOT with their own funds and stake them to bid, but there is also another option: the crowdloan.  What is a Polkadot Crowdloan and how does it work? A Polkadot Crowdloan is a mechanism that allows anyone to support a project’s parachain auction bid by locking DOT tokens in a crowdloan module. DOT tokens staked through crowdloans can be added to the project’s own staked DOTs to increase the total staking bid for the auction. Parachain auctions last one week. Crowdloan campaigns also have specified start and end dates which are defined by the project. If there is a crowdloan open when an auction period closes, the DOTS staked in that crowdloan can be applied as a bid for the auction. Once a crowdloan campaign period ends, if the project has not won an auction, the staked DOTS are returned to their owners. However, if the project’s stake is sufficiently high to win a slot during the campaign period, all the DOTs in the staking module will remain locked for the entire duration of the lease.  Why participate in a  Polkadot Crowdloan? Projects usually offer a direct reward for participation. The most common form of reward is a payment in project tokens, often made at the end of the staking period. Crowdloan participation is also a way to signal support for a project that you believe in. Crowdloans offer projects and their supporters a way to support the Polkadot ecosystem, win a parachain slot, and start a flywheel of reciprocal support. The individual supports the project and Polkadot and the project reciprocates with project tokens, encouraging and helping the individual to participate in the project.  How to participate in a Crowdloan? Some projects may offer dApps(decentralised applications) DAPPs or access to centralised exchange features for participating in crowdloans, but the least expensive way will usually be to use the Polkadot.js browser extension with the Polkadot.js UI wallet. You will also need to buy some DOT, which is easy to do with fiat or crypto on Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken and you can also buy DOT with USDC on Kucoin and Bybit. Once you have purchased DOTs and sent them to your Polkadot.js address, you can use the Polkadot.js wallet to participate in the crowdloan. Navigate from the top menu to Parachains, select Crowdloans from the second Menu Bar, then locate the project you want to support and click contribute. Your wallet can support multiple accounts, so you will need to specify the account you want to use. Then select an amount of DOT between the minimum and maximum shown on the screen. Make sure that subtracting your contribution from your total balance will leave at least 1.1 DOT in your account. You must maintain a minimum balance of 1 DOT and there will be a small transaction fee.  It is easy to install the Polkadot.js wallet (only available for Firefox and Chrome). Once you have one of those browsers set up, just download the extension here and then follow the prompts on the screen to add an account and store the key.