Four years after dropping out from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Suji Yan pinned a tweet to his profile in an unlikely moment of triumph.

The tweet was for the Web3 Drop Out Scholarship, an effort Yan founded that offers $50,000 to people who leave big companies or universities to enter Web3. If that sounds a little like the Thiel Fellowship created by billionaire Peter Thiel, which provides university dropouts with $100,000 over two years to pursue other work, that’s because it is.

In 2017, Yan thought he could offer more to the world by doing rather than learning and applied for Thiel’s scholarship. Although he didn't get it, he still dropped out. He has since started his own business, worked as an independent journalist and is now developing new tools to “decentralize” social media with figures like Jack Dorsey.

"There is not a lot of what we have [that the Thiel Fellowship] can provide," Yan said, adding that famed opportunity for renegades and outsiders (including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin) now seems "more traditional.”

Yan’s wager is that Web3 will fundamentally change the world – how we work, play and interact – over the next 20 to 50 years. The scholarship, which paid out tokens to three out of 40 candidates in its first year, is a path for similarly self-motivated people, who otherwise might be cut off from traditional financing, to start building.