Open Campus: Steps in the Dapp Evolution!

Table of Contents

Build Persists in Crypto Winter

1. Open Campus: The Star Player to Grow the Crypto Market

2. How Open Campus Utilizes Web3

3. Builders to Realize Ecosystem Vision

4. Tokenomics

4-1. Token utility

4-2. Token distribution plan

Value of Web3 Still Being Explored

Build Persists in Crypto Winter

Throughout the extended period of the crypto winter that started around 2022, numerous builders left the blockchain ecosystem, and the funding landscape within the VC circle responsible for fundraising for new projects also worsened, resulting in a significant decline in funding compared to the prosperous years of 2020-2021.
However, there were also builders who quietly continued their project building despite these challenges, holding onto their visions while waiting for the eventual arrival of springtime. Amid the recent bullish trend in the crypto market, fueled by the anticipation of the approval of Bitcoin spot ETF, these well-nurtured projects have started to gain attention one by one.

DApp grows alongside Web3 concept

The recent adoption of Web3 in various sectors, other than the finance-focused DeFi (decentralized finance), is also noteworthy, as it goes beyond merely issuing tokens or coins for fundraising purposes and reveals how blockchain technology is integrating into various industries.

Examples of such interesting Web3 adoption that include WorldCoin and Friend.tech. WorldCoin, a project launched by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, is designed to prepare for the age of artificial intelligence. It aims to build a vast, globally-connected economic community that distinguishes between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) through iris recognition. Friend.tech, a decentralized social platform, is built on top of the L2 project, Base, incubated by Coinbase. It integrates with Twitter and enables users to monetize their Twitter accounts. And both projects moved beyond the traditional concepts limited to DeFi and NFTs in the dApp space, introducing new and innovative ideas.

For more details about WorldCoin and Friend.Tech, refer to “WorldCoin & Friend.tech: Steps in the DApp Evolution”.

Web3 adoption that is observed in variation across different fields can also be observed in education. The education sector has been rapidly growing since the digitization process accelerated post-Covid19. S&P Global Market Intelligence predicts that the global education market will expand to $7.3 trillion by 2025. Amid this growth in the education industry, there are projects attempting to expand the Web3 ecosystem by incorporating blockchain technology. One such project is Open Campus, which aims to address the limitations of the traditional education industry through blockchain technology. In this article, we will delve into Open Campus and examine whether it can indeed bring changes to the Web3 ecosystem.

1. Open Campus: The Star Player to Grow the Crypto Market

Open Campus is a decentralized education protocol launched to address the limitations faced by various parties in the education industry. In November, the project gained attention by securing a $3.15 million investment from Binance Labs, the venture capital arm of the global cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

The ultimate goal of Open Campus is to establish a decentralized education platform, revolutionizing the $5 trillion education industry and returning control to educators and learners. The traditional education industry, with centralized entities owning and managing educational content, often results in content creators not receiving fair compensation, and students facing restrictions in accessing educational materials. Open Campus aims to resolve these issues by introducing blockchain technology into the education platform, decentralizing the creation and distribution of educational content.

2. How Open Campus Utilizes Web3

To address the previously mentioned issues, Open Campus chose to introduce Web3 to the traditional education industry. Open Campus tokenizes educational content to ensure ownership for content creators, enabling them to receive fair compensation. Moreover, buyers of tokenized educational content acquire the right to receive a portion of the revenue generated from the educational content.

This allows users to access and purchase various educational content without centralized entities. Furthermore, users can use blockchain technology to prove their learning history and use this to fairly evaluate educational content and instructors. Open Campus aims to grant individuals the authority to design the future of education, challenge the current situation, and provide a diverse, accessible, and dynamic learning experience. The values that it pursues in utilizing Web3 are as follows:

• Digital Rights and Participation: Tokenizing educational content as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) allows more communities to participate in decentralized education. Educators can sell co-publishing rights to educational content, securing new funding and expanding their network.
• Independence: Users can independently create, distribute, and consume educational content that matters to them, thanks to decentralization.
• Permanent and Transparent Learning Records: Blockchain technology makes it easy to verify qualifications and certificates.
• Platform-agnostic and User-owned: Tokenizing educational content ensures ownership for content creators. As these contents then won’t be limited to specific platform, they can utilize content widely across various platforms and create partnership opportunities.

Open Campus builds its pursued values based on the following components:

• Digital property rights in the form of Publisher NFTs: The protocol ensures digital property rights for content creators, maintaining control over intellectual property (IP) ownership and allowing creators to profit from the performance of their content. The NFTs grant the owners the right to market, promote, and earn a portion of the revenue generated by the owner’s promotional efforts of the educational content. Content creators can flexibly determine the portion of their content’s revenue they wish to sell. By NFTs, the Open Campus Protocol fosters an environment where creators can benefit from their work while retaining control over their IP. The purchaser of the Publisher NFT that holds the IP right then acquires partial ownership of the content and receive a share of its future earnings.
• Publisher NFT marketplace: Content creators or groups can create the NFTs and buy or sell them through the marketplace. Co-publishers (individuals or groups purchasing co-publishing rights) are responsible for promoting the content and receive a certain percentage of revenue generated through content subscriptions. This revenue is shared among content creators, co-publishers, and partner platforms.
• Crowd-sourced curricula: To facilitate the transition of Web2 users to Web3 and harness the power of the Open Campus protocol community, the platform supports content creators (individuals or publishers) in starting educational curricula by providing co-publishing rights through Publisher NFTs to supporters. Partners, content creators, and co-publishers collaborate to promote content, with each party earning revenue based on their contributions

Source: Open Campus

3. Builders to Realize Ecosystem Vision

Open Campus is actively collaborating with various builders and forming partnerships to execute its plans for constructing the ecosystem described earlier. The project currently engages with over 30 partners, so let’s examine the key builders and their roles.

Source: Open Campus

• Tiny Tap: Tiny Tap is an educational content platform offering educational games and interactive lessons. It provides a no-code authoring platform for educators to design and share educational games without coding. With over 10 million users and more than 250,000 lessons, Tiny Tap has attracted a substantial user base. Leveraging its experience, Tiny Tap has collaborated with the Open Campus protocol to develop Publisher NFTs, the first-ever content ownership on blockchain.

Source: Tiny Tap

• Mocaverse: Mocaverse is a flagship NFT project developed by the renowned venture capital, Anomica Brands. Mocaverse aims to establish a metaverse world offering features such as building, creation, gaming, and learning. The Learn Realm within Mocaverse provides a space for learning about Web3 insights and sharing ideas. Open Campus, as the first partner of Learn Realm, will actively engage in sharing diverse content and ideas. This partnership creates an intersection where participants in the Mocaverse ecosystem can naturally utilize the Open Campus protocol.

Source: Mocaverse

• GEMS: GEMS stands as the largest education network in the Middle East and North African region. Currently connected with over 60 schools, GEMS provides education to more than 130,000 students, and has established a deep community pool involving educational institutions, students, parents, and alumni, conducting various educational support programs such as scholarships and educational programs. Open Campus collaborates with GEMS to jointly develop a new Arabic education curriculums, intending to tokenize it through Publisher NFTs.

Source: Gems

4. Tokenomics

4-1. Token utility

Open Campus intends to use the $EDU token as the foundation for its ecosystem models. The token’s utility can be categorized into five areas:

• Open Campus ID: This involves a decentralized learning profile that records learning credentials, and $EDU can be used to issue them.
• Open Campus Publisher NFT: This represents a content NFT model for content creators to ensure ownership and fair compensation. Transactions involving Publisher NFTs can be facilitated with $EDU.
• Open Campus Alliance: This network of educational institutions that supports the decentralized education system of Open Campus will use $EDU token for payments.
• Open Campus University: The $EDU token will be utilized as an incentive on the online learning platform, Open Campus University. It is yet to be launched, and detailed information will be disclosed in the future.
• Open Campus Educators Fund: $EDU is earmarked to support protocol development funds, assisting educational technology companies and content creators.

The diagram below illustrates how the token is utilized within the Open Campus protocol. Let’s examine the step-by-step flow of how the token operates within the ecosystem, accompanied by examples of token use.

1. Content creators generate educational content.
2. Content creators pay $EDU tokens to have their content reviewed.
3. Upon approval by reviewers, content creators can pay $EDU to mint their content into a Publisher NFT.
4. Subsequently, creators sell Publisher NFTs on the marketplace, generating revenue.
5. Purchasers of Publisher NFTs promote the content.
6. Learners purchase and engage with content on the platform, earning certifications upon completion.
7. Throughout this process, revenue from Publisher NFTs is shared among contributors: content creators, co-publishers, education platforms, and the EDU Foundation treasury.

Source: Open Campus

4-2. Token distribution plan

The $EDU token has a maximum supply of 1 billion, allocated across nine categories for various purposes. These can be broadly classified into institutional and non-institutional ecosystem participants. Institutions (strategic sale, team, advisors, operational expenses) receive 42.5% of the total token allocation. Non-institutional ecosystem participants (ecosystem fund, early contributors, liquidity, Binance Launchpad) receive the remaining 57.5%. Tokens allocated to the ecosystem fund will be used for subsidies, scholarships, and incentives to encourage production of high-quality content and active platform participation. The token distribution plan aims to encourage new content creators and partners to adopt the Open Campus protocol, promoting growth. It also seeks to reward active community members and ecosystem supporters.

*For detailed token distribution and Lockup schedule, refer to Xangle’s Circulating Supply Dashboard.

Value of Web3 Still Being Explored

Open Campus does not present a groundbreaking tokenomics model that makes it unique nor outstanding technology to address issues. Many of the same participatory incentive models face challenges in establishing sustainability for the number of users depend on the scale of the incentives. If the value of the $EDU token experiences a significant drop, the incentive scale follows suit, potentially leading to users jumping ship, which is why maintaining token value is crucial for the sustainability of participatory incentive models. It remains to be seen how Open Campus navigates and resolves this challenge.
However, Open Campus stands out for presenting a clear problem-solving mission and offering a socially beneficial business model that can bring utility to all ecosystem participants. Moreover, by venturing beyond the limitations of existing dApps confined to DeFi, it introduces a new model, sparking anticipation.
Open Campus’s success could potentially contribute to the success of Web3 business models. Several companies, including Starbucks and SK Planet, are incorporating Web3. Starbucks incorporates it into their loyalty program to offer enhanced user experience, while SK Planet incorporates into its existing business model to secure service utility and universality. The recent success of Starbucks’ NFT, with a cumulative transaction volume of $3.2 million as of December 6, demonstrates the potential of leveraging Web3 in various industries.
Web3’s mass adoption requires its widespread use and acknowledgment of utility in diverse industries. If Open Campus successfully utilizes Web3 in the education sector to overcome the limitations of the existing business model, it could serve as a pivotal point in proving the applicability and mass adoption of Web3 elements. We anticipate that Open Campus will make evolution in the Web3 ecosystem.

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