Innovative Education courseware marketplace brings over 2,500 new daily users to Telos
Decentralized apps deploying on EOS.IO blockchains need to stake EOS or TLOS tokens for CPU and NET resources. This is how EOSIO transactions are able to occur without charging per-transaction fees. However, while this is much more convenient for users, this need to stake tokens can be an impediment for app developers coming from blockchains like Ethereum where developers do not need to stake tokens to reserve resources.
The GoodGrants is a program designed to make it easier for developers to deploy apps on Telos by staking their resource needs for their first year so that the app can develop a working business before needing to cover their own resource costs. GoodBlock has allocated five million tokens to the GoodGrants program over the next two years.
We are very pleased to announce the first GoodGrant recipient, Teachology.io. GoodGrants will stake Teachology’s first year of NET and CPU resource needs, allowing it to focus its resources on development and growth.
Teachology.io is an education app that aims to both incentivize secondary school students to learn science and technology and provide a marketplace for professional online courses in these subjects. Students are rewarded for passing course tests with TEACH tokens which they can use to purchase additional courses. Educators can submit courseware to the Teachology platform and earn TEACH tokens each time students use their courses.
Teachology.io is the brainchild of respected Egyptian educator, Mina Bebawy, who began the student rewards element of the program several years ago using paper cards and then moving to refillable rewards cards. When Bebawy discovered EOS, he wrote a token smart contract to update this idea to the blockchain age. The contract was deployed on EOS as EATCOIN (Education and Teaching). He was able to set up accounts for over 2,500 of his students on EOS and the majority of them became daily users (the rest are weekly users). However, the cost of resources and account creation became an impediment to deploying new student accounts. The lower costs and free new user accounts on Telos made it an attractive alternative to Bebawy who anticipates adding a vast number of students as he hopes to roll out his platform across the Egyptian education system and then into other countries.
The GoodGrants team was excited to work with Bebawy on the project. It provided Telos information and re-branding advice for the new project and introduced Teachology to the Telos Foundation, which worked with them to create the over 2,500 new free Telos accounts to students faster than the current free account creation tool would allow. (Read about the Telos Foundation’s important contributions to Teachology.) With the Egyptian school term about to change to a new year, there was an excellent opportunity to transition the current year’s students and then expand the program quickly to the following term’s students for rapid growth of the platform.
The Teachology token, TEACH, has now been listed on AKDEX along with other Telos tokens QBE (Qubicles), VIITA and VIITC (Viitospere). Teachology is creating an inter-chain “teleporting” contract so that its students can transfer their EAT tokens from EOS to TEACH tokens on Telos. It is also developing the marketplace for online science and technology courseware. Using the Telos blockchain, Teachology will track each student’s progress on the immutable ledger while providing a working economy for course creators and students. Each course will consist of both lessons and tests.
Bebawy has hired a developer to help him deploy the Teachology.io site quickly. As a well-known educator, Bebawy has created an expansive network of teachers throughout Egypt who are eager to bring their students into the Teachology network now that Telos has helped solve the resource and account creation cost problems. He aims to expand his student base with the new Egyptian school term and expects to grow the Teachology.io user base to between 30,000 and 50,000 students in the coming year. Future plans include expansion throughout Egypt and beyond. As most Teachology students interact with their accounts almost every school day, this type of growth could quickly give Teachology.io one of the largest numbers of daily users of any app in the EOSIO ecosystem, and even on older blockchains like Ethereum. Teachology students are engaged young men and women who access their accounts almost daily, primarily with Sqrl wallet. These “digital native” generation students are going to be growing up using the Telos blockchain, which is an exciting prospect.
Mina Bebawy has a clear vision for the app’s purpose and future, “Teachology.io wants students to learn and invest, and teachers to teach and invest.”
“We will use the NFT (non-fungible token) to document and certify the students’ achievements and starting next term, we will begin cooperating with universities, schools and other educational institutions to become a certified partner for their courses and programs so our NFT will be certified.” Bebawy explains. “All students courses, grades, skills and achievements will be recorded on the blockchain through the NFT and can be used to apply for jobs and take exams directly without attending the traditional courses in universities so we can see a 10-year-old PhD graduate someday!”
After the first year of staking ends, the GoodGrants program will work with Teachology to reduce its staking commitment at a rate that allows Teachology to continue to operate while it purchases its own resources. The freed up GoodGrant resources can then be allocated to a new recipient.
For more information about Teachology, go to: https://teachology.io. A major site revision is coming soon. For more information about the GoodGrants program, including application procedure, go to: https://goodblock.io/goodgrant. Applications are open.
About the author: Douglas Horn is the Telos architect and whitepaper author, and the founder of GoodBlock, a block producer and app developer for the Telos Blockchain Network.
More about GoodBlock can be found at: www.goodblock.io
Join us on Twitter @GoodBlockio
Vote for GoodBlock on the Telos Blockchain Network @goodblocktls