While the metaverse has become the newest macro-goal for many of the world’s tech giants, online learning is also making strides toward the virtual world.
BitDegree, a blockchain-enabled, online education platform with a million learners around the world, has announced the launch of the first-ever crypto learning metaverse — the Learnoverse — as its next stage of development. The Learnoverse will be a crypto-native metaverse featuring a Learn&Earn token economy and NFT-based assets.
E-learning Is Moving to the Metaverse
BitDegree features instructor-submitted short courses, tutorials, and crypto tools such as coin and dApp trackers. The platform aims to become the world’s #1 crypto educator.
Essentially, BitDegree is transforming from being a “Crypto Udemy” into a “Crypto-enabled World of Warcraft for Crypto Learning” to spearhead crypto-native education.
The platform offers blockchain credentials and scholarships, all of which will receive a major upgrade following the implementation of the Learnoverse.
The transition is expected to take place over 2 to 3 years, while the Learn&Earn token economy, NFT-based ‘learner’ avatars, course cards, and course maps will be made available by the year’s end.
The major catalyst for the platform’s adoption will be partnerships with other crypto-centric companies, with whom BitDegree will work to help acquire new end-users and employees through education.
A Gamified Learning Space
The Learnoverse will be a game-like virtual world centered on CryptoDegree City, according to the creative team. The districts and buildings will represent and play host to various crypto topics and courses respectively.
Learners will be able to roam the city in search of topics of interest, explore courses by entering buildings, and progress by rising through the buildings’ floors. Learners will also have NFT avatars which represent their specializations.
Users can increase in level, while earning tokens through learning and eventually obtaining crypto-degrees, thus endowing them with work opportunities.
Instructors can buy NFT land and construct standardized NFT buildings to represent their courses. Course material will be uploaded and managed through BitDegree’s e-learning platform. Inside the Learnoverse, instructors will be able to customize their facades to make them more attractive to prospective learners.
Crypto companies, brands, and influencers will have the opportunity to build their own dedicated courses and buildings. They will also be able to use their tokens and NFTs to sponsor and promote particular courses and advertise themselves to attract users and talent alike. The spending of such interested parties in the Learnoverse will make the Learn&Earn token economy sustainable.
Through the Learnoverse, BitDegree assumes leadership in “crypto-native education.” The aim is to re-form the education process with concepts native to the crypto community, such as Play2Earn, airdrops, ICOs, and more.
Earn While Learning
The Learnoverse will transform ‘Play2Earn’ into ‘Learn&Earn’ by paying out tokens to its users for their learning efforts. The same principle will be used to compensate instructors based on the usage of their educational content, similarly to the operations of Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX).
BitDegree already offers crypto companies “Learndrops.” This is a way for firms to build awareness among users by providing token reward incentives for completing a course related to them.
This is all made possible thanks to the interest shown by crypto companies looking to acquire and educate users, sponsor learning, and buy ads. The goals of all parties will be aligned through the Learn&Earn token economy, which distributes rewards.
The Learnoverse provides opportunities for “status development” for each of the involved parties by allowing users to attain higher levels. Users can achieve this by upgrading their avatars with personalized NFTs, acquired upon course completion. Instructors, influencers, and brands can similarly boost their course-buildings.
Henceforth, this status becomes a condition for social interaction between learners, instructors, influencers, and brands. For example, course alumni can access special instructor-led events. In other cases, users could access particular hiring events upon reaching a specific level.
Towards the Future of Learning
BitDegree has spent the past four years developing various blockchain applications for education, such as blockchain credentials, peer-to-peer blockchain scholarships, and different incentive-based products, including platform gamification.
The company has been featured in scientific literature and awarded numerous accomplishments for its pioneering work. It was named the Global Champion in SDG 4 – for improving education through ICT – by the United Nations’ World Summit Awards in 2020.
BitDegree highlights that the application of blockchain in the conventional education sector has had minimal impact. This is due to the education sector’s low technology adoption rate, ranking as the second least digitized area.
However, if the same products were to be recreated for the crypto community in a form that comes naturally to them, they would stand a good chance of achieving widespread adoption with great potential.
Today, only a few startups globally offer proper crypto-native education, the most notable among them being on-chain “learn-by-doing” crypto educator ‘rabbithole.gg’, which raised $20 million back in February 2022 in a funding round led by Greylock.
Many crypto metaverses, such as The Sandbox and Bloktopia, consider education one of their use cases, albeit a minor one, as gameplay always comes first.
BitDegree’s Learnoverse sits at the intersection of these two crypto-native education categories. It combines a blockchain-enabled EdTech platform with the metaverse, the gameplay of which is education.
BitDegree looks to follow in the footsteps of The Sandbox and Axie Infinity to become the #1 crypto educator metaverse, helping the crypto community to onboard the next billion users in crypto-native, exciting ways.
