Biteye | In-depth Analysis of Binance Launchpad Project Open CampusEDU
Author: Biteye Core Contributor Lucky
Editor: Biteye Core Contributor Crush
*Full text about 2800 words, estimated reading time 5 minutes.
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On April 21st, according to an official announcement from Binance, Binance will soon launch its 31st Launchpad project, Open Campus (EDU), and will start a BNB session. This sale will be based on a lock-up model, where Binance will determine the user's investment quota based on their 5-day average BNB holdings.
The relatively unknown project Open Campus has suddenly entered the view of cryptocurrency users. So, what is this project about? What advantages make it worthy of being on Launchpad?
In the following, this article will analyze this IEO project focusing on the education platform concept from:
- 1. Protocol Introduction
- 2. Core Partners Introduction
- 3. Token Model
- 4. Considerations
Four aspects will be analyzed separately.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction to the Protocol
Open Campus is a decentralized Web3 educational content platform that aims to create a fairer education system using blockchain technology. It provides new opportunities for educators to earn income. In its 2022 funding round, the platform raised $6 million at a valuation of $100 million, selling 6% of its tokens at $0.1 each.
As an educational platform protocol, Open Campus aims to build an online course platform on Web3 to attract more creators and learners to join the ecosystem through the following process:
- Content creators generate educational content.
- Content creators pay with $EDU tokens for content review.
- Once peer reviewers approve the content, creators can pay to mint their content into Publisher NFTs.
- Creators can then sell Publisher NFTs on the market to earn revenue (minus fees, with fees going to the EDU Foundation treasury), which are purchased by interested buyers.
- Holder of Publisher NFTs, platform, content creators, and EDU Foundation treasury share the revenue generated by Publisher NFTs.
- Learners on the platform can register, purchase courses, and obtain certifications upon course completion.
- Publisher NFT holders, content creators, the educational platform, and the EDU Foundation treasury share the revenue generated by Publisher NFTs.
From the above process, it is evident that Open Campus essentially enables educational content producers to turn their educational content into NFTs. This allows educators to generate funds and subsequent income by selling blocks of their educational content, with the revenue shared among NFT holders, creators, and the platform.
2. Introduction of Core Partners
The first adopter of Open Campus is Tiny Tap. In June 2022, Animoca Brands acquired 84% of TinyTap for $38.9 million, making Tiny Tap a subsidiary of Animoca Brands.
Tiny Tap, founded in Israel in 2012, is a UGC educational gaming platform that focuses on providing interactive educational content for children. The platform offers over 250,000 interactive courses targeting young learners from pre-school to sixth grade, with plans to expand to older age groups.
TinyTap provides creators with user-friendly creation tools to develop their educational games. Here is an example:
Suppose a teacher wants to create a math game to help students learn addition.
- Log in to the Tiny Tap account and select "Create New Game."
- Choose the "Addition" theme and set the game's name and cover image.
- Add the first page of the game, set as an addition question, such as "2 + 3 = ?"
- Add interactive elements like text boxes or number cards for students to input answers and interact.
- Add correct and incorrect feedback, such as "Congratulations! You got it right!" and "Sorry, the answer is incorrect. Please try again."
- Add more questions and pages for students to practice multiple times.
- Once completed, publish the game on the platform and share it with other users.
This is just a simple example; creators can use various elements and interaction methods to create their educational games to meet different learning needs and teaching goals.
Prior to being acquired by Animoca, let's look at Tiny Tap's original business model. Based on public data, TinyTap's revenue model involved subscriptions, revenue sharing from selling educational content, and advertising revenue.
As follows:
- TinyTap offers a free creation tool for users to create their educational games and upload them to the platform.
- TinyTap operates an educational game marketplace where users (parents) can purchase and use games for learning. TinyTap generates revenue from these sales, with a portion going to the creators.
- TinyTap provides a subscription service where subscribers (content creators and parents) gain access to more games and features. TinyTap generates revenue from these subscriptions.
- Additionally, TinyTap displays advertisements on its platform, generating revenue from advertisers.
From the announcement of Animoca Brands' acquisition of Tinytap, the following key points can be derived:
- Tiny Tap is one of the top 10 best-selling children's apps in the U.S. App Store, with over 8.2 million registered family users, over 100,000 creators, and partnerships with various well-known publishers like Sesame Street and Oxford University.
- From 2019 to April 30, 2022, Tinytap's revenue was $17.6 million. (Note that due to the pandemic's impact in recent years, Tinytap's revenue may have experienced some growth, but whether its service revenue can reach pre-pandemic levels post-pandemic is uncertain.)
- Animoca acquired 80.45% of Tinytap for $38.875 million in cash and shares, valuing Tinytap at approximately $48.32 million at that time.
For content creators, their income on Tinytap mainly came from three sources:
- Revenue generated from family purchases or renewals of TinyTap subscriptions, with profits from subscriptions (i.e., subscription revenue minus acquisition costs) shared with content creators. The amount earned by individual content creators depends on the engagement generated by their content.
- Direct payments when non-subscribed users purchase educational games from content creators.
- Platform rewards: TinyTap regularly organizes various contests and activities to encourage content creators to develop better games, providing bonuses and rewards to winners.
After being acquired by Animoca in June 2022, the platform introduced a Publisher NFT sales model as a new income source for educational content creators.
Currently, two Publisher NFT auctions have been held:
The first auction in November 2022 generated sales of 138.926 ETH, with 67.7 ETH (approximately $111,000 at the time of sale) going to teachers creating content related to NFTs. The second auction took place in December 2022.
Both auctions generated a total sales value of 257 ETH, with a total of 12 teachers earning income from the NFT auctions.
For buyers of Publisher NFTs, holding NFTs allows them to earn a share of the paid revenue generated by these educational contents on the platform and enjoy the perpetual benefits of the revenue generated by subscribing to these educational contents.
From the developments of Tinytap mentioned above, we can draw the following conclusions:
TinyTap provides a code-free educational creation and learning platform that enables educators to create and share interactive educational content, earning a share of the revenue when learners use that content.
The recently introduced Publisher NFT by TinyTap uses Web3 technology and community to improve income opportunities for educational content creators, allowing the community to support learning development directly while benefiting from it.
3. Token Model
Open Campus's governance token is $EDU, with a total supply of 1 billion tokens used for the following functions:
Governance: $EDU token holders can submit DAO proposals for the protocol and vote on them (e.g., guiding the allocation of tokens to ecosystem uses).
Payments: $EDU can be used as a payment method for products and services provided by companies adopting the protocol (e.g., TinyTap, where a percentage of revenue is allocated to the protocol).
On-chain revenue sharing: Contributors (including content creators, publishers, and the platform) receive a share of protocol revenue in EDU.
User acquisition: EDU can be used to incentivize and guide Web2 users to join Web3, as they can receive discounts when accessing products provided by protocol ecosystem partners (e.g., TinyTap).
Content ownership: Users can purchase joint ownership of content with EDU through Publisher NFTs.
The allocation is as shown in the following figure:
4. Reflections
From Binance's announcement, it is evident that the price on Binance Launchpad was 1EDU=0.05U, with an initial issuance of 14.5%, resulting in a circulating market value of $14.5 million for Open Campus and a total value of $50 million;
At the time of Open Campus's $6 million funding in 2022, the corresponding valuation was $100 million.
The valuation of Tinytap, the first partner in the Open Campus ecosystem, was around $48.32 million.
Open Campus also mentioned potential future partners like Gems Education, an international private school with 60+ schools globally, funded by tuition fees, but Open Campus has not announced how these two entities will collaborate.
Considering the IEO price of EDU, a $50 million market value appears undervalued based on common blockchain bubble valuation standards. The potential for upside is challenging to estimate, but the total market value should be in the billion-dollar range.
From Open Campus's partner situation, it is evident that their development plan focuses on collaborating with established companies with existing resources and users in Web2. They integrate their tokens and NFT models with these educational companies to provide more diversified income sources for platform and educational content creators.
However, whether this Web3 empowerment of Web2 is feasible and how much it truly benefits educational content creators remain to be seen.
For creators on Tinytap, if their educational content is popular, they can already profit from subscription and payment revenues. Issuing Publisher NFTs seems more like selling a portion of the copyright, with subsequent income shared among NFT holders, resembling selling future income in advance through NFTs.
Whether this Web3 empowerment of Web2 is viable and whether this monetization model is in demand remains uncertain. This monetization model seems more like a bonus, shifting and sharing risks, requiring buyers to hold an optimistic view of the potential income from the NFTs of educational content in the future. It remains to be seen whether ecosystem participants in the education platform are willing to buy into this concept; the situation warrants observation, and the author currently holds a somewhat pessimistic view.
However, from another perspective, perhaps projects like this may have a certain effect on the utility of NFTs in Web2's adoption, gradually building awareness of the crypto industry among professionals in various sectors, laying a foundation for true Mass Adoption in the future.
This article is reproduced from the "Biteye" community.