From popular science, L2E to professional courses, a brief analysis of the landscape and trends of Web3 education platforms

Authors: Biscuit, Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

With more and more novice users entering the space, the Web3 education sector is also heating up. According to the Rootdata platform, the number of Web3 education-related projects has exceeded 30, among which projects like Buildspace, Proof of Learn, and Encode Club have all secured over $5 million in funding.

Every industry needs to establish a mature entry and learning system, and this is especially true for the Web3 industry, which is still in its early stages and involves asset security. For a long time, exchanges have taken on most of the user education work, allocating a portion of their transaction fees to user education initiatives, which can drive traffic and user conversion, achieving an ecological closed loop.

However, with the explosive growth of on-chain ecosystems, users' learning needs have rapidly begun to exhibit characteristics of specialization and systematization, and simple articles for popular science can no longer meet user demands. At the same time, the number of industry participants has seen explosive growth, including technology learning enthusiasts, project interaction enthusiasts, and professionals seeking career development.

As a result, more and more Web3 education platforms have emerged in recent years, either providing systematic technical education courses or establishing Web3 learning systems through gamification, helping ordinary users to more easily enter Web3. This article will explore how the current landscape of the Web3 education sector is divided and what characteristics these platforms have.

Web3 Education Landscape

At present, Web3 education platforms consist of centralized and decentralized platforms, with no single platform forming a "duopoly." Each platform is striving to showcase its brand strength, with centralized platforms having advantages in operation, while decentralized platforms shine with their incentive systems. Web3 education platforms can be roughly divided into three categories: general popular science, L2E platforms (Learn to Earn), and professional courses.

General Popular Science

Any user entering Web3 needs to understand basic industry knowledge such as concept explanations and project introductions. This content is usually provided to users in the form of articles, with typical platforms including Binance Academy, Coinbase Learn, and CoinMarketCap Alexandria.

Specifically, these platforms are generally launched by industry giants with the aim of attracting users, having a certain trading orientation, but maintaining a good standard in terms of the richness and timeliness of popular science information, which still plays a significant role in helping users learn basic knowledge.

In addition, some platforms also collaborate with project parties to provide users with certain rewards. For example, Binance Academy offers new users the opportunity to learn blockchain knowledge and earn cryptocurrency, where users watch video courses and can only receive rewards by passing quizzes.

L2E Platforms

Learning to Earn is a relatively popular learning method in the crypto field recently. These L2E platforms act as a bridge between crypto projects and users, where crypto projects provide cryptocurrency and interaction requirements, and L2E platforms create tutorials based on these requirements. Users then learn according to the tutorials and earn cryptocurrency.

An early attempt in this area comes from RabbitHole, which focuses on rewarding basic operational behaviors in DeFi, allowing crypto newcomers to experience complex protocol interaction processes with a gamified mindset. Recently, this project launched the Quest Protocol open to project parties, allowing each to define interaction behaviors based on their predefined conditions and deposit their rewards for each relevant user.

Layer3 positions itself as a platform for Web3 learning, discovery, and contribution. The Web3 ecosystem and community upload tasks in the form of bounties, competitions, and projects on Layer3, while users explore the community and complete tasks to earn crypto or XP rewards. These figures will show users how to use and further explore decentralized finance (DeFi), Web3 games, Web3 social, Layer2 scaling solutions, and everything in between.

Additionally, there is the Web3 social education platform Continuum, which allows creators/users to publish or view content to enhance community interaction rates and earn cryptocurrency rewards.

Course Education

In the past, most crypto practitioners adapted to work requirements through self-study, which was difficult and inefficient. Developers typically exchanged technical knowledge in specific forums, while marketers and content creators were scattered across various small circles. Subsequently, some universities began offering open courses on crypto, such as Princeton University, MIT, and Stanford University, which gained widespread popularity due to their forward-thinking and practical nature, cultivating a large number of blockchain developer student teams.

At the same time, Web3-native course education platforms have begun to emerge, providing professional and systematic skill courses to help users seek employment opportunities within the industry.

The Web3 developer education platform LearnWeb3 primarily targets developers, offering a series of courses ranging from introductory knowledge, building dApps, to security precautions, and has developed specialized tutorials for public chains like Celo and Flow. This project secured investment from IOSG Ventures and Balaji Srinivasan in September last year.

Proof of Learn is a Web3 education platform that focuses on addressing the skills shortage experienced in the Web3 economy, aiming to enable users to directly gain income and employment opportunities through its vocational education courses. Users can earn rewards while learning, mentoring others, and enhancing new vocational skills. In January 2022, Proof of Learn completed $15 million in funding, with participation from Animoca Brands, although the project's incentive-based education platform has yet to be officially launched.

DeSchool, strategically incubated by SeeDAO, is a learning platform aimed at the crypto industry, where instructors can use the tool to issue SBT educational certificates to students who complete courses. Web3 organizations can also use this tool to streamline community education processes, with projects like Footprint Analytics and Plancker DAO already offering courses on this platform.

Additionally, 101 Blockchains also provides a series of Web3 training and certification programs, characterized by helping developers obtain various blockchain technology certification certificates.

Challenges of Web3 Education Platforms

Although Web3 education platforms are beginning to gain attention from crypto enterprises and investors, the overall challenges at this stage are not small.

First, current crypto projects have not yet reached the scale of traditional applications. Due to the lack of suppliers, the entire cryptocurrency incentive system cannot form a positive feedback loop of "project parties -- Web3 education platforms -- users." This may also be a helpless choice made by Web3 education platforms wary of "arbitrageurs," and perhaps SBT will become a solution. Relying on token economics to economically incentivize users may provide project parties with a large amount of data in the short term, but in the long term, users do not truly develop stickiness to on-chain projects, but rather tend to move towards projects with potentially higher returns to obtain airdrops.

Secondly, users do not have a strong perception of Web3 education platforms. In the rapidly iterating crypto world, it seems that no one is genuinely willing to engage in educational endeavors. This has resulted in the Web3 education sector lacking leading protocols, even causing platforms to be busy issuing NFTs/tokens for profit, while users focus on project parties' "arbitrage rewards," leading to a misalignment of positioning.

Conclusion

With the expansion of the crypto market and the refinement of user demands, there are still numerous opportunities for Web3 education platforms, playing an important role in promoting the dissemination of Web3 knowledge and attracting more users.

The L2E model is likely to become the mainstream framework for Web3 education platforms, achieving a win-win-win effect for project parties, platform parties, and users. However, balancing the effectiveness of education with the inducement of incentives poses a significant challenge for such educational platforms in truly enhancing users' understanding of the industry. Course-based education platforms, with their systematic courses, hold considerable appeal for users with clear learning needs, and their development models will also be healthier and more sustainable.