What is Giggle Academy, the new project launched by Binance founder Zhao Changpeng?
Learning courses turn into games, and educational certificates turn into NFTs.Original author: Meteor, ChainCatcher
Recently, Binance founder CZ announced on the X platform the launch of his new project, Giggle Academy, which aims to provide a free educational program for everyone, making education more gamified. He stated that the project is currently in its early stages and will not issue new tokens.
"No new tokens will be issued, free education," so what is the relationship between this free education platform and Crypto?
Providing an educational platform rather than replacing the existing education system
According to its Concept Paper, "over 75% of the 781 million adult illiterates worldwide are in South Asia, West Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, with a significant proportion being women."
Giggle aims to provide free basic education to children around the world who do not have the opportunity to receive it, allowing them to adapt to and become "addicted" to basic education. The project includes the educational content that children in grades 1-12 should receive, as well as adaptive personalized courses. However, the project is not intended to replace the existing education system but aims to provide opportunities for impoverished children in developing countries (countries unable to access education).
The educational content includes familiar subjects such as mathematics, literature, science, physics, biology, and finance, as well as programming and art. Additionally, the curriculum also covers emotional intelligence, negotiation, finance, blockchain, AI, and other topics that students do not learn during basic education.
In addition to being free, the project is also a zero-revenue platform. It aims to achieve fully online course education through AI and automation technology, and it is scalable in terms of the types and methods of course education. Currently, the online course education method has some drawbacks, such as a lack of peer practice and group learning, which may be addressed in the future.
What makes Giggle particularly special compared to traditional school education is its adaptive curriculum that encourages specialization in subjects. Traditional schools tend to discourage children from "specializing," for example, if a child excels in mathematics but struggles in English, they are advised to spend more time on English. In contrast, this project encourages students who excel in mathematics to focus more on mathematics rather than other subjects, allowing children to maximize their impact and value in their strongest areas.
The core of gamification, Crypto-style identity
The biggest highlight of this project is to cultivate children's learning habits through gamification in early education, so they can adapt to and accept high school subjects. However, gamification always carries the risk of excessive obsession, and the project also considers the risk of "over-gamification," needing to cultivate delayed gratification and perseverance within the curriculum.
In selecting teachers and content for the courses, the project will offer substantial rewards to teachers who contribute high-quality educational materials, incentivizing them to delve deeply into the course content. High-quality content will be distributed for free, and others can use this content, but websites that support the paid theft of content will not be allowed; everything is open-source.
Giggle is currently still in the design phase and has not launched a test network for experience, but according to its Concept Paper, the gamification of the project will allow the educational platform's system progress and content selection to proceed similarly to a game process, eliminating the need to search for course content online to keep up with educational progress, turning education into a learning game. Student educational credentials will be displayed through NFTs, Badges, Points, and Rankings, which are concepts often seen in blockchain games.
After students learn through the project, there will be no degree certification; instead, self-certification will be done through Giggle points, Levels, and Badges. Giggle will develop a Giggle Levels or badge system to recognize students' progress in a particular subject. For example, a child with a level 391 purple badge in science may represent a level 3 in that subject, with a completion rate of 91%, ranking in the top 20%. In the future, a more comprehensive badge, points, and level system will be established. Levels and badges will be issued as Soulbound Tokens (SBT).
There will also be a strict supervision system during the child's learning process:
The project’s devices will activate cameras at random times for facial recognition to ensure the student is not someone else (subject to privacy policies in certain countries);
A Timing Heuristic mechanism will be used to ensure that no machines replace humans (and to determine the student's capabilities);
AI will be used to identify and filter out answers provided by AI.
After learning through the project, students can seek job positions (with an embedded Job Market in the project). With the student's personal permission, potential employers can easily verify the student's professional level on the blockchain, and employers can provide feedback and ratings on the professional level of students entering the workforce. If the project develops smoothly in the future, the connection between the education industry and blockchain will become closer, with educational certificates turning into NFTs and the talent market becoming an NFT liquidity market.
CZ also stated that the project will provide better education to more people and will indirectly help solve many international issues, teaching people to fish rather than just giving them fish, thus building this scalable platform. Unlike many other profit-driven educational platforms, the Giggle platform does not generate revenue; in the future, if it expands to higher-level courses (beyond level 12), it may charge fees, and the Job Market may also charge employers.
Currently, Giggle Academy is fully funded by CZ. Once the platform is launched and operational and achieves the expected results, Giggle may accept donations in the future. Until then, CZ will bear the early risks. If there are teachers who can create digital content or game or application developers, they can contact the Giggle team through the official website.
The platform will also gradually iterate as it expands, and it is currently implementing the gamification process for first-grade English courses, with plans to launch more types of courses, languages, and devices in the future.
