BitDegree (BDG)

What is BitDegree

BitDegree is world’s first blockchain-powered, smart-incentives based online education platform which will revolutionize global education and tech recruiting. The main purpose of the BitDegree platform is to let Students acquire skills that are currently required by the labor market. The way to do it is not to ask business what skills they need in the far future (3-5 years), but to respond to explicitly expressed skilled labor demand quickly. BitDegree will directly align the incentives of students and anyone who wants them to become knowledge workers in digital economy - like current or potential employers, digital service providers and sponsors. Smart-incentive is a smart contract on Ethereum network ensuring the exchange of tokens between a sponsor (the Incentive Creator) and a student (the Incentive Taker), who is committing to study a specific subject in order to receive tokens (the Incentive).

The BitDegree platform will offer students online courses with a clear and transparent blockchain-based reward system and achievement tracking. Our use case for blockchain is not sensitive to prolonged waiting periods before transactions are committed, thus, overall platform overhead (as in expenses) of using Ethereum network for transactional and immutable data storage needs, will be low. To make the learning process as exciting as playing Minecraft we will use Octalysis framework of gamification design.

We see BitDegree as a unique tool for business to recruit tech talent and shape global education to its needs through smart-incentives. National government Job centers will be able to track the demand of skills without having to involve scrupulous report gatherings from businesses and also help jobless citizens by subsidising studies for skills on high demand. Think about it as Coursera and HackerRank merged together, powered by blockchain technology. The main benefit of BitDegree platform to incentive providers is the possibility to initiate and maintain dialogue with upcoming talent and reward them for achievements through smart-incentives. Smart-incentives on the BitDegree platform will range from small to large and be location and topic targeted. From the student’s perspective, it means getting paid to learn new skills based on local demand, which not only incentivizes but can actually be a viable escape from unskilled work.

We are proposing a digital incentivized studying platform as a new tool to grow the global tech talent pool. Companies in need oftech talent will provide financial incentives to students willing to participate in training courses and to develop their skills. Companies seeking to get people familiar with newly introduced technology or services, will provide financial incentives to students willing to spend time to learn and to try the company’s offerings. By providing incentives, any company explicitly signals the demand for certain qualifications, or informs about knowledge and skills needed to effectively use newly introduced technology/products/services. People looking for new opportunities will learn new technologies, develop practical skills in demand, and get familiar with existing technological solutions provided by solution providers.

Job seekers will enroll to subsidized courses to get more knowledge and to develop skills within selected technology topic. The course materials and learning process will be made interactive and in a highly engaging way by following field-proven gamification methods. Students will be able to communicate with other students and course mentors, to pose questions, and seek for more detailed explanations. All course material and progress assessment will be divided to small chunks in order to enable short-term effort in the reward cycle. In addition to subsidized course material, each student showing learning progress will be rewarded with platform Tokens.

Companies providing incentives will be able to get in touch with students enrolled in subsidized courses, and possibly offer employment positions for good performers. Companies, offering to accept Tokens for services, will allow students to deepen newly acquired skills, while using commercial services offerings. Students will also be able to exchange Tokens on exchange platforms. The BitDegree platform will register progress of each student, and will provide ways the students can prove they overcome the challenge of developing and applying skills to solve problems. BitDegree will rely on Ethereum platform to enable incentives scheme and to store transparent record of all achievements made by students.