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New Education Marketplace Development Funded by Crypto Coins

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 04/17/18

Crypto currency is funding development of ODEM, an "on-demand" education marketplace with aspirations of replacing or supplementing a college education. ODEM, which deals in digital tokens on several crypto-currency trading platforms, recently announced completion of its "crowdsale," selling more than 100 million ODEM tokens, equivalent to about $9.6 million at the current trading rate.

The company said the proceeds will be used to fund ongoing development of a blockchain-based service that brings students, instructors and other professionals together online to buy and sell education. According to a site FAQ, instructors who develop curricula will be able to earn royalties for the future use of their materials; students will be able to create and resell their own course programs to do the same. The potential formats of courses hasn't been shared yet.

According to ODEM, some 200 professors and lecturers have expressed interest in becoming early adopters of the platform. The service under development will allow students to engage directly with academic people around the world to access real-time educational experiences "at a reasonable cost." Students will pay for their education through ODEM tokens, to "ease cross-border payments," the company noted.

The platform itself is based on technology developed by Origin Protocol, a company that caters to the "sharing economy," in which buyers and sellers can do home-, car- or other kinds of sharing without intermediaries. The blockchain technology is provided by Ethereum.

A beta version of the marketplace is expected to be launched before June.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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