Learn to Earn - game engine

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Mario Altimari

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Entity (Not Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

6

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language

No

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

A game engine based on my public patent that gamifies learning materials, allowing students and evaluators to share revenue, by earning tokens, from their quiz outcome.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

No

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

No dependencies.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

Yes

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

The license is AGPL-3.0 license.

The code will be fully released on GitHub.

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG goals:

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

SDG subgoals:

4.4 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

4.4.1 Proportion of youth and adults with information and communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skill

#proposertoolsdg

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

Bounder (meaning Bet on Understanding) is an educational "Learn to Earn" game engine. It can be considered an evolution of the famous quiz tool Kahoot.

Bounder is based on my public patent US20230401973A

where:

• multiple authors create knowledge assessments and receive tokens (for a job well done)
• students are assessed and receive tokens (for a good grade)
• when goals are not achieved, both parties lose tokens

The engine can be played in a “solo mode” (like a typical e-learning process) or “multiplayer mode” (like in a classroom, where the teacher interacts with multiple students in real time).

Currently, there is no method for detecting accurately user knowledge using multiple-choice questions.

MCQ (multiple-choice question) is a powerful tool when you want to automatically “filter” for a certain degree of student knowledge (to be focused only on who passed a certain threshold). However, an “essay question” is still needed for a proper evaluation, which is extremely hard to automate (yes, AI is not yet that powerful) properly.

So, how can we more accurately evaluate still using an MCQ approach?

One solution comes from the white paper “Evidential Multiple Choice Question” (Ev-MCQ) by Javier Diaz, Maria Rifqi, Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier.

With Ev-MCQ, student answers are intentionally imprecise because it is necessary to set the percentage of confidence in correctness, rather than focusing solely on identifying the right answer.

Bounder evolves this concept, introducing a betting mechanism to gamify the process and incentivise the learning process.

This system encourages learning while providing financial incentives for deserving students. It’s a win-win situation where both students and creators benefit!

Use case explanation

1. Quiz Introduction:

• Alice is a student who has a certain amount of tokens as a budget to spend.
• The budget can come from different sources such as patrons, sponsors, employers, parents and financially independent students.
• Bruno and Carl are teachers and quiz creators. They work collaboratively on each quiz to ensure students are well-evaluated. They receive tokens as incentivization for the job.

2. Quiz Creation and Token Incentives:

• Bruno and Carl create quizzes for students.
• For each question, Alice is asked to bet tokens on one or more answers per quiz.
• Every quiz has a value expressed in tokens.
• If Alice answers correctly, she wins tokens the token she bet; otherwise, she loses them.
• She cannot win more tokens than her initial budget.

3.“Learn to Earn” process:

• This system promotes learning and receiving payment for deserving students.
• It is particularly valuable in developing countries where salaries are low and students need support.
• If Alice does not know the answer, she may skip the assessment but pay a small fee as a penalty. Bruno and Carl will receive this amount.
• She can ask for hints in exchange for extra tokens. Again Bruno and Carl will receive it.
• Lost tokens due to wrong answers go to Bruno and Carl.

4. Budget Management:

• All tokens are deducted from the available budget.
• When the budget is consumed, Alice may top-up to continue with the examination/game.
• Bounder allows students to save the budget from wrong bets and cash out at the end of the evaluation.

5. Quiz Difficulty Balance:

• Bruno and Carl aim to provide non-trivial quizzes that challenge students.
• However, if quizzes are too difficult, Alice will always skip assessments and Bruno and Carl will not receive incentives.
• If the quizzes are too easy Alice will always win and Bruno and Carl will not receive incentives.

For a visual understanding of how it works, here is a simple wireframe:

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

A web3 competitor of Kahoot doesn’t exist yet and online education is moving in this direction.

Paying with ADA will be beneficial for the community and ecosystem.

A third-generation blockchain goes beyond just handling money, decentralized finance, and digital art. It's also about applying this technology to everyday life and benefiting society, for example through online education. This approach is important for the community and helps the whole network grow stronger.

Cardano founders were also always interested in Online Education and this proposal is compatible with the overall view.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

I received 2 grants (Fund 7 and 8) and successfully delivered 2 open-source projects for the Cardano community. 100% success. I'm likely one of the rare independent developers in the community to have done this.

The level of detail in tracking work on the GitHub project and documentation via Wiki is of a high standard. This is an example of my previously granted project on F8: https://github.com/eLearningDAO/POCRE/projects/1

https://github.com/eLearningDAO/POCRE/wiki

The same level of quality will be executed again for this proposal.

I want to clarify that this is my personal open-source contribution to the Cardano ecosystem driven by my passion for the e-learning industry. It is not related to my daily job.

[PROJECT MILESTONES] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Milestone 1 (2 months):

Wireframing all the use cases (for teacher/verifier and student)

Define detailed workflows

Build the design

Build the user interface

Publish a website for progress tracking and marketing

Create a simple video explanation for marketing purposes

Milestone 2 (2 months):

Build a micro Content Management System for editing/publishing the Ev-MCQs

Integrate the payment process from the credit card with AdaPay or a similar tool

Integrate an optional browser wallet like Nami for more expert users

Build the revenue sharing stream for the stakeholders based on their roles and contribute

Milestone 3-final (2 months):

Build a basic algorithm able to increase difficulty based on betting amount and user knowledge

Cloud publishing 

Testnet publishing

Tuning the overall solution

Test and bugfix

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Mario Altimari - Team leader

Giuthub https://github.com/AltiMario

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/altimario

I have 20+ years of experience in IT, I started my career as a software developer in 1999. I have held many roles in my career, including technical director of startups and large consulting companies. I'm passionate about blockchain (obviously), open source, e-learning and data stream processing on distributed systems.

The rest of the team is composed of the people who already worked with me on previous occasions at eleaningDAO https://github.com/eLearningDAO/POCRE/graphs/contributors more notably:

Huzaifa Rasheed - Fullstack developer

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/huzaifa-rasheed/

Umair Mukhtar - Full Stack Developer

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/umair-mukhtar-828510153/

Github https://github.com/UmairMukhtar

Mithun Ray - Senior UX/UI designer

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/mithunray/

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

COST OF EVERY RESOURCE PER MONTH

Designer/UX/UI - Monthly salary average: $3500

Fullstack/Blockchain developer - Monthly salary average: $4000

Web developer - Monthly salary average: $3500

Project manager/coordinator/architect - Monthly salary average: $3500

COST OF THE PROJECT PER RESOURCE

Designer/UX/UI/website, 1 month of work, tot cost $3500

Full stack/Blockchain Developer, 3 months of work, tot cost $12000

Web developer, 3 months of work, tot cost $10500

Project manager/coordinator/architect, 6 months of part-time work, tot cost $10500

EXTRA COST

A year of cloud services, devops, domain, etc: $2000

ESTIMATION

Duration per milestone: 2 months

Duration of the project: 6 months

Tot cost: USD 38500

Conversion (@ rate $0.40 USD / ADA): 96250 ADA

[VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

The market opportunities in EdTech are enormous, the projected global market size is $181.3B by 2025

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/educational-technology-ed-tech-market-1066.html

and $377.85 B by 2028

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-education-technology-market

The Top 10 Largest EdTech Companies in the world:

1. Kahoot! AS (Oslo: KAHOT.OL)
2. Yuanfudao
3. Chegg, Inc. (NYSE: CHGG)
4. BYJU’S
5. Zuoyebang
6. VIPKID
7. Udemy
8. 2U, Inc. (NASDAQ: TWOU)
9. Coursera, Inc. (NYSE: COUR)
10. Duolingo

Source:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/15-largest-edtech-companies-world-155126885.html

https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/5-largest-edtech-companies-in-the-world-930988

As you can see Kahoot, which is just a quiz game, is a huge business success. Cardano can take a slice of its market by adopting the web3 fundamentals.