Tutorchain.io - Catalyst use case

We aim to create a decentralized network of experts and learners that empowers individuals to own their reputations. We hope this network will be used for everything from Plutus consulting to gardening advice, but to start we are targeting the academic tutoring market (worth billions of dollars and growing), which is fragmented and ripe for disruption. Our brand name for this endeavor is Tutorchain—check us out at tutorchain.io.

Our business model has a centralized and a decentralized component. The centralized component is a web app that matches tutors and students based on expertise, pay, and scheduling, creating a zoom link and a smart contract for each tutoring session. The decentralized component is the smart contract, which handles payment and submission / archival of reviews. Both student and tutor review each other. We take a small percentage of the payment, with the cut decreasing for repeat users.

This approach solves several problems with existing tutoring services

• COST: Flagship services (e.g. Cambridge Coaching) charge $100+ per hour and take a 50% cut from their tutors. Marketplaces like Wyzant take 25%.
• MATCH: Centralized gig-economy services (e.g. chegg.com) fail to properly match tutors and students. Students say tutors are not qualified; tutors say students are not serious.
• TRUST: Smaller outfits (e.g. tutormeeducation.com) struggle to gain trust of users. Can you really believe all those 5-star reviews?

We solve the COST problem by having low overhead. By using crypto smart contracts for payment, we avoid the payment-processing and accounting services that drive up prices on current marketplaces. We never hold USD, so we don't need to worry about chargebacks, and we don't need to send 1099 forms to tutors (or even collect the necessary personal information). We will be profitable with only a 5% cut, as opposed to the 25%-50% of current services. 

We solve the MATCH and TRUST problems by taking a the decentralized approach to customer reviews. When deciding whether to ask for or accept a gig, both tutor and student can search the immutable history of reviews and ratings of the other party, all of which are verifiably associated with monetary value and hence prohibitively expensive to fake.

Another great benefit of this approach is the international component. Current platforms require tutors to be based in the United States (or some other particular nation) in order to facilitate payment in fiat currency and ensure compliance with tax-reporting obligations associated with paying tutors as contractors. By contrast, a crypto smart-contract system has no currency exchange issues or onerous reporting requirements. We never pay the tutors--the smart contract does that. Tutors and students can just find each other and go! We expect this to awaken the sleeping giant of a truly international tutoring marketplace.

The key challenge for such a system is getting it started, since the first users have no history. Sam will use his network as a professional academic to recruit an initial crop of traditionally-vetted tutors, targeting the high-demand market of physics tutoring for pre-medical and engineering students. Once these tutors establish their independent reputations and we see user growth, we will repeat the process for other areas of academic tutoring as well as common use cases like data science consulting. Ultimately, we dream of an efficient expert marketplace where affordable help is available 24/7 on any topic, and where any expert can easily monetize their expertise, owning their reputation independently of any centralized organization.

Technical approach

The web app functions like any other marketplace: tutors and students make accounts and interact via private messages and global settings (topic, availability, etc.). After the website identifies a match (tutor, student, topic, time, pay) it sends both parties a zoom link and creates the smart contract, escrowing the funds. After the scheduled session, both parties report whether it took place and review each other, and the contract distributes funds accordingly and archives the result and reviews. It's easy to handle dishonest parties in a centralized manner since Zoom keeps track of who joined the meeting and when, and even provides automatic cloud recordings. This will be our backup as we test out decentralized verification mechanisms (tutoring DIDs), which we hope will ultimately power the service.

Founder bios

Gabe Gralla is a software engineer, data scientist, and technology leader based in Boston. He most recently served as Chief Information Officer at Zero, a non-profit building COVID safety apps. Before that, he was Director of Data Engineering at Lyte, an early engineer at Moat (acquired by Oracle), and an independent consultant with clients ranging from enterprise healthcare companies to crypto startups.

Sam Gralla is a physics professor at the University of Arizona known for his work on black holes. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award and the IUPAP young scientist prize in General Relativity and Gravitation. He is an accomplished teacher and public speaker. Check out a popular public lecture he gave on gravitational waves (https://youtu.be/Dn33_ySzB-w).

(We are cousins.)

Timeline

Development of the centralized component (web app) is ongoing, with the backend REST API scheduled for completion in early November. Wallet integration and smart contract development will begin as soon as the technology is ready (Plutus Application Backend finalized and browser integration available for light wallets), which is currently looking like October. We aim to have a working prototype (backend finalized, frontend prototyped) by year's end. In early 2022 we will contract out professional frontend development and recruit the initial crop of tutors. We will launch in time for summer session with just these tutors, with plans to open up the marketplace proper for Fall semester 2022.

The definition of success after 3 months is a complete backend with working wallet integration.

The definition of success after 6 months is a polished frontend and a crop of high-quality tutors.

The definition of success after 12 months is functioning decentralized marketplace!

Campaign suitability

Since our business spans several F6 themes, we were advised to propose in multiple categories. This proposal will support our efforts to customize Tutorchain for use with the Catalyst process. Interacting with the Catalyst community, there is clearly a need for expert proposers to connect with newcomers, but it is relatively disorganized (mainly some scattered discord servers and channels) and mainly limited to volunteer efforts. While we are all for pro-bono, community-based work, we think that injecting a modicum of capitalism may lead to huge improvements in results. We think a properly-incentivised expert marketplace could really help. The success of an expert marketplace relies on an initial critical mass of high-quality experts, good marketing to in-need learners, and good customer service to work out the kinks. We are requesting $5k to support these efforts for Catalyst.

Why should Catalyst voters support this project?

While the business can in principle run on any blockchain, Cardano is our top choice. We love the focus on peer review, the patience to do things right, the vision for decentralized governance, and the spectacular decentralization already achieved (70% staked across 3000 pools!). And we both love a good "geek out" on the lambda calculus. This money will get us started on the best chain out there.

We think that our business has a clear near-term path to success. This can attract other developers to Cardano now, giving a boost against the common "lack of developer buy-in" criticism. The long-term success of our business will grow the value of the ADA token.

More information

We will be available on the discord server as Sam Gralla#1222 and AngryGabe#8824. You can also contact us using the contact form on our website tutorchain.io.

We hope to earn your trust in this exciting experiment in decentralized grantmaking!