Open Campus, the decentralized education protocol, announced today it has received grant funding from the Arbitrum Foundation to support the upcoming launch of EDU Chain.
The EDU Chain blockchain is the first Layer 3 (L3) blockchain specifically designed for education. Through the grant, Open Campus will support the Arbitrum Ambassador Program with educational content initiatives and participate in Arbitrum hackathon competitions, offering incentives to developers who create decentralized apps (dapps) for EDU Chain. Some of the projects will be educational games.
With blockchain-powered ownership at its core, EDU Chain’s innovative “Learn Own Earn” model seeks to build an ecosystem of decentralized applications (dapps) for learners and educators.
Open Campus aims to leverage its network of over 60 education and Web3 partner companies, which have a combined 20 million learners, to drive participation in EDU Chain. This participation will include recording learning achievements on-chain, expanding innovative education finance solutions developed by Open Campus, and working with partners to develop dapps for deployment on EDU Chain.
EDU Foundation is building EDU Chain as an Arbitrum Orbit Stack L3 Rollup, which will enable EDU Chain Layer 3 transactions to settle on Arbitrum’s Layer 2 (L2) scaling solution for Ethereum, thereby offering Ethereum-level security with significantly improved scalability thanks to faster and cheaper transactions.
According to data from L2Beats, at the time of writing Arbitrum has the highest Total Value Locked (TVL) among all L2 networks (approximately $17.15 billion), making it the fifth largest blockchain protocol behind the L1 blockchains Solana, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Tron, and Ethereum.
Yat Siu, executive chairman of Animoca Brands and a member of the EDU Foundation Council, said in a statement, “This grant is an exciting step forward in the vision of Open Campus and EDU Chain to use blockchain technology to address current problems and challenges in education. The support of and collaboration with the Arbitrum Foundation positions us to redefine the education industry, leveraging the power of decentralization and the Arbitrum ecosystem to enhance access to and opportunities in education for both learners and educators.”
EDU Chain will be the first education-focused Orbit chain that will be launched in the Arbitrum ecosystem. With the support of the Arbitrum Foundation Ambassador program, the collaboration will focus on expanding the Open Campus learner base and enhance content creation by connecting 96 active Arbitrum ambassadors and 26 affiliated universities with the Open Campus Foundation to work on educational content.
Nina Rong, head of ecosystem development at the Arbitrum Foundation, said, in a statement, “We are thrilled that Open Campus will launch EDU Chain as an L3 on the Arbitrum Orbit Stack. EDU Chain marks an exciting step in the Arbitrum ecosystem, showcasing the Foundation’s dedication to nurturing a decentralized educational hub within the Arbitrum network.”
Open Campus is a community-led protocol for educators, content creators, parents, and students. It puts decisions about learning back into the hands of educators and their students by fostering a collaborative environment, enabling teachers to create materials that appeal to the exact needs of students. Additionally, Open Campus recognizes the achievements of teachers and content creators who help students seek new knowledge, opening new revenue streams for effective educators around the world.
The Arbitrum Foundation is a Cayman Islands foundation company that is tasked with developing and nurturing the Arbitrum ecosystem. The Foundation operates as a neutral steward in order to support the ArbitrumDAO, the continuous innovation of the Arbitrum technology and the development and education of the Arbitrum community.
Some of the projects will be games. The team said Open Campus is currently working on projects that will host user-generated educational games and similar learning experiences on EDU Chain to enhance student learning through interactive and engaging content. These educational games and gamified learning tools will be launched on EDU Chain by various content partners such as TinyTap, EduCup, KIP, and others.
Open Campus content resources will include not just games and gamified content but also AI learning tools, video content, and traditional courses from top universities, all of which will be listed in a comprehensive content hub on EDU Chain when the EDU Chain mainnet launches later this year. In this manner Open Campus will offer a diverse and growing range of educational resources to learners, placing a strong focus on data sovereignty, AI, and decentralization and ensuring that the protocol is able to address some of the challenges that learners will face in the world of tomorrow.
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