Crypto is a dynamic industry that’s increasingly characterized by the concept of incentives. Crypto users can earn rewards in a myriad of ways, whether it’s providing liquidity to a DeFi protocol, lending money, “staking” crypto to act as a validator, mining to secure a decentralized network, or playing video games — a practice that’s known as “play-to-earn”.
Crypto enthusiasts can earn rewards for participating in the crypto economy in many ways, and with the rise of “learn-to-earn”, they are now being incentivized to simply learn about how the crypto industry works.
Learn-to-earn tackles one of the most pressing challenges that’s holding back crypto adoption. The need for education. With learn-to-earn, projects have created an incentivized onboarding model, with the rewards usually coming in the shape of cryptocurrency tokens or NFTs.
Most learn-to-earn initiatives incorporate gamification into the learning process, incentivizing people to familiarize themselves with blockchain technology, terminology, various projects in crypto and more. It’s possible to earn between $1 and $5 worth of crypto, simply by performing a small learning task such as answering questions after watching a video tutorial or reading an article.
The projects that offer learn-to-earn programs are motivated by a desire to give people the knowledge they need to interact with their products and services, and though they’re essentially giving away their funds, they hope to retain those learners within their ecosystems. The idea is that learn-to-earn programs can transform the curious into committed users and investors, while fostering engagement.
Users who complete learn-to-earn programs will be transformed into informed investors. It’s both a smart and socially responsible customer acquisition strategy, because those new investors will, hopefully, acquire the knowledge they need to invest in a careful and considered way.
Crypto’s Education Gap
While mainstream interest in crypto is clearly growing, there remains a serious knowledge gap. For instance, a recent survey by Coinme and Coindesk showed that more than 90% of respondents do not know the maximum number of Bitcoins that will ever be minted, while 98% failed a basic crypto literacy test.
This education gap needs to be filled, and it could be argued that the industry has a moral duty to do so. With Bitcoin making some sharp gains and reaching a new all-time high value earlier this year, throngs of new users are taking a much closer look at digital assets, wondering if it’s time to invest. But a lack of understanding often results in poor investment decisions and increases the chance of new users being scammed. And that ultimately hinders crypto’s mainstream adoption.
Early efforts to overcome the education gap have had little success. Resources such as technical documentation and whitepapers are often too dense and too intimidating for new users. With learn-to-earn, crypto projects are offering a newer, more user-friendly way to explain strange concepts such as “proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms” and “distributed ledger technology”. They break down complex topics into smaller, bite-sized lessons that are easier to digest, and they pay users to go ahead and complete them.
Gamified Learning
In an industry with so many overwhelming terms as crypto, new users can easily be scared away, which is why it’s so important to provide an incentivized and fun learning experience. Gamification is key, and through interactive quizzes, simulated trading experiences and fun “quests” that encourage people to complete a series of simple tasks on social media, learning is transformed from a daunting task into an enjoyable experience.
Exinity Group’s Boxwind is a new cryptocurrency exchange that’s working to attract new users from developing countries in places such as Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. To attract these users, it provides a range of gamified educational resources that encourage them to learn about the basics of blockchain, the purpose of different cryptocurrency tokens, and understand what drives the crypto market’s ups and downs. By educating its users about how crypto works, it gives them more confidence to trade on its platform.
Taking things up a notch is PiP World, a new and immersive gaming platform that provides a fun entry into the decentralized financial world. In the game, players are placed in real-world trading scenarios, and they can form their own trading teams and set up virtual offices on a global scale. It provides an enthralling and immersive experience that aims to demystify the complexities of financial trading and make the experience more enjoyable.
PiP World is a game at heart, but it’s also a financial education tool, with its novel earn-and-learn model teaching users the basics of financial trading, investing and management. As they learn these concepts, they’ll be rewarded with PiP tokens, which incentivize their continued progress. Players can also buy or win NFTs that provide significant enhancements and advantages, and as the popularity of the game increases, it’s likely that demand for these assets will grow, driving up their value.
Proven Success
Learn-to-earn platforms all follow a basic model, in which every completed activity pays in the shape of user points, badges and platform tokens. Those rewards can be used in many ways, for example to upgrade an NFT, unlock more rewarding educational content, provide access to exclusive events, or simply be sold on a crypto exchange.
The effectiveness of such educational methods has been well documented in studies. They tap into our competitive nature and our desire for rewards, and these become a strong motivator for people to press ahead, picking up new skills and knowledge along the way. It’s an active process that can strengthen memory pathways, resulting in better long-term recollection.
Some learn-to-earn platforms have already demonstrated significant success. For instance, Mogaland, which offers a gamified metaverse, allows learners to mint an entire collection of NFTs as trophies of their learning journeys. It’s a popular approach to crypto education, with Mogaland being downloaded more than 50,000 times on Android just months after its launch.
A Promising Path Forward
Learn-to-earn is one of the most promising solutions to bridging the crypto education gap, but it’s not without its challenges. One of the major issues is that some users might try to game the system, by gathering rewards without taking in the educational content. There’s a risk of bots being used to create multiple accounts and “farm” for rewards. This is an ongoing solution that has not adequately been addressed.
In addition, learn-to-earn platforms must ensure their long-term sustainability. They need to strike the right balance between rewards and maintaining a healthy token economy. Designing a tokenomics model that incentivizes genuine learning without weakening a project’s ecosystem requires careful consideration.
Fortunately, projects such as Boxwind, PiP World and Mogaland show a lot of promise, giving us lots of reason to be optimistic that learn-to-earn models can help bring crypto adoption to the next level.
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