XRP, XAH And Education
Rather than a specific use case, let's call it a 'category' ....
And that category activates the imagination for those of us that have traditional degrees, diplomas, certifications, and other assorted acronyms following our name.
What am I talking about?
The Big 'What If'
Most of us have been through some level of education, whether high school, earning a diploma, a secondary educational degree, certification, or license.
Now consider whether cryptographic capabilities on the XRP Ledger or Xahau could be applied to our own experiences. 🤔
What Got Me Thinking
A game designed and coded by ekiserrepe was released recently, where players were rewarded with XAH if they completed a match. The game is called 'Trace Initiative'.
Trace Initiative XAH Game
The game is not just for recreation, although it is fun in its own way; it also endeavors to teach the player about geography, much like the game that has a similar bent from the recent past, called 'Carmen Sandiego'.
Player Statistics
Even though the game has only been around a matter of months, it attracted 62 unique users, and has paid out a total of 692 XAH thus far!
Ekiserrepe noted:
692 cases have been resolved in these months among 62 detectives that received 1 XAH per case/day.
Shocking: Some players have played dozens of times, and one 'geography detective' has earned 84 XAH playing the game! Ekiserrepe does not check on this data normally, and my query was the first time he was asked to do so.
When I asked what his goal was for creating the game, he revealed it was a build-out of an idea, a concept, and proof to other stakeholders that may be curious about doing something similar:
"The goal was to attract people to interact with blockchain without need(ing) to know what blockchain is or what is happening under the curtains. People who only want to play a game, can do it without log in, if you want to get rewards you only need to have a xahau address."
"Devs and blockchain heavy users can figure out what's behind, like xahau fast transactions, easy way to interact with web2 thanks to the effort of Xaman SDK and all the amazing backend they provide to devs for free. Xahau allow devs to create easy smart contracts in a faster and cheaper way than EVM chains."
If you're curious about the game, or know somebody that would like to:
- Learn about geography
- Earn free XAH
... then take a look here: Trace Initiative Website
'Trace Initiative' prompted me to consider the possible use of crypto technology for educational purposes, and aside from rewarding students for completing games, tasks, and assignments, there was one other obvious application; tracking educational achievements.
Tracking Educational Progress
The term 'NFT' stands for 'Non-Fungible Token'.
And to understand what that means, you have to, in turn, understand what is meant by 'fungible'. Fungibility, simply put, means that there is no difference between one unit and another of the same type. If you are paying your tab at a bar with dollar bills, for example, it makes no difference to the bartender whether one dollar bill was minted in 2015 and another was minted in 2025. This is the concept of 'fungibility'.
So the term 'Non-Fungible Token' simply means that a unit is NOT equal to another, and that it is unique in some respect.
Cryptographically, this can be thought of as an irrefutable proof that an item is specifically identifiable. The most frequent application of this concept is the selling of artwork represented on the XRP Ledger, Xahau (using URI tokens), or another blockchain.
When it comes to education, the most obvious use case is to represent educational progress.
We could combine a person's identity, along with a level of progress, to create a unique non-fungible token. This would be a non-transferable token that signifies for all time that the individual has completed progress along an educational pathway.
And the pathway could represent a specific diploma, degree, or certification.
Graduation With Honors
It could even represent a PhD, medical license, or any other type of official designation for an individual!
In-Class Rewards
Both Xahau and the XRPL allow a user to issue their own tokens.
This means that tokens could be created for the specific purpose of in-class rewards or a system of perks for various accomplishments. Think of it as 'programmable money' that can serve any purpose of rewarding students for a specified time period or class.
The individual teacher, if proficient with the options of how to create and use their own token, could use it to great success for an individual class, semester, or other purpose.
Crypto Can Improve Education
As I've stated for Xahau and the XRP Ledger many times; the only limit to the use cases these utility networks can address is the limitation of our imagination.
And when it comes to uses cases, educational incentives seem to be a perfect fit!
X | X>
Sources:
https://game.traceinitiative.com/
https://xrpl.org/docs/concepts/tokens/nfts
https://everycred.com/blog/blockchain-credentials-transform-higher-education-today/
