Main goal
The main idea and target of the Academy is to educate the future contributors of the blockchain-based decentralised world. They want their programs and lessons to inspire students to seek new knowledge, drive industry innovation and realize the transformative power of blockchain technologies
The technology of future
Academy strongly believes that blockchain technology is the future. With the recent popularization of cryptocurrencies in the mainstream world and new ICO projects emerging almost every day, we are witnessing the possible revolution. Funding for new blockchain projects has increased rapidly in the past twelve onths with private investment skyrocketing to over five billion dollars in 2017. They see almost unlimited usage cases and solutions which could help and improve many fields of our everyday lives.
Blockchain use cases
For example, programs like Building Blocks, piloted by the World Food Program, are integrating blockchain in order to combat widespread corruption in the aid sector. Blockchain assures that aid is distributed, received and redeemed transparently.
Another interesting usage case could be improvement in providing global legal identification, as almost 1.1 billion people are currently unrecognized by any government. Without legal identification, these people are unable to access healthcare, welfare or education.
The most obvious advantage of the blockchain technology are the cryptocurrencies that have been created thanks to it. They enabled us to make almost instant money transactions to people all around the World.
The possibilities are almost endless, and there are many developers working on delivering them, as only in 2017 there were 834 patents applications field in blockchain-related projects, which is twice more than in 2016.
Market demand
However, in order to create these projects and provide all of the solutions, there is a huge need in the developers, who are able to code and deliver the technologies. The blockchain job market is forecast to grow 16 times in the next 7 years, while almost all of the future programmers will be expected to be familiar with this technology.
Academy quotes in their whitepapers an interesting survey, where 188 executives have plans to implement blockchain technology in their projects, while only 12 were able to find suitable developers for this task. This shows, that there is a market need for skilled specialists in that field.
Raising new developers
Academy has noticed that there are two main problems when it comes to teaching new programmers about blockchain technology. The main reason is that blockchain as a technology, with its development moves just too quickly to be integrated into most traditional curriculum structures in schools and it would be very hard to work with textbooks as they would be quickly outdated or simply not useful. Moreover, blockchain specialists are in a higher demand and paid much more to work on various projects, so it’s hard to find anyone who has time and is willing to teach others.
School of Blockchain
Academy will be probably the first official and accredited school, which specialize in blockchain. They want to provide developers, executives and universities with variety of options for blockchain education.
One of the features will be creation of SCORM online programs, which means Sharable Content Object Reference Model, which allows partner universities to use it in their own e-learning suits. There will be online learning courses, with video lectures and interactive tutorials, a discussion and help groups to solve problems and work out solutions and assignment together.
The curriculum will be designed and created by top blockchain specialists and developers, that have already successfully worked on various related projects.
The Token
The tokens will be used within the platform for payments for access to the materials, courses and all of the features. During a payment 70% of such token is burned, while the rest is devoted to the scholarship fund and community development fund.
ICO phase
The first part of the tokensale started on the 15th of February, while the main phase and public crowdsale of Academy tokens is scheduled for the 15th of March. The initial price is set at $2 per 1 ACAD token, however by buying earlier you can get the tokens cheaper.
The team
Apart from people responsible for the ICO and technical part of the projects, the strong emphasis is put on developing the sole curriculum and learning materials. The advisory board of the project is pretty impressive, with people who have worked on projects like Ethereum, Monero or Tether, which means the Academy is really reaching out to the most experienced blockchain developers.
It’s worth noting that the institutions behind Academy have been providing education for many years and have been awarded many times for their learning programs.
Final Thoughts
The project looks very interesting and while there have already been some attempts and other ICO projects that wanted to create learning platforms, none of them have aimed to do this on that scale and with the sole focus on blockchain technology. It is expected that in the close future there will be a high demand for blockchain developers and specialists, therefore such platform and well-thought curriculum and teaching programs can be in high demand as well. Academy shows a very professional approach, the design of the site and content of the whitepapers are very well done.