According to a news release today, Open Campus members are reviewing more than 300 grant applications and will announce the winning proposals, limited to $100,000 apiece and paid in the group's $EDU cryptocurrency token, after June 22. The money comes from the organization's Global Educators Fund, supported by two Hong Kong-based companies, Animoca Brands and TinyTap, along with the New York-based Liberty City Ventures and GEMS Education, based in the United Arab Emirates. Open Campus' website said the intention is to empower teachers to create educational content and also give them experience with digital property rights, allowing them to own that intellectual property and make money when it's sold to other entities.
The news release said this marks the first time a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) — a member-owned group without centralized leadership that uses blockchain to manage finances and vote-casting among members — has allocated funds to educational content creators.
"Teachers are among the most prolific and important content creators, but they often lack the funding to advance and innovate in the classroom and in their learning programs," Yat Siu, the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands and a member of the EDU Foundation Council, said in a public statement last month. "By supporting the Open Campus Global Educators Fund, which we believe is the first of its kind, we want to use Web3 to allow educators around the world to produce new educational content that is relevant and innovative and that can adequately prepare students for the challenges and opportunities of the future."
TinyTap CEO Yogev Shelly said his company's support for the fund is about encouraging and rewarding teachers for what they create.
