ODEM.IO
Unlocking Higher Education

Diah Anggraini
5 min readJan 2, 2018

--

ODEM.IO
Unlocking Higher Education

ODEM is a comprehensive platform that allows students, educators and service providers in the education industry to participate in a direct, decentralized, real-time marketplace. It empowers participants to search, select and purchase existing educational products as well as create, request and negotiate customized education experiences in person and online. Unlike online education providers like Coursera and Khan Academy, the ODEM platform focuses on creating real-time, in-person educational programs. Because of this, the ODEM platform is designed to accommodate not only the delivery of a single course, but also the accompanying services and scheduling that are included in accommodating.

The ODEM platform has been made possible by the emergence of cutting-edge blockchain technology that allows qualified and trusted members of the education industry to create customized curriculum and experiences and offer them directly to the market. The ODEM platform further provides students with more choices for housing, transportation and other necessities. It allows international and local students to take ownership of their education. ODEM will facilitate live, in-classroom experiences, supported by online capabilities.

ODEM is more than just an education marketplace. Through Ethereum-based smart contracts, agreement between students and professors will be attained with the least possible involvement of intermediaries. The platform’s exchangeable utility tokens will act as a common currency to smoothen cross-border payments and to incentivize professors to keep their courses up to date and relevant. Our dream is making education from the world’s top educators accessible to everyone.

Using the power of blockchain technology and its smart contract-based payment platform, ODEM will enable students and professors to interact directly and participate in the exchange of education and learning, without the involvement of intermediaries. Our goal is to make quality education more accessible and affordable to a broader audience. Demand for U.S.-based education has risen enormously with students from Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East, seeking access to traditional four-year colleges as well as providers of customized training and curriculum.

ODEM and it’s secure, blockchain-based platform allows students to seamlessly interact with educators and to seize opportunities to access custom-designed courses and education programs. Students can use ODEM to search for curriculum that meets their needs.

The ODEM team was inspired by the success of U.S.-based Excelorators, a premier provider of education services to overseas students, executives and managers seeking exposure to America’s elite learning institutions and corporate campuses. On that foun-dation, ODEM is establishing a new industry standard of satisfaction by revolutionizing the quality and accessibility of high-impact educational experiences. Excelorators will be the exclusive on the ground service provider of ODEM education programs in the United States. Students and educators from Excelorators will pilot and test ODEM and form the basis for mass adoption. Whether for a one-day lecture or a more extensive week-long training event, the ODEM platform connects students and educators with course offerings at any price point anywhere around the world. And with a growing community of users, ODEM platform will be the ideal way to buy or sell customized education and training courses at a cross border level.

ODEM will be powered by a set of programs deployed on the Ethereum blockchain. Use of Ethereum will provide transparency and ease of payment

Participating in the ODEM platform is based on users providing their pre-approval criteria; unlike a platform merely matching buyer and seller, like AirBnB, the ODEM platform aligns many parties to achieve an advanced “match” where all parties’ requirements must be matched precisely as they have already accepted valid service engagements in the manner of AirBnB’s automatic acceptance booking feature. The fundamental limitation in ecosystem level optimization is the ability to account for the needs and restrictions of all parties concurrently; thankfully, advances in machine learning and optimization techniques make this a solvable problem and blockchain allows it the necessary contract automation to facilitate coordinated execution.

In the case of the ODEM platform, the use of the public Ethereum network ensures the system is trusted as access to the platform and periodic hashes of the the state of the platform are broadcast on the public network. At this time, ODEM token functionality is considered sufficiently complex for the team to prefer the Turing Complete EVM over the use of Stellar for the public token. Nonetheless, use of the Ethereum Network will be kept to a minimum to avoid excess transactions costs on ODEM.

On the ODEM platform, Ethereum based smart contracts will ensure the services are accessed in a “trustless” manner. “Trustless” does not mean that they can’t be trusted, but instead the necessity to trust each other is not required. At a practical level, this means that a student can buy services from service providers sitting on the other side of the globe, without ever meeting them and without knowing whether they are an honest service provider. Payment of educational services on the ODEM platform will be made via an inherent cryptocurrency, an ERC 20 token, namely the ODEM Token (ODEMT). This feature allows for a common denominator that provides low-cost transfers of value, as well as fast and secure financial transactions on the platform. Inside the ODEM platform, suppliers will be incentivized to join the platform through free initial tokens allocated from the ODEM Rewards token distributions. Once suppliers sign up and create profiles, they must adhere to the supplier fee structures.

Risks of ODEM

Acquiring ODEMT and storing them involves various risks, in particular the risk that the ODEM platform may not be able to launch its operations and develop its blockchain and provide the services promised. Therefore, and prior to acquiring ODEMTs, any user should carefully consider the risks, costs and benefits of acquiring ODEMT in the context of the crowdsale and, if necessary, obtain any independent advice in this regard. Any interested person who is not in the position to accept or to understand the risks associated with the activity (incl. the risks related to the non-development of the ODEM platform) or any other risks as indicated in the Terms & Conditions of the crowdsale should not acquire ODEMTs.

ODEMTs will not be listed on any regulated stock exchange, such as SIX Swiss Exchange, or SIX. These Terms have been prepared without regard to the legal standards for prospectuses under art. 1156 or art. 652a of the Swiss Code of Obligations or the legal standards for facilitated prospectuses under art. 5 of the Collective Investment Schemes Act (“CISA”) or art. 27 ff. of the SIX Listing Rules or the listing rules of any other stock exchange in Switzerland. Neither these Terms nor any other material relating to the Offer, ODEM SA , the ODEM platform or ODEMTs will be or have been filed with or approved by any Swiss regulatory authority. Specifically, these Terms will not be filed with, and the Offer of ODEMTs will not be supervised by, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA (FINMA). Furthermore, the Offer of ODEMTs has not been and will not be authorized under the CISA. Thus, the protection which is given to purchasers of interests or units in collective investment schemes under the CISA does not extend to purchasers of ODEMTs.

Website

https://odem.io/

whitepaper

http://odem.io/docs/whitepaper/ODEM.IO-Whitepaper.pdf

--

--