AMA Recap: TinyTap
Date: September 19th, 8am UTC
Host: DeFiNaut
Guest: Yogev Shelly, CEO
🦝 Hello, Raccoon family and crypto enthusiasts! We recently hosted an AMA with TinyTap. Here’s the AMA transcript for those who missed the live session. We sincerely hope you have as much fun reading it as we did running it with the team!
Table of Content
∘ Introductory Questions
∘ Community Questions
∘ About Solareum
∘ About Crypto Raccoons
Introductory Questions
DeFiNaut: Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today at the Raccoons for our crypto educational session none other than TinyTap! Now grab your pop-corn, nuts, berries or insects and let’s meet the founder of TinyTap; Yogev Shelly! *wait for applause*
TinyTap is an Animocabrands subsidiary, and home to 250K games made by educators. They’re building a new community owned education system on web3 via Open Campus.
Feel free to check out their website at: https://tinytap.com and X: https://x.com/TinyTapAB
Then for Open Campus: https://opencampus.xyz and https://x.com/opencampus_xyz
Welcome Yogev, please introduce yourself briefly to the Raccoons!
Yogev Shelly: Hi, I’m Yogi, I’m TinyTap’s Founder and CEO. For a decade now we’ve been working on building tools for creators to advance education for their communities and scale their talent outside of the classroom. We did that by creation a free DIY, no code authoring tool which you can use today and create interactive lessons and earn revenue whenever students play your content.
DeFiNaut: Yes and there’s some impressive numbers that got glued onto my screen when I first typed “TinyTap” in the google searchbar. #1 app for toddlers and preschoolders — and >20M parents worldwide using it!
Yogev Shelly: Today there are 250,000 Edu Games made by teachers and publishers usch as Sesame and Oxford and many more world wide. Families everywhere pay a subscription or pay for single courses and we do a revenue share with creators. Today TinyTap is among the top 10 grossing children apps on the AppStore. Happy to be here today and tell we how web3 accelerated our vision of building a decentralized community owned education system. Last year we partnered with Animoca Brands and introduced a new model for decentralizing education focusing on 3 main utilities that we believe blockchain has the most immediate impact in — content funding, ownership and access.
DeFiNaut: awesome looking forward to learn more about the transition to web3 and see what new possibilities that offers! What inspired the formation of TinyTap and ultimately Open Campus as a web3 education protocol, and how does it aim to disrupt the traditional education model?
Yogev Shelly: Needs are everywhere and the solution to answering them keep changing with the tools we get. in 2012 that tool was the iPad and need was a more active, local and personalized education.
The teachers and creators wanted to share their innovation and not just read what ever they got from their educational system, which tends to lag and adopt tech slower than individuals. So We’ve create an iPad app which allowed anyone to bring their ideas to life, not needing to be a coder or a pedagogy export in a company.
Just like YouTube made it possible for anyone to broadcast themself.
DeFiNaut: I agree, with technology everything goes ever so fast and such a crazy pace that legacy educational materials or teaching forms are just lagging too much. By the time you’re teaching them about something, it’s already overhauled by something else. So it’s more of a wisdom of the market approach? Where obviously high quality educational materials will naturally grow more popular and reach a wider audience?
Yogev Shelly: Creators have been creating in their own language for their own cultures and have now content which generats revenue… we wanted to use the next leap in technology which is Blockchain’s ownership and transparency to align more interest and creating a system for communities and supporters who are not educators to be able to fund, own, promote and earn from content together!
So, we did just that, we’ve introduced a new type of NFT, one that represents ownership for publishing rights in digital assets which generat revenue!
So imagine that 5 years ago you would have been able to buy 50% of Mr.Beast video, to support him or maybe cause you saw the value his content will have and joined him as partners early.
This is exactly what TinyTap with Opencampus are innovating — we’re offering people an opportunity to buy ownership in creators content and by doing that to support that kind of content and join them as business partners.
Unlike web2 companies, with Opencampus, creators and supportes see the flow of money from customer to content owner, can promote content in safe and trusted way knowing that their rights are on chain.
That ownership in its core is what we believe will help communities fund, create and own their own educational system!
DeFiNaut: democratizing educational materials (making them more accessible) and then also allowing early funding even for educators with a piece of the potential pie later on sounds very much web3 indeed! A great usecase of NFTs and we haven’t had a project over here before that did this for education. So let me ask as well, how did you end up on this journey? Do you have a background in education and perhaps also in web3?
Yogev Shelly: My bg is visual, from illustration to animations, anything creative excites me, I ended up also becoming a developer since I see it as another tool for creation.
TinyTap for me was my moment to develop a superpower for others, a tool which will free creator imagination and technicality difficulties, letting them, focus on making their teaching fun, visual, interactive and scalable.
My personal motivation to create TinyTap was to be able to create personalized activities for my Dad who had Demntia and I wanted to be able to create for the exact content he needed and he loved it :) Later I become a Dad, which made the path ahead much clearer and without all the challenges that education has today in any country.
Yat Siu, the chairman of Animoca Brands was an early investor in TinyTap, back in 2016 and I had the pleasure of watching his rise to fame with Animoca and discuss frequently with him, how blockchain can help with some of the most biggest hurdles for EdTech companies and creators.
DeFiNaut: ok that’s a warming story, goes to show that great projects can stem from ideas when there’s passion! Oh wow you guys go way back before all the hype during the last bull cycle when Animoca Brands was crushing it everywhere.
Yogev Shelly: It has to come with passion, to be able to have the grit to stay and the game and crack the mission ove years
DeFiNaut: How do you see blockchain technology and decentralization changing the way educational content is created, shared, and consumed in the future? What role will Open Campus play in shaping it?
Yogev Shelly: yeahh :), Yat invested in many EdTech companies and saw the same challenges as we saw:
- Teachers are underpaid and so talent many time shy away from the profession
- Getting funding for projects that aren’t math or english learning isn’t easy because investors need a big TAM
- Creating is difficult and expensive
- Distribution: selling to schools changes from country to country and takes a lot of time and money
- Philanthropy isn’t trust worthy
With blockchain, we can address all of the above, together, independent of traditional education systems. So lets take a step back… In May this year Animoca Brands and TinyTap along with other great companies such as GEMS from Dubai and Sandbox helped co-launch opencampus.xyz. which is a foundation and a token on a mission to create a community led education system!
DeFiNaut:Teachers are underpaid and so talent many time shy away from the profession
I would even add that many of the best teachers, they teach from experience (after a successful career) so they don’t necessarily study to become a teacher but rather turn to teaching cause they want to hand over their knowledge to the next generation. I believe the platform you created makes this form of teaching way more accessible — for them.
Yogev Shelly: opencampus listed the $EDU token on Binance Launchpad in May, at the 2nd biggest listing there yet. Well put, the same is true for parents, managers and other leading roles… you become that.
But even if you’re an incredible educator, getting funding, doing marketing can be a lot!
With the opencampus protocol, anyone here can create a course on any topic, doesn’t even needs to be for kids! and sell ownership in that course to a partner and together promote and earn from it.
My it’s about topic you care about, maybe it’s a group in a community that wants to produce educational content for their students such as social skills, financial eduction, local history, local language, women rights… what ever the topic is, groups can work to create and earn from it together
Right! so unlike traditional pfp nft which can hype or drop very fast, we see pNFT (publisher NFT) as a way to co own interent assets just like we own cars or apartments.
And something an apartment will get you $500/month and maybe if the neighbor hood get better or if you’ll renovate then people will pay more!
For educ content it can be localiztion of content to take it to a new geo, promotion in social, referrals and much more that creators can do with supporters.
I’ts a good opportunity to share with everyone here that TinyTap is running bushiness with millions of dollars in annual revenue, all directly from families globaly.
As such, the content which will go on Auction repreasents an already existing stream of monthly revenue with both the owner and co-publisher (who owns the pNGT) can withdraw each month and track on chain
DeFiNaut: So is the NFT linked to a course or more to all of the works of a certain creator? I was wondering what would happen if the material to which my published nft is linked would get updated, would a new NFT have to be published or is mine still valid.
Yogev Shelly: For the first pNFT sale, in total we sold 12 courses fo $370K, that represents something like 5x from the revenue those courses bring in each year, in that auction 12 members become co-owners and have been enjoying revenue growth for those courses in the past year.
The rational is that if thousands of people own content they have a bigger network and motivation to promote that content, reducing traditional marketing costs and business exploration. Half of that went to teachers! in the US, Turkey, Israel, Spain… the pNFT represents % of publishing rights in a single digital asset, game or course, not in a person’s work.
The rights sold are only for existing content and not an idea of a course.
The 1st auction was for high grossing courses and we’ll soon launch a new massive auction with hundreds of game lessons which will be much more affordable for people to be among the first to try this new type of digital asset, see it grow and help it grow.
We believe that this is the future of all of the on chain digital assets, hopefully one day of all the assets online, from a webpage to an article to a video and so on…
DeFiNaut: AI has recently been taking many industries by storm! TinyTap is known for its AI-driven personalized education approach. Could you explain how AI is integrated into TinyTap’s platform to enhance the learning experience for students and educators?
Secondly, looking ahead to 2024, TinyTap is planning to launch AI “”Practice Anywhere”” tools. Could you provide insights into what these tools entail and how they will reshape the way children reinforce their learning outside the traditional classroom environment?
Yogev Shelly: yes! we want to have a big community hands on experiencing opencampus and figuring out the best models for success together. TinyTap AI was the released two weeks ago. As I wrote earlier, technology offers new ways to solve problems.
We’re using AI as a way to empower even more people to become creators, without needing to understand or spend too much time creating the lessons slide by slde.
Now, anyone can write a topic and get back an interactive lesson which speaks, summarizes, quizzes in 1–2 minutes. with AI, content can be localized to any langauge, written and spoken.
The first AI tool we released focuses on topics. It’s the first visual AI EdTech tool which isn’t a written tutoring experience.
We’re building new tools for creators to be able to construct different lesson plans by typing, so we’ll eventually be able generate Human Guided, AI based curriculums for any topic in language while keeping the rich and visual nature of TinyTap.
For web3, this means being able to produce and own more relevant content faster and for any language.
and shows what it means to join a project, a year ago when we did the firs pNFT sale, AI wasn’t where its at today, and so even the people who purchased a course last year now join as we can scale their content and our platforms to new audiences
DeFiNaut: ok great so before we move to community questions I’d like to ask once and for all;
How does our community get involved? How do we get started? As you know we’re all about Web3 and hence we support any disruptive force taking on legacy systems!
Yogev Shelly: it’s our program for interpretability — projects, from single courses to video channels to companies who are accepting $EDU to access their services, so even you own $EDU from learning on TinyTap, you can take your wallet and use it on other partners channels.
and! because it’s all on chain, the $EDU credit can also be given a locked scholarship (un-tradable) to be used only on specific parter channels. such locking in a $1M for children in Istanbul to learn english on TinyTap or other programs.
That’s the best of part web3, the community is already here, we’re building the tools to formalize it, and we’re helping the echosystem grow!
Following @opencampus_xyz is the best starting point as we’re already promoting new initiatives there.
If you have a project you would like to suggest, please submit to opencampus $10M EduFund for supporting ecosystem projects — https://www.opencampus.xyz/fund
Community Questions
Q1: What sparked the creation of TinyTap? How can TinyTap’s AI technology revolutionize the World of Crypto and education?
Yogev Shelly: #1 is right to the point, so here’s what I’d love for people to take from there today:
- Funding: creating tools for communities to fund and own the content they need and want to see more, instead of VC and gorement funding, prioritizing what people care about.
- Content Ownership: eliminate costly content creation with Simple tools for creating and posting educational content which captures revenue and shares ownership on chain. no more complicated legal agreements, anyone can partner with anyone.
- Access: Fair educational access to students everywhere via differential $EDU tokens which can be moved from service to service, used to buy ownership in content and for granting smart scholarships which replaces old Philanthropy with transparency of flow and learning outcome
Q2: Does TinyTap provide any mechanism for teachers to receive royalties or ongoing revenue from the subsequent sales or usage of their Publisher NFTS?
Yogev Shelly: The diagram represents the simple on chain revenue share model, it works like ownership in an Arcade machine, me and you can be owners and have keys to collect revenue collected in the arcade, each can take only their proportional share.
Educators who create content never sell 100%, because we want them as co-publishers who keep promoting and developing their brand, and so they will keep earning from new revenue generated from the content even after they’ve sold 90%.
As for secondaries, we want that very much and have some contrains with some marketplaces, as far as what the technology will allow us to support, we will
Q2.1: An inbetweener perhaps, will you / or do you already have your own NFT marketplace for this?
Yogev Shelly: Yes! the previous auction was on OpenSea and for this grand upcoming auction, we’ll launch OC marketplace! with stunning new designs for each pNFT in the auction as well some intersting mechanics that I’m sure will make this a fun one for all!
Q3: For educators and content creators interested in selling their educational games on TinyTap Market, can you explain the revenue sharing model in detail? What percentage of revenue do creators get and how does TinyTap ensure transparent and fair compensation?
Yogev Shelly: Certainly, there’s two business models in TinyTap:
- Subscription: Similar to Spotify, we share profits with creators when they’re content is played. each subscriber has different profit to share, when they play a game, their monthly profit is shared 50% with engaged creators. but unlike Spotify or any other web2 service, on TT you’ll be able to see which wallets sent you how much for each game and it will all be on chain!
- Pay per course: Creators can bundle games into a course and sell that a the amount they set, receiving 80% from any sale
Q4: I am a crypto investor and I only care about prospect of a crypto that I chose, tell me the reason why I should choose yourEDU token over the existing one? What is your EDU token advantage that can convince me to change from my favorite EDU token?
Yogev Shelly: We don’t suggest to anyone to buy any Token. The opencampus foundation has a mission and token to serve as value which powers it through on chain utilities.
You should care about the project, if you care about advancing fair education and believe that OC global online education will grow to become a meaningful business.
And that blockchain and the ideas I shared today can help the project get an advantage, here are how we view the vision of success in the next few years:
- Edu Acces: EdTech and Schools on web2 and 3 accepts $EDU for their services as the currency for education, offering transparency and on chain access between companies
- Smart Scholarships will become the preferred method philanthropists Sheila to donate locked currency directly to students and view their learning outcome
- Not only education, but all content creators choose to hold their content ownership and revenue access with pNFT, opening it to supporters to join them
About TinyTap
World’s largest library of games made by teachers. Building an alternative education system owned by teachers & community on Web3. Part of Animocabrands.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TinyTapAB
Website: https://www.start.tinytap.com/
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