The document proposes the BitDegree platform, a blockchain-powered online education platform that aims to revolutionize global education through smart incentives. It seeks to align the incentives of students, employers, and digital service providers by offering online courses with blockchain-based rewards for completing skills in high demand by the job market. This would allow students to get paid to learn, employers to help shape education to their needs, and governments to track skill demand without extensive reporting. The platform aims to launch a closed test in mid-2018 and full launch in early 2019, and believes its approach of incentive alignment has the potential to significantly improve upon the low completion rates of existing platforms like Coursera and Codecademy.
Stablecoins have emerged as an alternative digital payment system offering the best of both traditional and modern digitized economies. In this deck, Shaan, our blockchain SME, will discuss how fiat-backed stable coins are well-equipped to help users transition seamlessly from a solely fiat-driven economy to a more modern and stable global economy.
To increase the security of mobile payments, many payment schemes nowadays apply a technology called tokenization.
Tokenization is the process of replacing an existing payment card number with a surrogate value (token).
This token is used during a payment transaction, keeping the original card number safe.
A Token Service Provider (TSP) is an entity within the payments ecosystem that generates and manages tokens.
The TSP maps the original card number with the payment tokens and stores this safely in a token vault.
Often these tokens can only be used in a specific domain such as a merchant’s online website or channel, limiting the risk even further.
A TSP manages the entire lifecycle of payment credentials including: Token Requestor Authorization Host
1. Tokenization: Replaces the PAN with a payment token.
2. De-tokenization: Converts the token back to the PAN using the token vault.
3. Token vault: Establishes and maintains the payment token to PAN mapping.
4. Domain management: Adds additional security by restricting tokens to be used within specific (retail) channels or domains.
5. Identification and verification: Ensures that the payment token is replacing a PAN that was legitimately used by the token requestor.
6. Clearing and settlement: Ad-hoc de-tokenization during clearing and settlement process.
Issuers, acquirers and merchants that wish to offer mobile and/or digital payments to customers can become a TSP.
Becoming your own TSP gives full control over the tokenization process: creation, storage, issuance and management.
By having your own TSP, you are in full control of digital payments by issuing tokens directly without third party intervention.
By using a third party TSP from the payment schemes, issuers need to integrate with each payment scheme.
Benefits of having you own TSP:
1. Reduce long term costs: no additional TSP fees from the payment schemes.
2. On-us transactions: save on transaction fees when you are the issuing as well as the acquiring bank.
3. Banks retain their privacy because data and roadmaps do not have to be shared with the schemes.
4. Keep track of customer payment behavior to gain valuable insight and be able to offer personalized services.
5. Expand to multiple use cases. Host Card Emulation Embedded SE Internet: Card-Not-Present Value added services / non-card payments
6. Have your own strategy and be future proof in order to stay competitive.
Bell ID® Token Service Provider enables issuers and processors to perform the role of a Token Service Provider.
What is decentralized finance ( de fi )Celine George
Defi is also is known as decentralized finance which leverages existing blockchain technology into a decentralized micropayment platform without any intermediaries. Defi is one of the technological concepts which got huge requirements from the banking sector as well as from those who deal with a large number of the financial transaction.
Stablecoins have emerged as an alternative digital payment system offering the best of both traditional and modern digitized economies. In this deck, Shaan, our blockchain SME, will discuss how fiat-backed stable coins are well-equipped to help users transition seamlessly from a solely fiat-driven economy to a more modern and stable global economy.
To increase the security of mobile payments, many payment schemes nowadays apply a technology called tokenization.
Tokenization is the process of replacing an existing payment card number with a surrogate value (token).
This token is used during a payment transaction, keeping the original card number safe.
A Token Service Provider (TSP) is an entity within the payments ecosystem that generates and manages tokens.
The TSP maps the original card number with the payment tokens and stores this safely in a token vault.
Often these tokens can only be used in a specific domain such as a merchant’s online website or channel, limiting the risk even further.
A TSP manages the entire lifecycle of payment credentials including: Token Requestor Authorization Host
1. Tokenization: Replaces the PAN with a payment token.
2. De-tokenization: Converts the token back to the PAN using the token vault.
3. Token vault: Establishes and maintains the payment token to PAN mapping.
4. Domain management: Adds additional security by restricting tokens to be used within specific (retail) channels or domains.
5. Identification and verification: Ensures that the payment token is replacing a PAN that was legitimately used by the token requestor.
6. Clearing and settlement: Ad-hoc de-tokenization during clearing and settlement process.
Issuers, acquirers and merchants that wish to offer mobile and/or digital payments to customers can become a TSP.
Becoming your own TSP gives full control over the tokenization process: creation, storage, issuance and management.
By having your own TSP, you are in full control of digital payments by issuing tokens directly without third party intervention.
By using a third party TSP from the payment schemes, issuers need to integrate with each payment scheme.
Benefits of having you own TSP:
1. Reduce long term costs: no additional TSP fees from the payment schemes.
2. On-us transactions: save on transaction fees when you are the issuing as well as the acquiring bank.
3. Banks retain their privacy because data and roadmaps do not have to be shared with the schemes.
4. Keep track of customer payment behavior to gain valuable insight and be able to offer personalized services.
5. Expand to multiple use cases. Host Card Emulation Embedded SE Internet: Card-Not-Present Value added services / non-card payments
6. Have your own strategy and be future proof in order to stay competitive.
Bell ID® Token Service Provider enables issuers and processors to perform the role of a Token Service Provider.
What is decentralized finance ( de fi )Celine George
Defi is also is known as decentralized finance which leverages existing blockchain technology into a decentralized micropayment platform without any intermediaries. Defi is one of the technological concepts which got huge requirements from the banking sector as well as from those who deal with a large number of the financial transaction.
10 New Business Models for this Decade (beta)
1. Localized Low-Cost Business Model
2. One-Off Experience Business Model
3. Beyond Advertising Business Model
4. Markets Are Conversations Business Model
5. Low-Budget Innovation Business Model
6. Community-Funded Business Model
7. Sustainability-Focused Business Model
8. Twisted Freemium Business Model
9. Unlimited Niches Business Model
10. In-Crowd Customers Business Model
TREND RESEARCH BY Trend Firm trendwatching.com
MARKET ANALYSIS BY Strategy Boutique Thaesis
BUSINESS MODEL DESIGN BY Strategy Consultant/Graphic Facilitator Ouke Arts
FinTech is just short for financial technology and it refers to the application of technology in the financial industry. On the other hand, blockchain refers to the distributed ledger technology behind cryptocurrencies; it allows digital information to be distributed and each piece of data can only have one owner.
The series of presentations contains the information about "Management Information System" subject of SEIT for University of Pune.
Subject Teacher: Tushar B Kute (Sandip Institute of Technology and Research Centre, Nashik)
http://www.tusharkute.com
Blockchain: The Information Technology of the FutureMelanie Swan
The blockchain concept may be one of the most transformative ideas to impact the world since the Internet. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are merely one application of the blockchain concept. The blockchain is a public transaction ledger built in a decentralized network structure based on cryptographic principles so that any kind of trading, buying and selling of assets does not need to go through a centralized intermediary. Any kind of asset may be encoded into the blockchain and transacted, validated, or preserved in a much more efficient manner than at present including ideas, health data, financial assets, automobiles, and government documents. Venture Capitalists are calling the blockchain the next big investment wave.
"Digital Banking" by Nikolay Spasov
The presentation was part of the 2016 Digital Marketing Masterclass organized by Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Bulgaria and New Bulgarian University (NBU). The scope of the lecture is to present the current trends in banking and the available technologies that are supporting the industry.
How to Build an Effective Customer Health ModelTotango
Your customers’ success is critical to your business. But how do you define and measure their success? Should you look at the number of support tickets, rate of adoption, revenue per customer, churn rate, net promoter score, or customer lifetime value?
Instead of looking at specific metrics, you need to take a holistic view of the customer using a Customer Health value. Health definitions should incorporate several KPIs and variables, such as business outcomes, lifecycle stage, product usage, license utilization, support tickets and other relevant information.
In these slides presented during our webinar, you'll learn how to build an effective health model to measure real business outcomes, drive retention and increase revenue. Presented by Jill Rubin, CMO of Totango, and Isabelle Rochon, Director of Customer Success from iPerceptions, a Totango customer.
There are four different types of blockchain - Public blockchain, Private blockchain, Consortium blockchain and Hybrid blockchain.
This presentation gives a glimpse about blockchain technology and the different types of blockchain. Hope it helps!
Slides for our first meet up about cryptocurrencies, solidity and smart contracts.
Repository for the code is available here -> https://github.com/thdaraujo/meetup-01-smart-contracts
How to Design a Value-Based Renewal Management ProcessGainsight
You can't rely on inertia to renew your customers for you. You can't even rely on customer happiness or delight to ensure a successful renewal event. In the Age of the Customer, the only predictable way to ensure renewal is to ensure your customers achieve their desired outcome. And that's intrinsically linke to value delivery. When you have a renewal process based on value, you're controlling all the variables that are in your control. Learn how to achieve a Value-Based Renewal Management process in this session.
Blockchain is a decentralized and distributed ledger system. In blockchain technology, the data is stored within blocks and then linked to one another, forming a chain of blocks. Some of the key features of blockchain include – immutability, decentralized, enhanced security, consensus protocol, and faster output.
Although blockchain offers a lot of benefits for a lot of sectors, it still comes with its fair share of disadvantages. Most blockchain platforms are still not scalable enough. Some of the public blockchain platforms, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, are not energy efficient.
Blockchain can be inefficient under certain conditions. The efficiency of blockchain technology varies from platform to platform. Implementing blockchain-based solutions from scratch is a costly investment.
If you want to invest in blockchain technology, it’s best to learn more about the technology from a reliable source. At 101 Blockchains, we offer the best of the best courses on blockchain technology to help you understand the true potential of this new tech.
You can learn more about this from here ->
Blockchain Like a Boss Masterclass
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/blockchain-masterclass
Ethereum Development Fundamentals
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/ethereum-development-fundamentals
Beginner’s Guide to Corda Development
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/beginners-guide-to-corda-development
Hyperledger Fabric Development Course
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/hyperledger-fabric-development-intermediate-level
We also offer lucrative certification courses for professionals. Learn more about these courses from here ->
Certified Enterprise Blockchain Professional (CEBP) course
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/blockchain-expert-certification
Certified Enterprise Blockchain Architect (CEBA) course
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/certified-enterprise-blockchain-architect
Certified Blockchain Security Expert (CBSE) course
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/certified-blockchain-security-expert
Learn more from our full guide on this topic ->
https://101blockchains.com/disadvantages-of-blockchain/
Deloitte’s 2020 Global Blockchain SurveyFrom promise to re.docxrandyburney60861
Deloitte’s 2020 Global
Blockchain Survey
From promise to reality
DELOITTE BLOCKCHAIN
At Deloitte, our people collaborate globally with clients, regulators, and policymakers on how
blockchain and digital assets are changing the face of business and government today. New
ecosystems are developing blockchain-based infrastructure and solutions to create innovative
business models and disrupt traditional ones. This is occurring in every industry and in most
jurisdictions globally. Our deep business acumen and global industry-leading audit, consulting,
tax, risk, and financial advisory services help organizations across industries achieve their
varying blockchain aspirations. Reach out to our leaders to discuss the evolving momentum of
blockchain and digital assets, prioritizing initiatives, and managing the opportunities and pain
points associated with blockchain adoption efforts. To learn more, let's talk.
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/consulting/solutions/blockchain-solutions-and-services.html
Introduction: The evolution of blockchain 2
A more “real” reality for blockchain 4
Digital assets today and tomorrow 9
Cybersecurity 13
Global digital identity 15
Regulatory considerations 17
Governance in blockchain consortia 19
Regional analysis 21
Concluding thoughts: The road taken 24
Appendix 25
Endnotes 36
Contents
2
Introduction: The
evolution of blockchain
MORE THAN A decade has passed since the introduction of what we know today as blockchain technology. Over that time,
the promise of what the technology could offer
businesses and industries has evolved from a
cryptocurrency payment platform to something
bigger, game-changing, and truly disruptive. In
recent years, we have seen sentiment about
blockchain’s potential similarly evolving, along
with companies directing actual investment
dollars toward applications.
In Deloitte’s 2019 Global Blockchain Survey,
we observed this continuing trend in thinking
and investment, even if some vestiges of doubt
and old-school thinking remained about the
technology’s promise.1 This year’s survey
suggests that those doubts are fading further,
and that blockchain is solidly entrenched in
the strategic thinking of organizations across
industries, sectors, and applications.
There are more substantive examples in
the marketplace of how both startups and
mature businesses are deploying blockchain.
Organizations appear to be more committed than
ever to blockchain and are demonstrating this by
implementing it as part of their normal course
of business.
That’s the key takeaway from our 2020 Global
Blockchain Survey, which finds that leaders no
longer consider the technology groundbreaking
and merely promising—they now see it as integral
to organizational innovation. This year, the C-suite
is putting money and resources behind blockchain
as a strategic solution in more meaningful and
tangible ways—in projects big and not so big—
putting i.
Impact of changing technology on strategic procurementMarcep Inc.
A must attend training as the world changes, so must you. Move beyond the conventional, unlocking your procurement power and become more strategic. Evolution is critical to procurement’s survival.
10 New Business Models for this Decade (beta)
1. Localized Low-Cost Business Model
2. One-Off Experience Business Model
3. Beyond Advertising Business Model
4. Markets Are Conversations Business Model
5. Low-Budget Innovation Business Model
6. Community-Funded Business Model
7. Sustainability-Focused Business Model
8. Twisted Freemium Business Model
9. Unlimited Niches Business Model
10. In-Crowd Customers Business Model
TREND RESEARCH BY Trend Firm trendwatching.com
MARKET ANALYSIS BY Strategy Boutique Thaesis
BUSINESS MODEL DESIGN BY Strategy Consultant/Graphic Facilitator Ouke Arts
FinTech is just short for financial technology and it refers to the application of technology in the financial industry. On the other hand, blockchain refers to the distributed ledger technology behind cryptocurrencies; it allows digital information to be distributed and each piece of data can only have one owner.
The series of presentations contains the information about "Management Information System" subject of SEIT for University of Pune.
Subject Teacher: Tushar B Kute (Sandip Institute of Technology and Research Centre, Nashik)
http://www.tusharkute.com
Blockchain: The Information Technology of the FutureMelanie Swan
The blockchain concept may be one of the most transformative ideas to impact the world since the Internet. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are merely one application of the blockchain concept. The blockchain is a public transaction ledger built in a decentralized network structure based on cryptographic principles so that any kind of trading, buying and selling of assets does not need to go through a centralized intermediary. Any kind of asset may be encoded into the blockchain and transacted, validated, or preserved in a much more efficient manner than at present including ideas, health data, financial assets, automobiles, and government documents. Venture Capitalists are calling the blockchain the next big investment wave.
"Digital Banking" by Nikolay Spasov
The presentation was part of the 2016 Digital Marketing Masterclass organized by Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Bulgaria and New Bulgarian University (NBU). The scope of the lecture is to present the current trends in banking and the available technologies that are supporting the industry.
How to Build an Effective Customer Health ModelTotango
Your customers’ success is critical to your business. But how do you define and measure their success? Should you look at the number of support tickets, rate of adoption, revenue per customer, churn rate, net promoter score, or customer lifetime value?
Instead of looking at specific metrics, you need to take a holistic view of the customer using a Customer Health value. Health definitions should incorporate several KPIs and variables, such as business outcomes, lifecycle stage, product usage, license utilization, support tickets and other relevant information.
In these slides presented during our webinar, you'll learn how to build an effective health model to measure real business outcomes, drive retention and increase revenue. Presented by Jill Rubin, CMO of Totango, and Isabelle Rochon, Director of Customer Success from iPerceptions, a Totango customer.
There are four different types of blockchain - Public blockchain, Private blockchain, Consortium blockchain and Hybrid blockchain.
This presentation gives a glimpse about blockchain technology and the different types of blockchain. Hope it helps!
Slides for our first meet up about cryptocurrencies, solidity and smart contracts.
Repository for the code is available here -> https://github.com/thdaraujo/meetup-01-smart-contracts
How to Design a Value-Based Renewal Management ProcessGainsight
You can't rely on inertia to renew your customers for you. You can't even rely on customer happiness or delight to ensure a successful renewal event. In the Age of the Customer, the only predictable way to ensure renewal is to ensure your customers achieve their desired outcome. And that's intrinsically linke to value delivery. When you have a renewal process based on value, you're controlling all the variables that are in your control. Learn how to achieve a Value-Based Renewal Management process in this session.
Blockchain is a decentralized and distributed ledger system. In blockchain technology, the data is stored within blocks and then linked to one another, forming a chain of blocks. Some of the key features of blockchain include – immutability, decentralized, enhanced security, consensus protocol, and faster output.
Although blockchain offers a lot of benefits for a lot of sectors, it still comes with its fair share of disadvantages. Most blockchain platforms are still not scalable enough. Some of the public blockchain platforms, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, are not energy efficient.
Blockchain can be inefficient under certain conditions. The efficiency of blockchain technology varies from platform to platform. Implementing blockchain-based solutions from scratch is a costly investment.
If you want to invest in blockchain technology, it’s best to learn more about the technology from a reliable source. At 101 Blockchains, we offer the best of the best courses on blockchain technology to help you understand the true potential of this new tech.
You can learn more about this from here ->
Blockchain Like a Boss Masterclass
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/blockchain-masterclass
Ethereum Development Fundamentals
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/ethereum-development-fundamentals
Beginner’s Guide to Corda Development
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/beginners-guide-to-corda-development
Hyperledger Fabric Development Course
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/hyperledger-fabric-development-intermediate-level
We also offer lucrative certification courses for professionals. Learn more about these courses from here ->
Certified Enterprise Blockchain Professional (CEBP) course
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/blockchain-expert-certification
Certified Enterprise Blockchain Architect (CEBA) course
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/certified-enterprise-blockchain-architect
Certified Blockchain Security Expert (CBSE) course
https://academy.101blockchains.com/courses/certified-blockchain-security-expert
Learn more from our full guide on this topic ->
https://101blockchains.com/disadvantages-of-blockchain/
Deloitte’s 2020 Global Blockchain SurveyFrom promise to re.docxrandyburney60861
Deloitte’s 2020 Global
Blockchain Survey
From promise to reality
DELOITTE BLOCKCHAIN
At Deloitte, our people collaborate globally with clients, regulators, and policymakers on how
blockchain and digital assets are changing the face of business and government today. New
ecosystems are developing blockchain-based infrastructure and solutions to create innovative
business models and disrupt traditional ones. This is occurring in every industry and in most
jurisdictions globally. Our deep business acumen and global industry-leading audit, consulting,
tax, risk, and financial advisory services help organizations across industries achieve their
varying blockchain aspirations. Reach out to our leaders to discuss the evolving momentum of
blockchain and digital assets, prioritizing initiatives, and managing the opportunities and pain
points associated with blockchain adoption efforts. To learn more, let's talk.
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/consulting/solutions/blockchain-solutions-and-services.html
Introduction: The evolution of blockchain 2
A more “real” reality for blockchain 4
Digital assets today and tomorrow 9
Cybersecurity 13
Global digital identity 15
Regulatory considerations 17
Governance in blockchain consortia 19
Regional analysis 21
Concluding thoughts: The road taken 24
Appendix 25
Endnotes 36
Contents
2
Introduction: The
evolution of blockchain
MORE THAN A decade has passed since the introduction of what we know today as blockchain technology. Over that time,
the promise of what the technology could offer
businesses and industries has evolved from a
cryptocurrency payment platform to something
bigger, game-changing, and truly disruptive. In
recent years, we have seen sentiment about
blockchain’s potential similarly evolving, along
with companies directing actual investment
dollars toward applications.
In Deloitte’s 2019 Global Blockchain Survey,
we observed this continuing trend in thinking
and investment, even if some vestiges of doubt
and old-school thinking remained about the
technology’s promise.1 This year’s survey
suggests that those doubts are fading further,
and that blockchain is solidly entrenched in
the strategic thinking of organizations across
industries, sectors, and applications.
There are more substantive examples in
the marketplace of how both startups and
mature businesses are deploying blockchain.
Organizations appear to be more committed than
ever to blockchain and are demonstrating this by
implementing it as part of their normal course
of business.
That’s the key takeaway from our 2020 Global
Blockchain Survey, which finds that leaders no
longer consider the technology groundbreaking
and merely promising—they now see it as integral
to organizational innovation. This year, the C-suite
is putting money and resources behind blockchain
as a strategic solution in more meaningful and
tangible ways—in projects big and not so big—
putting i.
Impact of changing technology on strategic procurementMarcep Inc.
A must attend training as the world changes, so must you. Move beyond the conventional, unlocking your procurement power and become more strategic. Evolution is critical to procurement’s survival.
KickCity is a social event platform that combines the organizers and participants of the events. KickCity team members are developing a decentralized P2P Protocol for event-marketing, in which users will be rewarded for promoting various events.
Rating score "B1"
Medium Fraud Rate
The linking of computers around the world is going to have far reaching effects, and the spread of knowledge, the interchange of ideas and the dissemination of information are going to produce a revolution in our society. Digital business use technology to create new value in business models, customer experiences and the internal capabilities that support its core operations. The term includes both digital only brands and traditional players that are transforming their businesses with digital technologies. the more important benefits derived from developing a digital business include the ability of your organization to rapidly develop and move into new markets uncover and form partnerships reach new customers and expand your brand with new and existing customers as an innovator, among many others. Digital business is about the creation of new business designs by blurring the physical and digital world. It is about the interaction and negotiations between, business, and things. A. Karthik | M. Karthikeyan | P. H. Gopikannan "Digital Business" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-4 | Issue-6 , October 2020, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd33644.pdf Paper Url: https://www.ijtsrd.com/management/marketing/33644/digital-business/a-karthik
The Dreamteam project was founded in 2017, with the goal of creating a global, all-in-one platform as a service (PaaS) for the creation, development, management, and monetization of e-sport teams, and to build a system to manage relations between players, teams, coaches, analysts, and sponsors based on the trust and transparency of smart contracts.
Rating score "В1"
Medium Fraud Rate
The Present and Future of Blockchain and AI by Dinis GuardaDinis Guarda
The Present and Future of Blockchain and AI
How Public and Private Sectors can holistically benefit from embracing blockchain AI tech.
DNA OF OUR TIME = TECH - DATA + BLOCKCHAIN + AI
by Dinis Guarda
Just as Amazon changed how we buy things and
Netflix transformed how we consume videos,
companies like AirBnB and Uber have shaken up the
hotel and transportation industries. With new disruptive
technologies, products, services and business models
being introduced almost daily, CIOs need to take charge
of their organization’s response now to secure long-term
business success.
Prashant Gorhe SIP project on Digital Marketing Strategies.pdfPrashantGorhe
"Analyzing Digital Marketing strategies on the Educational sector" Pune University Summer Internship Project at BitCode Technologies Pvt Ltd By Mr. Prashant Gorhe
Being Digital, Fast-forward to the Right Digital Strategy Fabio Mittelstaedt
Do my Company have the right Digital Strategy? Is it compelling enough to beat my competitors? Or to conquer the new digital customers from millenniums to baby boomers? Competing in a world shaped by digital technologies requires a fundamentally different approach to how strategies are developed and executed. 55% of business leaders admit that they do not yet have an enterprise-level digital strategy to support their corporate strategy. But there is a difference between developing some digital capabilities or being a digital lead in your industry. Digital disrupts business strategy. Business leaders must consider a new strategic approach.
BitClave was founded in 2016 to rethink and rebuild the relationship between businesses and customers based on
the trust and transparency of smart contracts. The company plans to transform the Internet advertising market,
which is currently monopolized by giant corporations and controlled by intermediaries.
Rating score "A1"
Low Fraud Rate
Learn how a configurable, cloud-based web experience that supports single sign-on, common navigation, and a common look across application can streamline ERP for users.
Gain new visibility in your DevOps teamAbhishek Sood
DevOps implementation too often focuses only on communication between dev teams and their business counterparts, but fails to adequately loop in downstream testing and operations teams. A lack of visibility for operations teams leads to delaying rollouts and going live with buggy code.
Check this Forrester Consulting report to see what strategies DevOps teams are using to maximize visibility, speed, and agility.
Azure IaaS: Cost savings, new revenue opportunities, and business benefits Abhishek Sood
By now, it is well known that moving to the cloud saves on various costs, but exactly how much benefit can you expect to realize? How do the experts evaluate platforms and what do they see as the key challenges a platform will need to overcome? This paper answers all this and demonstrates how to evaluate an IaaS service for you.
3-part approach to turning IoT data into business powerAbhishek Sood
There will be 44 zettabytes of data produced by IoT alone by 2020, according to IDC. That’s a little more than the cumulative size of 44 trillion feature films.
Data from IoT devices will soon be table stakes in your industry, if it isn’t already. Turning that data into quick and actionable insights is the race for all businesses who are investing in IoT devices.
Learn about a 3-pronged approach that can turn your IoT data into business actions:
Business-wide analytics revolution
Connected relationships with customers
Intelligent innovation based on data
Chances are if someone were to ask you to choose a department in your company where you could save close to $9 million as part of a 3-year ROI, HR wouldn’t make the top-of-the-mind list. Years past would suggest something closely related to HR - like layoffs - as holding the answer, but that’s not where the dollars could be saved as one large American healthcare provider found out.
The undisclosed, $4 billion organization was unfortunately riddled with inconsistencies and redundancies throughout their HR department that were ultimately draining massive amounts of resources. After much thought, the provider turned to ServiceNow for advice - and a new solution.
In this exclusive Forrester Research report, see how this healthcare provider was able to consumerize their employee service experience, which led them to unlock benefits like:
Benefits approaching $10 million in savings
30% improved efficiency in servicing HR cases
50% reduction in audit and compliance costs
And more
Big news coming for DevOps: What you need to knowAbhishek Sood
As the DevOps culture continues to sweep through the IT world, and the trend toward microservices picks up steam, VMware steps into the fray with their recent acquisition of Wavefront.
What does this mean for you?
This exclusive e-guide takes a look at what one of the largest names in virtualization platforms is looking to do with DevOps monitoring, as well as:
How they plan to stand out against the competition
How they are moving forward with the cloud
And more
Microservices best practices: Integration platforms, APIs, and moreAbhishek Sood
Your business’s ability to adapt quickly, drive innovation, and meet new competition wherever it arises is a strategic necessity in today’s world of constant change and disruption.
This paper explores how many organizations are laying a foundation for continuous innovation and agility by adopting microservice architectures.
Discover how to build a highly productive, unified integration framework for microservices that creates a seamless app network with API-led connectivity.
How to measure your cybersecurity performanceAbhishek Sood
In order for organizations to stay competitive, they must always be improving. This too is true for their cybersecurity.
Being able to properly harvest and digest cybersecurity benchmarking information is critical for today’s CIOs. If you realize that your cybersecurity is not at the level it should be, evaluating it properly can help you raise appropriate resources to fix the issues.
Discover how to get the full picture of your organization's security performance compared to your peers. Learn why benchmarking is so critical for today's CIOs and how to clearly communicate benchmarking data to your board.
Organizations have been putting the cloud to use for years, but recently the trickle of workloads being moved from on-premises to public cloud environments has grown into a tidal wave.
But just what public cloud infrastructure strategies are being used, in terms of the number of providers with which they partner, and do they see these services simply augmenting existing on-premises environments or as a means of revolutionizing them?
Read this ESG research brief to get the answer to these questions and more.
Gartner predicts that nearly 40% of enterprise IT application spend will be shifted to cloud versus on-premise by 2020.
However, most IT departments evaluate and select cloud-based apps based on their many business productivity benefits but a number of critical security and performance issues need to be considered at the same time.
This white paper details some of the major considerations you will need to focus on when looking for cloud app security. You will also learn about:
Limitations of existing products
Integrated cloud security gateway approach
Malware and data security challenges
And much, much more
How to integrate risk into your compliance-only approachAbhishek Sood
Information security policies and standards can oftentimes cause confusion and even liability within an organization.
This resource details 4 pitfalls of a compliance-only approach and offers a secure method to complying with policies and standards through a risk-integrated approach.
Uncover 4 Benefits of integrating risk into your compliance approach, including:
Reduced risk
Reduced deployment time
And 2 more
DLP 101: Help identify and plug information leaksAbhishek Sood
A data loss prevention (DLP) strategy isn’t something to be taken lightly: its cost, impact on process, and responsibility for keeping an enterprise’s data secure cannot be understated as data becomes more accessible and mobile.
In this e-guide discover:
What it means for security for data to be in use, in motion, and at rest
How DLP works: standalone vs. integrated
The DLP learning curve
And more
IoT: 3 keys to handling the oncoming barrage of use casesAbhishek Sood
74.5 billion devices will be connected to the internet by 2025. The Internet of Things (IoT) is going to impact every industry around the world, if it hasn't already.
Of course, something as significant as the IoT will present a number of challenges as it is introduced to traditional operations environments.
Access this infographic to prepare for an onslaught of IoT use cases and refocus your strategy to focus on scale, complexity, and security.
How 3 trends are shaping analytics and data management Abhishek Sood
Explore how 3 current trends are shaping modern data environments and learn about the impact of non-relational databases, big data, cloud data integration, self-service analytics, and more.
API-led connectivity: How to leverage reusable microservicesAbhishek Sood
Government agencies across the globe – whether they be state, local, central, or federal – face a digital transformation imperative to adopt cloud, IoT, and mobile technologies that legacy systems often struggle to keep up with.
This white paper explores how to take an architectural approach centered around APIs and microservices to unlock monolithic legacy systems for digital transformation.
Find out how to build up your API management strategy, and learn how you can:
Accelerate project delivery driven by reusable microservices
Secure data exchange within and outside agencies
Use API-led connectivity to modernize legacy systems
And more
How to create a secure high performance storage and compute infrastructureAbhishek Sood
Creating a secure, high-performance enterprise storage system presents a number of challenges.
Without a high throughput, low latency connection between your SAN and your cloud compute infrastructure, your business will struggle to extract actionable insights in time to make the best decisions.
Download this white paper to discover technology designed to deliver maximum storage and compute capacity for enterprises, with massive data stores, that need to solve business problems fast without compromising the security of user information.
Enterprise software usability and digital transformationAbhishek Sood
This report produced by IFS and CFE Media explores how ERP software usability is closely linked to a business' perceived readiness for digital transformation.
Transforming for digital customers across 6 key industriesAbhishek Sood
While many industries recognize the value of digital transformation and the role it plays in meeting increasingly high customer expectations, digital transformation maturity is lagging behind in several industries.
To learn more, Forrester Consulting conducted a study to evaluate the state of digital transformation across 6 industries, including retail, banking, healthcare, insurance, telco, and media.
Find out how each of these industries is faring in a digital-first world, and uncover the report’s key findings about:
The role of digital technologies in shaping customer relationships
Areas of improvement: From operations to digital marketing
Recommendations for the next steps in digital transformation
And more
Authentication best practices: Experts weigh inAbhishek Sood
A 2017 Aite Group survey of 1,095 U.S. consumers who use online and/or mobile banking revealsusers’ perceptions of various forms of authentication.
Access this report now to uncover key findings from this study and expert recommendations to improve authentication security and user experience.
Inside, learn about:
•Notable 2016 data breaches
•Market trends and implications
•Consumers’ attitudes toward passwords
•Pros and cons of authentication methods
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of technologies, XML continues to play a vital role in structuring, storing, and transporting data across diverse systems. The recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) present new methodologies for enhancing XML development workflows, introducing efficiency, automation, and intelligent capabilities. This presentation will outline the scope and perspective of utilizing AI in XML development. The potential benefits and the possible pitfalls will be highlighted, providing a balanced view of the subject.
We will explore the capabilities of AI in understanding XML markup languages and autonomously creating structured XML content. Additionally, we will examine the capacity of AI to enrich plain text with appropriate XML markup. Practical examples and methodological guidelines will be provided to elucidate how AI can be effectively prompted to interpret and generate accurate XML markup.
Further emphasis will be placed on the role of AI in developing XSLT, or schemas such as XSD and Schematron. We will address the techniques and strategies adopted to create prompts for generating code, explaining code, or refactoring the code, and the results achieved.
The discussion will extend to how AI can be used to transform XML content. In particular, the focus will be on the use of AI XPath extension functions in XSLT, Schematron, Schematron Quick Fixes, or for XML content refactoring.
The presentation aims to deliver a comprehensive overview of AI usage in XML development, providing attendees with the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions. Whether you’re at the early stages of adopting AI or considering integrating it in advanced XML development, this presentation will cover all levels of expertise.
By highlighting the potential advantages and challenges of integrating AI with XML development tools and languages, the presentation seeks to inspire thoughtful conversation around the future of XML development. We’ll not only delve into the technical aspects of AI-powered XML development but also discuss practical implications and possible future directions.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Sudheer Mechineni, Head of Application Frameworks, Standard Chartered Bank
Discover how Standard Chartered Bank harnessed the power of Neo4j to transform complex data access challenges into a dynamic, scalable graph database solution. This keynote will cover their journey from initial adoption to deploying a fully automated, enterprise-grade causal cluster, highlighting key strategies for modelling organisational changes and ensuring robust disaster recovery. Learn how these innovations have not only enhanced Standard Chartered Bank’s data infrastructure but also positioned them as pioneers in the banking sector’s adoption of graph technology.
Climate Impact of Software Testing at Nordic Testing DaysKari Kakkonen
My slides at Nordic Testing Days 6.6.2024
Climate impact / sustainability of software testing discussed on the talk. ICT and testing must carry their part of global responsibility to help with the climat warming. We can minimize the carbon footprint but we can also have a carbon handprint, a positive impact on the climate. Quality characteristics can be added with sustainability, and then measured continuously. Test environments can be used less, and in smaller scale and on demand. Test techniques can be used in optimizing or minimizing number of tests. Test automation can be used to speed up testing.
Generative AI Deep Dive: Advancing from Proof of Concept to ProductionAggregage
Join Maher Hanafi, VP of Engineering at Betterworks, in this new session where he'll share a practical framework to transform Gen AI prototypes into impactful products! He'll delve into the complexities of data collection and management, model selection and optimization, and ensuring security, scalability, and responsible use.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
Removing Uninteresting Bytes in Software FuzzingAftab Hussain
Imagine a world where software fuzzing, the process of mutating bytes in test seeds to uncover hidden and erroneous program behaviors, becomes faster and more effective. A lot depends on the initial seeds, which can significantly dictate the trajectory of a fuzzing campaign, particularly in terms of how long it takes to uncover interesting behaviour in your code. We introduce DIAR, a technique designed to speedup fuzzing campaigns by pinpointing and eliminating those uninteresting bytes in the seeds. Picture this: instead of wasting valuable resources on meaningless mutations in large, bloated seeds, DIAR removes the unnecessary bytes, streamlining the entire process.
In this work, we equipped AFL, a popular fuzzer, with DIAR and examined two critical Linux libraries -- Libxml's xmllint, a tool for parsing xml documents, and Binutil's readelf, an essential debugging and security analysis command-line tool used to display detailed information about ELF (Executable and Linkable Format). Our preliminary results show that AFL+DIAR does not only discover new paths more quickly but also achieves higher coverage overall. This work thus showcases how starting with lean and optimized seeds can lead to faster, more comprehensive fuzzing campaigns -- and DIAR helps you find such seeds.
- These are slides of the talk given at IEEE International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshop, ICSTW 2022.
Threats to mobile devices are more prevalent and increasing in scope and complexity. Users of mobile devices desire to take full advantage of the features
available on those devices, but many of the features provide convenience and capability but sacrifice security. This best practices guide outlines steps the users can take to better protect personal devices and information.
Enchancing adoption of Open Source Libraries. A case study on Albumentations.AIVladimir Iglovikov, Ph.D.
Presented by Vladimir Iglovikov:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/iglovikov/
- https://x.com/viglovikov
- https://www.instagram.com/ternaus/
This presentation delves into the journey of Albumentations.ai, a highly successful open-source library for data augmentation.
Created out of a necessity for superior performance in Kaggle competitions, Albumentations has grown to become a widely used tool among data scientists and machine learning practitioners.
This case study covers various aspects, including:
People: The contributors and community that have supported Albumentations.
Metrics: The success indicators such as downloads, daily active users, GitHub stars, and financial contributions.
Challenges: The hurdles in monetizing open-source projects and measuring user engagement.
Development Practices: Best practices for creating, maintaining, and scaling open-source libraries, including code hygiene, CI/CD, and fast iteration.
Community Building: Strategies for making adoption easy, iterating quickly, and fostering a vibrant, engaged community.
Marketing: Both online and offline marketing tactics, focusing on real, impactful interactions and collaborations.
Mental Health: Maintaining balance and not feeling pressured by user demands.
Key insights include the importance of automation, making the adoption process seamless, and leveraging offline interactions for marketing. The presentation also emphasizes the need for continuous small improvements and building a friendly, inclusive community that contributes to the project's growth.
Vladimir Iglovikov brings his extensive experience as a Kaggle Grandmaster, ex-Staff ML Engineer at Lyft, sharing valuable lessons and practical advice for anyone looking to enhance the adoption of their open-source projects.
Explore more about Albumentations and join the community at:
GitHub: https://github.com/albumentations-team/albumentations
Website: https://albumentations.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/100504475
Twitter: https://x.com/albumentations
Maruthi Prithivirajan, Head of ASEAN & IN Solution Architecture, Neo4j
Get an inside look at the latest Neo4j innovations that enable relationship-driven intelligence at scale. Learn more about the newest cloud integrations and product enhancements that make Neo4j an essential choice for developers building apps with interconnected data and generative AI.
2. 2
CONTENTS
Summary 4
02. Scope of the problem 6
2.1. Employers looking for tech talent 6
2.2. Service provider looking for educated customers 6
2.3. People seeking knowledge and digital economy based employment 7
03. BitDegree: it is all about education 10
3.1. Introducing smart-incentives 10
3.2. Gamification as a cornerstone of the platform design 13
04. The BitDegree platform 15
4.1. Roadmap and a Bold vision for the BitDegree platform 15
4.2. Identity registry 17
4.3. Course material repository 17
4.4. Course material index 17
4.5. Assessment tools 18
4.6. Sponsorship area 19
4.7. Study area 19
4.8. Student achievements viewer 20
4.9. Inclusion of third party course material 22
4.10. Third party assessors 22
4.11. Students as mentors 22
4.12. Integration with 3rd party education platforms 23
06. Why BitDegree is superior to its alternatives 26
6.1. The market potential of BitDegree 27
07. Token Launch 30
08. BitDegree team 33
8.1. People behind BitDegree 33
8.2. Advisors 34
3. 3
Please read this entire section and do not take any actions until you finish it.
This White Paper is a summary of BitDegree’s business model and technology, plus a brief introduction to the BitDegree
fundraising principles, and it should be read in its entirety.
If you are in any doubt as to the action you should take, you should consult your legal, financial, tax, or other professional
advisor and do not contribute to the development of BitDegree.
If you decide to contribute to BitDegree’s development, please note that your contribution to BitDegree, to the best knowledge
of BitDegree, does not constitute an exchange of cryptocurrencies for any form of securities, investment units and/or form of
ordinary shares in BitDegree or any other company. A BitDegree token holder does not receive any form of dividend or other
revenue right, nor does it participate in any kind of profit sharing program.
Regulatory authorities are carefully scrutinizing business and operations associated with cryptocurrencies throughout the
world, therefore regulatory measures, investigations, or actions may impact BitDegree’s business and even limit or prevent
it from developing its operations in the future. All persons must be informed that BitDegree’s business model, the White
Paper, or terms and conditions may change or need to be modified due to regulatory and compliance requirements from any
applicable law in any jurisdiction.
All statements contained in this White Paper and within the BitDegree webpage, statements made in press releases or in any
place accessible to the public and oral statements that may be made by BitDegree, its founders, team members and any third
party involved in the BitDegree project or acting on behalf of BitDegree that are not statements of historical fact, constitute
“forward looking statements”. Neither BitDegree, its founders, team members, any third party involved in BitDegree project,
nor any other person represents warrants and/or undertakes that the actual future results, performance or achievements
of BitDegree will be as discussed in those forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are sometimes, but
not always, identified by their use of a date in the future. Forward-looking statements are predictive and involve risk and
uncertainty. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are based on assumptions.
The information contained in the BitDegree webpage and White Paper are of a descriptive nature only, are not binding, and
are subject to update.
No information in this White Paper should be considered to be business, legal, financial or tax advice regarding contribution
to the development of BitDegree.
BitDegree will do its utmost to launch its operations and develop the BitDegree platform, but does not provide any guarantee
it will manage to successfully achieve them. BitDegree assumes no liability or responsibility for any loss or damage that would
result from or relate to the incapacity to use BitDegree tokens, except in case of intentional misconduct or gross negligence.
All product and company names are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. UUse of such
company names does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.
4. 4
SUMMARY
The conventional centralized higher education system takes 4-6 years to educate a person and there
is no guarantee of employment afterwards. We believe that the digital industry today lacks workforce
because higher education institutions are not responding to the needs of actual labor market. Most
of the skills needed by the digital industry don’t even require a degree in higher education. Workforce
that has practical digital economy skills and willingness to learn is needed. That is why today more
and more tech-savvy teens get freelancing jobs and earn more than their parents do.
BitDegree is world’s first blockchain-powered, smart-incentives based online education platform
which will revolutionize global education and tech recruiting. The main purpose of the BitDegree
platform is to let Students acquire skills that are currently required by the labor market. The way to do
it is not to ask business what skills they need in the far future (3-5 years), but to respond to explicitly
expressed skilled labor demand quickly. BitDegree will directly align the incentives of students and
anyone who wants them to become knowledge workers in digital economy - like current or potential
employers, digital service providers and sponsors. Smart-incentive is a smart contract on Ethereum
network ensuring the exchange of tokens between a sponsor (the Incentive Creator) and a student
(the Incentive Taker), who is committing to study a specific subject in order to receive tokens (the
Incentive). The BitDegree platform will offer students online courses with a clear and transparent
blockchain-based reward system and achievement tracking. Our use case for blockchain is not
sensitive to prolonged waiting periods before transactions are committed, thus, overall platform
overhead (as in expenses) of using Ethereum network for transactional and immutable data storage
needs, will be low. To make the learning process as exciting as playing Minecraft we will use Octalysis
framework of gamification design.
We see BitDegree as a unique tool for business to recruit tech talent and shape global education to its
needs through smart-incentives. National government Job centers will be able to track the demand of
skills without having to involve scrupulous report gatherings from businesses and also help jobless
citizens by subsidising studies for skills on high demand. Think about it as Coursera and HackerRank
merged together, powered by blockchain technology. The main benefit of BitDegree platform to
incentive providers is the possibility to initiate and maintain dialogue with upcoming talent and
reward them for achievements through smart-incentives. Smart-incentives on the BitDegree platform
will range from small to large and be location and topic targeted. From the student’s perspective, it
means getting paid to learn new skills based on local demand, which not only incentivizes but can
actually be a viable escape from unskilled work.
Building quality, interactive, and engaging learning experience is essential to every successful
education platform. There are attempts to solve the problem: i.e. Coursera and CodeCademy. Despite
the fact that these frontrunners face abysmal course completion results, similar to the entire MOOCs
industry – just 5%, these two companies together are worth more than $1 billion today. Our proposed
5. 5
incentive alignment approach has not been attempted on any of educational platforms of which we
are aware. A merit-based reward, currently practiced on existing platforms, does not provide the
income needed to support a student while studying.
We will pursue our vision to develop the BitDegree platform regardless of the ICO’s outcome. We
anticipate a closed-test, involving incentive providers in Q2-2018, and an open launch of BitDegree in
Q1- 2019. The capital available to the development of the platform will determine its initial functionality
and choice of the course material made available. The anticipated capital raised during the ICO, will
enable us to directly compete with existing education platforms, even before realizing the benefits
of a very popular BitDegree platform. Companies creating technologies used in the digital economy
should consider contributing to the development of the platform, if only to ensure that technologies
they create are represented in the course material available to millions of students.
WE BELIEVE THAT:
01. Everybody in the world deserves access to proper education, no matter the gender,
race, age or religion;
02. The key to success of any technology business is to hire the best and well-educated
talent, and thus the business should be ready to invest in such talent;
03. Public education systems are flawed and need to be democratized, decentralized,
and otherwise disrupted;
04. Blockchain-powered smart-incentives and gamification features they enable are the
game changers.
6. 6
02. SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM
When we first started to analyze reasons behind and difficulties of hiring tech talent, we looked for
possible solutions and then wondered who else would benefit from the approach in which we would
take to address the problem. We then incorporated those parties to synthesize new problem scope
and tried to find the solution to newly defined problem. As in any of those exploratory endeavors,
one must not forget to limit the problem scope to minimum, and to look for solutions providing
maximum benefits to parties involved. We settled on a very small group of parties that are benefiting
greatly from synergetic solution.
2.1. Employers looking for tech talent
The shortage of tech employees is undeniably global and increasing. According to a Jobvite research,
HR professionals report that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to fill open positions, and 65% of
recruiters claim that talent shortage represents the biggest challenge in hiring1
. Everybody knows
that the key to success in any tech company is talent acquisition. By everybody we also mean the
talents themselves. Though the salary levels in tech and IT industry are constantly growing, it has
been proved not to be a sufficient incentive to attract the best employees and keep them loyal.
Companies compete raising and maintaining the employer profile, offering the perks unimaginable
in other industries. In the next five years, it is expected for the demand of talent to deliver on new
capabilities, to significantly outstrip the supply2
. It is estimated that the entire recruitment market is
worth over $200 billion worldwide and $4,000 is the average amount spent by a U.S. company to fill
an open position3
.
2.2. Service provider looking for educated customers
Service providers invest money and effort to understand the real-world problems and to create
solutions to those problems. Most often, many companies provide similar solutions with some specific
differentiating features. Their solutions usually become known to new users/adopters via advertising
and old-fashioned word of mouth. Companies are spending significant amounts on advertising
in order to attract new customers, and to spread the word about their distinct ways of providing
value to their customers. For example, a service provider spends on average 300 USD on Google
adwords to acquire one new web hosting client. This is a huge amount in a low margin business. By
accepting BitDegree tokens, various web service providers, such as Hostinger, will be able to attract
a new flow of targeted customers in the most cost-effective way. Naturally, the service and product
providers shall also grow the interest to sponsor BitDegree users instead of giving service discounts
or vouchers. Tech savvy students and users are valued clients targeted by various industries. By
1 http://www.gethppy.com/
2 http://www.mckinsey.com/
3 https://www.forbes.com/
7. 7
providing incentivized courses that explain problems and the approaches taken by the company to
resolve them as implemented in their offerings, other service and product providers can nurture well
informed potential clients. Students with BitDegree scholarships will become qualified clients, ones
with a proven interest in learning technology, and a willingness to spend money on various products
and services. Qualified clients require less hand-holding from technical support teams, and do not
inflate a service provider’s support-related costs. As more and more SAAS buying decisions are made
by an employee working directly to automate some tasks for his employer, his preexisting exposure
to service provider offerings can influence the buying decisions of his company.
Hostinger is the 1st service provider who has agreed to accept BitDegree Tokens in exchange for its
services. Any user who learns digital skills on t he BitDegree platform will be able to order domain
names and web hosting services, and put newly acquired knowledge in practice at Hostinger.
2.3. People seeking knowledge and digital economy based
employment
Unskilled labor force is replaced by the automation more frequently. Automation forces unskilled
people to acquire new skills in areas where it does not provide cheap alternatives. Most areas
requiring knowledge, creativity, feel for aesthetics, and problem-solving skills are becoming better
paid, due to the shortage of qualified candidates. So how can one manage to develop new skills in
the market today? We have a higher education industry caring for those in need of knowledge, and
willing to work hard to develop their skills.
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攀搀甀挀愀琀椀漀渀 猀礀猀琀攀洀
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爀攀焀甀椀爀攀搀 愀洀漀甀渀琀 漀昀
搀攀洀愀渀搀攀搀 氀愀戀漀爀
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戀礀 戀甀猀椀渀攀猀猀
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渀漀爀洀猀 搀爀椀瘀攀
搀攀挀椀猀椀漀渀 眀栀愀琀
琀漀 猀琀甀搀礀
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The Internet has enabled us to reach the universal knowledge pool, to interact directly and informally
with the greatest minds of our age. However, the entire global education system has become frozen,
using centuries old methods that are virtually ineffective. There is a global need to disrupt the status
quo. It is not a surprise to anyone that higher education institutions are failing to fulfill their mission
- to transfer know-how, and let students develop practical skills that are necessary to guarantee
successful employment. The current education model faces many problems:
Education is expensive. Each year the price of education is growing. Students have to distribute
their time between the studies and low-level jobs, still ending up with huge debts for their education.
Figure 1. The conventional labor market education model
8. 8
The high price combined with the lack of incentives result in a decline of motivation to continue
studies. Students need an extra push in the right direction. Recent years have seen the rise of fintech
startups dedicated to student loan financing, but it is unavailable to the majority of the world. We
think that the loan approach is morally wrong, and that everyone should have the opportunity to
educate him/herself without the risk of defaulting on a huge debt.
Educational system so far offers mostly long-time incentives - the unspecified promise of
future employment. However, educational institutions rarely analyze and link business needs to
their curricula. The gap between the needs of employers and student knowledge already exists
and is widening. This results in the need for business to provide the post-graduates with long-
term and expensive training. We are building BitDegree to enable a direct and mutually beneficial
communication between businesses and future employees.
Students lose motivation. One way to increase students’ motivation is to use gamification in the
educational process. A lot of small incentives make learning interesting. The use of games in the
educational process attract the student at the beginning and retains attention throughout the game.
Gamification can reduce problems caused by low concentration aand it can also help more effective
learning. Research has shown that no more than 20% of information is processed while reading,
compared to 90% by using gamification4
.
According to study, conducted by Pew Research Center and Elon University, the majority (53% of
respondents) were confident that gamification will be very common in all areas of life by 20205
. Other
research has shown that 75% of teachers believe that digital learning content will totally replace
printed textbooks within the next 10 years6
.
The constant and growing need for continuous learning. Thomas Picketty, the economist and
author of “Capital in the 21st Century” concludes that across more than 300 years of history, the only
predictable factor that drives individual earnings potential are “skills and knowledge”. Today learning
is a part of economic survival. However, education is not enough if we don’t stay current, up to date,
and continuously re-skilled in our professions (regardless of what they are). We fall behind. Our belief
is that our smart incentives provide necessary, life-long learning possibilities.
2.4. Synthesis of the problem worth solving
The industry needs educated users as much as it needs skilled employees. Conventional education
is taking too long to satisfy these demands. Looking from the user’s perspective, there is a lack of a
clear incentive, especially when the conventional education process is so ingrained in the culture.
Digital industries such as recruiting and lead-generation are worth hundreds of billions each, but fail
to be integrated properly to support education, even though there are clear synergies. The reasons
4 http://voxmate.ru/
5 http://voxmate.ru/
6 https://www2.deloitte.com/
9. 9
for failure are numerous: the current non-digital nature of education, the biased legacy systems
of personal contacts, reputation and trust issues, geographic and cultural challenges (if a global
perspective were taken into account), etc. Educational institutions and digital industries do not
align very well despite an inherent synergy. This synergy can be better realized by overcoming the
obstacles of bias with neutral technology. It is essential to start with the most advanced area of the
education sector – digital economy skill development – before tackling the more mainstream sectors
of education. But our team is up to both challenges.
10. 10
03. BITDEGREE: IT IS ALL ABOUT
EDUCATION
We are proposing a digital incentivized studying platform as a new tool to grow the global tech talent
pool. Companies in need of tech talent will provide financial incentives to students willing to participate
in training courses and to develop their skills. Companies seeking to get people familiar with newly
introduced technology or services, will provide financial incentives to students willing to spend time
to learn and to try the company’s offerings. By providing incentives, any company explicitly signals
the demand for certain qualifications, or informs about knowledge and skills needed to effectively
use newly introduced technology/products/services. People looking for new opportunities will learn
new technologies, develop practical skills in demand, and get familiar with existing technological
solutions provided by solution providers. Job seekers will enroll to subsidized courses to get more
knowledge and to develop skills within selected technology topic. The course materials and learning
process will be made interactive and in a highly engaging way by following field-proven gamification
methods. Students will be able to communicate with other students and course mentors, to pose
questions, and seek for more detailed explanations. All course material and progress assessment
will be divided to small chunks in order to enable short-term effort in the reward cycle. In addition
to subsidized course material, each student showing learning progress will be rewarded with
platform Tokens. Companies providing incentives will be able to get in touch with students enrolled
in subsidized courses, and possibly offer employment positions for good performers. Companies,
offering to accept Tokens for services, will allow students to deepen newly acquired skills, while using
commercial services offerings. Students will also be able to exchange Tokens on exchange platforms.
The BitDegree platform will register progress of each student, and will provide ways the students can
prove they overcome the challenge of developing and applying skills to solve problems. BitDegree
will rely on Ethereum platform to enable incentives scheme and to store transparent record of all
achievements made by students
3.1. Introducing smart-incentives
Smart-incentive is an Ethereum blockchain based smart-contract ensuring exchange of value (tokens)
between the incentive creator (sponsor) and the incentive taker (student). Incentive taker is committing
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Figure 2. The proposed BitDegree education model
11. 11
to perform study effort in order to receive the incentive (tokens). The underwriter of this smart-incentive
is the BitDegree platform, which will provide the proof of study effort verification. Any company (like
a potential employer or a technology/service provider), government institution, (like a school, job
centers or prisons) and even ordinary citizens can become an incentive creator. Smart-incentives will
be created by Incentive Creators who will provide sponsorship amount and define maximum number
of applicants, date and time of when students can begin enrollment to course, when enrollment
becomes unavailable, and how long the incentives are left available to enrolled students. The
Incentive Creator will be able to set prerequisites for candidates, availability and intensity of incentives
for selected regions or even specific areas e.g. Tampa, Florida, US. Incentive Takers will be able to
lookup what kind of Study courses are available to them in their locality with respect to their track
records of achievements. All student engagement with smart-incentive will leave tamper proof trail
in the blockchain. The smart contract will provide assurance of incentive payment. The use of Token
enables us to serve the economic incentives to any student in the world, which is not possible with
flat money due to high transaction costs
Figure 3. How Smart-incentives work
Proof of study efforts. The BitDegree platform will provide proof of study effort verification for
all courses hosted on the platform. We will implement several familiar verification mechanisms like
tests, problem solving, creative assignments and others. The majority of the verification mechanisms
will be automated. In the future, for specific types of Study efforts, the BitDegree platform will open
up to 3rd party Proof of Study effort verifiers, that will provide study effort assessment and will be
incentivized to operate with compliance to quality of service requirements. The incentive to verifiers
will be based on a feedback of perceived evaluation quality as experienced by Incentive Creators.
Study efforts verification work will be compensated with a small part of the Incentive (tokens). Studye
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12. 12
ffort definition and enablement (preparing and running the course for the Student to study) is also
rewarded with a part of the Incentive (tokens).
Study effort enablers (Course authors and mentors). We anticipate the case where 3rd parties will
create part of study courses. In this case BitDegree will remain the Underwriter of smart-incentives.
For example, Courses can be created by 3rd parties on demand or at their own discretion, like in
Coursera, and the creators will earn tokens for usage and teaching of their courses. Once again,
course material, mentorship, and verification will be measured and judged according to requirements
of quality of service, and will be incentivized accordingly.
Chaining smart incentives together. Smart-incentives can be combined together to form a graph
of mandatory and/or at least one in a predefined set of prerequisites, e.g., student enrolling to a
frontend course should learn HTML and any of style setting alternatives (CSS/SASS/LESS/... as well as
any of languages targeting EcmaScript/DOM UavaScript/TypeScript/Eim/..) to claim a final front-end
capability reward. Smart-incentives can be applied to work of any length: a single action, a task, an
extensive assignment, a degree. This enables continuous learning for big bodies of knowledge and
different studying paths to achieve similar skillsets.
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Smart-incentives types. We will work with gamification specialists to design various smart-incentives,
i.e., rewards, incentive prizes, competitions, etc. We particularly believe in the Octalysis framework
and will apply it to various aspects of BitDegree. In the future, the smart-incentives may be designed
by 3rd parties, including Sponsors, to be tailored to the needs that we cannot foresee right now.
Figure 4. Example of serial chaining of smart-incentives
13. 13
Smart-incentives have many favorable qualities and provide solutions to some of the problems we
are aware of:
• they signal topics/skills in demand;
• they offer small rewards for small achievements and keep students engaged;
• they record all student achievements;
• they provide transparent records of how sponsorship was spent;
• they may offer rewards to course material creators;
• they may offer rewards to human evaluators assessing student’s progress.
3.2. Gamification as a cornerstone of the platform design
Smart-incentives have great gamification properties. As smart-incentives can underwrite exceedingly
small tasks. Nowadays, gamification is a key driver of a student’s motivation. It helps students to
actively engage in the process and makes learning as fun as playing computer games. Students
become more productive because a small incentive is always near – like collecting XP points and
raising your Level. The gaming industry has proven that this concept works effectively and brings
financial success to entertainment products responsive to human conditions: stress induced by
impatience, feelings of pride to be the first to achieve a goal or a need to belong with some group. We
will tap into the same subliminal pathways that our students so effectively exercise each time they
play computer games by implementing gamification through smart-incentives.
Yu-kai Chou defines gamification as “Human-Focused Design”, as the process takes into account
humans’ feelings along with reasons why people want to do certain things, or not. Yu-kai Chou
elaborated a gamification framework called Octalysis, which represents eight Core Drives of people’s
motivations. The Octalysis framework is an octagon shape with the Drives on each side.
According to Yu-kai Chou Core, Drives of people’s motivation are:
1. Epic Meaning & Calling. If a person is engaged in a process and believes that it is the mission of
great importance, he/she is ready to put a lot of effort, free time into pursuing this goal.
2. Development & Accomplishment. People like to see the results of the performed activities,
receive some bonuses or prizes for their accomplishments, and get to the leaders’ list.
3. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback. None of the awards matters to a person if the goal
can be easily obtained. Only those rewards matter, for which a person overcomes difficulties.
4. Ownership & Possession. When a person possesses something, he/she instinctively tries to
multiply the possessions and/or improve them.
5. Social Influence & Relatedness. The fifth factor incorporates all social elements motivating
people: mentorship, social acceptance, companionship, competition, and envy. When we see a
14. 14
friend reach a high level in the game, we, as a rule, wish to catch up with and overtake him/her.
6. Scarcity & Impatience. The sixth factor that motivates a person is the desire to possess
something simply because of its scarcity.
7. Unpredictability & Curiosity. Curiosity encourages people to continue progress, because they
want to know what will be next.
8. Loss & Avoidance. The majority of people prefer to act immediately because of fear of losing
the possibility forever.
The intelligent use of such drivers within the BitDegree platform, will enable us to not only attract
new students, but will also to contribute towards sustaining the interest of existing users.
Figure 5. Octalysis framework
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15. 15
04. THE BITDEGREE PLATFORM
WelovetheideaofrunningBitDegreeplatformondecentralizedblockchainfueledinternet.Webelieve
in decentralization and self-sustainable architectures, however, we see the need for centralization of
certain aspects of the platform (at least in the beginning) in order to enable shorter development and
deployment cycles and to ensure faster market adoption. After evaluating the current technology
capabilities, such as blockstack.org we have decided to start with mature, conventional web
technology. With time, we will aim to decentralize such things as course creation, course mentorship,
verification of study, smart-incentives creation and others. At first, we want to make platform that
is operational and we already have the basic implementations of some of the components in place
up and running. Initially, the platform will provide minimal set of complete and functional services,
essential to sustainability of the platform but we have a bold general plan for the future.
4.1. Roadmap and a Bold vision for the BitDegree platform
We practice agile development and therefore carefully plan for the immediate goals and draw general
plans for the future according to the vision that we want to achieve. We share the motto of Jeff Bezos
– “We are stubborn on vision but flexible on details”. We see at least 3 essential stages of platform
development. We have clear plans for v1, however, what will happen in v2 and v3 will depend on the
lessons learned in v1.
We follow core guiding principles for the platform design:
1. decentralization,
2. transparency,
3. inclusion,
4. sustainability,
5. growth,
6. disruption.
We will use these principles when deciding on the strategic direction of the platform and new
functionalities.
16. 16
ROADMAP
2007-2016 - 29M+ user base
Reached 29 million users on 000webhost - free web development learning platform, and Host-
inger - web hosting services. Biggest part of users are young tech-savvy with deep will to learn,
build and grow. Users love us as an online learning platform already.
2017 spring - Web fundamentals
Summary of 500+ articles about web coding fundamentals was prepared. Polishing of the busi-
ness strategy. Approaching first business partners. Consulting with numerous universities and
blockchain companies to develop first courses.
2017 summer/autumn - BitDegree ICO
Period of building Ethereum Smart Contract for upcoming BitDegree ICO event.
An ERC20 token, auditing SM code. Development of MOOC Educational expertise partnerships.
Marketing. BitDegree Token Crowdsale & Distribution Event.
2018 winter/spring - Best online IT Learning Courses
Launching the first Blockchain course material. Hire field experts to manage project expansion.
Source the best tutors. Blockchain identity registry research and implementation. Onboard 3rd
party providers. Course material repository and structure generalization.
Launch first 100 courses with world’s best online learning experience.
2018 Q2/Q3 - Hype on Student sector
Continue Blockchain knowledge improvement. First token scholarship issued. First partners
accept token in BitDegree ecosystem. Start full-stack marketing activities, oriented on student
engagement with strong influencers community & Alumni partnerships. Achievement and gami-
fication tracking for students. Tools enabling verification of study effort. Study area and student
achievements viewer. Smart incentives contract implementation. Mobile platform development.
Students as mentors. 3rd party content. 3rd party assessors.
2018 Q4 - Business Platform launch
Developed & launched platform for Sponsors. Business development towards strong sponsor-
ships with emphasis development of courses with a focus on skills in-demand. Creating sourcing
pool for talent. Course material index. Sponsorship area. Course chunks mapping and career
paths building area.
Future
3rd party integrations. Digital Service Provider SDK Development. Building SDK for a third party
Digital Service Providers to integrate Bitdegree Tokens as a mean of value exchange into market
cycle. At this point in time blockchain technologies are already widely adopted. Tools for token
integration into 3rd parties is already present. BitDegree for Business. BitDegree Jobs. BitDegree
Certification. BitDegree Decentralized Diploma. BitDegree education AI assistant. Decentralized
diploma viewer. BitDegree training. BitDegree young talent aquisition. BitDegree Braille (blind
education). BitDegree for Third World countries.
Figure 6. General plan for platform development
17. 17
We anticipate that version 1 of the platform will provide a set of essential services: identity registry,
course material repository, course material index, assessment tools, sponsorship area, study area,
and student achievement viewer.
4.2. Identity registry
All platform users, willing to interact with the platform, will be able to create a passwordderived
cryptographic pseudo-identity. To enjoy full functionality of the platform, users will be able to use
3rd party service providers to link user’s pseudo-identity to government issued identity and provide
other information needed to become eligible for sponsored courses. We highly value personal
privacy, and so we will enable students themselves to choose their position in a tradeoff of disclosing
more personal information for becoming eligible to enroll in more subsidized courses. All student
interactions with smart-incentives will only record pseudo-identities. The linked government issued
identity will become viewable to sponsors when the student enrolls in a subsidized course, or to
other 3rd parties, when the student shares a student achievement verification link with the above
mentioned 3rd parties. Companies and other organizations will have to disclose their registered
identities when providing sponsorship. Private citizens will be able to choose if they want to disclose
their government issued identity when providing sponsorship.
4.3. Course material repository
Enrolling in a course will give students permission to use the course material hosted on the platform.
Initially, course material will be created or licensed from content creators based on demand from
sponsors. The course material will be created in small ‘chunks’ (similar to the scope of a single
Wikipedia page). Each chunk will contain a summary of the content, tags for indexing, explanations
of concepts and theory, descriptions of the ways theory can be applied to solve specific problems,
examples of practical applications, challenges for students to apply theory in practice, and a criteria/
dataset for automated verification of the understandings/skills developed. All chunks will have an
associated knowledge base for frequently asked questions and answers, alternative explanations,
and other user contributed material. Content chunks can be joined to form continuous paths of
educational experience tailored to specific career positions and roles required by sponsors. Many
positions and roles require similar, but slightly distinct, paths of learning experiences, thus, reuse of
course materials will allow the reduction of overall costs of course material preparation. Additional
learning paths can be cheaply assembled by reusing existing chunks and creating only the necessary
additional pieces. Students can also benefit from reuse by skipping the assessment step in case they
already successfully completed identical material while in pursuit of another path and, thus, only
need a short memory refresh.
18. 18
4.4. Course material index
The course material index is a database used to store and search chunk meta information and
semantic links among all content chunks. There will be many content chunks available, and as a
result finding something that will fit a student’s career path could be difficult. While tailoring specific
learning paths to our sponsors we will detect and name recurring learning paths to be reused later as
guidance for additional paths. To make search more manageable, the semantic relations of chunks-
to-paths and paths-to-paths will be recorded and continuously maintained. BitDegree will maintain
public global naming space for chunks and paths but all sponsors will be able to define their own
naming or import chunks and paths distinctly from our global naming space. Selected paths can
be enhanced with conditions and imbued with smart-incentives. By immutably storing all publicly
used paths, we can easily vary course material while retaining chunk reusability and the student
achievement history that points to all chunks involved in course completion.
By managing chunks in a fashion resembling a semantic web, we gain more insights into what other,
related concepts could be beneficial to students. We will be able to track which chunks are most
commonly used in the critical paths of many courses and improve them more frequently compared
to lesser used chunks. A chunk public index will need constant curating, which will be performed by
BitDegree employees driven by recommendations and inputs from platform users.
4.5. Assessment tools
Fast and efficient self-assessment is crucial to maintaining motivation. We will generate individualized
chunk-focused or path-focused tests for student self-assessment based on testing datasets provided
ineachchunk.Forprogrammingtasksthatcanbeautomaticallyevaluated,thismayincludeexecutable
code to test the code written by students. Automated assessment will recommend which topics/
chunks to repeat to improve performance. Many assignment types require demonstration of creative
thinking and have many known and unknown methods of solving problems given to students.
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Figure 7. Course asignment assessment tools
19. 19
Human evaluation is necessary for those types of assignments and we are looking for economically
balanced ways to incorporate human verifiers (at first, course mentors) into assessment.
The assessment process will also try to detect cheating by applying machine learning techniques to
track exhibited student behavior, like the amount of time taken to become familiar with material and
complete exercises, the tendency to ask questions and not wait for the reply before trying to assess
his skills, and therewith, infer a risk rating. The rigor and scrutiny applied to assessment will depend
on the inferred risk rating. Each assessment will work as a challenge response mechanism, and a
positive evaluation will result in a signed achievement certificate, which later will be used to claim the
smart-incentive reward from the smart-contract.
4.6. Sponsorship area
Identified and authenticated sponsors will get access to the platform’s sponsorship area. They
will be able to use a guided process to express their needs in the form of campaigns. An example
campaign would encode information on the budget available (X tokens worth 8000 USD), pre-defined
satisfactory results (e.g., prepare two candidates for unfilled front-end positions), the qualification
goals for candidates in the form of learning paths successfully completed (e.g., developers with
demonstrated experience of using angular2 to implement a web shopping cart application). Another
campaign example would encode the budget allowance, limits on number of students enrolling and
topics (e.g., covering the use of the sponsor’s product) being sponsored. We are looking into many
ways sponsors will be able to define their satisfactory results, constrain students’ eligibility, establish
rules of splitting-off sponsorship amounts to reward joining campaigns (enrolling in courses), and the
use of dynamic pricing principles (within the budget scope), depending on the results of the ongoing
campaign. Sponsors will be able to increase the budget and targeted students for a campaign at
any time. The campaign will be publicly announced after it has been defined and planned, and the
budget paid. The platform will try to match students that have expressed interest in topics covered
by sponsored courses and will notify them in advance of a slightly delayed public announcement
to other qualified students. Given the sufficient budget allocation to help mentor new talent, and
an openly disclosed compensation for any positions being offered, the students with achievements
matching the required qualifications, and willing to receive position offers will be notified about the
newly opened positions. Sponsors will be able to track overall student enrollment and individual
progress of each enrolled student. Automatically triggered notifications will be sent to sponsors when
campaign results are being partially or fully matched, (i.e., one or several students having successfully
completed all assessments, proving their qualifications for open positions)..
4.7. Study area
Identified and authenticated students will be authorized to access the study area of the BitDegree
platform. During the first visit to the area, students will be asked to create a student profile. They
20. 20
will be asked to disclose some personal information, to establish their privacy settings, to rank study
fields and topics in order of interest, and to select ways they can be contacted by the platform.
Personal information includes mandatory information, like government issued identity (name,
surname), date of birth, location of residence, and it may include optional factors like native
language, proficiency in foreign languages, and other personal factors. Privacy settings will allow
the restriction of when, how, and which personal information may be disclosed to other parties. For
example, some sponsorships may only be made available to residents of certain areas, therefore
the platform will not offer enrollment to students who prefer to hide their location of residence.
Students will be asked how they can be reached (by email, Facebook, text message, etc.) in the event
that new sponsored studies, matching their interests would become available, or new employment
positions matching their achievements become available, plus all other listed and unlisted cases.
Any case can be enabled or disabled individually at the student’s discretion. After completing their
profiles students will be able to look up available sponsored study courses and read about rewards
and perks (like job offers for the first or top achievers) associated with successful participation and
completion of a sponsored course. Students can access selected course material by enrolling in a
particular course. The enrolment process may include answering some questions, such as how much
time a student has available to engage a selected course. This will allow sponsors to estimate the
time-to-completion of the course. Students will access course material and complete self-assessment
exercises whenever they feel ready for it. Students are able to communicate to other students or
course mentors if they are unable to answer any questions. Sponsors will be tracking progress of
students enrolled in courses and will be able to initiate a dialog with any enrolled student. Students
will get notified when such communication is desired by a sponsor and will be given means to accept
and continue the dialogue.
4.8. Student achievements viewer
As part of our prospective vision we see BitDegree being used as the main platform to attract talent,
yet old-fashioned ways may continue to be in use. When responding to old-fashioned job applications,
BitDegree students will be able to generate and include a link to their achievements viewer page on
BitDegree showing a summary of their achievements made on the BitDegree platform. Students
will be able to select what achievements they want to be visible to the viewers, as some may not
be needed for a specific employer or job application. Every prospective employer can receive a
distinct and custom-tailored link. The achievement viewer will display a verified government issued
student identity, and courses taken and successfully completed without disclosing the student’s
pseudoidentity. Although no direct link between pseudo-identity and government issued identity will
be disclosed on the achievements viewer, this may not prevent highly motivated employers from
looking for correlations of disclosed achievements and matching achievements on the blockchain to
reveal the pseudo-identity and, thus, all other undisclosed achievements on the platform.
21. 21
Version 1 of BitDegree platform will provide solutions to most of the problems we seek to
solve:
• It will match business and student incentives;
• It will allow businesses to familiarize students with their offerings;
• It will enable opportunistic, continuous learning for people striving to gain new desired skills and
knowledge;
• It will lower costs of sharing the knowledge and assessing knowledge/skills;
• It will help motivate students to continue with their study efforts and will provide incentives to
those progressing forward.
In the future, large and detailed data sets of information about BitDegree users will allow for useful
big data analysis revealing career guidance and employment-fit matchmaking. Imagine students’
being able to completely by-pass the conventional education system and be guided to their most
profitable and/or exciting career options based on how well they are studying micro-courses.
Moreover, we could steer students toward course choices that guarantee employment right after the
completion. BitDegree will become an essential tool to unlock this unprecedented potential and to
disrupt outdated education systems. This is the future that we believe in and will do our best to bring
to reality.
In the scope of Version 2 of the BitDegree platform we will increase the choices of available content,
introduce localized version of course material, and scale mentorship and assessment functions.
We would like to include more human touch and guidance in the learning process. Only open and
flourishing ecosystems can grow beyond their original limitations, and opening up the platform will
be a primary objective for us.
䄀氀氀漀眀 戀甀猀椀渀攀猀猀攀猀 琀漀
昀愀洀椀氀椀愀爀椀稀攀 猀琀甀搀攀渀琀猀
眀椀琀栀 琀栀攀椀爀 漀昀昀攀爀椀渀最猀
䔀渀愀戀氀攀 挀漀渀琀椀渀甀漀甀猀
氀攀愀爀渀椀渀最 昀漀爀 猀琀甀搀攀渀琀猀
䰀漀眀攀爀 挀漀猀琀猀 漀昀
猀栀愀爀椀渀最 欀渀漀眀氀攀搀最攀
愀渀搀 愀猀猀攀猀猀椀渀最 猀欀椀氀氀猀
䴀漀琀椀瘀愀琀攀 猀琀甀搀攀渀琀猀 戀礀
瀀爀漀瘀椀搀椀渀最 椀渀挀攀渀琀椀瘀攀猀
䴀愀琀挀栀 戀甀猀椀渀攀猀猀
愀渀搀 猀琀甀搀攀渀琀
椀渀挀攀渀琀椀瘀攀猀
Figure 8. Bitdegree platform benefits
22. 22
4.9. Inclusion of third party course material
We aim to establish a live ecosystem of content creators contributing to the success of the platform.
Third parties will be able to contribute to the scope of a single chunk, a series of progressive chunks
or even a complete course covering a specific area of expertise. Contributors could register their
fields of expertise and receive requests to create content for new or trending topics and/or improve
existing content in exchange for compensation. Unsolicited opportunistic content creation could
also help cover less trendy but nonetheless important topics (as in a COBOL developer course or
OpenVMS administrator training material).
Contributors will have to adhere to contribution guidelines for course material to be accepted. The
guidelines will cover acceptable forms of knowledge transfer methods supported by our platform,
requirements for datasets used to assess completion, conflict resolution processes, acceptable
content licensing terms, and other details.
We are looking into secure schemes of providing fair and reasonable incentives to contributors.
Conventional learning platforms with standard rewards schemes to contributors have certain
weaknesses that can be abused. In such abusive schemes, giving rewards directly to content providers
does not really contribute benefits to students. Testing and research into aligning the interests of all
parties involved will be needed. We would like to explore ways to measure how helpful 3rd party-
supplied material is to learning a subject during our testing phases via implicit (passive observation)
feedback from students and A/B testing of the same content from different content providers. We
believe that rewards collected for continuously providing contributions to our platform could become
a source of steady income for active contributors.
4.10. Third party assessors
Intricate and complex topics require more flexible and responsive assessment that only humans
can provide (at least today). Standard testing practices that give lots of false negatives by assessing
only minor details and overlooking the broader picture of the persona may not reveal talented
students. That is why a second opinion from a human assessor may provide a great opportunity to
keep students from dropping out. As more and more content from different fields of science and
technology become available on the platform, the inevitable need for human assessors will become
evident. Some advanced qualifications may even require 3rd party assessors to verify knowledge/
skills in a controlled environment and in the physical presence of the student. Many 3rd parties
provide professional assessment services and we will tabs on the market for existing solutions.
4.11. Students as mentors
Most of us have had the enlightening experience of finally understanding some complex topic with
23. 23
just a little push and help from another student or a master of the craft, when books and blogs failed
to deliver the final missing piece of the whole picture. Allowing distinguished students to mentor
other students can greatly benefit them both. To help someone else understand new concepts, one
must look for several ways to present such concepts and their relationships to other concepts. This
practice deepens a mentor’s understanding and sometimes leads to new insights. Different deep
perspectives delivered by a mentor can shorten the time it takes for a student to grasp the concept
and its utility for solving problems. We will be researching technological solutions for students to
solicit help from mentors and enable seamless mentor-student communication to achieve that ‘Ah-
Ha!’ moment. Furthermore, we will seek suitable incentive models to apply to the circumstance.
The path to the 3rd Version of the platform will lead to even broader content available to students
as a result of strategic partnerships with other education platforms.
4.12. Integration with 3rd party education platforms
Integration with 3rd party education platforms will provide mutual benefits to BitDegree and its
partners. BitDegree would mine the data of recurring sponsorship from major employers to match
students with the best studying options available, not limited to just the content available on the
BitDegree platform. We would seek assessors that are independent of 3rd party platforms to organize
intermediate/ final assessments.
24. 24
吀伀䬀䔀一 䴀䄀刀䬀䔀吀匀
匀瀀漀渀猀漀爀
䤀渀挀攀渀琀椀瘀攀猀 䤀渀挀攀渀琀椀瘀攀猀 䤀渀挀攀渀琀椀瘀攀猀 䤀渀挀攀渀琀椀瘀攀猀
匀攀氀氀 匀攀氀氀 匀攀氀氀 匀攀氀氀 唀猀攀 匀攀爀瘀椀挀攀猀
匀瀀漀渀猀漀爀
匀攀氀氀 匀攀氀氀
吀䠀䔀 倀䰀䄀吀䘀伀刀䴀
匀瀀漀渀猀漀爀猀 匀琀甀搀攀渀琀䴀攀渀琀漀爀猀䌀漀渀琀攀渀琀
䌀爀攀愀琀漀爀猀
䄀猀猀攀猀猀漀爀猀 䐀椀最椀琀愀氀 匀攀爀瘀椀挀攀
倀爀漀瘀椀搀攀爀猀
05. TOKEN CYCLE AND BENEFITS TO
PARTIES INVOLVED
Figure 9. Token flow
Sponsors are the main economic fuel for sustainable BitDegree economy. The economic incentive
for Sponsors to buy BitDegree tokens is the targeted platform for the employer branding and
recruitment of tech talent. Corporate and private employers, HR companies, government and non-
government organizations, other talent acquisition and talent growth structures/agents will be buying
tokens to initiate, fund and create courses, establish scholarships and other rewards targeting exact
topics and areas of study. For the spent tokens, Sponsors will be able find, train and recruit talent.
Digital service providers, who want to familiarize users with their products, would buy tokens to
sponsor the students willing to spend time to learn the products offered. By providing sponsorship
to BitDegree platform and accepting BitDegree tokens IAAS/SAAS and other digital service providers
will be able to attract freshly minted technology power users. The BitDegree platform will spend
tokens to incentivize students, content providers, assessors, mentors and to cover marketing and
other operational expenses.
Content providers, assessors and mentors will receive compensation (in a form of tokens) for their
contributions to the platform and for helping to organize educational process. We anticipate most of
the compensations received will be sold in token markets.
People looking for new opportunities or jobs will study on the platform. Students will receive tokens
as rewards for choosing to study topics in demand and for continuing to show learning progress in a
25. 25
form of tokens. Good performers are likely to receive offers to join sponsoring companies. Students
may also accept offers to familiarize themselves with services provided by digital service providers
for a fee (in a form of tokens). Students will be exchanging tokens for the services and products of
digital service providers, spend tokens on the BitDegree.org platform (for premium or non-sponsored
courses, funding of courses on topics of interest, etc.) and exchange tokens to fiat on token markets.
The amount spent by a U.S. company to fill an open position approaches 4,000 USD and the entire
recruitment market is over 200 billion USD worldwide. We do not doubt the fungibility of t h e
BitDegree Token.
26. 26
06. WHY BITDEGREE IS SUPERIOR TO ITS
ALTERNATIVES
There are many well established companies providing remote learning experience like Coursera,
Khan Academy, EdX, CodeCademy, FutureLearn, XuetangX, Udacity and others. These companies
run platforms to provide access to content, assess student knowledge, enable student to mentor
communication. Each company has its take on how to cover its running expenses, for example: by
being supported by consortium of universities, providing paid course or paid assessment, providing
company and product branding. By being pioneers in the new field, those companies burned
through huge amounts of investments to learn about things that does work together and things
that does not fit well. Sadly, after becoming very popular, they become too big to risk introducing
radically new ideas to get funded, introducing new forms of training material, or experimenting with
new communication patterns. The current success of these companies is staggering and allows to
measure the size of market we are about to enter. Top 10 of these companies have in excess of 110
million cumulative registered users with some companies showing revenue in excess of 60M USD.
We are coming late to the market. Coming late to the market allows us to study history and attempts
of each company to test ideas, techniques and to create user centric focused workflows. Being small
allows us to rapidly test new ideas and ways we respond to the needs of our students, sponsors and
contributors. We studied most of well-established remote education providers by enrolling to courses
and learned best practices used but also experienced many difficulties. We analyzed availability and
price of certification, availability of scholarship, value provided to scholarship sponsors and a level of
gamification employed in educational process.
COURSES FREE OR
PAID?
Free Free Paid Mostly free
CERTIFICATES BitDegree ID
For CodeCademy Pro
Intensive only
Yes, but paid Yes, but paid
SCHOLARSHIPS/
EARN TO LEARN
Earn to learn
No scholarship
available
For individual courses
only
For individual courses
only
VALUE TO
SPONSORS
• Receive high-skilled
workers
• Advertise their
products and services
• Receive high-skilled
workers
• Increase number of
users
• Advertise their
products and services
• Increase number of
users
• Advertise their
products and services
GAMIFICATION Extensive Little None None
BLOCKCHAIN BASED Yes No No No
Figure 10. Bit Degree advantages matrix
27. 27
一伀⸀ 䌀伀唀刀匀䔀匀
㠀Ⰰ
㜀Ⰰ
㘀Ⰰ
㔀Ⰰ
㐀Ⰰ
㌀Ⰰ
㈀Ⰰ ㈀Ⰰ
Ⰰ
㈀ ㈀ ㈀ ㌀ ㈀ 㐀 ㈀ 㔀 ㈀ 㘀 ㈀ 㜀 ㈀ ㈀
Figure 11. The rise of the MOOCs courses. (Source: Class Central)
Although gamification techniques are well tested and proven to help motivate consumers in other
fields it is still seldom used by existing competitors, who stick to more old style, tried and true
academic approaches. We will assemble the current best practices of providing free access to
teaching material and augment it with learning process gamification, human mentorship, free and
verifiable assessment, financial incentives to students and employer-student matching capabilities.
Non of our competitors employs all of these features.
We are not a big threat to existing market players as the education market is expanding wildly
and can accommodate additional players. Each player brings exclusive features meant to attract
customers, but strategic partnerships are common in the exchange of training material. However,
with time we believe our gamification and incentives based model will show its benefits and lead to
capturing a significant share of the remote education market.
6.1. The market potential of BitDegree
It is easy for everyone to observe the rapid expansion of the remote education and e-learning
markets. We believe that with the new incentivized learning model, BitDegree brings the next wave
of e-learning adoption, which will spur the growth of the user base. We estimate the user base to
double every two years..
29. 29
䨀伀䈀匀 䐀䔀䴀䄀一䐀 倀伀吀䔀一吀䤀䄀䰀
㤀Ⰰ㔀 Ⰰ
㤀Ⰰ Ⰰ
㠀Ⰰ㔀 Ⰰ
㠀Ⰰ Ⰰ
㈀ 㔀 ㈀ 㘀 ㈀ 㜀 ㈀ 㠀 ㈀ 㤀 ㈀ ㈀
Figure 13. Rise of the demand for digital professionals (vacancies) in the EU. (Source: IT professional
and Innovation leadership labour market data and forecast for EU28)
Figure 14. Digital staffing gaps. (Source: BCG analysis)
In fact, we expect a severe shortfall in digital talent around the world by 2020, when according to a
Gartner study, 30% of tech jobs will be unfilled, due to digital talent shortfalls.
We believe that these trends warrant and confirm BitDegree’s business model and that there is
clear demand for our value proposition.
䘀爀漀渀琀ⴀ攀渀搀 搀攀瘀攀氀漀瀀攀爀
䐀椀最椀琀愀氀 倀爀漀搀甀挀琀 䴀愀渀愀最攀爀
匀漀氀甀琀椀漀渀 䄀爀挀栀椀琀攀挀琀
䈀愀挀欀ⴀ䔀渀搀 䐀攀瘀攀氀漀瀀攀爀
唀堀⼀唀䤀 䐀攀猀椀最渀攀爀
䐀䤀䜀䤀吀䄀䰀 匀吀䄀䘀䘀䤀一䜀 䜀䄀倀匀 一唀䴀䈀䔀刀 伀䘀 䔀䴀倀䰀伀夀䔀䔀匀匀
䨀伀䈀 倀刀伀䘀䤀䰀䔀匀 ㈀ 㘀 ㈀ 㜀 ㈀ 㠀 ㈀ 㤀 ㈀ ㈀ ㈀ ㈀
㈀
㐀
㔀
㔀
㌀
-㐀
-
-㔀
-㔀
-㜀
-㈀
-
-㈀㜀
-㘀㈀
-㤀
-㈀
-
-㤀
-㘀㈀
-㈀㘀
-㜀㌀
-
-㐀㔀
-㜀
-㠀㈀
-㘀㌀
-㈀
-㔀㈀
-㜀㐀
匀栀漀爀琀昀愀氀氀 ⠀─⤀
ⴀ㜀㔀 ⴀ㔀 ⴀ㈀㔀 ⴀ㔀 ⴀ㔀 㔀 㔀 ㈀ ㈀㔀 㸀㈀㔀
匀甀爀瀀氀甀猀 ⠀─⤀
30. 30
07. TOKEN LAUNCH
BitDegree will issue an ERC20 compatible token, which will be used to provide incentives to students
and contributors of the platform.
The sale of BitDegree tokens will be final and non-refundable. The BitDegree will not be responsible
for any loss of BitDegree tokens or situations making it impossible to access BitDegree tokens, which
may result from any actions or omissions of the user or nay person undertaking to acquire BitDegree
tokens, as well as in case of hacker attacks.
We plan to offer anyone sharing our vision to contribute to the development of BitDegree by buying
BitDegree tokens during the Initial Coin Offering event, which will be held on Q4, 2017. BitDegree goal
is to raise a minimum of 5 million USD and to stop accepting contributions when 25-30 million USD
will be collected. Some of the numbers may change due to ETH/USD exchange rate volatility, but the
following numbers are best estimates as of September, 2017.
• Maximum financing:
30,000 ETH - may change due to exchange rate changes;
• Minimum financing:
550 ETH - may change due to exchange rate changes;
• Exchange rate:
1 ETH = 10,000 Bitdegree Tokens - may change with ETH exchange rates;
• Token contract address:
Will be published only on website bitdegree.org 48hrs before the crowdsale launch date;
• Launch date and time:
Date to be announced soon. Block number will be published on website. Dates may be prone to
change;
• Token launch time-frame:
30 days.
• Token launch completion:
Token launch will end when either the maximum number of ETH is raised or 30 days have
passed. If less than the minimum of ETHs are raised, ETH can be retrieved by holders of
BitDegree Token;
• Contributors sending ETH to BitDegree Smart Contract address will immediately receive
tokens.
31. 31
Scholarships.
Scholarships pool will be used to incentivize users to participate in the BitDegree ecosystem in the
early days of its operation. No new tokens will be created once the user growth pool is exhausted.
Budget Allocation
• BitDegree Platform: 30% of budget.
The team consists of over 10 engineers [DS8] and MOOC experts fulfilling the key roles in the
company – sales, marketing, legal and others. This financing allows the rollout and operations of
the BitDegree platform;
• Courses development: 30% of budget.
Token Distribution
• BitDegree foundation: 66 million (locked for 360 days);
• Scholarships pool: 165 million;
• Token available to public at launch: 336,6 million;;
• Team: 66 million (locked for 720 days);
• Advisors / Partners: 13,2 million (locked for 160 days);
• Bounties : 13,2 million;
• Tokens in total: 660 million.
䈀漀甀渀琀椀攀猀
匀挀栀漀氀愀爀猀栀椀瀀猀
吀漀欀攀渀猀 昀漀爀 瀀甀戀氀椀挀
䄀搀瘀椀猀漀爀猀Ⰰ 倀愀爀琀渀攀爀猀
吀攀愀洀
吀伀䬀䔀一
䐀䤀匀吀刀䤀䈀唀吀䤀伀一
㈀─
㈀─
─ 㔀─
㈀㔀─
䈀椀琀䐀攀最爀攀攀 䘀漀甀渀搀愀琀椀漀渀
─
Figure 15. Token distribution doughnut chart
32. 32
These funds will be directed at third-party education professionals, offering online courses and
content production;;
• Marketing and business development: 25% of budget.
Marketing will focus on expanding awareness and adoption of the BitDegree platform and
the platform solution among users, publishers and advertisers. This also includes the growth
and maintenance of the world-wide community. Marketing, growth-hacking, PR, partnerships,
affiliate programs and more;;
• Operational: 8% of budget.
Consists of BitDegree legal, security, accounting and other associated administration costs;
• Security: 2% of budget.
This part of the budget is set-aside for auditing software.
• Reserve: 5% of budget.
This part of the budget is set-aside for unforeseen expenditure.
㈀─
匀攀挀甀爀椀琀礀
㔀─
刀攀猀攀爀瘀攀
㌀ ─
䈀椀琀䐀攀最爀攀攀 倀氀愀琀昀漀爀洀
䴀愀爀欀攀琀椀渀最Ⰰ
䈀甀猀椀渀攀猀猀 䐀攀瘀攀氀漀瀀洀攀渀琀
㈀㔀─
伀瀀攀爀愀琀椀漀渀愀氀
㠀─
䌀漀甀爀猀攀猀 䐀攀瘀攀氀漀瀀洀攀渀琀
㌀ ─
䈀唀䐀䜀䔀吀
䄀䰀䰀伀䌀䄀吀䤀伀一
Figure 16. Budget allocation chart
33. 33
08. BITDEGREE TEAM
The need for the BitDegree solution was recognized by the team behind Hostinger - one of the top
global web hosting providers. Hostinger works to enable millions of people around the globe to
unlock the power of Internet by giving them tools to learn, create and grow online. The most popular
Hostinger services can be reached online at:
www.hostinger.com, www.000webhost.com, www.hostinger.es, www.hostinger.com.br,
www.hostinger.ru, www.hostinger.co.id, www.hostinger.fr.
Marketing of BitDegree will start from the existing 29 million user base of Hostinger and 000webhost
- loyal, web-passionate, learning and innovation open, worldwide community. Our confidence
in BitDegree success comes from more than 10 years of experience in analyzing the needs and
challenges faced by the millions of Hostinger customers worldwide.
8.1. People behind BitDegree
The team is comprised of multi-skilled professionals that have worked with each other in various
capacities and became friends. This joins the project that everyone in the team is highly passionate
about. This is the time when everyone dreams big and goes big. Most of the team has already worked
together scaling solutions that reached millions of users and stumbled upon the need to educate
them, whereas some others have worked on the educational initiatives experience, which can be
directly applied to BitDegree.
Andrius Putna, CEO, co-founder
11 years in software engineering. Blockchain advocate. Person behind the success of 000webhost -
world’s first and biggest free cloud hosting platform designed for learning, testing and experimenting.
Hostinger product architect.
Danielius Stasiulis, CBO, co-founder
Head of Startup Division at Civitta (7 years) - the leading management consulting firm in Eastern
Europe. Advised 300+ startups and worked with many startup programs, including Berkeley Skydeck
in Silicon Valley. He focuses on ICO and blockchain-based business models.
Ervinas Rimdeika, CLO, co-founder
Ervinas is a FinTech fan and has extensive practice in related fields of corporate, intellectual property
and business transaction law questions as well. He worked not only at a few well-known law firms,
but also at one of the largest company’s group in Lithuania and Baltic States. In previous years Ervinas
Rimdeika was a member of one of the top raising Baltics FinTech startups and reached impressive
results, where Lithuanian Supreme Court changed case-law and formed new interpretation rules on
financial lease and other matters. Clients and colleagues especially value Ervinas Rimdeika for deep
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legal knowledge, critical and strategic thinking, in-depth analysis of the problems as well as rational
approach.
Rio Asatiani, CMO, co-founder
With more than 14 years of experience in effective customer acquisition, working with new brands
and startup launches, Rio is a growth-hacking guru & Google Certified Partner who led 000webhost
and Hostinger to an international success in more than 40 countries by attracting 29+ millions of new
users. He joined the BitDegree project having a strong vision in innovative acquisition channels and
solid experience in growth-hacking. Rio ensures the success of BitDegree on an international level.
Darius Rugevičius, Partner in Prime Block Capital Investment Fund
Darius is experienced in building successful technology based businesses, having sold two of his
previousstart-upsinthepast4yearsalone.Usinghisskillstoimplementeffectivemarketingstrategies,
propel execution, and meet deadlines, he has assisted companies operating in the blockchain, fin-
tech, robotics and biotech sectors. In the past year Darius has worked with numerous blockchain
projects, helping them to develop successful strategies, networking, and outcomes.
8.2. Advisors
Jeff Burton, Serial Entrepreneur, co-founder of Electronic Arts
Global technology executive, keynote speaker, and a Silicon Valley veteran, Jeff was a founding
team member of Electronic Arts, where he oversaw the global expansion of its operations. Jeff has
high-level connections in Silicon Valley and around the world that he is using to help startups like
BitDegree. Jeff developed U C Berkeley’s Skydeck startup accelerator and is currently involved in
helping startups around the world to grow and scale into the Silicon Valley. Jeff is an experienced,
dedicated contributor who believes in BitDegree and wants to help.
Roberto Santana, Product and Strategy Advisor, Former Senior Manager at Coursera
Entrepreneur and Former Product Management Growth Lead at Coursera. Roberto played a role
in helping Coursera scale to a global level and acquire over 27 million learners worldwide. Roberto
is Stanford MBA with 3 engineering degrees in computer science and design. His exceptional
engineering and technical knowledge has led him to scale several startups by managing the project
and business development, including San Francisco-based Zendesk, where he helped grow number
of paying customers by 60%. Prior to his work in the Valley, Roberto was a Senior Engineer with
Shell, where he led cross-functional team responsible for the delivery of products that accounted for
$400M in refinery revenues.
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Maurice De Hond, Steve JobsSchool Founder, Personalized Learning Advisor
A successful entrepreneur and founder of Steve JobsSchool - a modern elementary school concept
designed to see each child as an individual and nurture him based on his strengths and interests.
This learning model quickly became successful and is already adopted in more than 35 schools in
the Netherlands. Being the pioneer of innovative learning ensures the implementation of modern
educational solutions on the Bitdegree platform on the long term that will establish a solid foundation
for IT passionate people to reach their full potential.
James K. Scarborough, Stanford University PhD., Gamification Advisor
Currently a candidate for PhD. at Stanford University, James main focus is to deeply engage players
for the purpose of increasing workplace, classroom, and similar forms of individual and team-
based productivity. He is currently involved in projects assessing the effects of real social interaction
in virtual spaces concerning primarily energy efficiency behaviors, gender and culture specific
responses, and the physiological impact of social interactions in goal-oriented game environments.
Having a profound experience in gamification and working with companies that created such games
as Tetris, Civilization, Falcon Flight Simulator, led him to joining the BitDegree team and assures a
deeply engaging environment of the platform on the long term.
Arnas Stuopelis, COO, co-founder
Arnas is the CEO of Hostinger. Prior to taking the role of the CEO, for 6 years Arnas was responsible
for business development at Hostinger. He successfully expanded Hostinger on a global level as
well as played an important role when creating one of the most successful web hosting brands in
Indonesia - Niagahoster.co.id. With his profound entrepreneurship skills and a solid experience in
business development, Arnas knows how to scale a project to global success..
Ričardas Pocius, Technical advisor
Ricardas is a passionate distributed systems engineer who enjoys sharing his experience and
knowledge with others. Determined to keep magic out of the systems. Organizer of Erlang workshop/
meetup in Vilnius,LT.
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REFERENCES
[1] S. Bhens, L. Lau, H. Sarrazin, “The new tech talent you need to succeed in digital”,
http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/the-new-tech-talent-you-need-
to-succeed-in-digital, 2016
[2] J. Bersin, “Google For Jobs: Potential To Disrupt The $200 Billion Recruiting Industry” https://www.
forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2017/05/26/google-for-jobs-potential-to-disrupt-the-200-billion-recruiting-
industry/#2c0fb9714d1f, 2017
[3] https://www.funderbeam.com/startups/hackerrank
[4] ”HR and Recruiting 50 Statistics for 2016. A Statistical Reference Guide for Savvy Recruiters”
https://b2b-assets.glassdoor.com/50-hr-and-recruiting-stats-for-2016.pdf, 2016