In the last few minutes of the Year 2018, a cacophony of voices joined the noisy celebration – from those who lost massively in the crypto market as well as a few exuberant winners. Naysayers and “crypto prophets” competed for crypto news space and yet, the “crypto winter” did not impress me as the key story of 2018. Rather this announcement towards “tokenizing” English learning, in particular, this crypto news item appeared to me like a spark of hope in the dark horizon:
“English Forward, the Internet’s largest learn English Q&A site, with over 250 million unique visitors, hundreds of thousands of registered members, and 2 million question-and-answer threads, has launched a new logo and brand strategy, marking the most significant change in its visual identity in 17 years.”
After the change of leadership in February 2018, English Forward has been consistently moving from a purely Q&A community website to one incorporating a peer to peer marketplace with a Blockchain application that will accelerate the progress of English learning over the coming years. Hurray!
A little background for orientation…
Founded in 2002, English Forward (then known as English Forums) has grown in viewership, respect, and dependability with the support of its English learners community.
As explained in a press release in mid-2018, the transition to Blockchain was spurred on by increasing market pressures for English language learning, i.e., users need a much more comprehensive solution to link up with teachers, translators, and other English language professionals.
This is a brilliant move by the English Forward team. Indeed, only blockchain can guarantee collaboration, integration, motivation, simplicity, and progress that the current English Forward Community requires.
At the crossroads of success, the choice has to be made on whether or not an enterprise can incorporate Blockchain to its traditional system. The pivotal point is whether an enterprise can muster enough support from its existing community for mass adoption of its proposed blockchain platform. The English Forward team reported in a flurry of office communications their crucial considerations.
What were the major considerations for integrating English Forward on the Blockchain?
- Incorporating a Peer to Peer marketplace with a blockchain application will effectively monetize the expertise of teachers in a competitive transparent manner, without interference or price manipulations by monopolies or restrictive organizations.
- By streamlining and automating learning processes with blockchain, all kinds of learning activities can be completed faster and more efficiently.
- Since record-keeping is performed using a single digital ledger that is shared among participants, and ed-tech platforms, where the rating/reputation/certification for both students and teachers are carried over to other blockchain ed-tech platforms and it’s easily verifiable by everyone. This will remove clutter which adds to the confusion of English learners.
- Investments of all stakeholders will continue to increase with the growth in the business value of blockchain to $176 billion by 2025 and $3 trillion by 2030 by improving business efficiency.
- English Forward is expected to provide prestige to Blockchain and encourage more successful traditional enterprises to sign up for blockchain integration, ensuring massive adoption of the platform.
Considering benefits is a hopeful and idealistic perspective but a realistic perspective would be additionally understanding that not all blockchains are created equal. The English Forward team ensured that the Blockchain met fundamental requirements, namely, it is:
- Built on open standards
- Scalable and enterprise secure
- Developed with industry expertise by convening new ecosystems
How does an enterprise qualify for Blockchain integration?
A stalwart in the ICO and blockchain community and the organization’s CMO, Mr. KEY, helped clear my doubts regarding the suitability alongside benefits of “tokenizing” English Forward operations. Indeed, the downfall of most ICOs is caused by NOT properly utilizing its tokens. He uses the following criteria for qualifying enterprises for blockchain integration:
- Real people with real experience
- Real company with real offices
- Real team with real full-time hands-on effort
- Real money from the founder, as much as from the private investors
- Real product, not just coded in GitHub, but live, with users, a live community, not today, but for many years
- Real revenues already coming in, month after month, not just a loss-making-forever-trillion-dollar-opportunity
English Forward has qualified for blockchain integration as attested by its 17 years of stable, capable, community-centric existence.
Mitch Rankin, CEO of English Forward said:
“Plans are currently underway to modernize English Forward’s technology to allow for new avenues of content creation and creative tools for learning and to enable all contributors and volunteers to earn “crypto tokens” for their support.”
Do you want to get involved?
Visit the website, EnglishForward.com and register for free and post a question or answer one. Engage on their social channels, help someone else improve their English and you will be contributing to a valuable English resource for humanity.
