Inspiration: Education is stagnant and needs to change. Learning is decentralised, teachers no longer teach in the same way they used to teach. The future does not require college degrees, but job skills. Yet, there is no existing verification platform that matches the decentralised learning journey of the users. We want to use web3 to change that.
Problem: We are on a mission to shape better futures by giving education the freedom and equal opportunities for all to make an impact at any point of their career. Twenty million students started college/university in the US alone this month, and this much is certain: The vast majority of them will be taking on debt — a lot of debt. What’s less certain is whether their degrees will pay off. Traditional degrees don't equip the skills the future generation needs to get jobs. Degree inflation and unemployment is at record high. Students are in a lot of debt before they even begin employment, but are unemployable. Degrees are still thought of as lifelong stamps of professional competency. They tend to create a false sense of security, perpetuating the illusion that work and the knowledge it requires is static.
Market Size: The global Online Recruitment Services market size is estimated to be worth USD31750 million in 2022 and is forecast to a size of USD45990 million by 2028. Moreover, 70 % of the global workforce is made up of passive talent who aren’t actively job searching, and the remaining 30% are active job seekers. The freelance e-learning market is expected to grow roughly 24% annually until 2028 to an estimated 1370 Billion USD. The e-learning forecast report 2022 states that the COVID pandemic rise has further boosted the need for the schools and colleges as well as the other institutes to be online as most of the conventional schools have closed down. Online education market trends have grown significantly due to this.
Further statistics: one of the problems we identified regarding the problem of diploma verification - 68% of applicant resumes were found to be misleading. 85% of candidates say that fixing their resume is normal. In 29% of fraud cases, the applicant provided a different diploma than the one they held. 47% of recruiters said they had already dismissed applicants whose resumes included lies. 53% of these lies were about diplomas! We are tackling this problem as our first challenge in democratising education access through skill based certifications.
Our Vision: Litmus is here to PROVE the true strengths and skills of our users who are looking for jobs, just as litmus paper reveals the true element of a solution. Employers and employees can finally match their needs using a decentralised voting skills-based system. We are currently building a product that combines both web2 learning education aspect, but applying the blockchain solutions to provide incentivised onchain skill based credentials.
Product: Litmus is a decentralized voting platform for the issuance of on-chain experience and credentials. Currently there is no easy way to prove that you are knowledgeable in a specific field unless you show a certification or diploma. And there is no simple way to check if these certificates are correct. Additionally, traditional forms of certification and issuance of degrees are expensive, centralized, and tend to focus on standardized testing which is not indicative of real world experience.
How it works: 1) Users can now attain on chain credentials through decentralized voting groups. This leads to more accurate assesment of skills, more opportunities avaiable, and encourages the web3 ethos of decentralization. 2) Users login with their Near wallet, create an online portfolio/resume, then submit their resume (~2 NEAR) to a panel of certified judges that vote on whether they believe the candiate's skills are accurate. 3) Judges do not know each other, and they are incentivized to vote by rewarding them with NEAR. Judges are penalized if they abstain from voting too often or vote again st the majority over a period of time.
Technologies Used: -NEAR Protocol Testnet -Pagoda JS SDK for NEAR -Vue.js+Nuxt+Tailwind CSS
Monetisation: Litmus is a collective initiative, the platform will be funded by taking a fee from users who want their profile reviewed. Judges must stake a certain amount of NEAR to hold them accountable, which we will take a commission from the interest gained as well to monetize the platform.
Go to Market / Strategy & Growth: Raising funding and launching our first product to market allows us to scale users to the point where we can pilot with 10+ universities in the UK. Once the solution reaches 1million users in the first 3 years, we can monetise education, content and data for insights, and have full control over their education and user data by leveraging blockchain technology. We plan on implementing these features incrementally, with blockchain being integrated in the next few years. Our goal is to reach 1million users within 3 years. Our product strategy is quite clear. We will do a pilot test on the app with as many users as possible to receive feedback and to iterate the product to make the user experience of onboarding and learning as seamless as possible. Once the solution reaches 10000 sign ups we will approach our first university with a research pilot proposal to trial our solution. Before the end of 2022 we hope to have launched with NEAR Protocol and market our app and onboard NEAR users and partners on the blockchain.
Accomplishments - NearCon 2022 Winners: Putting the team together on the first day of the hackathon and winning Nearcon Hackathon 2022 first prize. We met because of our open mic pitch as a team! We love working together and we have built a small community of women at NEAR through this team.
Traction: To date, we have surveyed 300+ students and interviewed university staff members, as well as multinational web3 companies to understand customer and market needs. From partnering with NEAR protocol, NEAR University, Brunel University and the Mayor of London, we aim to grow and expand our business further with extensive plans in our roadmap. We have won 1st place at the NEAR Protocol Hackathon 2022, hosted in Lisbon, and sponsored by NEAR Protocol, winning over 50k in funding. We are looking to raise over £500k in our first pre-seed funding round.
Team: Our team has the energy and time to continue coding and developing the product. We are a team of three passionate about education in the realm of web3. We have a dynamic, driven and diverse team behind the success and mission of Litmus. Our skillset is highly varied and complementary, from life sciences to business, engineering and design, we represent a variety of world leading universities and our co-founders have extensive exposure within the entrepreneurial ecosystem, having co-founded 3 other startups. We have 2 females in the team from diverse backgrounds and notable clients and companies the team has worked for include: Coca Cola, Google, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar Land Rover, Estee Lauder Companies, ITV and more.
What's next for Litmus: Raising funding and launching our first product to market allows us to scale users to the point where we can pilot with 100+ employers in the UK. Once the solution reaches 1million users in the first 3 years, we can monetise education, content and data for insights, and have full control over their education and user data by leveraging blockchain technology. We plan on implementing these features incrementally, with blockchain being integrated in the next few years. Our goal is to reach 1million users within 3 years.
Besides this, we are looking to build more connections within public and private companies, universities and educational institutions, to understand the price point that would be ideal for a solution like ours. For this we need to quantify how much value we are providing and this will help validate the viability of our business.
Built With
- astrodao
- javascript
- nuxt
- pagoda
- tailwind
- vue
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