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SPE — Student Performance Exchange

Discover Potential. Fund Achievement.

SPE (Student Performance Exchange) is a scholarship exchange platform that allows supporters to discover promising students, trade sponsorship certificates based on their academic potential, and follow their progress throughout the semester. By combining academic performance evaluation, market-driven pricing, and foundation-funded scholarships, SPE introduces a new approach to recognizing student potential and encouraging educational philanthropy.

Inspiration

Traditional scholarship systems often evaluate students based on past achievements, including cumulative GPA, academic awards, leadership experience, and extracurricular activities. While these criteria help identify accomplished students, they do not always capture a student's future potential or recent academic improvement.

Consider two students. One has maintained a 3.9 GPA throughout college, while another has recently improved from a 2.5 to a 3.5 GPA. Although the second student has demonstrated significant academic growth, traditional scholarship selection processes may still favor the student with the stronger cumulative academic record.

We believe that a student's potential should not be defined solely by their past achievements.

Another challenge is the scholarship application process itself. Students often spend considerable time searching for opportunities, preparing essays, requesting recommendation letters, and submitting academic transcripts. Even after completing these requirements, receiving financial assistance is never guaranteed.

We also recognized a limitation from the donor's perspective.

Traditional donations often involve a one-time contribution to a scholarship organization, with relatively limited opportunities for donors to participate in a student's academic journey. Supporters may not know how students are progressing, whether they are achieving their goals, or how their support contributes to their development.

This led us to ask several questions:

• What if students could receive financial support based on their future potential, rather than only their past accomplishments?
• What if supporters could personally discover students they believe in and follow their progress throughout the semester?
• What if supporting students became a continuous, interactive experience rather than a one-time donation?
• What if students could receive scholarships even when they fall short of their original academic goals?

These questions inspired SPE — Student Performance Exchange.

Our goal is to create a scholarship model that recognizes academic achievement, personal growth, and the confidence that supporters place in students.

What it does

SPE introduces a scholarship exchange where students apply for financial support and supporters participate by purchasing and trading student-specific sponsorship certificates.

The platform connects three primary participants:

1. Students: Apply for scholarships, establish academic goals, share performance updates, and receive financial support.

2. Supporters: Discover promising students, purchase and trade sponsorship certificates, manage sponsorship portfolios, and follow students' academic journeys.

3. Scholarship Foundation: Reviews applications, establishes scholarship terms, issues sponsorship certificates, provides market-making liquidity, and funds scholarship payments.

The platform is structured around the following process.

1. Student Application and Academic Profile

Students begin by submitting an application that includes their academic transcripts, extracurricular activities, personal essays, and proposed target GPA for the upcoming semester.

Additional academic information may include:

• Major and academic year
• Cumulative GPA
• Previous semester GPA
• Historical GPA trends
• Current course load and credits
• Academic achievements and extracurricular involvement
• Proposed semester GPA target

Our foundation reviews these submissions to assess the student's academic background and the feasibility of their proposed goals.

After approval, the student receives an anonymized public profile.

Privacy is a key part of the design. Supporters can evaluate students through academic indicators and personal narratives without accessing identifying information or original academic records. The foundation maintains the verification information separately from the public-facing profile.

This allows supporters to focus on the student's potential rather than their identity.

2. Academic Success Probability Estimation

One of SPE's central components is estimating the probability that a student will achieve their proposed target GPA.

The probability estimation model considers academic information such as cumulative GPA, previous semester GPA, historical performance trends, academic workload, and course difficulty.

For example, suppose a student has the following academic profile:

Academic Metric	Value
Cumulative GPA	3.40
Previous Semester GPA	3.60
Target GPA	3.80
Current Credits	15
Estimated Success Probability	70%

The estimated probability represents the likelihood that the student will achieve or exceed their target GPA at the end of the semester.

The foundation reviews the proposed target and estimated probability before approving the scholarship listing.

This review is particularly important because extremely low estimated probabilities can create disproportionately large performance bonuses, while overly easy targets may provide little incentive for academic growth.

For our prototype, probability estimates are illustrative and should not be interpreted as statistically validated predictions. The probability is given as an arbitrary value in the demo.

3. Scholarship Certificate Issuance and Initial Pricing

Once a student is approved, the foundation issues a fixed number of sponsorship certificates associated with that student's academic goal.

Each certificate represents an opportunity to support the student and participate in the secondary exchange.

The initial certificate price is calculated using three variables:

• Initial Scholarship Amount
• Estimated Success Probability
• Total Number of Shares Issued

Our initial pricing formula is:

$$ P_0 = \frac{S_{\text{initial}} \times p}{N} $$

Where:

• (P_0) = Initial certificate price
• (S_{\text{initial}}) = Initial scholarship amount
• (p) = Estimated probability of achieving the target GPA
• (N) = Total number of certificates issued

Example:

Suppose a student has:

• Initial Scholarship: $50,000
• Success Probability: 70%
• Total Shares Issued: 100

The initial price becomes:

$$ P_0 = \frac{50,000 \times 0.70}{100} = \$350 $$

Each sponsorship certificate is initially priced at $350.

This pricing mechanism creates a standardized relationship between the scholarship amount, the student's estimated success probability, and the number of certificates issued.

Importantly, the formula is an initial offering-price rule, not a guaranteed financial valuation. Certificate holders do not receive the scholarship amount or any cash repayment at maturity.

Once trading begins, market prices are determined by supply and demand rather than being mechanically tied to academic success probabilities.

4. Student Performance Exchange

After certificates are issued, supporters can explore available students and purchase certificates based on their evaluations of academic potential.

Supporters can examine:

• Academic history and GPA trends
• Target GPA and estimated success probability
• Extracurricular activities
• Personal essays and academic goals
• Monthly academic performance updates
• Current certificate market prices
• Historical price movements and trading activity

Similar to an exchange, supporters can submit buy and sell orders.

Certificate prices fluctuate as participants update their assessments of students and their willingness to provide support.

Supporters can also manage their holdings through a portfolio-style dashboard, tracking the students they support, their certificate holdings, and changes in market value.

Unlike conventional investments, certificates do not provide dividends, ownership of the student, or a maturity repayment. Supporters may realize trading gains by selling to another buyer before maturity, but profits and liquidity are not guaranteed.

The exchange is designed to make student sponsorship an ongoing experience rather than a single transaction.

5. Foundation Market Making

One of the challenges of creating student-specific markets is ensuring sufficient liquidity.

Because individual students may attract a relatively small number of supporters, buyers and sellers might struggle to find counterparties.

To address this, SPE incorporates a foundation-operated market maker.

The foundation provides bid and ask quotes based on an internal reference valuation, market demand, available liquidity, and certificate inventory.

For example, if a certificate's reference price is $350, the foundation might quote:

• Bid Price: $345
• Ask Price: $355

A supporter who wants to purchase a certificate may buy at the available ask price, while someone looking to sell may accept an available bid.

The market maker helps facilitate trading by providing liquidity when participation is limited.

However, the foundation does not guarantee a fixed market price or unlimited liquidity. Trading prices emerge from executed orders, and market-making activity must operate within defined financial and risk-management limits.

The foundation's scholarship reserve and trading-liquidity reserve are conceptually separated to protect scholarship funding from market-making losses.

6. Monthly Academic Performance Updates

A defining feature of SPE is its ongoing academic performance reporting system.

Just as publicly traded companies release quarterly earnings reports to inform investors, students participating in SPE are expected to submit monthly academic performance updates throughout the semester.

These reports can include:

• Recent midterm and examination results
• Assignment and project grades
• Updated academic progress
• Estimated current semester GPA
• Progress toward the target GPA
• Reflections on challenges and accomplishments

These updates solve an important information problem.

Without regular reporting, supporters would have limited visibility into a student's performance between the initial listing and the final semester results.

Monthly reports allow supporters to continuously reassess their expectations based on new academic information.

For example, a student might initially have a 50% estimated probability of achieving their target GPA. After demonstrating strong midterm performance, supporters may become more confident in the student's ability to succeed.

Conversely, disappointing academic results might reduce confidence and motivate some supporters to sell their certificates.

Supporters have the right to sell their certificates before maturity, subject to finding a buyer or an available market-maker quote.

This structure introduces transparency and accountability while allowing supporters to make their own decisions about continued participation.

Monthly updates also help create a stronger connection between students and their supporters.

Rather than simply donating money and moving on, supporters can follow students' progress, celebrate accomplishments, and provide encouragement throughout the semester.

For privacy and accuracy, public updates should contain student-approved summaries and clearly distinguish self-reported information from independently verified results.

7. Maturity and Scholarship Distribution

Each student-specific market has a predetermined maturity date, typically corresponding to the end of the academic semester.

Before maturity, supporters are free to buy and sell sponsorship certificates.

At maturity, trading closes permanently, the final market price is determined under predefined settlement rules, and the student's final academic performance is verified.

The foundation then calculates the student's scholarship.

There are two possible outcomes.

Outcome A: The Student Achieves Their Target GPA

If the student achieves or exceeds their target GPA, the foundation awards the initial scholarship plus an academic performance incentive.

Our proposed achievement-based reward formula is:

$$ S_{\text{success}} = F + \frac{G_{\text{final}}-G_{\text{goal}}}{p}\times F $$

Where:

• (F) = Initial fixed scholarship
• (G_{\text{final}}) = Verified final semester GPA
• (G_{\text{goal}}) = Approved target GPA
• (p) = Initial estimated success probability

The formula applies when the final GPA meets or exceeds the target.

Example:

• Initial Fixed Scholarship: $50,000
• Target GPA: 3.50
• Final GPA: 3.60
• Initial Success Probability: 70%

The scholarship becomes:

$$

S_{\text{success}}

50,000+\frac{3.60-3.50}{0.70}\times50,000 $$

$$ S_{\text{success}}\approx \$57,142.86 $$

The student receives approximately $57,142.86 in this hypothetical example.

This formula rewards students for reaching their goals while providing additional incentives for exceeding expectations.

It also illustrates how individual supporters can participate with relatively small contributions while helping support a larger scholarship funded by the foundation.

In a real deployment, the payout model would require reasonable caps, probability safeguards, and clearly defined scholarship funding commitments.

Outcome B: The Student Does Not Achieve Their Target GPA

SPE is built around the belief that failing to achieve a specific academic goal does not necessarily mean a student lacks potential.

A student may perform exceptionally well on midterms but struggle during final examinations. Another may demonstrate remarkable effort, academic improvement, or resilience without reaching their original GPA target.

Supporters might also recognize valuable qualities through a student's personal story, extracurricular accomplishments, and monthly progress reports.

Even when a student falls short academically, continued market demand may indicate that supporters still see potential worth backing.

For this reason, our proposed model provides a scholarship even when the student does not achieve the target GPA.

The formula is:

$$ S_{\text{failure}}=P_T\times N_T $$

Where:

• (P_T) = Final market price at maturity
• (N_T) = Total outstanding shares at maturity

Example:

Suppose:

• Initial Share Price: $350
• Final Share Price: $420
• Total Outstanding Shares: 100

The student would receive:

$$ S_{\text{failure}}=420\times100=\$42,000 $$

Even though the student did not achieve their target GPA, the foundation awards a $42,000 scholarship under this hypothetical outcome.

The idea is that a student's GPA should not be the only factor that determines whether they deserve financial support.

However, market appreciation is not proof of academic ability. The final-price calculation requires manipulation-resistant settlement rules and adequate foundation reserves.

In both outcomes, the foundation pays the scholarship to the student. Certificate holders do not receive a maturity payout.

This distinction is fundamental to SPE's mission as a scholarship-oriented exchange.

How we built it

We designed SPE as a full-stack platform connecting student applications, scholarship administration, market activity, and supporter portfolio management.

Our prototype is organized around a frontend application, a backend API, and a database for storing platform information.

Live Market Simulation with Capital One Nessie

To demonstrate how sponsorship certificates behave in an active exchange, we integrated Capital One’s Nessie sandbox API into SPE.

Starting with Student A, we transform historical sandbox deposits and withdrawals into simulated buying and selling activity. This lets patrons explore a changing market, submit their own orders, and see how their participation interacts with other market activity.

Because our sandbox initially contained no transaction history, we created clearly labeled synthetic test transactions for the demonstration. The simulation uses virtual credits and does not move real money.

From Banking Transactions to Sponsorship Orders

Our backend imports completed transactions, validates their contents, removes duplicates, and sorts them chronologically. It then transforms these records into events for the trading simulation:

• Deposits generate simulated buying pressure.
• Withdrawals generate simulated selling pressure.
• Transaction amounts determine small order quantities.
• The current order book helps determine simulated bid and ask prices.

The resulting pipeline is:

Nessie sandbox history → normalized events → simulated orders → SPE matching engine → live market interface

For each transaction, the proposed order quantity is:

$$ q(a)=\min\left(3,\;1+\left\lfloor\frac{a}{5000}\right\rfloor\right) $$

Where:

• (a) is the transaction amount in cents.
• (q(a)) is the proposed number of sponsorship certificates.
• (\lfloor \cdot \rfloor) rounds down to the nearest integer.

For example, a $75 transaction produces:

$$ q(7500)=\min\left(3,\;1+\left\lfloor\frac{7500}{5000}\right\rfloor\right)=2 $$

The simulation further limits orders according to available virtual funds and certificate inventory.

An Interactive Market, Running in Real Time

The replay processes an event approximately every three seconds, with selectable sessions of five, ten, or fifteen minutes. Historical events repeat when necessary to fill the selected duration.

During a session, patrons can place or cancel their own orders. Simulated orders pass through the same matching engine as user orders, so they can interact with one another and produce actual fills within the prototype. Changes to the order book also influence subsequent simulated quotes.

This allows us to demonstrate bid–ask spreads, liquidity, price discovery, and portfolio changes through participation.

Nessie provides the historical sandbox events; SPE creates the sponsorship-market simulation. Banking transactions are not treated as evidence of a student’s academic potential or used to calculate their probability of success. API credentials and source transaction records remain on the backend.

Frontend

We used a React-based frontend with Vite to create the user-facing platform.

The interface is organized around three primary experiences:

Student Experience

Students can present their academic backgrounds, define scholarship goals, and share their progress through student profiles and performance updates.

Foundation Administration

The administrative workflow allows the foundation to review student applications, approve academic targets, manage scholarship listings, and oversee exchange operations.

Supporter Experience

Supporters can browse student listings, inspect academic and market information, interact with trading interfaces, and view sponsorship holdings through portfolio-style dashboards.

We focused on presenting complex financial and academic information in an understandable interface.

Backend and Data Management

Our Python-based backend uses FastAPI to organize the platform's application logic and API functionality.

The backend project includes database storage, testing components, and a WebSocket-related module for realtime communication.

The intended backend responsibilities include:

• Student and scholarship listing management
• Application review and approval
• Initial certificate price calculation
• Trading order processing
• Market price and volume data
• Scholarship reward calculation
• Portfolio information and performance updates

The prototype uses a local database during development.

Market Design

We modeled SPE around a central limit order book and a foundation-operated market maker.

The exchange concept separates initial pricing from secondary-market price discovery.

Initial prices are set using the scholarship amount, estimated success probability, and issuance quantity.

Once listed, certificates trade according to market supply and demand.

The market maker is designed to provide reference bid and ask quotes to improve liquidity in smaller student-specific markets.

Scholarship Calculation

We also designed rule-based scholarship payout formulas for both successful and unsuccessful academic outcomes.

These formulas allow the system to demonstrate how different final GPAs, success probabilities, and market prices affect scholarship awards.

For our hackathon prototype, scholarship outcomes can be demonstrated using hypothetical academic records, simulated market conditions, and virtual financial values.

Our architecture is designed to support future extensions, including more sophisticated academic prediction models, improved market surveillance, and independently verifiable scholarship settlement records.

Challenges we ran into

1. Designing a Scholarship Model That Rewards Both Achievement and Potential

Our initial concept was inspired by prediction markets where participants forecast whether a student would achieve a particular academic goal.

However, we realized that a purely binary outcome could conflict with our mission.

A student who narrowly misses a target GPA may still demonstrate meaningful improvement, determination, and potential.

We therefore developed a model with two scholarship outcomes: achievement-based rewards for students who reach their goals and market-value-based support for students who fall short.

This required us to reconsider what academic success should mean within a scholarship system.

2. Establishing Initial Prices

Determining how to price a student's sponsorship certificate was a challenging design question.

Unlike conventional stocks or bonds, SPE certificates do not provide future cash flows to holders at maturity.

As a result, traditional investment valuation methods cannot be directly applied.

We adopted an initial offering-price rule based on the maximum scholarship allocation, estimated success probability, and number of certificates issued.

This provides a consistent starting point while allowing subsequent market prices to be determined by supply and demand.

3. Estimating Academic Success Probabilities

A student's likelihood of achieving a target GPA depends on many factors, including academic history, course difficulty, workload, and recent progress.

Two students with the same cumulative GPA may have very different academic trajectories.

We explored using multiple academic indicators rather than relying solely on GPA.

A major challenge is ensuring that estimated probabilities are accurate, fair, and properly calibrated.

This is especially important because success probability affects both initial pricing and performance-based scholarship bonuses.

4. Maintaining Liquidity

Student-specific sponsorship certificates may have relatively small trading communities.

A limited number of active participants can make it difficult for supporters to buy or sell certificates when they want to.

We addressed this in our market design by introducing a foundation-operated market maker.

The foundation provides bid and ask quotes within defined limits, supporting trading activity without guaranteeing unlimited liquidity.

5. Protecting Student Privacy

We wanted supporters to have enough information to evaluate students' academic potential without revealing their identities.

However, information such as exact GPA, major, academic year, and personal achievements can sometimes identify individuals when combined.

Our design therefore distinguishes between verified private academic records and public anonymized profiles.

We also considered how students could provide useful monthly performance updates without unnecessarily exposing sensitive academic information.

6. Balancing Incentives and Preventing Manipulation

Linking financial awards to academic results and market prices creates potential opportunities for strategic behavior.

Students might propose unrealistic goals, success probabilities might be underestimated, or coordinated trading could influence the final market price used to calculate scholarship awards.

We identified the need for independent academic verification, consistent approval standards, scholarship payout caps, market surveillance, and carefully defined final-price calculations.

These remain important areas for further testing.

7. Development Environment and Integration

Building a multi-component platform required coordinating frontend, backend, dependencies, and local development environments.

We encountered Python version compatibility issues while configuring the backend and worked through virtual-environment setup and dependency installation to get the FastAPI server running.

We also needed to ensure that the frontend and backend could operate as separate services while supporting a unified user experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

1. Reimagining Scholarship Funding

We developed a scholarship exchange concept that connects student potential, community participation, and academic achievement.

Rather than designing another scholarship application directory, we focused on how supporters could participate throughout a student's academic journey.

2. Creating a Structured Student Sponsorship Experience

We designed a workflow where students establish goals, the foundation reviews their applications, and supporters discover students through academic profiles.

This creates a structured relationship between the student, the foundation, and the supporter.

3. Developing a Transparent Initial Pricing Model

We established an initial pricing rule using the scholarship amount, probability of success, and number of certificates issued.

This allows participants to understand how a certificate's starting price is determined.

4. Designing a Two-Outcome Scholarship System

One of our most important conceptual accomplishments was ensuring that students could receive support even if they did not achieve their initial GPA goals.

Our proposed reward system recognizes both verified academic achievement and the potential reflected in community support.

5. Introducing Continuous Academic Reporting

The monthly performance reporting concept transforms scholarships from one-time decisions into ongoing relationships.

Supporters can follow a student's academic development throughout the semester rather than waiting for a single final result.

6. Building a Full-Stack Project Foundation

We organized a web application around student-facing profiles, foundation administration, market information, and supporter interactions.

The project structure includes a React/Vite frontend and a Python/FastAPI backend, providing a foundation for further development and integration.

What we learned

1. Financial Mechanisms Can Be Used to Explore New Forms of Philanthropy

Working on SPE challenged us to think beyond traditional donation models.

We explored how exchange-style interfaces, market participation, and transparent performance reporting might encourage supporters to become more actively involved in students' growth.

We also learned that financial incentives must be designed carefully so that they do not undermine the educational mission.

2. Academic Potential Is More Complex Than GPA

GPA is useful, but it represents only one aspect of a student's academic experience.

A student's improvement over time, course difficulty, workload, and individual circumstances may provide additional context.

We learned that evaluating student potential requires more than simply ranking students by cumulative GPA.

3. Liquidity and Price Discovery Are Different Problems

A transparent initial pricing formula does not guarantee an active secondary market.

Even if a certificate has a calculated initial price, supporters must still be willing to trade it.

We learned why market makers, order books, available inventory, and bid-ask spreads matter when designing an exchange.

4. Transparency Requires Reliable Information

Monthly reporting can help supporters make informed decisions and strengthen connections with students.

However, inaccurate or misleading updates could distort market activity.

We learned that academic information should be verified where possible, while uncertainty and unverified information should be clearly disclosed.

5. Good Incentives Are Essential

Our early discussions revealed that poorly designed reward formulas could encourage unrealistic academic targets or create excessive payouts when estimated success probabilities are extremely low.

This taught us the importance of incentive alignment, risk limits, and transparent reward rules.

6. Technology Alone Does Not Create Trust

A sophisticated trading interface cannot guarantee that academic information is authentic, market prices are fair, or scholarship funds are secure.

Trust also requires responsible administration, clear financial commitments, independent verification, and privacy protection.

What's next for SPE - Student Performance Exchange

Our long-term vision is to develop SPE into a more complete and responsible platform for performance-based scholarship support.

1. Improve Academic Probability Estimation

We plan to explore machine learning models that estimate the probability of students achieving their academic targets.

Potential approaches include logistic regression, gradient-boosted trees, and other supervised learning methods.

These models could incorporate cumulative GPA, recent semester GPA, academic trends, course difficulty, and current academic workload.

Future development would require sufficiently representative academic data, careful privacy protections, probability calibration, and fairness evaluation.

2. Expand Academic Performance Tracking

We want to build a more comprehensive reporting system where students can submit monthly academic updates and supporters can visualize progress over time.

Potential features include:

• GPA progress visualization
• Monthly academic performance reports
• Verified assignment and examination summaries
• Student milestone announcements
• Supporter encouragement and reactions

The goal is to make student growth more visible and build stronger connections between students and supporters.

3. Develop More Robust Market Infrastructure

We plan to further develop and test the exchange's trading infrastructure, including order matching, bid-ask quotation, market-making rules, and portfolio management.

Additional risk-management tools would be needed to address illiquidity, price manipulation, coordinated trading, and excessive volatility.

4. Strengthen Scholarship Funding and Settlement

We want to define scholarship payout policies more precisely, including maximum bonus amounts, final market-price calculations, and foundation reserve requirements.

The long-term goal is to make scholarship commitments understandable, verifiable, and financially sustainable.

5. Explore Verifiable Donation and Scholarship Records

We are interested in exploring blockchain technologies as a potential way to document certificate ownership, scholarship funding, and distribution.

Any future blockchain integration would need to provide a clear benefit in transparency or settlement rather than simply adding technical complexity.

Sensitive academic information would remain protected outside public blockchain records.

6. Evaluate Real-World Legal and Regulatory Requirements

Because SPE proposes transferable sponsorship certificates that participants may trade for potential financial gains, a real-money implementation could raise securities, derivatives, gambling, charitable fundraising, and consumer-protection questions.

Before any real financial launch, we would need specialized legal review and a compliant operating model.

Until then, simulated trading and virtual credits provide a way to explore the concept without operating a real-money exchange.

7. Pilot the Student Sponsorship Experience

We would like to test whether students and supporters find continuous academic sponsorship valuable.

Potential pilot activities include usability testing with university students, feedback from scholarship administrators, and surveys examining whether supporters prefer ongoing progress-based engagement over one-time donations.

Our goal is to validate the platform's educational and philanthropic value before attempting a larger deployment.

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Our Vision

At its core, SPE is built on one belief:

A student's future should not be defined solely by their past performance or by whether they achieve one specific academic target.

We want to create a platform where students can demonstrate their growth, supporters can recognize potential early, and scholarship foundations can connect financial assistance with academic achievement and community encouragement.

SPE — Discover Potential. Fund Achievement.

Built With

• fastapi
• nessie
• python
• react
• sqlite
• tailwind
• tanstack
• typescript
• vite
• zustand