Hey there, Steemians!

My brother and I were recently assigned a new homeschool summer project and, so far, it has been a very eye opening experience! Our assignment; explore the world of blockchain technology and find a way to get involved.

Our parents are big supporters of crypto tech and crypto currencies and they wanted us to learn about this innovative (and disruptive) technology. From a homeschool point of view, the subject of crypto-currencies and crypto-technology covers the realms of computer science, economics, investments, history, human rights, social science, and many others. As part of this homeschool assignment, we are to provide weekly learning progress reports to our parents AND post them here on Steemit.

This past week, Hayden and I have been studying various crypto currencies/tech/tokens, set up wallets for a few, connected to an exchange and just received our first Trezor. *For those of you that don't know; a Trezor is a secure way to store your crypto.

Since our parents have been involved in crypto since 2012, we thought we had a pretty good idea about crypto-tech already. They seem to talk about it every day. "What more was there to know?”, we thought. But then we hit the internet only to find out that we have so much to learn!

Part of what is overwhelming about the subject of crypto tech and crypto currencies is the wide gap of opinion about it. Since white paper tech is over our heads at the moment we rely on YouTube videos to help us break down the concepts and ideas behind the technology.

Here are some of the channels we have used to learn about crypto:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJWCJCWOxBYSi5DhCieLOLQ
https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldCryptoNetwork
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAzD2v9Yx4a4iS2_-unODkA/videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrYmtJBtLdtm2ov84ulV-yg
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbiWJYRg8luWHnmNkJRZEnw
https://www.youtube.com/user/jsnip4

There are many more channels, but these are the ones we watch the most.

We have researched various currencies and blockchain projects. For the purpose of this post we are going to mentions the 4 we are most familiar with at the moment; Basic Attention Token, OpenBazaar, VPN/Vash Coin, and, of course, Steemit.

Basic Attention Token

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We like Basic Attention Token, because they are changing the game in advertising. We have learned that nowadays, it is becoming more and more difficult for businesses/projects that are not associated with mega-corps (like Disney) to get noticed. The big corps make so much noise with their ads that it is nearly impossible to become a popular independent creator in the current system. Plus, we have heard a lot of recent complaints that people are paying for advertisements but are not seeing their results.

With BAT, our understanding is that both parties (ad viewer and publisher) are rewarded based on how much attention an ad generates. BAT uses the Brave Browser, which blocks invasive ads, and only targets ads based on the users browsing habits. It appears that this is all done in the front end of the browser, so anyone can view the code. One of our favorite aspects of BAT is that it uses the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts. Because BAT uses Ethereum, they have the time to focus on their specialty – changing the world of advertising.

Open Bazaar

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We also have been looking into the decentralized marketplace called OpenBazaar. So far, this is the most developed blockchain marketplace we have found (but if there is a better one, shoot us a comment, we'd love to hear your thoughts). Since we started our Saturn Music & Entertainment project, we have wanted to accept crypto-currencies for our creations, especially our original music. We tried to build this into our website but the platform we built the site on is not blockchain friendly. We even tried using a Shapeshift button on each product page but it didn't work out.

With OpenBazaar, we can easily sell our creations and earn crypto. We can have a store that was meant to accept crypto; not just have it as a plug-in. At first we were concerned about that fact that in order for people to be able to purchase our products, we’d have to keep our devices running constantly. This can be problematic on travel days where we are without internet connection. Recently we realized that we can operate our OpenBazaar shop just like a local coffee shop. We can be open during certain hours of the day, and provide notices on when we’ll be closed. We haven’t officially downloaded OpenBazaar yet (our current hotel wifi is just too slow), but we are excited to download it and have a chance to play around with it when our internet is good again.

Have you bought or sold anything on OpenBazaar? What should we know before going all in?

It looks like Basic Attention Token and OpenBazaar will help us with our Saturn Music & Entertainment project. We want to use as much blockchain tech as possible to help launch our project. We also want to understand what tools we are utilizing for our project so it may take some time for us to grasp some tricky concepts.

VPN/Vash Coin

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We found out about VPN/Vash a couple years ago through our Mom. She loved the idea and concept behind it and so it made sense we would start with it. She said, from a beginner’s perspective, VPN has done everything right to foster easy/early adoption – and she likes the idea behind the tech too. We like it because it was a familiar name to us and our Mom explained that we could receive Vash rewards by something called ‘staking’.

Staking is like earning interest on coins you have in your wallet. It’s like a reward you receive for supporting a network. A better description of staking can be found here. For us, it was just a simple download, some VPN coins from our Mom (to improve our staking weight), and we started earning rewards. If more kids our age understood staking (rewards), we think they’d get on board!

Steemit

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Last, but certainly not least, we love Steemit. We love Steemit for many reasons. First off, Steemit is surrounded by a community of people that have a wide range of interests. Through Steemit tags like Photography and Homeschool, users can have meaningful conversations and support each other’s posts by upvoting and resteeming.

Over the past few months, we have found some pretty sweet people here on Steemit. We were pleasantly surprised to see some fellow homeschoolers (and homeschool parents) on here too! Unlike a majority of mainstream social media, Steemit has quality content. We also like Steemit because we can earn free Steem by creating our own quality content (blogs). It kind of reminds us of staking, except it's a bit more work. The best part is that after we have made a certain amount of Steem, we can convert it to Steem power, or we can put a fraction of our Steem profits into exploring a new crypto-currency or blockchain project.

This weekend we will learn how to use our Trezor and we will also be using our saved allowance to invest in some of the coins/tokens we like. As we continue on this project we were wondering if any Steemians had any suggestions for us as we move through this new space. What are your favorite crypto-currencies and projects? What decentralized marketplaces do you use?

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to upvote, resteem, and follow to get homeschool project and travel updates.

Cheers!

For those who are interested in supporting our homeschool education, consider buying one of our music pieces, here.