Background

The objective of Steemit Crypto Academy is to foster crypto literacy, to induce practical intelligence of a wide variety of use-cases in the crypto domain, dedicated to the development of crypto-related education, yet at the same time, it creates an avenue to reason, to explore, and to find the right talents and to reward the effort being put by the participants.

The Crypto Academy Season 2 draws to a close at the end of Week 8, 5th June, Time- 11:59 PM UTC.

The Steemit Crypto Academy in the Season 1 was supported by 5 professors. Recognizing the participation rate and to smoothly curate and manage the entries it expanded to 11 professors in Season 2.

To bring down the number of spam/plagiarism cases new threshold(Min 50 reputation & a Min of 150 SP with 'no power down') was introduced in Season 2 and so far it is proven to be effective. The trending page of Steemit Crypto Academy is much better now, along with notable signs of improvement in the overall average quality.

The Steemit Crypto Academy in partnership with 11 professors train & educate the students through various Homework Tasks. In response, the students learn new things each week and earn(upvote) and explore the practical side of the concept. Ultimately it is enabling the naive users to earn distinction in crypto specialties.

The guidelines and objectives set out by the Steemit Crypto Academy will underpin crypto literacy in Steem Blockchain in the long run and will prove to be a beacon of light particularly for the Newcomers and naive users.

Herewith we would like to present the various statistics, tangible data, analytics to easily acquaint you all with the overall state of Steemit Crypto Academy(Season 2).

Courses/Topics covered

Weekly sheet of total Entries (Season-2)

The total number of entries in Season 2 stands at 6217. The average figure per week stands at 777, and the per day average figure is 129 entries/day.

Please note that the participants get 6 days every week to submit their assignments.

Considering 6 professors to curate at any given time, the per day curation rate per professor on an average is 21 (approx).

Total nos of Unique authors in Crypto Academy up to Week-8/Season-2

From Week-1 to Week-8 (Season 2), a total of 6217 posts were published in Steemit Crypto Academy. The number of unique authors over the last 8 weeks stands at 877. If we take out the spammers/plagiarists(131) from this list, then the tangible figure would be 746. That's precisely the community size in Steemit Crypto Academy at the end of Week-8.

Total nos of Winners/Unique Winners and their winning rate

Please note that all the curated assignments receive upvotes from Steemcurator02. Further, each week, three are shortlisted as winning articles by each professor and they receive an additional upvote of 10% from Steemcurator01.

Frequency- How many times an author has won.
Total Entries- How many times an author has published/submitted his/her assignments in Steemit Crypto Academy

Winning Rate= (Frequency/Total Entries)x100

The sampling of the above data is based on the assessment by the respective professors assigned to run their course. In the last 8 weeks, a total of 120 winners were declared. Of this winning list, 64 are unique winners. Their frequencies and the winning rate has been indicated in the table.

Spammers/Plagiarists(Grey List/Black List)

_{This list is exclusively based on the data of Spam/Plagiarism cases in Season 2 up to Week-8.}

It has been a long-standing battle for us to fight the good fight against spam/plagiarism. However, with continuous vigilance, we have been able to curb spam/plagiarism of late.

In season 2, with the introduction of the new threshold, the number of spam/plagiarism cases has dropped significantly.

Until the end of week-8/Season 2, the total number of unique spammers/plagiarists stands at 131. We have categorized it into two lists--

• Black List
• Grey List

Black List- The users who spam/plagiarize more than once/many times feature in this list.
Grey List- The users who spam/plagiarize only once(so far).

All such users have been advised to correct the course, return to the path of hard work, and are asked to complete Task-3 in Newcomers' Community to develop a better understanding of content etiquette.

Note- If you feature in the Black List, the professor will skip your post, they won't curate you in Steemit Crypto Academy.

Proposal for Season 3

Existing Problem Interface:-

(1) High barrier to entry for Newcomers

The total nos of active users over the last 8 weeks(Precisely Season 2) in Crypto Academy stands at 877.

The total nos of Newcomers joined in Newcomer's Community over the last 8 weeks(from 13th April to 5th June 2021) stands at 3402.

The total nos of Newcomers who participated in Crypto Academy over the last 8 weeks stands at 26.

So only 0.77% of the Newcomers participated in Steemit Crypto Academy in Season 2.

There has been an influx of Newcomers' over the last 2 months or so(as high as 3402). But somehow the data did not validate a proportional transition of Newcomers into Crypto Academy, therefore we have reasons to believe that the existing regime of Crypto Acadamey is with a higher barrier to entry.

So we need to lower it and must ensure a smooth transition for the Newcomers so as to motivate them to partake in Crypto Academy and expand their knowledge in the crypto domain. We also believe that the basic knowledge of crypto will make them self-sufficient.

It may please be noted that we do not intend to intrude into the areas of interest of a user. Steem Blockchain venerates choice, it is up to the user what they want & how they want to engage in this Blockchain.

But, there are certain things in this ecosystem which is more about necessity than about choice. For example, a user joining this ecosystem might not be interested to complete the Tasks in Crypto Academy, their areas of interest may be different. That's fine. But the exchange of crypto to fiat and vice versa is a necessity for almost all users, so they must have exposure to the practical side of such a use case. Similarly checking a transaction and its status or for audit purposes might become a necessity at some point in this journey, so a user must know how to use and check a transaction in a Block Explorer.

We intend to train/mentor the Newcomers on a few basic things through Crypto Academy which is indeed a necessity for all users, we want to make sure that the Newcomers walk with a sense of confidence when they tour the crypto world at least on the basic use-cases/necessities.

(2) Dependency of newcomers upon CR/Admin to exchange their STEEM to fiat and vice versa

We got to discover that many users are relying upon other users and CR/Admin to exchange their STEEM or crypto for fiat & vice versa. Steemit Crypto Academy has already spent 16 weeks time, so it will be disappointing for us if we can not school/mentor such users on how to exchange crypto for fiat. It's the responsibility of the Crypto Academy to make them familiar with such use-cases.

(3) Complete knowledge of plagiarism (precisely types of plagiarism)

While plagiarism is a bad versification in the context of authorship, we can not discount the fact that many new users, particularly those who are teenagers have no idea what exactly plagiarism is. Many such users were caught in acts of plagiarism and that is purely out of ignorance. We want to distinguish such users from repeat offenders and from those users who run multiple accounts with a deliberate intention to leech the reward pool.

It is our responsibility to build awareness on the understanding of plagiarism, precisely the different types of plagiarism. We have Task-3 in the Newcomer's community, but we want to emphasize more on the different types of plagiarism to ensure increased awareness and to prevent naive users from authorship misdemeanors.

Proposed Solution

Bring three tiers of Tasks in Crypto Academy:- Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

The tiered Tasks in crypto Academy will make the transition curve smooth and in time it will become an indispensable guide in crypto academia(particularly for the Newcomers).

Beginners:- Those who have completed at least up to Achievement Task-4 in the Newcomers' community can participate in the Beginner Course. There will be a total of 6 courses. There will be two modules in each course-- Theoretical & Practical.

The theoretical section will belong to the Beginner tier whereas the practical section will belong to the intermediate tier.

This Beginner tier will cater to those users who have no knowledge at all.

The beginner's course will be the very basic & common understanding/know-how of crypto, precisely the use-cases which are necessities.

Eligibility criteria to partake in Beginners' Course:-

• Must have an SP of 50(at the same time should not be powering it down).
• Must have a reputation of 50 and above.
• Should not feature in the list of repeat offenders.

Some of the easy courses we can include in the Beginner tier are:-

(1) Introduction to Blockchain, the first-ever cryptocurrency Bitcoin

(2) Different types of Consensus mechanisms, Examples, Scalability, etc.

(3) Blockchain Wallet-- Types, Uses, Installation, Securing Keys, Restore, etc.

(4) Block Explorer-- Txn Hash, Sending Address, Receiving Address, Timestamp, Network fees.

(5) Exchanges-- DEX & CEX and the difference between the two, Popular Exchanges, how to trade crypto for fiat & vice versa, P2P Trading, Spot Trading, etc.

(6) Steem Blockchain-- PoB, General Voting Window, how to use memo to transfer STEEM to Exchanges and vice versa, Recovery account, etc.

Intermediate:- Those who have completed the Beginner tier(means those who have an understanding of the theoretical section) can complete the practical module to accomplish the intermediate tier.

The intermediate tier is for those users who have theoretical knowledge but they don't have any exposure to the practical side of the concept yet, in other words, they have the knowledge without professional usage.

Eligibility criteria to partake in Intermediate' Course:-

• Must have an SP of 150(at the same time should not be powering it down).
• Must have a reputation of 50 and above.
• Should not feature in the list of repeat offenders.

Advanced:- This tier is for those users who have good knowledge and good level of experience & exposure to the crypto world with regular professional usage to showcase their skill of authorship in the crypto academy.

Such users don't need to partake in Beginner/Intermediate tiers, they can directly partake in various courses of the Advanced tier.

Eligibility criteria to partake in Advanced Course:-

• Must have an SP of 500(at the same time should not be powering it down).
• Must have a reputation of 50 and above.
• Should not feature in the list of repeat offenders

The type of courses that we covered in Season 2 mostly belongs to Advanced Course. So in Season 3 also it will be more or less like that.

For Beginners/Intermediate, the courses will remain fixed for the season and the users have to complete the Task, once a user completed it can proceed to complete the Intermediate tier, fulfilling the eligibility criteria, and then it will be an easy thing for such a user to transit to the Advanced courses. Any attempt to abuse this program should be appropriately responded to.

Furthermore, 20% of the Advanced courses should include the Task which is related to the latest development around the crypto ecosystem. The rest of the 80% should be a balanced mix of theoretical and practical Tasks. Customized Tasks can be more effective to serve the objective of the Crypto Academy.

Task Force to manage Crypto Academy

We have 11 professors at the moment to manage & run Steemit crypto Academy. If the concept of Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced tier materialize in Season 3, we might need another Taskforce specifically for Beginner/Intermediate tier.

This will also create more room to mentor the users/newcomers in a proper way and the degrees earned through the crypto academy will be of paramount significance in academia. We can truly foster a sense of crypto literacy and draw real-life experiences.

If you are educating/schooling/mentoring a Beginner who has no idea of the crypto world and if at the end of a season he earns distinction in the crypto academy then that is more valuable than an achievement not just for the Steem Blockchain but also for the entire crypto domain.

Introduce another reward to reinforce the idea of delayed gratification

In the existing setup each week three users are being short-listed by the respective professors who are topped with another upvote of 10% from Steemcurator01.

We have seen and analyzed a second row who is very close to this top three, they are also regularly partaking and accomplishing the Tasks in Crypto Academy, but somehow not being able to make it to the top 3.

If we value their effort and if we can also create a Table and add their mark on a week over week basis and at the end of the season, if we can shortlist 8 such users on the basis of consolidated highest score of the season and reward them with Steemcurator01 then we can reinforce the idea of delayed gratification.

The immediate rewards always corrupt and pollute the young minds, they don't find the motivation to go through the process. In fact, the motivation of most of the plagiarists stems from instant gratification. Let's delay it to vindicate the long-term objectives of Steem Blockchain.

That will also motivate the users to believe in long-term profit, they will become more consistent to consolidate their score and will try to win it at the end of the season, that consistency in Crypto Academy will also help us to develop & grow a community organically.

Don't worry about the data, we have gathered all sorts of data to identify the pattern/trend in Steemit Crypto Academy, and this proposal is against the backdrop of the sampling of those data.

So we can maintain another sheet where the score of each user will be recorded and maintained. We can publish the status of the same at the end of each week at the behest of the Steemit Team and the partakers. The nos of unique users in Season 2 is 887. In season 3 we can maintain such records along with scores and at the end of the season, we can evaluate to determine the top 8 winners based on the highest consolidated score.

Conclusion

We have collected all sorts of data from Week-1 to Week-8 to prepare this report. After thorough analysis of the data, and after identifying the existing trends, we belive that the proposed solution will be efficient to deliver an intuitively obvious solution for Steemit Crypto Academy, particularly in the context of lowering the barrier to entry(for Newcomers/Naive users).

Steemit Crypto Academy is committed to spearheading efforts in crypto literacy in Steem Blockchain. It is equally committed to staffing, mentoring, training, recognition of talents & performance, rewarding them based on PoB.

Thank you.

Cc:-
@steemitblog
@steemcurator01
@steemcurator02

Cc:- @stream4u @imagen @fendit @alphafx @yohan2on @yousafharoonkhan @abcallen @levycore @pelon53 @kouba01

Unless otherwise stated, all the images, infographics, charts, tables, etc(if any) are my original works.