Big ideas about education X blockchain from Tim Ferris’ podcast with Balaji Srinivasan, and a tie in with RabbitHole, a ‘learn and earn’ crypto product

Traditional education: In university, we must complete ‘problems’ in each course to earn credit. Graduating means completing X amount of problems, and receiving a degree as certification. Currently, the relationship between education and salary is a step function — e.g. 500 problems completed -> $10/hour internship. 2000 problems completed -> degree obtained -> $60/hour full time role. Traditional institutions are restrictive geographically and financially.

Hybrid-digital education: MOOCs like Coursera and Udacity help democratize traditional education by recording and repurposing lectures and projects. The salary step function still exists though— it’s difficult to motivate learners to invest hundreds of hours just for the prospect of landing a job that gets them to the next step on the function.

Fully-digital education: What if we made the education x salary function look more linear? Teach the theory, but also provide hands-on exercises that grant rewards upon completion: learn and earn. Like Mechanical Turk, but with more challenging tasks to show proof of skill. On completion, the user is granted a crypto credential that shows employers their current skill level. Imagine as an employer, you want a certain skill, so you query a blockchain for whoever has this skill’s credential — this is an on-chain resume.

Balaji is doing his part with 1729, a newsletter that pays you for completing tasks.

RabbitHole is also at the forefront of this idea, offering crypto rewards from completing tasks that grant “Skills” on your profile.

Fully digital education will level out the playing field — anyone with an internet connection can participate to learn + earn, and compete for jobs, no matter their background.