3 reasons blockchain and educational certification are a match made in heaven:

1️⃣ 🔒 Security

2️⃣ 🤩 Trust & Convenience

3️⃣ 🎓 (Alumni) Community

Let’s dive-in.

1️⃣ 🔒 Security On-chain degrees provide a secure and reliable way to verify your credentials. Since they are stored on a blockchain, they cannot be changed or faked by anyone. This can help increase the trust and credibility of your degree.

👉 No more fraud. Research from Indeed.com showed that 40% of job candidates lies on their resume. On-chain certificates eliminate fraud as the professional and educational degrees can’t be forgery and can be traced back to the original issuer.

2️⃣ 🤩 Trust & Convenience: With an on-chain degree, you can easily share and verify your credentials with potential employers, clients, and partners. This can help you stand out in a competitive job market and open up new opportunities for advancement.

👉 Forget scanning paper documents (that can’t be forged, see point 1) that you need to email to potential employers. That is if you can find them and you didn’t accidentally got rid of the box that was catching dust during your latest move.

3️⃣ 🎓 (Alumni) Community: On-chain degrees can create a community of alumni by providing a way for Universities (& companies) to easily connect and verify each their alumni’s credentials. The on- chain degrees can be used as the identifier that community.

👉 Imagine how the digital certificates create a platform for alumni to share job opportunities, networking events, content and other useful information with each other. As well as potential employers being able to target specific alumni communities based on their digital certificates.

Want to see how OG Studio helped a Dubai based consulting firm with their Digital Certificates? Read our case study here.

*Ok, I must admit, I reframed the question a little bit, most of the times the question is the following: “Why the hell would someone pay so much for a f*cking JPEG?”.

To pay or not to pay for a JPEG, that’s the question

Excellent remark. As Shakespeare famously put it: “to pay or not to pay for a JPEG, that’s the question.”. What few people know is that Shakespeare addressed the question to the creator of the NFT rather than to the collector. Are you going to launch an NFT project where you want people to pay for your NFTs? Or do you want to distribute your NFTs ‘for free’? NFTs are all about digital ownership, which as a consequence allows you to sell NFTs, but it doesn’t necessarily needs to be that way. In fact a lot of super exciting NFT use-cases are the ones where people don’t have to buy NFTs, but where NFTs are used beyond their speculative, financial, nature.

For example, people receiving NFTs as a proof of their merits and their accomplishments.

Enter the Meritverse

The Meritverse is the convergence of people’s professional identity and reputation where skills, trackrecord, certificates , … live on-chain in an immutable and verifiable way.

Imagine you graduate from University and instead of a paper diploma your university issues an NFT that proves you graduated and has your grade, your majors, and year of graduation as metadata for example (could also be complementary to a paper one off course).

Not only is this potentially much easier for future job applications. You can just authorise potential employers to verify your diploma NFT instead of wasting time digging into some boxes far away, scanning and uploading it etc. It also prevents fraud and cheating by creating a direct link between the issuer (in this case your former university) and the person holding this NFT. Those NFTs could even be non-transferrable so that cheating is totally out of the question. Vitalik calls this soulbound NFTs.

University Diplomas are one example of the Meritverse. Others are NFTs issued after completing certain projects, attending meetings, professional events or trainings. Even your on-chain history and activity could be added to your digital professional identity. For example a label ‘Bitcoin holder since 2017’ or ‘Part of community/project X since 2019’ …

Where does the ‘verse’ come into play?

Meritverse is a derivative from metaverse. By now the ‘merit’ part should be quit clear, what about the ‘verse’ part? How do your merits come to live?

The beauty of NFTs is that they can serve as a base layer where you can build applications on top of. As the ownership is at the users side, companies have to build upon those NFTs (note that in Web2 it is the other way around: you have to build on top of individual platforms where you can not extend to other ecosystems. You can’t import your credits, connections and diplomas from LinkedIn to Facebook).

So for example creatives could build their own, visually appealing, interactive portfolio in a Metaverse environment such as Oncyber where they can showcase the awards they won, their winning campaigns etc.

A Web3 version of LinkedIn could be built where you add degrees and certificates as NFTs. Enormous Alumni networks could be leveraged as you can easily connect with people who hold the same NFT, aka degree.

Experiences for specific professional NFT holders could be created. For example the online course ‘NFTs for professionals: advanced level’ can only be accessed by people who hold the ‘NFTs for professionals: beginner level’ NFT certificate.

As you can see, there are plenty of examples and the future looks bright for the Meritverse, even though those you don’t have to pay for them.

A great application, and potential start of your Meritverse journey, is the POAP protocol. POAP stands for 'proof of attendance protocol'. It's sort of an NFT that proves you were at a certain event, meeting, ... or read a certain article 😉.

Claim your POAP to prove that you know what the Meritverse is all about. Send us gm@og-studios.xyz a message and we’ll provide you a link to claim the POAP.

OG Studio is a full stack, daring Web3 studio. Built by cryptonatives, built for the ownership generation. Web3 is all about enabling digital ownership for everyone. We strongly believe the world will be a better place when everyone has digital ownership over their own business, identity, reputation, data, assets and their digital presence in general.

I recently stumbled upon this LinkedIn post, where Jacqui (don’t know you personally Jacqui, but thanks for the inspiration 😉) asked a pertinent question: are we moving back to the age of ownership?

I believe the real question Jacqui asks is: do NFTs push us back into an exclusive ownership model where content is locked away? Because that is what NFTs promise, right? Digital ownership?

What about all the convenience and abundance that we got accustomed to thanks to the likes of Spotify and Netflix? We don’t want to give that up! And didn’t we try that already with iTunes (buying mp3s) or DVDs? People just started downloading illegally the content they liked*. How will Web3 be different?

*Or even better, just right-click-save the JPEG!

Very good questions, Jacqui! But fear not, abundance of content will still exist in Web3. Let me explain.

Digital ownership is a concept we find hard to grasp. That makes sense of course. Contrary to physical ownership, a concept we’ve known and understood since the beginning of times, digital ownership has been around only for a couple of years. In 2009 when the Bitcoin blockchain was founded, the world got to experience the concept of digital ownership for the first time. It’s a brand new concept and we are still in the process of discovering what new possibilities it will unlock.

Digital ownership has many applications and vectors. Basically, it means that the internet can not only store and transfer information (websites, messaging, social media networks, …) but also value. I know, the internet storing and transferring value, seems kind of vague. Let me give an example to clarify:

Recently the importance of owning your money yourself, and not a government or bank or other institution, has gained interest. Unfortunately because of the Ukraine-Russian war. Because of the war various sanctions have been issued against Russia. Western banks froze billions in Russian assets. That is possible because banks store (and protect) your money, and thus they are able to exercise control over it. What blockchain enables is that the internet, instead of a bank, stores your money. Thanks to the decentralised nature of the blockchain, there is no CEO or centralised authority to control the blockchain, only the person with the access key (you) has control over your money (in a digital wallet). So if Russia added Bitcoins instead of Dollars to its treasury there was no way their money could be seized (luckily they didn’t).

Now replace money with any other digital asset, and you have a sense of what digital ownership is: you, and no-one else, own the digital asset and you, and no-one, else can control and use it.

Ok, we have drifted off a bit. So let’s go back to Jacqui’s questions. How does digital ownership translate to media and content?

Choosing between access or ownership is Web2 thinking. Ownership & access is the way forward.

It’s not about choosing between access or ownership. In Web3, access and ownership will co-exist, each with different value propositions.

The problem used to be that we were never able to make digital ownership really work. iTunes tried to sell you (licences to) digital songs, but you didn’t really own the song. By buying a song you were allowed to download and play it on your iPod.

What is different today in comparison to the ‘digital ownership models’ of the past, is that blockchain technology allows you to exclusively own digital content. Only 9 letters are added, but the word ‘exclusive’ changes the whole game.

Today people are able to buy NFTs of digital media content such as songs, videos, digital art, photos, etc. The NFT entitles the owner to exclusive ownership. Each NFT is unique (hence the name non-fungible token) and is owned by one person (NFTs could be owned by multiple people, it’s called fractionalisation, but we’ll dig into that another time).

Note that exclusive ownership doesn’t mean exclusive access. That’s the Web2 and skeuomorphic thinking again. We can’t just copy the rules of Web2 and implement them in Web3. As people can exclusively own content (which was not possible in Web2: think of the millions of mp3 of the same song sold on iTunes) access to non-owners can be inclusive.

So why is that you might think? Because the value proposition of exclusive ownership is different than the value proposition of access.

If you want to see the latest movie or Netflix series, you pay for access (a movie ticket or Netflix subscription). What you get in return is the opportunity to consume that content. But nothing else. You can view/listen to the content, and that’s it.

When you exclusively own digital content, what do you get in return? Of course, you are able to consume that content as well. So what are the other benefits that justify the price you would pay for owning such a piece?

• Status & bragging rights: just as people would like to brag about buying the latest Jackson Pollock or an expensive supercar, there is status attached to digital ownership. Imagine if you are the only one that owns the most viewed Youtube video of all time? (it’s Baby Shark Dance with 10 billion views)

• Identity & belonging: why do people buy expensive fashion items, hire designers and architects to shape their interiors or buy merchandising of their favourite band? To express their identity, the fact that they are unique but at the same time to belong to a community. If you are a huge Friends fan, then owning an iconic scene with Chandler & Joey could mean a lot to you. Collectibles have been around for ages in the physical world, NFTs allow them to exist digitally.

• Utility: belonging to a community is not only an aspirational driver for NFT purchases, it can become very tangible as well. By owning a Friends NFT you could get access to an online community of other Friends lovers for example. The NFT could be your ticket to exclusive Q&As, in-real-life meet-ups, conferences, … The media NFT could grant you benefits such as receiving NFTs from partnered projects, receiving discounts on real-life items, …

• Financial upside: since you truly own the digital item (you don’t own a license to use it but you actually own it) and you are the only one to own it, you can monetise as you like. The NFT could go up in value. For example: what if you discovered Taylor Swift at the beginning of her career and bought an NFT of her song. The NFT would be cheap as she wasn’t popular yet, but today it would be worth a ton of money. Are you that person that always discovers artists before they break through? Now you have the opportunity to earn on that special skill of yours. Price-goes-up is not the only way to benefit financially from media NFTs. New business models around digital ownership are popping up: you could leverage your NFT as collateral for a loan, lend your NFT to others (they pay rent so they could benefit from the perks such as access), fractionalise your NFT in smaller parts or even receive a part of the commercial royalties through NFTs.

The benefits of exclusive ownership extend far beyond exclusive access. As a matter of fact, it seems that the more popular and widespread the content is, the higher the value of the NFT (and thus the higher the value of exclusive ownership). For example, lots of popular memes are sold for huge sums of money.

What are the learnings for Media Companies ?

Exclusive digital ownership will be a game changer for media companies. We are used to a model where we need to pay for content in order to access it. I’m suggesting that content could be free for everyone to watch/listen/consume while others pay for the exclusive ownership rights.

Sounds crazy? Not at all. The game changes when exclusive ownership comes into play (see value proposition above) and there are projects doing this already today.

Take Shibuya for example. Shibuya is a is a web3 video platform, founded by digital artist pplpleasr1, that allows users to engage, fund, decide outcome and become owners of long form video content.

How does Shibuya work? Shibuya will launch an anime series ‘The White Rabbit’. To fund the episodes Shibuya launched producer passes in the form of NFTs.

While the content of the White Rabbit will be free for everyone, (you can play the first chapter here), the owners of the producer passes will be able to decide in which direction the story goes. Every episode will have alternative endings, producers can vote on the outcome.

Owners get access to the story and are involved in the direction & community (identity & belonging + Utility). Owners of the NFT will also be credited as producers of the show (status & bragging rights).

At the end of the film, when all episodes are produced, the video will be minted as an NFT. The film NFT will be divided into thousands of tokens (process called fractionalisation) and these tokens ($WRAB) will be distributed to the producers. Owners of the original NFTs can benefit financially by selling their producer NFTs when value would go up, or sell their $WRAB tokens when the film is produced.

Shibuya is a beautiful proof of concept for what the future may hold in the media industry. There are clearly different value propositions for passive viewers, who get access to the content, and active owners, who get access + the other benefits. For media businesses it will require a mind shift abandon the exclusive access model and build active, ownership-driven communities around the content instead.

Would you like to hear more about the future of media in Web3, reach out to samuel@og-studio.xyz

“Skeuomorphism is a term most often used in graphical user interface design to describe interface objects that mimic their real-world counterparts in how they appear and/or how the user can interact with them.”

When we encounter new technologies we tend to literally copy paste the user experience, mental models, how things work and function… of the world we know to the new, emerging world. It often takes technological innovation to disrupt those ‘habits’ we bring across the border of those two worlds.

Remember the first note taking apps on smartphones. They mimicked the experience of actually note taking on paper.

Another example is the GPS built-in your smartphone. When the iPhone launched in 2007 people expected applications to emerge that made way finding easier. That’s the skeuomorphic thinking again.

What people didn’t expect was the whole myriad of disruptive start-ups that followed on top: ride hailing through Uber, getting your food delivered thanks to Deliveroo, …

Today we are approaching a lot of our thinking about Web3 from the skeuomorphic side. Take metaverse land for example.

Location location location, or is it?

The century old adagio in real estate is ‘location location location’. Location is on of the main drivers of value for real estate properties in the physical world. A piece of land in the center of a popular town, where all the cool kids live, will cost a hell of a lot more than that same amount of square meters in a less developed neighbourhood. That makes sense. As in the physical world land is scarce: there are only a few plots of land available (in that nice neighbourhood). And secondly it takes time and effort to move from one place to another. The closer you live to the nice neighbourhood, the less time and effort you need to spend getting there.

Does the real world adagio also apply to the metaverse?

Lots of experts are indeed claiming that location will be key in the metaverse as well. If we look at the valuation of some popular plots of land, we should give them credit and agree with them. In the Sandbox metaverse, a virtual plot of land, next to that of American Rapper SnoopDog sold for $450.000.

The arguments tend to be that people who visit Snoop Dogg’s property, will also pass by the neighbouring properties. And thus they must be worth more as they will attract more visitors.

But is this not yet again another case of skeuomorphic thinking?

First of all you could make a case that selling ‘scarce’ digital land is the extreme outlier of skeuomorphisicm. Why would you limit something in a space that has infinite possibilities and no limitations in terms of resources or surface? Note that there is a countermovement on its way with new metaverses, where land isn’t scarce. Nifty Island for example, a virtual world where everyone gets an island to build experiences on. No need to buy-in.

Assuming that digital land is scarce, does location still matter?

Let’s rephrase the question: does location still matter in a world where we can transport ourselves with a single click? In a digital world, you won’t be walking from one part of the town to the other. You’ll just enter the coordinates of the next location you want to visit in your browser and you’ll be there.

The whole argument saying that ‘plots next to premium locations will attract more traffic’ is invalid as people won’t cross the borders of the premium locations anymore. They don’t need to walk anymore. They can just hop on and hop off. Like a virtual subway, but then instantaneously.

Let’s not forget, we are friction hunters. We optimise for efficiency, speed and quality (of time). What is Netflix’s greatest innovation of the last years? the ‘skip intro’ button ;)

The ‘passing by neighbouring plots’ element becomes even less likely when you add a social layer to the metaverse. Let’s say I’m at a concert, rocking my virtual avatar, and I want my friend to join. I pull my virtual contactbook up on my screen and I send him an invite. The notification will pop-up on my friends’ screen and he’ll click on it and will stand next to me in the blink of an eye.

Community trumps location

Location location location as I see it today is another case of skeuomorphic thinking. Or at least for the traffic side of things.

There will probably be some status attached for being a neighbour to Snoop Dogg. And it could be a great place to build experiences for a similar audience. Imagine you build a hip hop temple next to Snoop’s condo. In that case it becomes community first thinking.

Could community, community, community become the adagio of the metaverse then?