Gu Yanxi: Under the epidemic, how to use blockchain to improve the online education industry?

Source: Huoxun Finance

Editor's Note: This article has been deleted without altering the author's original intention.

On February 7, Gu Yanxi, the director of the CBX Research Institute, was a guest at Fire News TALK. The following is a record of the interview.

Highlights

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• The founder runs away, Cosmos strife

Gu Yanxi, Dean of CBX Research Institute:

• Blockchain technology should be combined with other technologies before it can provide a complete industry solution.
• Only a few celebrity teachers have made a lot of money, but the vast majority of content creators haven't made good money.
• Online education platforms are not very different from each other. As an intermediary channel, these platforms do not have low income in the paid education market.
• The current business model of online education platforms is inherently flawed.
• Writing benefit distribution rules into smart contracts in advance is the core of blockchain applications to solve online education problems.

Interview Record

Moderator Zhao Yidan, editor-in-chief of Huoxun Finance: Good morning everyone, thank you for watching today's special show of Huoxun Talk ’s blockchain industry talent think tank, “How does blockchain help business and organizational innovation under the epidemic? 》 The guests sharing this program are our old guests from Huoxun and the director of CBX Academy Gu Yanxi @ 谷 燕西 （Ben Gu）

Gu Yanxi

Research and practitioners in the blockchain and encrypted digital asset industries. He has extensive professional and management experience in well-known Chinese and American financial companies, enterprise software companies and Internet financial companies. Served American Options Clearing Corporation and Huatai United Securities, and served as COO of several financial services companies. Participated in the writing of "Libra, a financial innovation experiment", "Understanding Libra" and "Cryptocurrency and Virtual Assets, From Rivers to Lakes" and other books.

MBA from University of Texas (Austin), Master's degree from University of Notre Dame, master's degree from University of Science and Technology of China, and bachelor's degree from Shandong University.

Mr. Gu is now in the United States. Thank you Mr. Gu for bringing us trans-ocean sharing! Welcome @ 谷 燕西 （Ben Gu） 谷 总 场.

01

Blockchain technology should be combined with other technologies before it can provide a complete industry solution

Gu Yanxi: Thank you for your invitation. I am very happy to have this opportunity to share this at Huxun. I have been doing various researches related to blockchain, including the application of blockchain in various industries, and the application of encrypted digital currencies. I have previously studied the application of blockchain in some specific industries. Such as financial industry, medical beauty industry, film industry and so on.

My speech today is mainly divided into several parts: Part 1 talks about the current status of the online education market, Part 2 talks about the characteristics of blockchain technology, and Part 3 talks about how to apply blockchain technology to online education market.

I think blockchain technology can be applied to many industries. Some issues need to be paid attention to during application. First of all, we have to analyze what problems exist in this industry and which problems can be solved by blockchain technology? What problems do not require blockchain technology to solve?

Blockchain technology should be combined with other technologies before it can provide a complete industry solution. If the main application of blockchain technology is to solve some problems in the industry, such a solution will probably not produce actual value. Therefore, even after startup, it is difficult to run continuously.

Let me first analyze the status of the online payment transaction market:

The online paid education market actually started in 2016. The market has grown very fast since then. From 2016 to now, although only three years, the total number of paying users and the total paid market size have grown very rapidly.

Some studies predict that paid users will reach 387 million in 2019. Another study predicts that the scale of the online payment market will reach 23.5 billion yuan by 2020. Therefore, in terms of the number of users and the market size, the online paid education market is a newly emerging industry with strong growth momentum.

Despite the rapid growth of the industry, there are some problems.

The first is the emergence of a lot of original tutorial content. Due to the low threshold in this industry, a large amount of uneven quality content has appeared, which has led to a decline in overall user satisfaction. So only a few star teachers get a lot of income, but the vast majority of content creators don't get good income.

Another problem is that online education platforms are not very different from each other. Although these platforms are focused on their own fields, creating their own characteristics. But users value lecturers more than platforms. But these platforms as intermediary channels do not earn low income in the paid education market.

I think the third problem in this industry is the platform's business model. These platforms usually use a fixed expenditure to purchase products, and then use the platform's advantages in terms of number of users to sell one by one. The more users there are on the platform, the more they can sell, and the more profit the platform can make.

But the problem with such a model is that the current business model of online education platforms is inherently flawed. If the platform cannot dig out products that are welcomed by the market, but because of the huge cost of fixed expenditures, there will be a situation of insolvency.

These are some of the issues in online paid market education. Then let's take a look at some of the characteristics of blockchain technology that can be applied to solve these problems, at least some of them.

02

Writing benefit distribution rules into smart contracts in advance is the core of blockchain applications to solve online education problems

Gu Yanxi: Blockchain technology has the following basic characteristics: It supports the direct exchange of digital value between accounts and accounts. All transactions need to be verified by participating nodes before they can be recorded. Nodes are open and transparent, and once transaction records are recorded, they can never be tampered with. These characteristics are the basic characteristics of blockchain technology. If we apply these functions to some solutions, we will provide more effective solutions than centralized technologies.

We can combine blockchain technology with the information technology of the Internet to create a platform that serves some educational institutions in an industry. Internet technology provides information communication between these educational institutions and users. Blockchain technology is used to determine the rules of cooperation for automatic execution. Of course, in such a platform, payments between users and educational institutions are made directly.

Users and educational institutions conduct direct transactions instead of going through a channel platform. In this way, each educational institution is responsible for its own products, that is, responsible for the profitability and risk of its own products, so it is not necessary to sell to channel intermediaries at a fixed cost.

In this solution, the core part of the blockchain application is that the benefit distribution rules can be written in smart contracts in advance. These rules are mutually agreed upon by educational institutions. Then after this smart contract is deployed, after the user pays, the revenue distribution between the platform education institution and the lecturer is automatically executed. This uses technology to ensure the automatic execution of business rules.

Since this platform is open, smart contracts guarantee the automatic execution of business rules, so he can attract more online education institutions to join. In such a network, educational institutions will engage in differentiated competition and focus on a subdivided field in this ecology to avoid the development of homogeneous competition. The users are jointly owned by all the educational institutions in the ecosystem, so each educational institution can more effectively reach its target customers.

For an online education institution, because it communicates directly with the user, he can save the cost currently being paid to the agency. The income of educational institutions and lecturers will naturally increase. Users can also benefit from this reduction due to the reduction in intermediary costs.

The above is a very likely solution for the online paid education industry.

But it is important to point out that the ecology in the future industry will be diverse. An alliance network of educational institutions based on blockchain does not completely exclude the existence of other channel intermediaries.

Which specific scenario will appear depends on the specific practices of the industry development. But the advent of blockchain technology provides the possibility for an industry solution I just mentioned.

Gu Yanxi: Finally, I would like to emphasize one point in particular : Blockchain is a so-called technology that changes production relations, not a technology that changes productivity. That is to say, the best scenario for blockchain applications is a group scenario, not an individual. of. Therefore, if there is no group that strives for a common goal on the basis of equality, blockchain technology will be difficult to achieve.

So I think the best application based on blockchain technology is an industry solution, not a company's solution. Alright, let me share it here, thank you all.

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