Former Binance chief Changpeng Zhao announces new educational project involving NFTs

People • March 18, 2024, 9:12PM EDT

Published 1 minute earlier on

UPDATED: March 18, 2024, 9:13PM EDT

Quick Take

Zhao’s new platform aims to provide underprivileged kids with free education.
Zhao stepped down as CEO of Binance in November last year and pleaded guilty to violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act.

Changpeng Zhao, co-founder and former CEO of Binance, announced on X on Tuesday morning in Asia that he's hiring for his next project named Giggle Academy. He described it as a “gamified, adaptive” platform that aims to provide free basic education for all.

The concept paper for Zhao’s new platform said that the project's main target is to educate underprivileged children in developing nations by providing content covering education from grades one to 12.

Noted as a “zero revenue platform,” Giggle Academy plans to gamify its educational content using a system involving points, scores, rankings and non-fungible token (NFT) badges. However, Zhao noted in a separate X post that there will be no cryptocurrency involved with this project. The concept paper also discussed the future possibility of adopting a “learn-to-earn” system.

“I thought about what to do next for a few months,” Zhao said in the paper. “I need to find something that has the maximum positive impact that I could achieve in this world. This would require me to do something that I am good at and scalable.”

In November last year, Zhao pleaded guilty to violating and causing a financial institution to violate the Bank Secrecy Act. He agreed to pay a $50 million penalty as an individual and stepped down as CEO of Binance.

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About Author

Danny Park is an East Asia reporter at The Block writing on topics including Web3 developments and crypto regulations in the region. He was formerly a reporter at Forkast.News, where he actively covered the downfall of Terra-Luna and FTX. Based in Seoul, Danny has previously produced written and video content for media companies in Korea, Hong Kong and China. He holds a Bachelor of Journalism and Business Marketing from the University of Hong Kong.