LiveEdu ICO Review: Offering Live Coding Tips from Experts

LiveEdu ICO: Offering Live Coding Tips from Experts

The Internet has successfully disrupted education, with abounding online courses. Now, LiveEdu aims to further disrupt the creation of online course content, by using the decentralized nature of the blockchain. LiveEdu would syndicate courses from independent creators, and reward the participants with its EDU token. The pre-sale token distribution has already finished, and the ICO opens in about a week, as registrations are open now as a prerequisite to participate in the token sale.

What is LiveEdu?

• LiveEdu
• LiveEdu White Paper
• Country of origin: USA/International
• Ticker: EDU
• ICO Dates: 15 January – 10 February
• Hard Cap: $10 million in Ethereum
• Funds raised: Unknown in pre-ICO
• Industry: Education
• Funds accepted: Ethereum, Bitcoin
• My Rating: 2/5

LiveEdu Social Media

• Blog
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Telegram
• Github

LiveEdu Overview

The LiveEdu ICO comes up with a clear idea and an already well-appointed website and registration dashboard. The pre-registration does not give an address for sending actual Ethereum, but the backers would need to provide their token wallet address to be white-listed.

There is also a referral program with a 10% bounty from new referrals, again after providing a token address.

While the idea of LiveEdu is straightforward, its whitepaper is strangely missing. For now, it is unknown how token payments would be integrated into the system. The company has a niche selection of topics to present in its online courses, including the topic of cryptocurrency.

The rest of the topics focus on coding and artificial intelligence, as well as data science – all of them trending topics that also have many touching points with blockchain technology. The project claims to have videos and courses already created, but the token sale would lead to expansion, more instructors, and supposedly, better future quality.

In short, LiveEdu is seen as TwitchTV for coders. Through live-streaming real coding sessions, LiveEdu plans to attract those interested beyond the basics offered on Coursera, and into the intricacies of production-level code.

The LiveEdu Team

The LiveEdu team is a proof that this ICO has sprung from the minds of developers, almost as a pet project they want to spread far and wide. The founders are all experienced coders with broad entrepreneurial experience. The founder, Dr. Michael J. Garbade, has a long bio of working for both tech giants like Amazon and serial startups. The rest of the team consists of Alex Zhukov, an experienced backend developer, and Ilya Toka, frontend developer.

The team is rather small for this ambitious project, but creating online content is fairly straightforward. But the team may be expanded in the future, as about 35% of the funds from the ICO would be diverted to hiring more experts.

About LiveEdu Token

The token for this project, EDU, sells at 1,000 EDU for one ETH. It is a straightforward ERC-20 token, which would initially be stored in a wallet.

Just half the issued tokens would be sold at the ICO, with the rest distributed for various bounties and incentives, including small rewards for course viewers. About 250 million tokens are expected to be sold in the upcoming event.

Investing in LiveEdu: The Pros

LiveEdu has a straightforward idea, and may potentially come up with a working product. Its ICO demands are reasonable, and the token sale looks like a pet project with the potential to build a niche community and provide valuable content.

Join stream live!: "Ethical Hacking From Scratch – #13 – Exploit Exercises – #8" https://t.co/IV09arHKqc #technology #projects

— Liveedutv (@liveedutv) January 6, 2018

The team is also dedicated to popularizing the project by making the rounds at industry events and expos, and this is where the project has secured some additional funding, potentially from larger investors, backers, or venture capitalists.

The other appealing side of this project is the already working platform for premium course creation, with coders finding it a good way of spreading specialized knowledge.

The Risk of LiveEdu

Just like any ICO, investing in LiveEdu must be done carefully. With Ethereum's price on the rise right now, participating in a token sale and potentially waiting for months before being able to trade the tokens may lead to losses. Choosing LiveEdu may mean buyers would need to wait and even rely on platforms like Bancor, to see any liquidity for their token.

The other risk is the popularity of the platform. LiveEdu may only employ a small group of live coders, and the biggest risk is gaining a good pool of educators. A platform like LiveEdu may take years to grow to any significance, given the dominant position of YouTube. For more niche learning opportunities, places like Lynda.com have many coding and technology classes online.

So even in a best-case scenario, its product may remain a niche endeavor. The courses indeed offer live coding, but sometimes in an unstructured way, and by amateur presenters.

So the ICO backers would need to be patient and see LiveEdu evolve in an organic way, over months or possibly years. Looking for short-term gains by flipping the project may not be an option, as exchanges are becoming flooded by tokens.

Final Thoughts on LiveEdu

LiveEdu is a project designed for a world where viewers may need to be used to paying in tokens. Token integration as a means of monetizing online content has been talked about many times, but still , ayment options in Ethereum-based digital assets are very limited. This is mostly due to the nature of wallets and the blockchain, where speed lags behind what is normally expected of apps.

Paying for LiveEdu videos may one day be paid in tokens, but right now, premium courses require a good old dollar payment, and not even an attempt to offer an Ethereum or token option. This is rather strange about a project wanting to unleash “the power of the blockchain”, while not having even a basic Ethereum payment button, or a wallet address beyond the token sale.

Because investing in LiveEdu may mean remaining with still dormant tokens while Ethereum's price moves up, My Rating for this project is 1.5/5. Ethereum has been growing by leaps and bounds, crossing the $1,000 barrier, and by the time the LiveEdu token has any meaningful trading, simply holding ETH tokens may be the more reasonable move. In case a backer is interested in the project, a well-established secondary market may allow the buying of EDU tokens even below the ICO price.

The world of cryptocurrencies moves too fast, and locking up funds may mean missing out on other projects. LiveEdu may find its mix of large initial backers and a fan base of developers, but it is not the best ICO for newcomers coming in relatively late.