Former Binance chief Changpeng Zhao announces new educational project involving NFTs

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.