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Page last updated: March 26, 2022

Overview

Patents, research papers, curriculums, guidelines, academic datasets... what if these were all NFTs? The Gneeks.org is an on-chain academic ecosystem with one goal: decentralize education. We're one of the first communities asking questions about the intersection of blockchain and education. As such, we've embodied our proof of concepts in new projects built by our members. Serving as an incubator, a treasury and innovation lab, the Gneeks faction will be home to some of the smartest academics, designers, engineers and educators on the planet.

In order to disrupt the 'Powers that Be', you must exercise your board powers to determine how to steer the treasury budget towards derrivative products that address the problems in global education. Examples of such products and problem spaces within education are addressed throughout this paper.

By minting on June 18th, and joining the Gneek faction, you'll secure your spot in the revolution. With each set of asset classes, you'll acquire the tools, resources and funding you'll need to change the World. While Gneeks and $CLASSX plays like a strategy game, the real-world impact is serious.

First generation of on-chain asset classes include:

• Gods & Geeks: an inclusive 1st generation PFP collection giving 10,000 members a voice, with a set of options for moving ahead and taking action. Spots are intended for education system problem solvers, innovators and critical thinkers.


• Book Games: four interactive NFT and print books that guide the ecosystem through the origins of technology and computer science culture. Owning your character, obtaining scannable items, airdrops, and resources become your utilities for making change. Book Games will keep you on track and serve as a storymode guide to the daunting challenges we face disrupting the global education system.


• Thrones & Crystals: board and adivsory seats that give special privileges to community members working towards the ultimate goal: decentralize.


• $CLASSX Token: a governance token airdropped to gen 1 PFP NFT and book game holders. Use tokens to purchase thrones and crystals for $CLASSX board of education voting power.

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The second set of student asset classes will support the end users of the education products (teachers and students) built by the Gneek ecosystem. Current proposals include:

• AxiomX: a community-managed computer science syllabus and curriculum that resembles a periodic table.


• The Hacker Way: computer science, cryptography and cyber security awareness choose your own adventure game for desktop with play-to-earn utilities such as: gamer tokens, symbols, AxiomX elements and legends.


• Node Chronicles: digital text technology literacy app for iPhone and Android. Unlock achievements (student asset classes) for reading about technology history and computer science.


• Symbols: earnable achievements representing critical facets of technology.


• Legends: earnable all-time technology legends awarded for completing technology history lessons.


• Trunks: update your Gen 2 PFP's metadata with your unlocked student asset classes using a trunk.

Note: baseline content, prototypes, alpha products and artwork for each of the proposals mentioned above have already been produced in one form or another. Gneeks.org is currently in the stage of community and smart contract development to bring said assets and products on-chain. Explore deeplinks throughout thewebsite for examples of progress and methodology within each of these areas.

Let the Games Begin: From here on out, learn everything you can about the Gneek Faction, Technology and the power of DAPPs.

Why Blockchain?

Blockchain gives us a way to materialy connect people in pursuit of a common goal. This paper examines the methods in which a guild of academic experts can work together in a distributed education ecosystem, while being compensated for their intellectual contribution, influence and/or participation.

In simple terms, people, technology, content and funding are necessary to develop new systems. Community educators and students must also be a part of this equation. NFTs, smart contracts and tokens are on-chain tools built to distribute value and support, wherever needed.

Why Decentralize?

For centuries, employees, writers, developers and adivsors relied on market-rate compensation with upside in the form of: potential notoriety, paper contracts, stock options, or perhaps even a good old fashioned handshake in exchange for their time and effort. The reason decentralized apps and DAO's are so appealing is because they toss this old way of working out the window. Smart contracts and tools like Etherium give constituents the motivation to work within an ecosystem with real-time reward and proportional ownership. As workers within the hive come together under smart contract and token governance, they become true owners, incentivized with digitial equity, instant royalties, liquidity and the ability to control and upward manage the organization. Ultimately, web3 platforms such as Gneeks and $CLASSX offer more favorable working conditions, say-so and reward, not only for those who create within the system, but for those who promote, teach, and use the system.

Before we get into things like tokenomics and the treasury, let's be sure we all understand what exactly is taking place at Gneeks.org. The asset classes we introduce in this litepaper are programmed with utilities that unlock the possibility of best practice consensus, project funding, and blockchain ledgers to house many facets of verification, data and information. Beginning with our first generation PFP, the Gods & Geeks Genesis NFTs, holders are given the option to perform a variety of subsequent actions.

Such actions include:

• Obtain a position on the board of directors (thrones & crystals).
• Develop and vote on proposals (governance).
• Speculate, arbitrage, and help finance the mission (hodl, fud, flip, fomo).
• Control the direction of treasury spending.
• Earn while learning and contributing.
• Steer critical values represented in the end products.
• Collaborate in a worker ready ecosystem that supports open ideation, best practice design, product development, and distribution.
• Produce on-chain, verifiable instructional frameworks, lesson plans, guidelines, and curriculums.
• Analyze non-personally identifiable product usage data for independent review.

In short, academic institutions could never be successful without tuition, endowments and research grants. No text book company could ever make a difference without paid writers, revenues and a supply chain. And a valuable source of knowledge such as Wikipedia wouldn't exist without their foundation and community of thousands of contributors. The difference between Gneeks.org and these other impact models rests in one simple fact: reverse ownership. Gneeks.org governance is led by you, the contributor, the user, the thought leader. For everyone, forever.

Lastly, Gneeks.org takes on an embodiment approach in everything it delivers. The entire orchestration of the project is a game unto itself. Each moment you spend reading texts like these, enhancing your vocabulary, interacting with board members, is a moment invested in the next generation.

What is Broken?

Many experts would agree that it would be easier to colonize Mars than change our global education system. With supporting data illustrating huge disparity in how students perform across reading, math and science in various countries, there's an overwhelming set of challenges holding students back. Socioeconomic disadvantages, role models, cultural motivation, consensus, and access create an underwhelming experience in many communities. Furthermore, there are many teachers and students operating in poor conditions, without funding and access to critical methodologies and programming. In our research, we've dug up a plethora of data to support these theories.

A decentralized education system holds the promise of:

• Establishing curriculum consensus.
• A support ecosystem ready for advocacy and action.
• Educator income supplementation.
• Classroom funding supplementation.
• Incentivizing student participation.
• Channeling grants and donations to those in need.

How Long?

Amazon was not the first eCommerce website. Without Bitcoin, Ethereum may have never been created. Without the Gneeks faction, the eventual goal of decentralizing education will only take longer. The vision of Gneeks.org is big, and it will take time for the full system to come to fruitiion. Possibly, 3-5 years. In that time, we will have explored many aspects of decentralizing education. Some aspects might scale, others may need to be scrapped and/or redesigned. For now, it's all about taking the first step:find the right people passionate about the overall mission. The more members who join the board and the more treasury dollars we collect, the faster we move!

Collectable Assets

Collectable assets offer a role playing approach to achieving the daunting task of revolutionizing education. When we discuss decentralizing academia, we refer to 3 pillars in need of disruption:

• consensus among experts on what to teach, how, and when.
• Equitable funding and resources for product makers, teachers and students everywhere.
• Secure access to on-chain usage data for independent studies and efficacy review.

The asset classes defined below each provide a protocol and theoretical means for achieving the incredible task of decentralizing, one step at a time. From the very onset of community led reseaerch and development, to the fruition of finished products, the smart contracts offered shall bind all necessary utility to the wallets of each participant.

The Gods & Geeks Genesis NFT Series

The Gods & Geeks NFT asset class is where it all begins. Obtaining your PFP avatar is a way to secure your spot in the Gneek ecosystem. To demonstrate our purpose first intentions, we've decided to give the PFP genesis collection away for free. The motivation being to first find the right members passionate about the mission before collecting any money.

Why Gods?

It's no secret that the mysterious gods of Egypt shared many philisophical ideas about our origins as a species. Across all cultures, the highest diety most often refers to a god who formed the stars and planets out of chaos, in some primordial dark waters. Ironically, in physics, we are taught that out of darkness, the big bang produced gasses, dust, gravity and clumps of matter which formed our stars and planets. Dozens of other dieties were assigned to represent all apects of life, culture, education, craftsmanship, justice and more. We chose the gods of Egypt as our guide because they are perhaps one of the oldest, most complete curriculums we find in our history books.

Why Geeks?

Behind every great technological achievement, somewhere up late, burning the midnight oil, reading, researching, expirimenting, there is a so called geek, working, sacrificing, yearning to make a difference, while the rest of the world sleeps on their opportunity. Geeks are one of our greatest achievements as a species. They are an evolution of the human race. They work on the worlds most intense problems using their tremendous brainpower. The Gods and Geeks collection is a celebration of the hard work, tenacity and dedication.

What are Gneeks?

Gneeks, pronounced (ga-neeks), are geeks who have become gods / gurus in their respective field. In book one, Into the Ether, they are described as a new species of highly intelligent people tasked with overturning the 'Powers that Be' and guiding humanity to the stars.

Book Games

Book Games are the provenance of Gneeks.org. Originally, co-creators Franck Jones and Christian Colbert set out on a mission to teach computer science and technology using comic books and digital texts. As they observed learners of all ages interact with their books, they found themselves lost in a sea of ideas on how to make reading more fun for adolescents and adults. They became obcessed with technology history, new education paradigms and the cultural barriers people face when joining the industry.

Node Chronicles, The Hacker Way, was the earliest rendition of their book. Noted as the first graphic novel to interact with an iPhone and Android via image recognition, the books companion apps helped extend the comics with animated content, existential questions, fortunes, character unlocks and more. Soon after, the idea of transmedia became a thing as their products began engaging users on various levels, across multiple senses.

From an operational point of view, Gneeks.org has established critical capabilites as an organization, including the ability to self publish printed books and merchandise, self distribute, conduct eCommerce operations and manage customer support. In 2021, Node Chronicles fulfilled several thousand print books via Shopify and Amazon.

Competitors

When Punks Comic and Huxley dropped as NFT comics, Jones and Colbert decided to embrace blockchain and it's unique abilities to protect collectors, airdrop extra goodies and extend the lifetime value of their saga. Today, book one, Into the Ether, has become the center of inspiration for everything our community works for: culture, purpose, equality and prosperity. The values of our organization, what it means to be a contributing human, and a geek, and where we're all going, can be found in this intentional work of literature and art.

Together, Punks Comic and the Huxley Saga represent many learnings that we are inspired by. Punks initial distribution model and Huxley's game mechanics have demonstrated that there is an abundance of room for creative innovation and opportunity within the NFT comic book space.

Another stepping stone for future NFT projects, Gary Vee's book games have established an ecosystem of 350,000 members. Gneeks.org questions whether building a similar sized community of passionate academics is possible, with an altruistic end game, is something the NFT market wants.

Thrones

Gneeks.org has established a board of education, whereby seat holding members are granted special abilities, such as the ability to create proposals, vote on spending bills and build quorum. Seats, otherwise known as Thrones, are NFT's that provide transformative utilities. By combining a throne with your PFP, a mutation to a god is peformed, and your original PFP may be burned, forever (deflationary). You may also consider a split, whereby your PFP shards into 6 new random PFPs, of which you may distribute or build upon (inflationary).

• Nun - Primeval Waters, Founder
• Re - Life on Earth, Chair
• Atum - Substance, Creator
• Amun - Abstract Notions, Culture
• Ptah - Craftsmanship, Builder
• Thoth - Learning and Writing, Educator
• Anubuis - Gatekeeper, Security

Crystals

Featured at a smaller entrance cost, Crystals are granted for smaller achievements, while extending the core values of the Gneeks.org ecosystem with 8 additional guiding principles. They including additional voting power. As an example, a culture throne with many crystals, may estabish the equivalent voting power of a Nun founder throne.

Crystals are named after 8 additional Egyptian Gods, representing the following values:

• Mut - Family
• Maat - Justice & Equality
• Hathor - Love
• Sekhmet - Health
• Bastet - Home
• Shu - Environment
• Tefnut - Elements
• Khansu - Nature

Legends

Legends represent the historical context and evolution of technology. The ClassX writing team has studied the likeness of 100+ legends and developed short stories, comics, and illustrations of their greatest moments. A linear timeline representing each legends place in our history, and their greatest achievements, may be used by future implementations.

Node Chronicles, The Hacker Way, was the first comic book ever to demonstrate machine vision with a companion iPhone and Android app.

AxiomX Elements

The first rendition of the Node Chronicles iPhone and Android app featured an ability to nest computer science elements inside digital texts, which could be unlocked and earned for reading accomplishments. A core database and GraphQL database was been designed featuring 10 Branches of Technology. Each element acts as a storage container for the defintion, metadata, links to resources, and threaded contextual conversations. In the future, AxiomX elements might become NFTs granted to those who study them and work within their scope.

• Math
• Physics
• Design
• Hardware
• Code
• Protocols
• Datatypes
• Algorithm
• Sensors
• Tooling

$CLASSX Token

Note: This area of the paper is under development.

Gneeks.org will create a governance token named $CLASSX and issue aidrops to PFP holders for holding. Book game owners will receive an even greater percentage of $CLASSX token airdrops. Use your tokens to purchase a throne or crystal.

Treasury

A substantial portion of all NFT sales and creator fees will go to the treasury. Money in the treasury will be spent on education technology development, creative works and verifiable acts of education using Gneeks.org community developed systems.

Governance

Preferred governance will be managed by Throne and Crystal holders. Additional public voting power will be controlled by the $CLASSX token. A complete paper on the $CLASSX governance token is being developed.

Members

The entire Gneeks.org team, ecosystem, platform and all of its assets will be on-chain. Effectively, the utilities of the Gneeks smart contracts will create a fully functioning decentralized board of education, capable of making critical decisions on behalf of the ecosystem.

Advisors

Less involved members who wish to share their direction, ideas and concepts for proposals may join the board of advisors by obtaining crystals.

Proposals

A web3 application is being developed to allow for proposal generation, quorum, voting and the allocation of treasury spending.