Animoca Brands, the company advancing digital property rights for gaming and the open metaverse, and its subsidiary TinyTap, the leading platform for user-generated educational games, today announced that the first batch of six TinyTap Publisher NFTs sold at auction for a total of 138.926 ETH (approximately US$228,000 at time of sale) generating a total 67.7 ETH (approximately US$111,000 at time of sale) for the six teachers who authored the content linked to the Publisher NFTs.

Each Publisher NFT represents co-publishing rights to one TinyTap Course, which is a curated bundle of educational games made on TinyTap by one teacher in one specific subject. NFT buyers take on the role of co-publishers alongside TinyTap and the teacher who created the course, and in return for promoting and marketing the associated Courses they share in the benefits generated from co-publishing efforts.

Each participating teacher receives 50% of the net proceeds from the auction of the NFTs of their Courses as they have in the past on the TinyTap platform, plus a 10% ongoing share of any revenue generated by such Courses as a result of the co-publishing efforts of the NFT owner, plus royalties generated by the secondary sales of the NFTs (see announcement of 27 October 2022).

The successful auction marks another step toward the vision of Animoca Brands and TinyTap to build an alternative Web3 education system that better values teachers by improving the earning opportunities available to them.

The NFT that sold for the highest amount was Learn English with Gabi, which generated 22.9 ETH (approximately US$37,600 at time of sale) for its creator Gabi Klaf, or approximately 13.4x the average monthly elementary teacher’s salary in the public education system of Israel, where she is based (source: OECD).

Commenting on the sale, Gabi Klaf said: “I’ve been teaching ESL passionately for over 30 years. I thought that discovering TinyTap’s interactive game platform was my biggest teaching breakthrough; but now, I see that the Publisher NFT is my real breakthrough. I am overjoyed that my English courses will now reach thousands of children worldwide and I’m excited to teach a new generation of young kids! Financially, I foresee this endeavor to be highly beneficial to me.”

Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, commented: “We designed TinyTap’s Publisher NFTs to significantly increase teachers’ earning opportunities over the current TinyTap subscription model, and to free teachers from the costs and time required to promote their work. Thanks to this innovative use of NFTs, TinyTap’s teachers can choose whether to continue business as usual, or instead make use of Web3 to focus on what they do best – produce great content – while gaining the backing of a co-publisher.”

Yogev Shelly, CEO of TinyTap, said: “We’re deeply thankful for the tremendous support we have received for our new and pioneering education model of Publisher NFTs. This initiative has shown that it is possible to better reward educators for the critically important work that they do. Instead of waiting for salaries to rise and for education to become more relevant, we’re using Web3 to build an incentive system to allow communities and educators to come together to create quality learning content while earning revenue together.”

Cici Lampe, the US-based creator of the Course Learn Colors with Super Heroes, commented: “Five years ago, I started creating interactive games on TinyTap for my grandson in order to teach him myself using a hands-on approach. I can hardly believe one of my courses is now the face of decentralized education with TinyTap and Animoca Brands, bringing supporters worldwide so all kids can learn with me. In addition to rewarding me for it, the course will continue to be co-published in the future. This is a teacher’s dream!”

Ellen Weber, the US-based creator of the Course Nursery Rhymes & Fairy Tales, commented: “TinyTap has been my second income for more than five years. I always believed in TinyTap’s mission and have been inviting the teacher community to join me and create revenue generating educational games on TinyTap. This new step into Web3 makes me believe that TinyTap is on track to fulfill its mission to decentralize education. I hope that teachers out there will see the power and potential of the Publisher NFT model.”

Animoca Brands acquired TinyTap earlier this year (see announcement of 16 June 2022). TinyTap provides a code-free platform that empowers educators to create and share interactive educational content and to receive a revenue share when that content is used by learners. Both companies believe that Web3 solutions can improve opportunities for educators worldwide to earn from the content they create.

Teachers who would like to work with TinyTap to turn their educational content into games and tokenize them can reach out to the TinyTap team at [email protected]. Follow TinyTap on Twitter to keep updated on future developments or visit the Publisher NFT landing page to learn more.