The LiveEdu ICO recently started, they've already sold over $7 million tokens out of a $10 million hardcap, meaning there's not long left to get involved.

What is LiveEdu?

Website: https://goo.gl/rQ4Tya
They've already set up a decentralized P2P learning platform. The platform is video based with them stating in their whitepaper that they hope to become a decentralized version of Youtube for learning.
They plan to target education type videos on youtube and recruit them on to their platform instead.
Unlike many of the recent ICOs, this project already has a working product and they claim to have team members who previously worked for the online retail giant Amazon and Y-combinator.
The platform currently focuses on 8 topics with plans to target all learning topics by 2019.
The platform will be decentralized and have a similar model to how Steem works by rewarding everyone on the platform.

Competing with Youtube

Many people would feel that competiting with Youtube would be impossible. However by targetting a small niche with a new monetizing concept it should be possible.
Twitch has already proven this by becoming the biggest live stream gaming platform in the world, many youtubers have quit youtube to solely focus on Twitch now.

How big is LiveEdu now?

They state in their whitepaper that in just 2 years they've already had over 1 million people from 194 different countries use their product. They also boast an impressive 13,000 project creators that have created over 200,000 videos.
This year they expanded by adding premium options and increasing the amount of categories that they allow on to the platform.
Currently the platform has both premium and non premium projects, however they state that in the future only premium projects will be available.
The platform targets those who already have some prior knowledge of their niche rather than beginners, with their main targets being College students and professionals.

The blockchain

The project will initially run on the Ethereum network with a smart contract similar to Steem. I assume this means that viewers and teachers will be rewarded when they receive upvotes. If it's the same as Steem then it will work by giving users who hold more of the currency a higher upvote value.
They state that within the next 3 years they plan to develop their own blockchain so that they're not relying on any 3rd parties.

Tokenization key points

• The platform won't be creating any content themselves and will be solely P2P

• They're hoping to hit the ground running by offering token incentives to early project creators on the website, they claim that this will bring content creators together rather than acting as competitors as they'll all want the platform to be successful.

• Currently the content uploaded has been solely decided on by the project creators. By using the tokens on the platform however they plan to start to offer users the chance to submit projects that they want other users to create.

• The new Education token will be used for all transactions on the platform and will be used to reward content creators.

• Investors will benefit from the platform using 30% of the revenue generated from subscriptions to burn tokens, this should send the price higher if their revenue is high.

• Token holders will also be able to vote on certain decisions that need to be made.

How big is the market?

They claim in their whitepaper that the market for training was worth over $300 billion back in 2013. North America and Europe account for the majority of this figure.
The platform will be targeted at users who already atleast intemdiate level, therefore they don't view Udemy as a direct competitor. However Udemy is a good example of how big LiveEdu could grow to be.
The platform also focuses on teaching their users how to built a complete product from start to finish in each course.

Categories and Features

Currently the platform focuses on 8 different categories with each having sub categories, When the platform launched they first focused on just programming the 7 other categories only recently launched so the team has been focused on getting more content for them.
Each product category is organized into sub sections with streaming, video and a live chat.

Decentralized learning

Over the last few years learning has quickly advanced from almost solely offline based at Universities and Colleges to more recently becoming more popular online. Many platforms have launched online over the last decade in the niche. The difference being that most of these tend to target beginners.
By utilizing the blockchain and smart contracts LiveEdu is hoping that the next step becomes decentralized learning.
The new EDU tokens will be the sole payment method on the platform and used to reward creators and even to reward 'good' students.
The platform will transition from being fiat based to token based by giving all of their users their own wallet and a small initial free token balance.

ICO Details

• Soft cap: $1 million (already complete.
• Hardcap: $10 million
• Token type: ERC20
• Minimum investment: Just $3
• Payment methods: ETH or BTC
• Price per token: $0.1
• End date: Scheduled for the 10th of February, however it looks like it will hit its hardcap before then.

Use of funds

• More projects: 15%. The platform hopes to have atleast an extra 700 projects completed per quarter.
• Team members: 35%. The platform will be spending a large amount of funds on hiring more team members.
• Network development: 25%. Integrating the token into the platform and server costs.
• Marketing: 15%
• Overhead: 10%

Conclusion

Recently there seems to be many similar projects coming out, this one however seems to be unique. Twitch has shown that competing with Youtube is possible by targeting a niche which is exactly what LiveEdu hopes to do with the learning niche.
The token sale has been selling out quickly with $7 million sold in just the last week. I also like that the hardcap is 'just' $10 million, many other projects attempt to raise $100 million which seems to be far too much.
Sign up to the platform with my link below to read more information:
https://goo.gl/rQ4Tya