ELMarket: An E-Learning System Based on Blockchain

Abstract

With the development of information technology in the era of big data, the traditional education model based on offline courses can no longer meet people's needs. Online education (i.e., E-Learning) has become a new type of education model. Blockchain has the characteristics of decentralization, traceability, collective maintenance, data disclosure, non-tampering and so on. Its characteristics make it an ideal solution for the existing problems of online education. In this paper, we proposed a new type of decentralized system which called ELMarket(ELM), aiming to solving the problems and deficiencies of existing online educational platforms, including that student user power is insufficient, participants are not interactive enough, and the copyright of educational resources is not protected well. ELM is based on Ethereum to build a private chain called "Intelligence Chain". We released circulating tokens which called ELStone(ELS) on the "Intelligence Chain" as an incentive to users. The system also proposed and widely applied the concept of "Smart Market". In order to protect teachers' creative rights and stimulate students' interests in learning, we have also added several mechanisms such as originality detection, review of users’ behavior and credits exchange. In addition, we combine IPFS and relational database to store, making up for the lack that blockchain cannot store large files. In the end, ELM established a safe, transparent, efficient, and non-tamperable online education ecosystem.