Eric Loit / E$P Project
Eric Loit on E$P Project's work in education and energy
In this episode
Ashton Addison speaks with Eric Loit, the managing director of the E$P Project. Eric discusses ESP’s work in the education sector lowering organizational and payment costs, targeting developing countries like Vietnam, their involvement in the renewable energy and solar sector, the ESP Token and its economy, and what’s upcoming on the roadmap for ESP Project.
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- ESP Project developed a digital platform for education that connects parents, teachers, and students while enabling payments through an internal utility token.
- The platform targets unbanked populations in developing countries by leveraging mobile wallets instead of traditional banking infrastructure.
- Vietnam is the initial market focus due to its 21 million students, innovative culture, and abundance of private schools willing to adopt new technology.
- ESP's token economy allows content consumers to earn tokens through ad exposure and spend them on educational content, potentially making content free.
- The platform aims to reduce transaction costs to approximately one cup of coffee per student annually through off-chain or sidechain technology.
Transcript
Read the full transcript
initiatives in a few different sectors that i'm excited to dive into so if you could just kick it off for us first of all with a high level overview of the esp project and some of those initiatives then we could dive into the details certainly well it really started off where we've been actively creating digital platforms in the educational space
and when we're bringing that platform to fruition we really decided the need to have an internal payment mechanism and this is what really was the original genesis for esp and along with that we were able to work in partnership with some other groups that had the same needs and that was in the renewable energy sector so really what we've decided to do is
come out with our own utility token called esp and that is going to be the value transfer mechanism for making these different closed systems work so they're each individual ecosystems that's great to hear and yeah definitely the education front could use a evolution and i think blockchain and cryptocurrency will be a great step forward integrating
that into the platform for you know all scholars to have more benefits in that area can you talk more specifically about some of those initiatives in the education sector and some of the frictions in the industry that you really are pinpointing and solving absolutely great question so where we started off was that there was a real need to have a
basically a platform as a student information information management system so we're connecting parents teachers and students together getting your you know daily activities lesson plans attendance management but then the parents also wanted the ability to pay tuition fees buy books provide lunch money things like field trips and it was really necessary to have
something that worked within one window right so we're bringing this all together we wanted to have a platform and you know part of the problems with being in you know in a developing like we're going to launch in the developing world is that many many parents are unbanked they don't have a bank account so doing electronic transfers through some standardized mode of
payment it just doesn't didn't exist but they all have cell phones so being able to use a cell phone in a digital wallet to move a token from a to b was just a natural fit for the platform so this was one aspect then the other aspect is actually on the content delivery side we want to have the token utilizing the fashion where the content consumers would pay with the
token but at the same time if they're being exposed to advertisements or paid placements they can actually earn tokens while they while they watch those with that content so in essence they have the ability to earn tokens and then spend those tokens on the content that they want to use making that content virtually free right and then if you broaden out that
ecosystem you have the ability to then reward the content providers with payments and tokens as well as advertisers coming into the platform with pay within tokens so it just made it very easy and for us being international based we didn't have to worry so much about borders and exchanges basically in each country they would deal with their own kyc
process their own fiat to crypto exchange locally and then be able to use the platform anywhere in the world so the exchange is really build an important role for us in terms of the fx site definitely yeah the on-ramping and off-ramping and the liquidity of that is going to be super important and you mentioned there you know there's so many different
factors in the school system that could be changed and upgraded through esp and through using blockchain but i've noticed that traditionally you know in the developed worlds the school systems are using architectures that they're they're pretty set in their ways you know they've been around for decades and it's hard to change those industries
that are using although it is antiquated technology most of the time to get them to change to something that's actually really innovative and going to benefit them more but you did speak about first getting it into developing worlds and we've seen with you know internet and cell phone technology that these developing countries that are mainly unbanked as you said
seem to skip that traditional architecture and now are moving ahead because they don't have to you know try to change what they already have they can just move right into this innovative technology can actually skip ahead of the developed worlds and start using the technology with less barriers to entry which is really exciting so i would love to
hear about where specifically your you're focusing these efforts first and how you're going to penetrate into those markets excellent question you actually understand it very well i think one of the biggest barriers to acceptance is especially on the school level is cost you know school boards around the world it doesn't matter if you're in north america or in asia cost is a
huge barrier so what we're looking at the token to provide is you know that lower cost of transaction you know and you don't have to deal with payment gateways and you know all these specialized setups in order to make that process work so if we create an ecosystem that has the various apps already connected through the token that's very easy to pass out along if
you do it in a off-chain or sidechain kind of combination then you can virtually make the transfer tokens free so our initial target is actually in vietnam and the reason for that is it's a it's a fair sized country over 90 million people about 21 million students and the you know for a new startup in the education space it's pretty hard to break in at the municipal level
with a brand new product but the nice thing in vietnam is that we have many many private schools so we can start with a handful grow organically basically prove the platform and then really bring it internationally i have also some agreements in the uae to bring it in at the municipal level as well so you know once we get that kind of traction
in places like europe and north america are natural add-ons for us but you know vietnam for the next 12 months is really the target ultimately you know the big crown jewel is india with over 330 million students so we've created a platform that is very very low cost think about the cost of a cup of coffee per student per year to run the platform
right so whether the municipality and we don't expect ever for the students or parents to pay for this though they might pay through it through tuition fees or whatnot but it wouldn't be a direct charge and we wouldn't be collecting from them really we want to have the municipalities fund that kind of activity definitely that's great to hear
in vietnam specifically you know i actually did speak at some tech conferences in vietnam and across asia and i noticed in vietnam that not only the students but the older generations as well seem to be very focused on tech and i might be biased because i was at tech conferences but it seemed overall like they were very open to innovation and utilizing
technologies that are going to benefit them you're absolutely correct they're a real innovative country they're accepting new technologies they're growing crazy and so the time is really right now to enter vietnam not just with technology but it is really a developing nation that's on its path and we've seen a lot of growth and it's they've got the right attitude as well
You know every every school that you go talk to and i've spent that are part of three years now canvassing the market to understand that we have a good you know good direction and everybody is just waiting get it to us bring it online as quick as you can because we really need this if i can positively impact the student experience where parents are more involved with
the educational process the expectations that you know we can raise the grades of the students so that's primarily where we're focused definitely and obviously that would be a great underlying benefit and one of the main points of creating a better quality of education for those that are using the platform now you also mentioned at the beginning
that you have your hands in the in a few different pots and renewable energy and solar energy specifically also is tied into the platform now i wanted to cover all the bases with the esp project because you are focused on a few initiatives maybe you could touch on how that's involved in the project and how it relates to the whole initiative sure so we have partnerships on the on
the deployment of solar projects at the at the residential level so really one of the problems on the resident side is you know the whole process of you know getting a design done then getting a quote then getting financing for it either through a bank or whatnot usually it's for 20 years or this type of thing getting an approval just the
time and expense of getting that done is very elongated so really what we're looking at trying to do is convert this all into a smart contract basically where we're getting using d5 for the on the financing side as long as that we have a way to secure the project so define the security for the project for the receivable get that into the blockchain and then
it manages so on a monthly basis the payments are made again in coin or in tokens in our case and run that process so if there's a default then there's automatic actions that the contract can take right and part of the challenges there is to make sure that we're not so rigid that oh you didn't pay we cut you your offer you know we execute on collecting
on our on security it's not like that so we have to kind of have a couple of different levels built into the contract and so that's work that's being done now is really on how do we secure the asset for the receivable how that is actually defined and then approved through a decentralized fashion right because we really don't want a central point
that ends up being the gatekeeper of everything right so if we have through the through the network a number of people that can actually approve that this is a is secure then it can allow them the flow of funds to the to the project so it's it's we're in that definition phase now and there's some nuances to where that happens and of course it's it's very locally driven
now we're a little bit more focused in north america for that side of it because that's where you know especially united states there's a new push from the biden administration for renewable energies right infrastructure and that type of thing so we think that the opportunity there exists to help scale an existing operation with a number of projects and just help
them scale because we're giving you know some ease i guess convenience in terms of making that all happen for the homeowner so it becomes a very simple process definitely and i think sort of hitting the nail on the head with both of these initiatives is lower in cost and you mentioned the very beginning you know having those payment channels for on-ramps off-ramps
ease of payments and liquidity and sort of tying both of those initiatives together is the esp token itself i was and you mentioned there using defy to help with the solar industry as well so i'm interested to hear more about that maybe you could touch on the esp token how it is specifically used throughout all of these initiatives that you're
working on and if there's anything else that we didn't talk about yet in terms of its functionality and how it brings value to the ecosystem certainly well the token itself we've made it in such a way that it doesn't carry you know a huge transaction tax we have one percent tax that's in there that will reduce the overall supply to a fixed 50 billion
coins again i keep saying coins because originally this was a point thing but it's it's erc20 token and that you know we're not going to be adding there's not going to be a dilution by adding a new coin so we've minted the coins now and that's it right so it's it's a fixed supply so we want to make sure that it remains relatively stable
we don't want to see you know oh you know we've brought out another you know 50 of supply and that's killed the market or anything because really if when we're using this for payments and transfer of value as for its utility huge fluctuations in price is a problem right because ultimately the token will have to be converted to a fiat currency
and it really needs to be somewhat stable right so we've we've built in some metrics for num metrics but some capability into the coin itself to manage that now on the outside of the token we have policy against you know how we provide liquidity to the market such that we always are very sensitive to the public
about what's happening in terms of you know big movements in the price of the token so we're we're going to actively try to manage that to our best of our ability obviously in a free market the token will do what it's doing but i think a couple of key differences between the token one and other projects are out there is that a lot of those projects are
based basically on hype or you know of the echo of somebody else speaking and who's adjusting the where it's impacting the value of the of the token whereas these operational businesses are actually putting liquidity in terms of actual fiat currency back into the coinbase right supporting it that way and so i think you know from a token
holder they're going to be satisfied that there's real there's a real business behind the project they're putting money into into the coin base that's to the benefit of all the token holders so i think that's one of the big key differences that you see with the esp project against others definitely eric and i think that's a great point and i can imagine students and more
specifically parents don't want to have to worry about volatility when they're you know paying their their students tuition or bills or whatever else they may be using the payment network for so i'm glad that your team is focused on that as a part of the system as well now we don't have a lot of time but i want to look forward with the esp project and
maybe you can talk about some of the main focuses for the rest of 2021 and beyond in what your team is looking to achieve and bring out to the platform okay great well first of all we've just minted the tokens and actually have some for you know basically for a donation you can get some off the website but really the you know the next step is
to get it onto exchanges and then really is you know moving away from the token is now focused on the actual business development getting the platforms out so we have about i'd say a 16-week lead time for getting the what we call our school connect platform out and that's really going to be the first one using the token in the in
its own closed ecosystem the second content delivery platform that we have is called talk to expert it's kind of like a master class type of thing but with you know substantially or lower fees again the coin paying consumers of content if they're watching advertisements replace place content but also providing a lot of educational content
which they will then use the coin to pay for so we want that out also in the next about 18 weeks for that one so we've got those two parallel projects and then the third thing is you know what i mentioned before on the renewable energy side is really the you know getting that whole structure in place we could directly invest
in a number of different individual solar projects but that doesn't give us scale we really want to get the scale is leveraging the d5 side of things right because then that brings additional liquidity into the into the ecosystem and it gets used and focused specifically on the projects that people want to be involved in so i think those three things say over
between now and really q4 is really our primary focus you know there's been a lot of talk i think in the last six or eight weeks you know solely about the token and really that's a small component to a much bigger picture and it's really where our focus is on the business activity of on the education and renewable energy space
great thanks eric and for the viewers that are looking to follow along with those initiatives as they roll out and learn more about the esp project and the token what's the best way for them to learn more and to get involved in the community thanks for asking that the best place is really off the website so esp coin dot io all our social links are there
right so you can get to telegram or facebook or twitter telegram seems to be the most most active but certainly we'll be posting a lot of information on the site and also the activity on the coin we're pretty transparent we'll talk about you know where we're burning coins our regular you know we'll have a coin buyback and this is
the liquidity coming back into into the coinbase we do that we'll start that on a monthly basis and in q3 and we'll list exactly how much is on there how much we're buying back and show the transaction we obviously are not going to broadcast exactly when or how much because again that could influence the market we will do that in secret and then
report afterwards but that yeah the definitely the website's the best place to start but we have a very active telegram community so it's please join that and you see lots of information happening there multiple times a day great eric thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show i will leave all those links in the description
box below as well all the best with esp moving forward and let's follow up in the near future perfect thanks so much really appreciate it
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