CINCINNATI, OH — May 7, 2024 — Scholarships represent a vital student lifeline by offering crucial support for tuition, textbooks and other essential expenses. However, many scholarships have specific renewal criteria that students must meet to continue receiving funding.
Traditionally, students navigate a labyrinth of hurdles, from procuring letters of recommendation to verifying attendance at various events.
Director of the Kautz-Uible Cryptoeconomics Lab in the University of Cincinnati’s Digital Futures research building, Jones partnered with faculty colleague Jordan Tate, professor of Fine Arts at UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, to launch the startup company Carbon Copy Assets (CCA).
In the near future, CCA will introduce a user-friendly mobile application. This innovative tool will allow students to earn badges and rewards effortlessly, simply by verifying their participation at campus events like career fairs, student club meetings, and volunteer opportunities. Students will also be able to demonstrate their acquisition of job and life skills, such as financial and legal literacy.
A blockchain will securely record these activities, enabling scholarship donors and employers to access a publicly verifiable, immutable list of achievements.
Jones and Tate firmly believe blockchains are the digital economy’s cornerstone. “Whenever students tap their own phones to a hardware chip embedded in a physical tag at the entrance to the UC career fair, their time and location can be stamped and recorded on a blockchain,” says Jones. “This type of verification can only be activated by someone’s physical presence at an event, ensuring the utmost transparency. Moreover, the university can fully trust a student’s claim of meeting scholarship-related activities because the evidence is stored on a blockchain. The technology’s inherent security makes it virtually impossible to back-date an activity or alter a record’s value, providing a robust and reliable system for all stakeholders involved.”
The mobile app’s benefit ensures the uninterrupted flow of financial assistance, enabling students to devote their energies to academic pursuits. Removing the burdensome distraction of managing, tracking and reporting requirements will also help students avoid missing deadlines or seeking alternative funding avenues.
Name, image, and likeness (NIL)
While creating a solution to the scholarship challenge, Jones and Tate quickly realized that they were building a reputation and personal brand management platform that would be particularly helpful for students involved in competitive athletics. In a world where the Supreme Court recently granted student-athletes the freedom to monetize their name, image, and likeness (NIL) through corporate marketing deals, companies and students have difficulty finding each other – making the need for robust reputation management even greater.
“With rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence, athletic scholars wanted a way to prove their reputation and marketability, and our app delivers that capability for students,” says Jordan Tate. In addition, most companies in the NIL marketing space focus only on collegiate athletes. However, Carbon Copy Assets offers a solution to all students on a university campus. Jones and Tate recognize that the best match for a company marketing campaign might be someone other than a university-level sports performer. A student club president or a high-achieving journalism student could be the perfect brand influencer.
What began as a quest to streamline scholarship renewal evolved into something far more significant—an on-chain reputation platform for students.
The CCA platform certifies students’ academic endeavors and empowers students to showcase their multifaceted talents beyond the confines of the playing field. Cultivating their brand discovery and development can help students open doors to employment opportunities and corporate collaborations. CCA’s ultimate goal is to work with universities, students, donors and brand partners to create an ecosystem that allows students to pair with brand partners while simplifying tax filings and contract management.
The faculty co-founders of CCA participated in the UC Venture Lab pre-accelerator program inside the 1819 Innovation Hub. The mentor-based program is designed to fast-track early-stage companies’ growth by providing industry resources, entrepreneurial guidance, and funding to scale startups from concept to commercialization.
The team received $115,000 in entrepreneurship funding through the 1819 Venture Lab program. Moreover, as part of 1819’s partnership with tech titan Microsoft, CCA has been admitted to their Startups Founders Hub, granting them access to Azure software credits worth up to $150,000.
Jones said, “Participating in the Venture Lab program and working with the Technology Transfer Office was a huge benefit for us. The expertise of experienced mentors and exposure to potential investors through the 1819 ecosystem were extremely valuable. From legal advice in protecting our IP to business plan strategies, they provided us with the tools we needed to take our technology to the next level.”
Jones and Tate shared how the program emphasized the importance of customer discovery and encouraged them to engage with student-athletes and brands to understand their challenges directly. As cohorts, they collaborated with Venture Lab mentors such as Carlo Cruz at Toyota Ventures, Tim Metzner at Fireroad Ventures, and Joe Maruschak at Aventurine Capital Group, as well as a program entrepreneur-in-residence, Stefan Kyntchev, who continues to advise CCA technically.
The Office of Technology Transfer has worked with Jones and Tate to file a patent application protecting the UC-owned intellectual property (IP) developed in the Kautz-Uible Cryptoeconomics Lab. The company has signed an option agreement giving it the exclusive and first right to license the IP.
CCA launched in August 2023 and worked with a handful of UC students during the fall semester to test their technology. Jones and Tate equipped students with a deeper understanding of their brand value. Students who tested the CCA platform told Jones and Tate that it surpassed the limitations of conventional tracking metrics, such as athletic performance. Tate says “in our work with students, we found that we created a better way for students to manage, grow and quantify their personal brand identity by accumulating digital badges demonstrating offline and online activities. These badges unveil an authentic essence of what makes each student truly unique.”
The app, slated for a fall release, promises to be a game-changer for student-athletes. As Jones elaborated, those who demonstrate their skills and accomplishments through digital badges on the platform will become eligible for lucrative influencer marketing collaborations with prominent corporate brands. This innovative approach rewards athletic talent, empowering individuals to leverage their brands by opening doors to unique opportunities that extend beyond the playing field.
“CCA is an insightful and vital application that will allow student-athletes to excel not only in sport but in NIL and branding themselves,” says Jessica Davis, a UC Women’s Swim Team member. Davis affirmed. “It has been a pleasure helping give insights in the development process and seeing great progress for our school’s NIL infrastructure.”
What’s next?
Reflecting on their landmark initiative, Jones and Tate envision a future where blockchain streamlines administrative processes and fosters a culture of transparency and empowerment. Through the CCA application, corporate brands can trust the student-athletes’ verified metrics, which include academic performance, community, and social reputation. Companies are more inclined to partner with student-athletes with a good reputation that aligns with their brand.
The team believes the technology can help the University of Cincinnati redefine the intersection of academia, sports and personal brand.
“We are currently exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can improve our product,” says Jones. “AI algorithms can analyze an athlete’s social media engagement and brand preferences to craft personalized strategies. AI can also help the matching process between student-athletes and brands. By evaluating compatibility based on factors like audience demographics and marketing objectives, AI can recommend partnerships that are likely to be mutually beneficial.”