The Hacker is an educational ecosystem where cybersecurity specialists share practical knowledge in exchange for financial rewards and recognition. Access to this knowledge significantly increases the hands-on educational level of fellow specialists and the security of computer systems throughout the world.

Hacker: Educational Ecosystem for Cybersecurity Specialists
Financial rewards and recognition for experts and participants

Background

The Hacker, (native Russian spelling ‘‘XAKEP’’), was created in 1999 as a print publication and online magazine. It was the first mainstream community for IT security professionals and enthusiasts.

Today, with over 65,000 publications of proven technical knowledge and research from the best specialists, Hacker is the largest resource worldwide in the field of applied information security.

Abstract

Increasingly complex cyber threats grow each day, and IT-specialists need current hands-on knowledge and research that is approved and validated by the cybersecurity community to protect themselves and their businesses.

Technical specialists and scientists often have trouble monetizing their expertise, as most revenue streams end up in the pockets of big corporations.

Hacker is an educational ecosystem that allows the exchange of cybersecurity knowledge while providing a peer-based system for validation and rewards.

Introduction

Hacker is a decentralized ecosystem for an exchange of materials related to cybersecurity that brings together IT-security specialists from all over the world.

This ecosystem consists of three parts (described below) which filter and rank materials in a fair and transparent way. Contributors receive fair and transparent payments from the community by setting their own price for their materials. A vital part of the ecosystem is the fact that all rewards are tied to the contributor’s online reputation and participation scores. This fact incentivizes participants in the ecosystem to work harder for a higher score to access the benefits.

At the moment our ecosystem allows articles only. In later stages we will be adding more features such as videos, online courses, conference tickets, software, and a recruitment/job marketplace, making use of the existing reward tokens and infrastructure.

Currently, many experts and enthusiasts around the world hold highly specialized knowledge but are not incentivized enough to share it. As mediums for sharing this knowledge with narrow, professional audiences are limited, specialists often have no way to reward themselves. For developers of educational materials such as videos, online courses, and software, sharing is often done through third parties that pocket a significant part of the revenues. These companies bring together supply and demand, but their aim is optimizing profits, not rewarding contributors and users in a fair way, nor do they necessarily share the passion for the subject.

This is why Hacker introduced the Hacker Decentralized Ecosystem. Here, cybersecurity specialists from all over the world can interact with each other directly, while enjoying the quality of materials they have grown to expect from Hacker. To ensure accessibility and quality control, the marketplace will consist of three parts:

In the ecosystem, contributors can upload their materials and set their own pricing. Costs for posting is to prevent spam, and the fee will be put in a reserve fund which later will be used to incentivize highly-ranked users to check spam-marks.

Contributors can request a Hacker-approved stamp for their materials when their reputation allows them to and they can at any time request God-ranked contributors to stamp their materials. The rating of a God-ranked contributor is influenced by the rating of the stamped materials.

Platform features

Roadmap

1. Hacker has a large existing knowledge base in Russian. Initially, we will translate the most exclusive and relevant materials into English and other languages necessary for the user base.
2. The next step will involve recruiting international specialists to share new knowledge
3. In the third stage, we will integrate all other formats of information sharing such as videos, webinars, software marketplace, etc.