Giggle Academy

The project’s concept paper is titled “Giggle Academy, Concept Brainstorm” and marked “A CZ project, Feb 2024”; the file name on the official website carries “v0.4” and “20240221.” Written in the first person, it sets out to make basic education “accessible, addictive and adaptive” and free for children who have no access to it today.⁠[1][2]

In the paper Zhao writes that he spent a few months thinking about what to do next: “I need to find something that has the maximum positive impact that I could achieve in this world.” He says his area of expertise is building teams that build software platforms, which can reach hundreds of millions of people. On the name, the paper explains that the target audience is children who may not have literate parents to nudge them along, and writes “We feel learning should be fun, and addictive. And the domain is available.”⁠[1][3]

Drawing on WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia is a free, multilingual online encyclopedia launched on January 15, 2001, written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and hosted by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation; it is one of the most visited websites in the world.Open the full entry data, the paper states that more than 75% of the world’s 781 million illiterate adults live in South Asia, West Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and that women make up nearly two-thirds of illiterate adults worldwide.⁠[1][4]

The curriculum it envisages runs from grade 1 to grade 12: basic reading, writing, language and literature, together with math, science, physics, biology and finance; senior grades add programming and arts, and the paper also lists emotional intelligence, negotiations, entrepreneurship, sales, legal or accounting topics, blockchain and AI. History and religion are left out, for the stated reason “Too much potential debate on a global platform.”⁠[1]

The paper says the platform is “Not aimed to replace the existing education systems”; its goal is to help students get better jobs, not necessarily to enter college. It awards no degrees: students certify themselves through Giggle points, levels and badges, and the platform is to provide a path for those who want to continue into higher education. The paper says the platform is aimed at giving access to underprivileged children in developing countries, mentions “The 13 year old kid who never went to school,” and wants children with illiterate parents to be able to follow along.⁠[1]

On teaching method, the paper proposes gamification and an adaptive curriculum: points, scores, rankings and badges (NFTs) as rewards, content that adjusts to each student, and encouragement to specialize in a student’s strongest subjects; it also warns against “over gamification,” writing “Too much dopamine may also be bad.” and saying children need to develop delayed gratification and grit. Levels and badges are to be issued as Soul Bound Tokens (SBTs), which the paper explains are blockchain-based tokens that cannot be transferred and that employers can verify with the student’s permission. In the FAQ, the answer to “Is there a (crypto) token with this project?” is “No.”⁠[1]

Against cheating, the paper lists random camera-based facial recognition checks (subject to local privacy laws), timing analysis to detect bots and gauge a student’s strength, and AI screening to filter out AI-generated answers. The paper envisages a platform that is entirely online, with no physical presence, run with AI and automation and scalable; it acknowledges that online learning lacks peer support and group learning, and leaves this to later iterations.⁠[1]

The paper calls the platform “Completely free” and a “Zero revenue platform,” and says basic education will always remain free; courses beyond grade 12 may later carry fees, and employers may pay to use the job market. The FAQ states “This project is funded by CZ,” who says he will fund it for as much as needed if it proves effective; asked whether people can donate, the paper answers “Not at this time. We are sufficiently funded for now.” and says it may accept donations once the platform is proven effective.⁠[1]

The FAQ also says that the team is fully willing to work with other charities but wants to keep its autonomy and its own pace; that it leaves higher education and professional development aside because other sites already serve those areas, and wants to focus on the “first mile,” where revenue is harder to generate; on competition, “There is no competition. Our platform does not generate revenue.”; on whether it can succeed where others have failed, “Success is never guaranteed, but that doesn’t stop us from trying.”; that the team will first build a set of initial materials itself; and that pay-to-learn or learn-to-earn is unlikely in the initial phases because it complicates the platform’s financial model.⁠[1][3]

The paper also envisages a job market: employers could filter students by the certifications or skills they have achieved and might pay for AI-generated summaries of a student’s history; from about age 13 students could take on simple paid work such as AI tagging, and later more advanced jobs such as customer support, marketing associate and community moderator, and the paper expects the income to motivate parents to keep their children learning.⁠[1]

The paper also sets out ideas for parents and peer support: finding incentives for parents to keep children in school, explaining to parents why education matters, giving comprehensive reports to highly involved parents and simple reports to less involved or even illiterate parents, and sending timely notifications so that both kinds of parents can follow and encourage their children’s progress; forming social circles for children by subject, interest, strength or proximity, with peer tutoring, counseling and mentoring by older children and volunteers, and private consultation channels with volunteers. The paper regards mental health and peer support as vital for children to sustain a long-term commitment to learning.⁠[1]

On teachers and content, the paper says teachers are underpaid worldwide (it gives an average United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry teacher salary of about $30,000 a year without a source) and says it will likely offer a feature in the future that lets teachers submit content and compete, with high rewards for the best-performing content; others may reuse the platform’s content provided that they also offer their own content free of charge, and partially paid sites do not qualify.⁠[1]

The next steps come in two phases: Phase 1 is a minimum viable product (MVP) that asks whether good gamification can be achieved: it gamifies a level 1 English course, web only but made to fit a mobile browser; Phase 2 and beyond is scale, with more courses, more languages and more devices. The paper names internet access and devices as key problems but treats them as areas for partners, outside the team’s core expertise, and writes “Most rural villages have an internet connection at least.”⁠[1]

On March 18, 2024, Changpeng Zhao previewed the project on X: “Launching a new project. No, no new tokens. Education project. More details soon.”⁠[5]

He then announced the project’s name, Giggle Academy, on X, calling it “My next project” and writing “(No logo yet),” “Free basic (grade 1-12 ish) education, for all.” “No revenue.” “Gamified.” “Adaptive.” and “We are HIRING. Small team, work directly with CZ.”; the post linked to the concept paper and a website. It was posted on Monday, March 18, in the United States, which was already the morning of Tuesday, March 19, in Asia.⁠[4][3][6]

In a separate post he said no cryptocurrency would be involved in the project.⁠[3]

At the time of the announcement Zhao had stepped down as chief executive of Binance in November 2023 and pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program, and his sentencing was set for April 30, 2024; his plea carried a $50 million fine, he was free on a $175 million bond, and a federal judge had restricted his travel out of the United States.⁠[4][3]

The project website at the time quoted Zhao as saying that building “a high-quality and sticky education platform that is entirely free and accessible to all” was the most impactful thing he could do for the next chapter of his life; its listed job openings included Senior Game Developer and Gamification Product Manager.⁠[4]

After the announcement an X user launched a memecoin on SolanaSolanaSolana is a proof-of-stake (PoS) public blockchain designed for high throughput and low latency, with SOL as its native token; it was developed by Solana Labs and launched Mainnet Beta in March 2020. It is known for design choices such as its Proof of History clock and parallel execution, suffered several network-wide outages in its early years, and became one of the crypto industry’s focal points in events including the FTX collapse, U.S. SEC lawsuits, and the listing of Solana ETFs.Open the full entry, and more than a dozen tokens riffed on the Giggle name; volunteers also offered to design a logo and to test the platform at launch. Kashif Raza, founder of the BitcoinBitcoinBitcoin (common symbol BTC) is an open peer-to-peer electronic cash protocol, network, and native digital asset. Full nodes independently verify transactions and blocks according to the consensus rules; transactions are recorded as UTXOs, and blocks are organized into a public ledger through proof of work. Bitcoin is not issued or managed by any single institution, but using, holding in custody, and trading it still involve key, privacy, market, and legal risks.Open the full entry education platform Bitinning, endorsed the initiative, saying “the only way to bring change in this world is through education.”⁠[4][5]

On March 30, 2024, Zhao posted an update on X: “We got a team of 10 now.” Some members were part time and some full time, all remote, with calls together three times a week in addition to smaller ad hoc chats; hiring was continuing, he was doing a dozen interviews a week, and the initial target was a team of 15.⁠[7]

The same update said the first phonics lesson had been finalized and was awaiting production; Zhao preferred to launch an Android version before a web version, because families in the target market are more likely to buy an Android device first and children find touchscreens easier to use.⁠[7]

The terms and conditions on the official website carry a last-update date of August 6, 2024. They state that Giggle Academy provides free online educational content for grades 1–12 and that all courses are completely free of charge; the service is available to all users worldwide, and “Our primary focus is on underprivileged kids in developing countries who do not have access to education”; users under 18 must have a parent’s or guardian’s permission. The terms are governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which Giggle Academy is based, without naming that jurisdiction, and they name no operating legal entity.⁠[8]

On November 9, 2024, replying on X to a post ranking countries by literacy, Zhao said he was interested in the countries at the “bottom of the list”; World Population Review data shared by a user in the discussion placed Chad, Mali and South Sudan among the countries with the lowest literacy rates.⁠[9]

At the TOKEN2049TOKEN2049TOKEN2049 is a global series of cryptocurrency and Web3 industry conferences that originated in Hong Kong; as of October 2026 it centers on its Singapore and Dubai editions and has announced a New York edition to be added in June 2027. The Singapore edition is held at Marina Bay Sands, coinciding with the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix.Open the full entry conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Zhao said to the audience: “In a few years, I think, I want to teach 100 million or 1 billion kids for free.” He said that with current technology “it’s not that hard to make an app that will stick,” one that can be educational while keeping children engaged, and he spoke of the heavy use of generative AI in crafting Giggle Academy’s course materials. The account of the talk was published on April 30, 2025.⁠[10]

On Sunday, September 21, 2025, Giggle Academy announced that it would accept public donations and said all donations would be used for community building, creator incentives, ecosystem development and product promotion.⁠[11][12]

About half a day after opening, BscScan showed the donation address holding more than 1,311 BNBBNBBNB is the native crypto asset of BNB Chain. It was launched by the Binance ecosystem through a token offering in 2017, originally ran on Ethereum, migrated to Binance Chain in 2019, and has since been used for fees, staking, and governance on BNB Smart Chain. Its supply mechanism combines the periodic Auto-Burn with the BEP-95 real-time burn.Open the full entry, worth over $1.3 million at the time. On September 22 Zhao said on X that the donation service had raised $1 million within 12 hours, 90% of it from meme coins; he also said Giggle Academy had no plans to issue a token and did not want to complicate a free education platform with tokenomics.⁠[12][13]

Most of the money came from trading fees on a newly launched memecoin, GIGGLE (Giggle Fund), which sends the fees it collects to Giggle Academy in BNB. As to who launched it, the same September 22, 2025 article credits an X user known as RUNE in one place and the Giggle Fund in another; as to when, that article has most of the first day’s donations already coming from the token, while an October 10, 2025 article says on-chain data show the token was launched on September 22, a day after donations opened.⁠[12][11]

RUNE had asked Zhao on X whether the project would accept tokens as donations, pointing to Vitalik ButerinVitalik ButerinVitalik Buterin is the originator of Ethereum, the author of its whitepaper, and one of its eight co-founders, as well as a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine. The Ethereum Foundation calls him the inventor of Ethereum; he has long been involved in protocol research and public discussion, but does not control the network as a CEO.Open the full entry’s 2021 donation of about $1 billion in Shiba Inu tokens to a COVID-19 relief fund in India; Zhao replied that memecoin donations would be converted or sold for major altcoins: “appreciate the donations, but please don’t complain about the selling pressure later.” RUNE later explained that the token does not work that way, since it charges its fee in BNB: “No one is affected.”⁠[12]

BscScan showed that the Giggle Fund accounted for 967 of the nearly 10,000 transactions sent to the Giggle Academy address since launch; its description on DEX Screener calls it a “donation coin that directly donates to GiggleAcademy,” and the token’s transaction count rose more than 470% in 24 hours on $2.8 million in volume.⁠[12]

On October 10, 2025, Zhao wrote on X: “$11,000,000 in hard currency (#BNB) donated to @GiggleAcademy in less than 20 days to spread free education to the world.” The BscScan screenshot he attached showed the Giggle Academy address holding about 8,722 BNB.⁠[11]

The post went on, “Power to crypto for good, Power to $giggle,” and several tokens using the GIGGLE ticker rallied: TradingView data showed the Giggle Fund token rising from $82 to $120.61 within seconds and falling about 19% over the next hour, while volume on the GIGGLE/WBNB pair rose to $23.5 million; GMGN data put the token’s market capitalization above $110 million, after an earlier peak of $116 million. An X user replied asking him to make clear that Giggle Academy had not launched any token; up to then the project’s official X account had made no announcement of a token launched to fund the initiative.⁠[11]

Earlier, on the first anniversary of his release from prison, Zhao had said the project had provided free education to at least 50,000 children.⁠[11]

BinanceBinanceBinance is a global digital asset trading and multi-asset financial platform launched in 2017 and co-founded by Changpeng Zhao and Yi He. Its business has expanded from spot trading to derivatives, wallets, payments, a public blockchain ecosystem, market data, traditional securities, and artificial intelligence interfaces; its history also includes security incidents, regulatory enforcement across multiple jurisdictions, a 2023 U.S. criminal settlement, and subsequent compliance restructuring.Open the full entry announced that, starting in December 2025, it would donate 50% of the trading fees generated by Giggle Fund (GIGGLE) spot and margin trading pairs; the plan counts fees from 00:00 (UTC) on November 1, 2025, until further notice. Fees collected in other tokens such as USDT, USDC and TRY are converted to GIGGLE at Binance’s real-time daily exchange rates, each month’s fees are totaled before the 5th day of the following month, and the donation is then made on-chain and the monthly report updated; the announcement says the mechanism does not change GIGGLE trading fees, BNB fee discounts or fee rebates. The announcement page gives its publication time as 09:06 on November 3, 2025, and its update notes record a correction that day to the calculation time for the first batch of donations; CointelegraphCointelegraphCointelegraph is a digital news outlet covering blockchain, digital assets, artificial intelligence, and fintech, known for its cartoon-style news illustrations. It also runs businesses including Cointelegraph Magazine, research, an accelerator, and events.Open the full entry’s November 4 article has Binance announcing it on the Saturday.⁠[14][15]

The announcement describes Giggle Fund as a charity-focused memecoin on BNB Smart ChainBNB ChainBNB Chain is a multichain blockchain ecosystem with BNB as its native asset. Its core includes the Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible BNB Smart Chain, the opBNB layer-2 network and the decentralized storage network BNB Greenfield; its history traces to Binance Chain, launched in 2019.Open the full entry that converts trading fees into donations for children’s education through Giggle Academy, and as a community-driven initiative “not officially associated with Giggle Academy”; Binance says it will remain neutral, that “This donation plan does not constitute investment support for any token or project,” and that it will consider withdrawing the donation if the plan cannot be implemented. The donation address listed in the announcement, 0xC7f501D25Ea088aeFCa8B4b3ebD936aAe12bF4A4, is the same address linked from the donation page of Giggle Academy’s website.⁠[14][16]

On November 3 Zhao wrote on X: “The Giggle memecoin is not an official coin launched by Giggle Academy,” adding “I don’t know who launched it.” In an X post after Binance set out its donation plan he wrote: “It’s good to see it generated so much donations. Not surprised to see @Binance donating its fees.”⁠[15][17]

On November 4 Giggle Academy stated on X that the Giggle Fund token was not issued by the organization and was a memecoin initiated by the community; the statement also thanked the community for its donations and said a donation page had been set up to disclose all income and expenses publicly. The same day Zhao explained on X that the Giggle Fund token’s smart contract, designed by the community, donates BNB directly to Giggle Academy’s public donation address, whereas Binance’s proposed fee donation is paid in Giggle Fund tokens, of which Giggle Academy would burn half of what it receives.⁠[15][18]

CoinMarketCapCoinMarketCapCoinMarketCap is a crypto asset price and market data website launched in 2013. It ranks crypto assets and exchanges by price, market capitalization and trading volume and offers products including an API, the on-chain data tool DexScan and the education platform CMC Academy, and its data is often cited by major media. It has been part of Binance since around April 2020, and David Salamon became chief executive officer in September 2026.Open the full entry data describe GIGGLE as designed to donate 5% of every trade automatically to fund Giggle Academy’s education projects. CoinGecko data show the token launched in September 2025 with an initial market capitalization of about $24 million and reaching $100 million by early October; on October 25 its market cap climbed from about $86 million to a peak of $277 million, fell back to about $60 million by November 3 and rose again to about $90 million on November 4. After Binance’s announcement the token’s price briefly reached $110, with trading volume up 150% on the previous day by CoinGecko’s data, before falling back to around $59.⁠[15][17]

The swings drew criticism; the X user The Alchemist wrote: “They really pumped that GIGGLE up and used y’all for exit liquidity.” Cointelegraph approached Giggle Academy for comment on GIGGLE’s volatility and had received no response by publication.⁠[15]

The records on Binance’s announcement page show cumulative GIGGLE trading fees of 12,237.00 GIGGLE (about 1,386,556.74 USDT equivalent) for November 1, 2025, to January 30, 2026 (UTC), and a fourth batch, covering January 31 to February 27, 2026 (UTC), of 1,368.89 GIGGLE (about 43,148.52 USDT equivalent). The page lists an on-chain donation transaction and a burn transaction for each batch, together with a burn address. It was updated on March 1, 2026, with burn and donation records, and on March 27, 2026, to say that later burn and donation transactions are no longer updated there and are kept on a separate page, and again on September 24, 2026, to reflect a new burn execution time.⁠[14]

On Sunday, August 16, 2026, Zhao moved about 1,440 BNB (then worth about $872,000) and 182,620 BinanceLife tokens (about $93,000) to Giggle Academy’s GnosisGnosisGnosis is a blockchain project founded in 2015 in the Ethereum ecosystem. It began by developing decentralized prediction markets, later shifted to infrastructure, incubating the multisig wallet Safe, the trading protocol CoW Protocol and the blockchain Gnosis Chain, and operates the crypto payment card Gnosis Pay. It is governed by GnosisDAO, made up of GNO token holders, with Gnosis Ltd as its main development entity; its co-founders include Martin Köppelmann, Stefan George and Friederike Ernst.Open the full entry wallet, roughly $965,000 in all; the on-chain analysts Onchain Lens and The Data Nerd recorded the transfers. BinanceLife is a meme coin on BNB Chain that Binance lists for spot trading.⁠[19]

In a Binance Square post that day he gave his reasons: while testing Trust WalletTrust WalletTrust Wallet is a self-custody, multi-chain cryptocurrency wallet offered as a mobile app and a browser extension, in which users keep their own private keys; it belongs to the Binance ecosystem.Open the full entry he found that the many unsolicited meme coins sent to this public address made it hard to locate his own BNB, and burning those tokens set off speculation about whether he endorsed them; since anyone can keep sending assets to a public address, he decided to donate his remaining BNB and BinanceLife holdings to Giggle Academy and stop using the address: “It will effectively be a burn address.” He said the tokens sent that day had been bought with BNB.⁠[19]

crypto.news’s article judges that this is not a conventional burn address, since there is no public evidence that the private key was destroyed or that the address is cryptographically unspendable, and anyone can still send tokens to it. In July 2026 Zhao had said that donations to Giggle Academy are meant to fund free education and that recipients should be expected to use donated assets.⁠[19]

As of November 2026 the homepage carries the slogan “High-quality education for every child” and “Always free,” and lists as features a step-by-step learning path from first words and phrases to full self-expression, AI-assisted language learning in which children listen and speak along with Mai, a games area called PlayZone, and leveled storybooks and resources; the site description mentions English, Spanish, Chinese and other languages. The homepage quotes Zhao as saying that building a high-quality, engaging and truly free education platform for all is the most meaningful mission of his next chapter.⁠[2]

The core English course has five stages and twenty levels: Discover (Levels 1–2, Sounds & Words), Explore (Levels 3–5, Words & Phrases), Build (Levels 6–10, Sentences & Speaking), Talk (Levels 11–15, Questions & Responses) and Express (Levels 16–20, Description & Detail), with Express marked as coming soon. Leveled storybooks run from Level A to Level E (Pre-reading, Beginning, Early, Developing, Independent), and phonics has four parts: letter sounds, word families, blending words and reading storybooks independently. Children earn rewards called Giggles in lessons, which they use to decorate their own corner of Giggle World, and can team up with a deskmate.⁠[20]

The “About Us” page of the website gives the scale of the content as 400 core English words reinforced with more than 100 mini-games, more than 1,000 picture books with support for more than 30 languages, flashcards covering more than 1,000 English words through more than 100 flashcard games, and English courses for children aged 2–8 that include more than 300 teaching videos. The AI features it lists are voice cloning, which lets parents create their own voice models to read stories, an AI tutor mode that supports conversational interaction, and a story-creation community that encourages creators to use AI tools to produce, edit and share children’s stories. Planned expansions include math, science, chemistry and physics, and additional languages such as Chinese and Spanish.⁠[21]

The app is listed on AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry’s App Store and on Google PlayGoogle PlayGoogle Play is a digital content distribution service operated by Google, centered on the Google Play Store, the app store for Android devices. Its predecessor, Android Market, launched in October 2008 alongside the first Android phone, and in March 2012 it merged with Google Music and the Google eBookstore and was renamed Google Play. As the main distribution channel for Android apps, its commissions, billing rules, and review practices have drawn controversy, including the Epic Games antitrust lawsuit in the United States and penalties under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act.Open the full entry as “Giggle Academy: Learn and Play,” and the website also offers an Android package (APK) download. The United States App Store page shows the app as free, in the Education category and rated 4+, with the subtitle “English Games,Storybooks,Songs,” support for English, Filipino, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Vietnamese, and 129 ratings averaging 4.6; the description says there are no in-app purchases and no ads, while a release note in the version history announces a “Giggle Lifetime Learner plan,” and the page does not say whether that plan is paid. The Google Play page shows more than 1 million downloads, a 4.7 rating and a content rating of 3+, its description says the app has no ads and works offline, and the last update is dated November 7, 2026.⁠[22][23][2]

The website’s pages give different figures for its reach: the donation page says it has reached more than 210 countries and regions and benefited more than 50,000 children, with more than 2,000 storybooks, lessons, flashcards and games, while a banner on the blog page reads “Join over 1,000,000 kids worldwide to learn English for free on Giggle!”⁠[16][24]

The storybook section is for children aged 0 to 12 and arranges illustrated stories with professional narration into 25 theme categories.⁠[25]

The careers page lists nine positions, all “Remote / Worldwide”: Senior UI & Motion Designer, User Growth Specialist, Marketing & Community Manager, Product Manager (B2C, EdTech), Backend Engineer, Unity Developer, UI/UX Designer, Spine Animator (Character/UI Motion) and 2D Graphic Designer. The Senior UI & Motion Designer posting says the team is small and describes the product as an English learning app for children aged 3–7.⁠[26]

The footer of the official website names a limited company under a Chinese-language name that identifies it as a Shanghai education technology company (the site gives no English name), and the footer of the blog page also carries a Chinese ICP filing number with the Shanghai prefix (No. 2025138469).⁠[2][24]

The developer shown on the app-store pages is Herb Services Limited: the App Store page’s copyright line reads “© 2024 Herb Services Limited,” and the developer address registered on the Google Play page is in Seychelles.⁠[22][23]

The donation page of the website has a Donate button, offers USDT, USDC, ETHEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry and BNB as token options, and links to the donation address on BscScan; it states that its data refresh every 5 minutes. It lists three uses of donations: community incentives (supporting teachers, volunteers and creators), impact expansion (taking the program to more districts where children have few learning resources) and free educational content (creating picture books, lessons and interactive games).⁠[16]

The privacy notice on the website gives its last-updated date as “04 01 2026,” names no operating legal entity, and states “We maintain servers in Japan,” adding that users’ information may be processed on servers outside their country of residence.⁠[27]

The notice states that children under 16 can use the services without providing contact information; that only parents or adults can create accounts, manage child profiles, install the app and submit information, with features that require personal data restricted to adults behind a Parental Gate; and that data collected from children are limited to what educational activities need, such as a profile name, age or school grade, and optional avatar and voice recordings. It says children’s data are used only for educational and service purposes, not for marketing, profiling or behavioral advertising, are not sold, and are shared only with contractually bound service providers; parents can review, correct or delete their child’s data and can allow or block microphone, camera, location and push-notification access.⁠[27]

The developer-declared privacy labels on the App Store page list Identifiers under “Data Used to Track You” and Contact Info, User Content, Identifiers and Diagnostics under “Data Not Linked to You”; the page notes that this information has not been verified by Apple. The “Data safety” section of the Google Play page declares “No data shared with third parties” and “No data collected.”⁠[22][23]

The Giggle Hero Program is Giggle Academy’s global volunteer initiative, whose participants help grow the community and enrich the content library. It has three paths: Enthusiast, for parents, students and others who share the mission, with tasks that include sharing Giggle Academy news on social media at least twice a month, taking part in online forums and testing new features; Creator, for educators, certified teachers and content creators, who in addition regularly create educational content on the Giggle Creator platform, test creator tools, lead community discussions and represent Giggle at local education events; and Organization Partner, for schools, non-profits and educational institutions with 20 or more students, which integrate Giggle Academy into teaching or class projects, share one case study or testimonial per semester and appoint a lead educator as liaison.⁠[28]

As rewards, Enthusiasts get access to a private Hero channel, quarterly branded merchandise, a verifiable digital Giggle Hero badge and invitations to online and local meetups; Creators additionally receive free AI Creator Suite credits, featured promotion of their content, access to a teaching-materials library and workshops, and invitations to virtual summits and offline events; Organization Partners additionally receive bulk AI credits for registered teachers, staff training, priority support and a chance to help shape institutional features, and the page marks a free classroom account and a free institutional account as coming soon. Joining involves completing an online application form, an interview with a Giggle Community Manager, an orientation training cohort and onboarding into the global Hero community.⁠[28]

As of November 2026 the Hero Hall page of the website shows 25 “Volunteers,” 14 “Global Origins” and 42640 “Total Service Hours.”⁠[29]

Giggle Academy: Official website: https://www.giggleacademy.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/giggleacademy (opens in a new window).⁠[24]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@GiggleAcademy (opens in a new window).⁠[24]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/giggleacademy/ (opens in a new window).⁠[24]

Xiaohongshu: Public account: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/user/profile/67ff67a6000000000d00a03c (opens in a new window).⁠[24]