OST KIT Alpha III: Embedded Wallet-Lite Challenge — BRIX⍺ POC Final Blog
Update 8/14/18: Our project and the other 90 plus challenge winners are vying for addition awards for our proof-of-concept projects. Take a look at our MVPs and please vote. You will find me waving among the other entries here:
First I want to give a shout out to Chris Dark, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer OST.com , Board Member OpenST Foundation for his timely article posted to the OST Medium page titled, “Blockchain Tokens vs. Points Programs — 9 reasons why companies and customers should care”. The article invigorated me and supported many of the theories that support my work on the BRIX token and the included wine loyalty program platform.
With our Apha III POC challenge video finished and uploaded, I will attempt to fill in some of the blanks here for our project, ‘Facebook Messenger Chatbot OST Integration’ — RateWine Chatbot, that could not be fully covered in a five minute video.
Our Team:
My freelance development team is consist of two technology students located in Cluj-Napoca, Romania with Anna as my lead developer. Cluj-Napoca is known for it’s numerous universities, energetic nightlife, skilled developers and for also being known as the “Silicon Valley of Transylvania”.
This team has proven to be highly skilled integrating APIs into The Facebook Messenger platform. Their skills proved critical with the short time line for completion of Alpha III and because we were building our RateWine chatbot from scratch with no residual advantage from work completed in Alpha II. It may benefit other non-developer project managers like myself, to look for talent in this region.
Our Key Goals for Alpha III:
Our key goals for this proof of concept challenge were to build on our past experience from the Alpha II POC and move another step forward in our plan to provide the wine industry with an economical, simple to use, tokenized platform to reward social sharing and as a super-dynamic loyalty program. The US wine industry domestic off-premise wine sales (retail sales, no restaurants) was $26.7 billion in 2017. Direct to consumer wine is almost exactly 10 % of that amount. Direct to consumer offers wine businesses the greatest opportunity for growth in the next several years. RateWine.com is a simple way to start introducing the DTC (direct to consumer) wine industry and wine consumers to the concept of tokenization.
The high cost of monthly SaaS subscription fees for wine loyalty software is a common complaint among wine industry marketing managers. Loyalty rewards program tokenization could lower some of the high costs associated with running such programs and especially reduce ongoing subscription costs. I feel that once BTs have adequate developer support, loyalty or rewards programs can be purchased and managed as easily as a WordPress plugin at low cost and low annual renewals.
Our branded token is called BRIX which is a familiar term in the industry that refers to the level of sugar measured in maturing wine grapes. BRIX branded tokens are easy to use and spend in the newly created RateWine chatbot without having to step into the deep weeds of blockchain education and opinion.
Our 1000 + Transaction:
Over 450 test “Wine Ratings” were submitted to the RateWine chatbot triggering our 50 BRIX company-to-user reward. This action was defined in OST Kit as “Wine Rating”.
Over 640 “Thumbs Up” actions were submitted triggering the accompanying 1 cent price oracle determined user-to-user reward. This action was created and defined in OST Kit as “Thumbs Up”.
The Super User badge purchases priced at 100 BRIX each triggered over 210 “Badge Me” user-to-company transaction. This action was created and defined in OST Kit as “Badge Me’.
A user would choose the ‘Badge Me’ option in the persistent menu and the chatbot then displays the Super User Badge and instructions on how to purchase it. User is directed to simply enter his email address in the reply field and hit send. The Super User badge delivery can be automated or sent manually by email.
Note: This is why I think there is such great potential to leverage branded tokens via chatbots or other conversational interfaces. The interactions are very simple and intuitive, not to mention possibly addictive and viral.
We also generated 30 plus “Join RateWine” company-to-user rewards. New users were instantly awarded when users activate the chatbot for the first time.
My wife Becky and I performed most of these transactions personally on the platform via desktop and mobile devices and generated no errors along the way (except our own spelling mistakes in the wine ratings). It was quite a lengthy process but I am glad we did it manually. My development team had also done thorough testing before handing it over to us. They continue to work on the next iteration of the chatbot and rewards system.
Overall, my team and I found API integration to be much easier during this project because of the past Alphas. OST is allowing us to understand each module of API functionality via these challenges, by building on real past experience acquired from past Alphas. We look forward to the next Alphas.
Wallet Features:
When using Facebook Messenger one must forego design features outside of the conversational format , UI and UX that are already provided in the Facebook Messenger platform and Chatfuel middleware.
The wallet features are simple and to the point in our chatbot, staying within a linear format of making a request to the chatbot and receiving an answer in the form of a link or list of options. For instance when a user asks for their balance in our chatbot they can either type in ‘Balance’ in the reply field, click on our persistent menu and choose ‘Balance’ or choose the ‘My Balance’ option on the main screen. Their balance request is processed via the Get Balance API request almost immediately and returned to them as part of the chatbot conversation.
Currently the user is shown his current balance only. Future chatbot versions will incorporate a balance report with a ledger request together to more closely resemble a wallet’s structure.
The same design thought was put into the ledger feature, again using the conversational format (with the help of a webview), UI and UX that are already provided in the Facebook Messenger platform and Chatfuel middleware and which is formatted as ‘History’ in our chatbot. This ‘History’ is used to inform the user of what past actions he performed in the chatbot and what his earnings were for each of those actions. To request ‘History’ on our chatbot a user must type ‘History’ into the reply field and hit ‘send’. His history is requested via a Get Ledger request and returned in a webview that he may browse.
Currently the user is shown the ID of the transaction, the name of the action , status of the action and amount paid or debited in BRIX tokens. At this time this feature is mostly to fulfill the requirements of Alpha III and in the next iteration of RateWine it has a lot of potential to include several more API parameters that will both collect and disseminate data and further inform users.
Chatbot design limitations and advantages:
As mentioned above, many of the aesthetic, UI and UX design considerations you might put into apps or websites, are not the case with conversational interfaces like Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp and further into Alexa and Google Home. Rather than tracking eye movement and building heat maps, designers must be aware of conversational context and direction to help users navigate their platforms. And yes, even conversational interfaces, especially chatbots can and are, sometimes poorly designed.
But since these platforms are now where much of our youth spends most of their time we had better embrace them as the powerhouse destinations they are becoming. And for this audience, fellow blockchain and BT developers working on creating token ecosystems, there is no simpler environment for your tokens to exist and interact. And there is no simpler token system to learn and use as OSTKit and the OST API.
I have learned and come to realize, that for all problems and opportunities there are for chatbots and conversational interfaces there are an equal or greater amount of opportunity alone for our BTs working on these platforms.
What’s Next?
As mentioned, the development team continues to work on the next iteration of the RateWine chat bot with our social sharing rewards action. We will reward users with BRIX for sharing their own and other user’s ratings to various social platforms.
*UPDATE on Social Sharing Rewards
Late today, 8/9/2018, my developer team delivered a first version of our Social Sharing feature for RateWine and the BRIX token. Wine Ratings can now be shared by RateWine users via Twitter and Facebook. The next version will convert the chatbot wine ratings into an image for posting to social media and linking back to a desired website destination. Users will earn reward in BRIX tokens for each rating they share whether it is their own or another user. There are several ways we intend to support these micro-incentives earned by our users.
I am also planning to create two to three more platforms in the near term, where users may be able to use their BRIX tokens. One will be wine industry employment related and the other will be for wine consumer education. There will be many opportunities to earn and spend BRIX tokens on these additional platforms.
Observations:
During the generation of the test transactions, it was interesting to see the potential of a a branded token ecosystem achieving balance. When CTAs align with the defined BT actions, user-to-user, company-to-user and user-to-company, it appears you can create a near self-sustaining ecosystem, where tokens regularly complete a circuit from the company, to users and eventually back to the company.
More thought and focus needs to be put on how to create balanced branded token ecosystems.
A note about non-fungible tokens:
While creating and testing the “Badge Me” action it became apparent how exciting it will be to be able to mint and utilize non-fungible tokens to permanently assign unique values and identities to purchased or exchanged badges, stickers and other digital assets. I look forward to that development in upcoming iterations of our BT ecosystems.
Thank Yous:
Many thanks go out to my better half Becky, my wonderful Team Romania and of course the OST Team for this opportunity and their awesome support. Thank you all!
‘Facebook Messenger Chatbot OST Integration’ @ostdotcom #OSTa3 RateWine www.RateWine.com www.OST.com m.me/RateWine
My past Alpha III posts (The whole story):
