Giving Free Gifts to Stimulate Initial Interest in a Digital Assets Ecosystem (DAE)
by Dane Keller Rutledge
November 16, 2018
INTRODUCTION
To recruit and incentivize a sustainable supporting community of mainstream users, a digital assets ecosystem (DAE) must first attract and engage the attention of potential participants.
JUMPING IN
You’ve heard about Bitcoin and blockchain and you have no idea how to sift through all the dense language surrounding cryptocurrency. What you do know is that it sounds like risky stuff.
You’ve read the news about hundreds of millions of dollars being lost to hackers of cryptocurrency trading exchanges — the stories are plastered all over the media. And you are thinking you’d better stay far away from names like Bitcoin and Ethereum and Litecoin and Ripple.
But what if you could have easy, safe, and secure access to the world of digital assets, a world harkening to the future of money and commerce, and also have a free starting stake in that world?
Would that be interesting to you?
MAKING A CONNECTION
In my article, “Creating a Comprehensive Digital Assets Ecosystem (DAE)”, I wrote that the “primary focus of digital assets technology must be to simply and enrich user experience” in order to penetrate the mainstream population. But how might the attention spans of potential participants initially be attracted and engaged in an effective manner?
First of all, a DAE must distinguish itself from the vast ocean of high-hype videos and hyperbolic websites hawking hundreds of cryptocurrencies calculated to lure you to buy and trade digital tokens many of which are outright scams crafted from thin air.
In addition, a DAE must offer certain core technological tools: a decentralized digital assets exchange connected with a secure multi-currency cross-blockchain peer-to-peer wallet, a user-friendly market-ratings analytical interface, and an incentives-based recruitment program.
Granted, that’s an eyeful. But let’s hold onto those last few words: “an incentives-based recruitment program.” Back to the question, how is the attention of a potential participant engaged in the first place?
GIVING A GIFT
An Internet-savvy advisor of mine who’s built many successful websites once told me: “When someone visits your website, give them something”. He went on to say that the “gift” might be information, meaning useful education about some topic relevant to them, such as “the ten most important things to consider when choosing an attorney.” He said, “you’re giving them free advice, and in exchange you are asking for something from them, something as simple and easy as providing a name and an email address. People will jump at that.”
But if the educational information itself is not the gift but rather the reading of it is the task, then my advisor’s principle may be the same but the dynamic is different. Instead, potential recruits must be incentivized to review the educational material.
In exchange for their spending some of their time to review explanatory descriptions, the idea is to give those participants free digital asset units native to the particular digital assets ecosystem. Those participants thereby gain knowledge and a starting balance. It is perhaps very similar to a bank promotion in which potential customers are recruited to use a new bank offering them free money to open new accounts.
SWEETENING THE POOL
It also occurred to me that the digital assets giveaway promotion could be sweetened by entering each participant in a lottery to receive an additional quantity of digital asset units in a good old-fashioned drawing. If, for example, there are a total of six educational modules to review, and free units are given for each completion, then the participant could also receive a free entry into the lottery for each module completed. Such a process incentivizes participants to complete all the available modules and, thereby, to educate themselves extensively.
Does it sound like something of a gimmick? I suppose it does. But it is suggested in order to drive educational information to the user. It supports the public policy notions underlying consumer protection and regulatory structures. It’s not enough to make information available; there must be a mechanism designed to ensure the potential user has an incentive to read and become educated on the particulars. In this way, a mainstream decentralized community (MDC) can potentially be assembled and sustained.
DKR
CAUTION/DISCLAIMER: Please do not take any of what is written in this editorial as legal advice (or, for that matter, as advice of any kind). One should always seek advice of one’s own legal counsel and/or other relevant professionals.
Copyright 2018
Dane Keller Rutledge
All rights reserved
Recent articles by Dane Keller Rutledge:
“Creating a Comprehensive Digital Assets Ecosystem (DAE)” (October 24, 2018)
“Fundamental Human Constituents of a Comprehensive Digital Assets Ecosystem (DAE)” (November 5, 2018)
