A Closer Look at GMT Rewards

Dev Highlights This Week

• Integrated new ERC20 gas payment into reward and premium feature smart contracts
• Integrated new ERC20 gas payment into Dust servers on Dev
• Added transaction status flags on Android client
• New wallet UI in Android client
• Upgraded iOS client to Swift 4
• Implemented Ethereum compliant encoding of uint, utf8string, and address so they can be signed OUTSIDE of a transaction execution in Java

This week, we wanted to focus on one of the most important parts of the tokenized social ecosystem: User Rewards. If users can’t earn tokens through platform activity, there would be no way for them to use tokens for free, which defeats the whole purpose of designing a self-sustaining token ecosystem that rewards both users (for participating) and developers (for providing services).

Besides fulfilling a key role in the token flow ecosystem, rewards allow app developers to encourage certain behaviors that make a platform more enjoyable and beneficial to all users. If a platform wants to encourage activity in the morning, for example, the developers may offer rewards to all users who log in between 6am and 12pm. Users are empowered by choosing which rewards they are willing to earn, and the more users that are willing to change their habits to earn “free” tokens the more leverage developers have in shaping the direction of their platform.

Rewards for All

Certain behaviors are beneficial across all communications platforms, regardless of app mechanics. Activity like logging in, engaging other users, creating content, etc., is useful to every communication ecosystem. Below is a list of rewards that can help incentivize valuable activity on any social platform:

• Daily logins / login streaks
• Creating or consuming x posts/messages/minutes of video
• Feedback on x number of posts/content (likes, upvoting/downvoting, 5 star rating, etc.)
• Inviting friends to join the network
• Reaching x number of contacts/followers

The above items may have different terminology depending on the platform (i.e. rewards for “reading posts” on Facebook might be akin to “watching videos” on Youtube), but the underlying activity is functionally similar.

How Rewards Can Help Your Platform

User rewards can profoundly improve a platform by providing leverage to quickly overcome unforeseen behavioral issues (see below for examples).

Matchmaking Apps

Examples: Tinder, Bumble, Hinge

Problem: A culture of serial matching has arisen, where many users are more focused on the number of matches they can earn in a day than in engaging in conversation, which results in two mutually interested parties never actually talking to each other.

Solution: By rewarding users for exchanging a minimum number of messages (i.e. 5 each), users are encouraged to start and maintain conversations. The rewards help counteract the addicting nature of trying to see how many matches can be earned, and refocuses the user actions on engaging with one another in a measurable way.

Messaging + Email

Examples: iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Gmail

Problem: People are busy, and might not always make it a point to respond to an email or text right away. When you send a message, you might not receive a response for hours until you’re busy and can’t respond, and the cycle repeats in a sort of new age phone tag.

Solution: Rewarding people for responding to a text or email within a certain timeframe can help incentivize a quicker response time. While a few tokens might not be enough to convince someone to drop everything they’re doing to respond to a text (nor should it), it could convince them to respond during a Netflix episode instead of after the binge session.

Social Media

Examples: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

Problem: Participating in a new social network is hard when you have no established network to socialize with. What’s the fun in joining Twitter if no one follows you?

Solution: Developers can incentivize users to more actively connect with their network by rewarding users for actions such as inviting their friends, sending friend requests, or accepting friend requests. Thus, the developers gain a larger user base, and the users get more of their friends to interact with. It’s a win-win.

Video Streaming

Examples: Youtube, Twitch, Netflix

Problem: Over half of the internet is video content, and that number is rising. If someone has a great idea for an internet travel series, how can she gain traction if all the algorithmically generated recommendations lead to already established competition?

Solution: Video streaming platforms can use rewards to incentivize users to watch new content and rate it. This incentive will help drive traffic to new channels with a yet to be established following, and help curate content to help the good videos quickly rise to the top. Even in established companies like Netflix, Hulu, or HBO that have advanced analytics systems, if a new show flops it can be difficult to determine why it flopped. But rewarding users who take the time to provide feedback on why they did or didn’t like it can provide invaluable insight on how to create content that users will enjoy in the future.

Content Subscription:

Examples: Wall Street Journal, Time, Spotify

Problem: A subscription service struggles to maintain enough monthly subscriptions to remain in business.

Solution: By rewarding its current subscriber base for sharing up to three links to articles each week, the service can demonstrate value to a potential customer base without giving full, free access to their content, and subscribers are awarded tokens for sharing content they like with their friends and family.

The Risks of Reward Systems

While Rewards can be used to incentivize users for positive behavior, it is critical to properly design rewards systems specific to each app in a way that does not game-ify negative activity. For example, if a developer team finds they have a problem with harassment not being reported they may try to design a reward system around the removal of trolls. Perhaps the team builds a reward system in such a way that if a user is reported 5 times they are banned, and all the users who reported the Troll are rewarded. While it may work under some circumstances, there is a risk of users forming 5+ size teams to report other users to earn the rewards at the cost of collateral ban damage.

This would obviously end up negatively impacting the users on the platform, so a better solution might include monitoring which users are submitting the harassment reports, or checking to see if the users submitting reports are doing so more frequently than average. This info can be used to flag and prevent users from gaming the system.

Conclusion

Rewards are a powerful tool for incentivizing users, and an integral part of of the tokenized ecosystem. If designed correctly, reward systems can be leveraged to overcome unforeseen issues and encourage a positive environment in any communication platform. Like any other new complex technology, developing safe, calibrated rewards systems will be an iterative process.

TL;DR

Rewards are a powerful tool for both developers and users; developers can incentivize certain actions to influence platform behaviors, but users have ultimate control.

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