ZTX Explained: Designing Cryptocurrency Adoption Incentives
This is the third article in an ongoing series about how our native cryptocurrency, ZTX, will function within the ecosystem of products and services we’re building to support our mission of bringing cryptocurrency access to the world. In ZTX Explained, we explore some of the main issues facing the blockchain industry and discuss how we’re building real solutions to help stimulate widespread adoption.
Designing systems is all about incentives, and building a cryptocurrency ecosystem like Zulu Republic is no different. How users interact with the platform and what interactions are incentivized will determine its ultimate form, its success, and its broader social and economic impact.
Whether you’re talking about Twitter or Bitcoin or a political system or an economy, incentive design is a crucial component of building any complex system of human interaction.
So designers and architects of these systems have to ask themselves, first and foremost, what behavior they want to incentivize and how that behavior aligns with their ultimate goals for the system.
Since our primary mission is designing systems to promote cryptocurrency adoption and accessibility, the question we were faced with was: how do we incentivize onboarding and usage, making it both easy and beneficial to join the cryptocurrency revolution?
The answer, of course, is everything that we’re building: Zulu Pay, Lite.IM, the Passport, and even more to come. But an important thread behind all of these, and one of the most useful tools we have at our disposal to design these incentives, is our native cryptocurrency, ZTX.
The ZTX Airdrop
Incentivization of ZTX adoption and usage began on the very first day of the currency’s existence. Instead of releasing our native currency through an ICO, which was the standard distribution model at the time, we decided to launch ZTX with a free airdrop to our first 10,000 users. Just by signing up for the Zulu Republic beta with an email address, password, and 2FA authentication, 10,000 people were able to claim 500 free ZTX.
Not only did we feel this distribution model was more democratic than selling tokens through and ICO, it was also an excellent way to incentivize adoption on a broad, international scale, giving everyone a chance to own ZTX regardless of their income level or location.
But this was just phase one of a three-phase airdrop. In phase 2, which will launch soon in 2019, the first 90,000 of the Zulu Republic Passport will receive a free distribution of 1000 ZTX. The details of phase 3 will be announced in the future.
Zulu Pay Incentives
Our design for the economic hub of the Zulu Republic ecosystem also has a strong focus on adoption incentives. Zulu Pay will incentivize ZTX usage by offering a generous 5% rewards program for qualifying purchases made with in-network merchants. Not only will this incentivize people to adopt ZTX for eligible payments, it will also promote merchant adoption by increasing their sales opportunities.
Cryptocurrency usage will also be incentivized on Zulu Pay through our innovative off-chain state management solution, which will allow us to offer instant payments with incredibly low fees at scale. A number of additional features will also help make cryptocurrency usage easier than ever.
Lite.IM Incentives
Lite.IM offers simple, trustless cryptocurrency transactions and purchasing on the world’s most popular messaging platforms. With its easy, user-friendly chat-based interface, Lite.IM is designed to make cryptocurrency usage a breeze even for those general users who may be completely new to the cryptocurrency world.
Currently under development for Lite.IM is a system of incentives for user acquisition and adoption, including a generous refer-a-friend bonus that will reward users in ZTX for inviting their friends to join and actively use the platform, and a series of temporary promotions that will refund cryptocurrency purchase fees in ZTX for a limited time.
With these incentives we aim to both promote the virality of the Lite.IM platform and facilitate the adoption and accessibility of cryptocurrency in the long term.
Going forward, with our future updates to the Zulu Republic ecosystem we will maintain this focus on incentives and gamification, continuing to add new, valuable features for all types of end users, month after month.
Keep up-to-date on all things Zulu Republic and ZTX by following us here and on Twitter.
To try out Lite.IM, just send any message on the platform of your choice: Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or SMS (US/CAN only: 760–548–3460).
