Quick take:
- Me Protocol has built a rewards platform for brands, games and other consumer-facing apps to connect their programs.
- Anyone, web3 game, reward token etc. can gain instant liquidity for their token by connecting it with the Me Protocol, says Wesley.
- He also shares his thoughts on the Starbucks Odyssey program, which closed in March and how it was able to demonstrate the scalability of an NFT-based rewards program.
One of crypto’s biggest talking points has been “whether people can use it as they would any other currency.” However, over the past few years, payment services like PayPal and online shopping marketplaces including Shopify started to embrace crypto payments, allowing crypto holders to find more real-life use cases for their assets.
While the likes of PayPal and Shopify have expanded the utility of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins, one emerging segment of the crypto industry, and one that Wesley thinks could play a part in onboarding masses to Web3 still lags.
Rewards programs date back decades, with brands using them to promote customer loyalty. However, they have always been closed ecosystems, with utility limited to the brand itself or a centralised network, take Starbucks for instance, which launched the card reward program in 2009.
But could you redeem the points earned on your Starbucks card for gas? Of course not. Not even for a cup of coffee at McDonald’s.
That is something that Wesley and his team at Me Protocol believe can be fixed using blockchain technology. And although Starbucks did experiment with an NFT-based rewards program, it did not work out, and the restaurant chain eventually shut it down.
Ramsey thinks that had Starbucks pivoted towards the fungible side of the tokenised rewards for the mainstream, the company may have had better luck with the program.
Even with the blockchain-based Starbucks Odyssey customers could only redeem points for Starbucks products and services.
“When you want to enable things like directly redeeming Starbucks rewards for a pizza, you need a fungible reward in there, and our Protocol brokers the transaction without Starbucks or Pizza Hut having to talk to each other,” Says Wesley.
Wesley discusses more about his Web3 journey, customer rewards and the importance of data privacy in the age of AI in our conversation below.
Briefly tell us about your journey in Web3 and what inspired you to build Me Protocol.
I feel like I have lived multiple lives professionally, but they are all connected. From international diplomacy to deep tech, I’ve been working internationally my entire career, and in addition to founding multiple companies, I had the honour to work on some of the most challenging issues of my generation. As for the origin of the Me Protocol, it dates to when I was developing an AI Agent for travel back during the height of COVID, back before all the generative AI hype. I was building in travel, during COVID, so you can imagine no one was answering my emails. I thought “wouldn’t it be great if I could just give someone a gift, a reward, for opening my email, and even if they couldn’t use it they could give it to a friend would could?” That’s how I started down the rabbit hole of blockchain. I met my co-founder Paul in that rabbit hole. He had been down there quite some time having built a L1 and founding the blockchain program at the Pan Atlantic University. When we popped-up, we had a solution that would be the foundation for a global rewards economy. It was the Me Protocol.
What role do you see web3 customer loyalty programs playing in the mass adoption of users?
Well, rewards interoperability is a great use-case for blockchain tech. Most consumers in advanced economies have rewards from brands that they don’t use, either because they don’t realise they have them in the first place or because they can’t easily use them on things they want. About $180b worth. How many of us have unused airline miles? With the help of blockchain tech, we can make any reward a universal reward that can be instantly redeemed across any connected brand. If you make that easy enough for consumers and brands to participate in, you can onboard masses into web3 without them even realising they have a wallet.
What would you say is the biggest challenge that current blockchain-based rewards programs face and how does Me Protocol fix that? Can the same be said about traditional rewards programs?
They don’t offer much differentiation from non-blockchain-based programs, or otherwise have not created a user experience that brands and consumers can easily adopt. In fact tokenising a reward can create even more friction if it cannot be easily used. While we all love the geeky aspects of blockchains, most consumers don’t give sh*t. What they care about is figuring out a way to use all those accumulating airline miles that they earned, or getting a discount on a cool new product that really want but can’t quite get the courage to press the buy button. You have to offer them something different. The Me Protocol makes something really hard, really easy, for both brands and consumers. It allows any brand to connect their reward program so their customers can instantly use their rewards on products across any connected brand. No need to exchange anything, no need to know what a wallet is, just “here is a reward, go use it anywhere and everywhere you want”. That is a real-world hard problem that blockchain can solve in a trustless, frictionless way.
What is the biggest challenge that you’ve faced so far in your quest to “Freeing Web3 Rewards?”
Mostly time (and money). Anyone, web3 game, reward token etc. can gain instant liquidity for their token by connecting it with the Me Protocol. We have been really full-on building four complex products and penetrating multiple traditional industries including travel and fashion. So, we’ve barely found time to reach out to our own web3 clan to welcome in their projects. You wouldn’t believe how small our budget has been. It’s not sustainable, so we decided to open up to new financing. We are also launching our token at the end of November, which will open even more opportunities for the web3 community to get involved.
In March, Starbucks closed its NFT-based loyalty program, Odyssey. What do you think can be done to make such programs more sustainable? How can brands benefit from integrating their rewards programs with Me Protocol?
The Starbucks program was a cool experiment in how scalable the “collectables” approach would be in a consumer brand with a large fan base. I was surprised they did not pivot the on-chain part to focus more on fungible (points) rewards for mainstream customers while maintaining the NFT part for the segments desiring a higher level of engagement. In other words, I would have flipped the emphasis. For the Me Protocol, the fungible part is like the standard currency for the brand that is easy to use, transfer and understand. When you want to enable things like directly redeeming Starbucks rewards for a pizza, you need a fungible reward in there, and our Protocol brokers the transaction without Starbucks or Pizza Hut having to talk to each other. Anyone can just plug and play their rewards program.
As a Web3 rewards platform, Me Protocol deals with a lot of customer data. Does it employ AI and machine learning in some way? And if it does, what measures has the company taken to enhance user privacy?
We think about the data in terms of how we can let consumers better leverage their purchasing power and consumer profile to be better rewarded. For example, I want to be able to walk down a busy shopping street and have brands there airdrop me rewards as I get closer to their store. They don’t need to know it’s Robert Wesley walking down the street, just that someone walking by likes watches or games, or whatever. The AI/ML filters out the noise for me so I’m not getting spammed, and maybe reminds me I need to get my wife something too so would I like it to let the stores know?
Several Web3 VCs including Paradigm have launched new funds to invest at the intersection of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence, where do you see the industry in five years?
There is a lot of investment being thrown at AI-related everything. Some of this is the typical ‘lemming’ investment approach, but AI is for sure massively disruptive and deserving of placing big bets. Blockchain-related tech will be a core enablement layer for AI, and especially as we get down the road a bit on more autonomous agents. Decentralisation, data provenance, data immutability, etc. are all features that may prove key to allowing agents more responsibility. Accessing blockchain-based tokens, whether to use as currency to fund their work or to secure access to data and other resources, may end up being accelerants for the AI industry and thus Paradigm’s fund may be more than just hype. If I was a fund like Paradigm, I would still focus the AI fund on key infrastructure and usability projects that AI can then more easily utilise when the cross-over happens. Our rewards infrastructure is a potential building block in the future AI stack.
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