Actually, Points Are Cool and Good | Zane Huffman - Demos

[Music] okay hey everyone congratulations we are at oh I'm going to fix that real quick there we go we are at the most exciting topic of the day points I am an avid proponent for points my name is zann I give out points I believe that by the end of this presentation you two will feel similarly to me if you're a point skeptic keep an open mind we can have some Q&A at the end let's dive in all right so today I will give a rundown of what exactly points are I will contextualize points in the history of crypto micro work I will talk about why points are an awesome innovation in the space today address some of the common critiques uh things we can do to improve the future points and most importantly give me your attention until the end of this presentation and perhaps you to audience can earn some points yourself so a bit about me my name is Zayn Huffman I go by Green Jeff online that's my Mady uh I have been doing stuff in the space doing tasks and getting points getting tokens for a long time this is me referring people to a Bitcoin Minecraft Casino in 2013 um and today I also give out points I'm the CEO at deos which offers orb free human authentication and I contribute to block where we have some exciting upcoming projects all of these which have points so at a high level points are a mechanic that businesses can award users award their consumers for doing some type of Engagement effectively you do an activity you get a unit of Engagement these activities can be attention based come to my talk download my app fill out this survey or Capital based deposit tvl into my protocol trade on my exchange use my credit card points are one specific implementation of microwork so lightweight worker engagements and what's important to note is points are not a phenomen phenomenon that only exists in crypto we have points in the real world people love them we have free Starbucks drinks airline miles all kinds of ways to earn points all throughout the world and they're fun people like to earn points projects benefit from giving out points I believe they are cool and good in order to explain why I think points are so important to crypto today I think it's important to look at the history of microw work in the crypto space back in the good old days 2012 you you could put these signatures on your uh Bitcoin talk profile and you get paid Bitcoin every single time you did a forum post you would do little things and get Bitcoin this went like a bajillion X when icos launched because now you could mint free tokens that maybe would go up a lot give those out for good work done of course in 2020 things went crazy we got the Unis swap airdrop we got a whole bunch of air drops I'm sure everyone has had the joyous experience of receiving an airdrop we invented getting free money for having done a thing it's awesome even better we also came up with a way that you could take that free money deposit into a protocol and get more free money how could it get better than that you guessed it points to explain why points are an important innovation with where we're at in the space today it's important to understand why all those previous microw work metas ultimately faltered initially you were getting paid Bitcoin to do things and then Bitcoin went up a lot instead of this being an effectively free to mine currency that you could tip and give out it was suddenly worth something that Minecraft Casino I reference shut down because they were giving out two Bitcoin every single day to Minecraft players they decided they actually wanted to hold on to their Bitcoin in 2016 we realized we could create new tokens icos and give people future tokens for doing microw workk if those tokens did well they sold their Ico they got listed on binance those microw workers could have made thousands and thousands of dollars for very lightweight work engagements this of course was abused people spun up botn nets where they were spoofing hundreds or thousands of workers and scammers use microwork as a way to sell their token without actually intending to pay people out in 2020 we hit it again we got air drops and yield Farms we invented the free money and the free money duplicator how could this have failed there we go well a few things happen one airdrops were supposed to be surprising you participate on a protocol later they drop a token and you get incentivized for having done stuff in the past this was quickly gamed by insiders if you're a regular person going in blind you might get an airdrop but if you're an Insider you might get most of the airdrop I'm sure we've all seen instances of this happening before also people started to Cil Farm they would create thousands of wallets and spoof the same activity over and over again real users were no longer getting the good airdrops and at the same time board Apes were stolen what I mean by that is those real users pressing buttons trying to get airdrops were also being targeted by fishing attacks it was less and less uh expected value to be a regular person farming for airdrops on the yield farming side of things the the flare and the fervor died out people were not buying the tokens as much as they did initially the farmers deposited wherever they would get the highest apy they sold the tokens those tokens ran out and then the tvl left at the end of the day you had air drops going to not real users and yield Farm payments going to tvl that would leave as soon as the money ran out fortunately we have a solution it is points instead of issuing tokens after the fact through airdrops or during the fact through yield Farms issue points for that attention this is a proactive way to fairly engage activity instead of there being surprise criteria which could be abused you can tell users exactly what you're looking to incentivized users know exactly what they need to do to win incentives and projects get exactly the type of Engagement that they need also tvl is much better bootstrapped with points because there is much more opportunity cost for that Capital you don't get to just deposit in whatever the highest API is you need to figure out what protocol you align with you are passionate about and believe that your exposure to that protocol will do you well this enables a much higher Affinity between users and the protocol generally with both types of points attention based task and the capital based task it's a much better way to get good real users and good real Capital that are interested in the longevity and the success of your protocol also it's fun I've got the that's my uh blast screenshot up there I roll that wheel every day there's flashing numbers and lights it's fun it's fun to spin the wheel and get those points that's the Linea part Quest down there it's very engaging it's very gamified it's fun it's it's awesome I love points and I think that it's a much better way that users can engage with projects be iteratively incentivized for doing so and projects can have a more fun more cohesive engagement with their users unfortunately not everyone agrees with me points are very controversial as you guys may understand uh I'm going to address some of the common criticisms number one points are not fair I think that is totally the opposite points are super Fair they are way more fair than airdrops they are way more fair than yield Farms there we go um another one I see this one mostly in regards to where people are depositing and they're locking up their assets points are a liquid I'm forfeiting yield to get a point that might be worth something in the future first of all I think it is important that you require a higher Affinity to the project you're depositing in additionally there are new mechanisms in the market that get around this on Pendle you can separate the point and the yield and you can speculate on the underlying asset and the opportunity to earn points separately whales Market also allows you to trade points over the counter before the air drop it is totally uh you're totally able to trade points even if they're liquid and more and more of that is going to continue to happen I also see people posting on Twitter that they don't like earning points these are people who post on Twitter to get likes and retweets I think they are lying to themselves I think points as a little hit of dopamine is way way better than getting a like or a retweet or a follow I will die on that hill this one comes up a lot too points are not Innovative they exist in the real world they have for a long time we did not invent them in crypto this is a good thing we know the legal Clarity around points we have the market research that people like to earn points that it's effective for projects and businesses this is a good thing we're not shooting in the dark and for projects looking to stay above the belt legally this is much safer than Distributing those surprise airdrops lastly this one upsets me points are bad because they're centralized I've created this diagram to illustrate why this upsets me if you were speculating on a new project that just launched or is about to launch and they don't have a token and a team needs to build the project you are engaging in a highly centralized Endeavor and and there's a lot of ways that the project can screw you over a project can rug pull you even worse a project can hide an exploit in their contract and they can rug tvl it is bad if projects put out a points program to get engagement from users and then they decide they're not going to do an airdrop they they Sunset the program and the users are not rewarded that's bad but in the scope of how new malicious projects can screw you over it's not that bad I don't think projects have more faculty to rug users if they have access to points with that being said points are not perfect here are some ways that I think we can improve the points meta new Innovations to come so that this can continue to be an important microw work Niche that does not die out like the previous versions number one accountability culture if projects are rugging users if they're taking their points programs and asking them or sunting them or then they don't exist do not engage with those projects projects if you are offering points do the right thing additionally we still have a lot of issues around uh civil attacks and the notion that it's difficult to uh assert that a participant in a project is a unique person we need to uh enable the ability to vet uh users on the blockchain as Unique Individuals this enables more nuanced engagements for example you can offer surveys to get acclimated to a project and you can't do a survey a thousand times our project deos helps to enable this type of proof of humanity there are others in the space that are working on this as well I believe that we will have a much better um a much better grasp on proof of humanity going into this next cycle lastly be intelligent about how your offering points be intelligent about how you're issuing points just because a project has points doesn't mean they're automatically a good project if someone Forks Unis Swap and they put points on top of it it doesn't mean you need to give them your attention projects if you're just looking for getting likes and retweets on Twitter that's not a good use of points get people to use your app get people to understand the project and grow out the community lastly this is the most important part of the presentation thank you for your attention claim this poop and you will get points everyone who claims this PO app we'll get points for deos which will potentially uh be good when we launch our token also the projects I'm working on at block have points programs as well and are also pre-t toen uh lastly if you guys want to find me I'm Jeff the dunker on Twitter that's my Mady I'm on Tik Tok as well if you're on that Cur St uh thank you I have to leave this up so people can claim it but if anyone has questions and you're able to shout feel free otherwise come talk to me down on the side thank you