Mass adoption is not just about onboarding billions of people onto the blockchain. It's about creating an environment where we can amplify the impact per person through the unique value of blockchain. And TripleS, the Web3 K-Pop idol, is doing it right with a trustless governance system enabled by blockchain.
Why it matters
We have been craving for blockchain mass adoption saying onboarding billions to web3 but we are yet there. I am going to elaborate on how we can rethink the scope of mass adoption and how tripleS’s approach is demonstrating it.
Disclaimer : I believe in Mass Adoption and don’t think it is a myth. I just have a slightly different view on how we should approach.
Onboarding Billions to Crypto - For what?
The narrative around mass adoption was onboarding millions & billions to crypto. We can interpret it as “increasing # of people using blockchain based products” = mass adoption.
Thanks to all builders out there, we definitely see more people joining in the industry, building innovative products, and experiencing decentralized culture.
But we are yet to onboard “billions”. There are many convincing reasons why
UX - Onboarding user experience is still hell of journey.
Bias - “Crypto is speculative and dangerous”. Well, it is partially true but it’s not everything but that’s how people see us.
AND MORE!
While builders are solving these issues in parallel, there is one critical problem missing and not discussed - “What should happen when mass adoption is achieved"
“Onboarding billions” is not the objective, it is the quantitative data for evaluation just like # of wallets, DAU, transaction volumes. What’s happening here is we talk problems (UX, bias, lack of devs) and follow quantitative data without defining the “goal” of mass adoption.
Social Platforms want to onboard billions to create “social graph”. Games want to onboard more players for diverse gaming experience and better profits. What about blockchain?
What would be the one moment and criteria we can say “we achieved mass adoption”? Is it when people use blockchain like the internet? Is it when everyone has crypto wallets?
I believe in the world where blockchain benefits billions of people but we can see it from different perspective and order.
My view on mass adoption is building the environment where we can amplify the impact of per person through the unique value of blockchain.
Like, because of “blockchain",
People will spend more time on something
People will have more attachment on something
How we can do it? Using the values of trust-less and permission-less that only blockchain can provide with the design of “experience based education”.
Going beyond of onboarding billions
Understanding what current blockchain use-cases exist is the first step to reframe the mass adoption. There are two main cases of them.
Infrastructure using blockchain as base infrastructure
Social Protocol, Creator Economy Protocol, DePin, Gaming
Value Storage in blockchain
Meme, Stablecoin, NFT, SBT, Defi
Both of them utilizes the core values of blockchain but there is one big difference,
“Users’ awareness on the source of value”.
Here is the breakdown how they are different 👇
📍Examples for #1 - Infrastructure using blockchain as base infrastructure
Web3 Creator Platform that increases the profits for creators by removing 3rd parties through blockchain. Better Margin lead to more creators on platform.
On-Chain Gaming enables permission-less market allowing users exchange in-game items that are compatible.
Web 2 community platform introducing Digital Collectivle (NFT) and user automatically receives it with wallet embed to their account.
These examples fits into typical definition of mass adoption of onboarding billions as it increase the ultimate #️. But users on these infrastructures are not necessarily aware of where the values are coming from.
Creators on decentralized platforms will receive better margins and stick to the platform without knowing what’s behind
Gamers will play games, purchase items, and send them over to other games. without knowing what’s behind
Web 2 users on community platform will receive cute characters and use them as pfp without knowing what’s behind
“Without knowing what’s behind" is not the problem, actually it has never been. People buy luxuries for social status without knowing about detailed heritage of brand and materials. People drive cars mainly to move on place to another without knowing how the engine works and how the components of car harmonizes.
People have motivation to use something and if they are somehow satisfied, that’s enough! If you create new social, gaming environment using the values of blockchain and actually onboard real users, that’s the achievement to be praised as there are only few cases like that.
But what happens “if you know what’s behind”?
By educating customers the history of brand and background story of its collection, luxury brands generate stronger attachment between brands and customers.
By explaining how the safety structure of your car is designed and the magic behind the engine, car manufacturers can change the persona of drivers to fans. Think of Tesla or Porsche.
When you successfully create stronger bond and build something like “fans” or “community” through understanding user’s motivation and deepening it by explaining what’s behind (which should be your product’s uniqueness) the impact they generate for your business becomes greater.
Either they will show higher retention, spend more money, or even their child will also adopt your products. → Greater impact per person generates.
This logic is identically applicable for blockchain. Let’s Look at the #2 case.
📍Examples for #2 - Value Storage in blockchain
NFT was the biggest narrative because the concept of “non-fungibility” and “ownership”. It attracted people directly to on-chain as they knew value comes from blockchain.
They didn’t have to understand the how decentralization is designed nor their image of NFT can be changed. The only thing they needed to know is the concept of “blockchain is trustless and enables self-custody so you own and you won’t lose yours”.
Defi summer’s insane yield farming onboarded traders.
They didn’t know where the yield is coming from and how AMM works
But they at least knew that this yield generating environment is based on something called “blockchain” that allows you trade whenever and what you want without going through banks or traditional exchange because it is decentralized and permissionless.
Not all of them sympathize the value of blockchain but at least they knew it, found it intriguing, and decided to opt in.
In the case #2, user were onboarded with speculative motivation but end up understanding the high level concept of blockchain and experience the unique idea of “self-custody, transferability, trust-less, perimission-less”, which are definitely unprecedented values enabled by blockchain.
The important part is “they knew where the value is coming from”.
By understanding the values and sources of it which are “new” to people, the amount of money and input that they were willing to spend was massive. “The willingness to pay” was greater.
Consequently, the case #2’s market dominance (size) has been way greater than that of #1. Users who opted into NFT, Defi, Stablecoin have spent more money than those in case #1.
We can apply this examples to the blockchain mass adoption by going one step further from “onboarding billions”.
Build post-framework to have people understand and experience the value of blockchain.
Understand people’s motivation and initially satisfy it with blockchain based product / infra
Build post-framework to educate people to understand and experience the value of blockchain
Generate greater impact of per person. This could be through ownership, trustless governance, and anything.
This simply can be done by combining the good part of case #1 & 2. Onboarding greater number of people then educate them through unique experience.
And tripleS is already doing it fan based governance enabled by blockchain.
tripleS - The first decentralized K-Pop Girl Group
TripleS is the K-Pop Girl Group using blockchain based governance that allows fans become the “owner” of their idol.
If you don’t know about the K-Pop, it refers to Korean musics mainly led by what people call “idol” or “Girl / Boy Group” like BTS & Blackpink. And this is not just small / niche market driven by stereotypical figure of sub-culture, rather it has market size of $8B and expect to grow up to $20B til 2030. It is one of the biggest entertainment sector.
TripleS, in surface, is one of many K-Pop artists but cleverly using blockchain as a method “to increase the impact of per fans”. Here are some words that you should understand before diving in.
Cosmo : The entertainment platform for TripleS
Objekt: NFT(ERC-721)-based photo card
Como: Governance token
Gravity : Voting Place
Dimension : Think it as “sub-group” within tripleS
How it works
If you are fan of tripleS, you download Cosmo APP and automatically create wallet with social login based on MPC
You buy Objekt (NFT) of tripleS member and you also receive Como, the governance token.
You use Como to vote on various agendas at Gravity.
You can vote for new dimension and what song should be the main song of the next album.
All the Como used for voting is burned.
These 5 steps are simple but powerful enough as it is built different. Various entertainment companies tried to use blockchain for idol fans to provide unique experience but most of them have shut it down or barely maintaining its service.
“They were trapped in the typical #1 case”.
These platforms used blockchain as base infrastructure for their platforms and onboarded millions fans but failed to converge them into greater value. Fans were buying NFTs of their favorite idols under the name of digital collectibles but experience-wise “it was nothing different” from buying digital photo cards. There were lots of educational efforts explaining what blockchain is and why NFT matters but fans don’t care; fans only care about their artists.
Yes, these platforms onboarded "millions" but that was all.
TripleS went one step further and introduced the new paradigm ; decentralized governance for fans enabled by blockchain. Users don’t end with mediocre minting experience NFT but they get to experience value of blockchain with NFT / Token by satisfying their initial motivation.
The tricky part is that “Fan Voting” for Idol was long-existing concept in web 2.
Fan voting was the popular tool of attracting fans and giving better immersion to the artists but the process was never been transparent and fans are desperate to know it. There were cases where either the vote was forged and some results were in-convincible from fans’ perspective. Everything was trust assumption.
*Check this article for more info - "X1 fans boo CJ ENM for survival audition vote fixing"
“Blockchain based voting” introduces the most attractive feature for fans : “Trustlessness”.
TripleS understand this motivation of fans and designed the framework of implementing blockchain based governance system that solves this thirst and educate the value generated through blockchain by allowing them to experience it, rather than explaining it. 👇
Soft Onboarding
Onboard fans into TripleS and Cosmo without telling them what blockchain, NFT, Tokens are.
Fans will have their wallets, NFTs, Tokens by buying Objects and minting Como.
This is where it usually ends in traditional scope of mass adoption.
Passive Participation
They vote using Como on agendas like selecting title songs for albums and who should be included in the Dimension.
Experienced based Education
Educate fans that every process of voting is transparent and you don’t have trust someone through the repetitive voting process.
Active Participation
Fans will check everything that impact the voting like voters status, remaining votings powers, and the on-chain result.
Fans are like degens. UX of checking on-chain data is horrifying for new users but fans will do everything for sake of their idols just like degens will go through 10steps of on-chain transactions for better profits.
Understanding
They now understand that blockchain enables the whole process of transparency, trust-lessness (at high level) and the value of owning NFTs & tokens.
Persona Change
Fans attachment and royalties to tripleS increases significantly.
What they did really well here is “Not falling in the rabbit hole of decentralized governance or everyting on chain”. You don’t need to make every single process of governance decentralized rather you need to tailor it in a way to fulfill the purpose of governance; as long as blockchain guarantee the trust-less environment.
By going one step further from onboarding fans to their platform, tripleS let fans experience and learn how blockchain benefits their favorite artists through trust-less governance. This increased the “impact of per fan” generates “higher willingness to spend” or “stronger psychological bond to tripleS”.
*You can check on-chain status of tripleS on Dune (Thanks to Subin from Hashed)
All we need one step further
There is at least one common ultimate motivation for your users using your products. If you can satisfy that motivation through the unique value of blockchain and design the one more step for users to experience and understand the value, the impact of per user becomes greater.
Idol fans’ motivation is simple ; they want their idols become more popular. TripleS introduced trustless governance system that allows fans to have direct impact on this motivation.
In order to achieve the mass adoption that uses blockchain to increase the impact of per user, designing “Experienced based education” is as important as the traditional “UX Design”. If done right, this is applicable in many other cases (these are just mumbling ideas)
For Social Protocol, users’ motivation is enjoying the social status generated by social graph.
Onboard users by creating social graph by building unique environment enabled by blockchain.
Provide feature like tokenizing their social status, which becomes like a market cap per person.
People go crazier when social status is presented in numbers. we can present it as monetary value which struck humans harder than just # of followers. Let user experience that your market cap is enabled by blockchain.
For Blockchain Gaming, user want to play fun game.
Onboard users by providing fun gaming mechanisms.
Let them use their NFT items or in-game currency to vote on critical agendas in the game and even propose the idea for better “fun”.
Gamers can have stronger bond to the game and character itself.
Mass Adoption is not myth
We can go one step further from onboarding billions through experience based education. The impact that every person can generate is greater.
Imagine the world gamers, creators, users understands the value ownership from blockchain rather than just playing blockchain games and using platforms. The amount of they are willing to spend (both time and money) in game / digital world increases . Not only the market size itself expands, new markets and contents will be emerging.
Mass Adoption is not myth, it just requires one more step.
Thanks for Moyed, Jing, Wise, Dan for reviewing and sharing their thoughts.