Loyalty Tokens for Businesses

Loyalty tokens is an innovative way for businesses to boost their loyalty programmes and connect better with their clients and customers.

A web-based platform and dApp will be developed for businesses to sign up and mint native tokens on Cardano to be used as loyalty tokens. The tokens can represent various aspects of a loyalty programme like category, type of rewards and expiry. Businesses can send minted loyalty tokens to the wallets of their clients like any native asset.

The recipients can utilize their loyalty tokens at a different time and place in order to claim their rewards, validate their loyalty status or even trade them with others.

The implementation scheme for tokens will encode the credentials of the issuer as well as attributes of the token within the token itself instead of transaction metadata. This will enable validation of the token without having to query the blockchain. This approach improves the configurability and tradability of the loyalty tokens.

Use cases and benefits

For Businesses

• An innovative way for customer outreach. They can define different attributes for their tokens like type, privileges bestowed, validity etc.
• Most loyalty programmes today depend on Plastic cards or membership info stored in the IT systems of corresponding businesses.
• Since there are no dependencies on their own IT infrastructure, a business can issue tokens in collaboration with other businesses and run joint loyalty programmes.
• Businesses can reach out better to the youth.

For the Community

• Engage in multiple loyalty programmes with the ease of using their ADA wallets.
• Be able to exchange or trade their loyalty tokens.
• Improved commercial adoption of Cardano with innovative loyalty schemes.

What makes this proposal suitable under Mini/Low-Budget Dapps & Integrations?

1. Feasibility: Our team has already evaluated the technical feasibility using POCs developed using Plutus and tested with PAB simulator.The next step is to test with the public testnet and develop the web interface and integration of the components involved.

2. Delivery timeline: We believe since POC is successfully completed, we will be able to deliver a complete and usable product within 3 months.

3. The budget falls in line with the challenge category.

Sustainability of the project

• To cover infrastructure costs after an initial period covered by Catalyst funding, businesses will be charged a nominal platform fee for upkeep of the tech infrastructure.
• HR expenditure is expected only if the functionality is scaled up from the scope outlined here and in that case future catalyst rounds or crowdfunding will be considered.

Roadmap

February 2022

• Test prototyped minting smart contract with public testnet
• Design web interface and system architecture

March 2022

• Develop web interface and backend
• Integrate with PAB

April 2022

• Integration tests and beta launch.
• Obtain dApp certification or initiate the process if the turnaround time is more that one month.
• Launch on mainnet

Success metrics

After 3 months:

• Loyalty Token dApp successfully developed

KPIs

• Number of businesses/entities that sign up on the platform and mint their tokens
• The number of different in loyalty schemes implemented by using the platform and the number of native tokens types (policy ids) issued.
• The number of market sectors to which the adopting businesses belong to.

Team

The Loxe Inc. team is behind this proposal, and we have already been funded through Catalyst in Fund 6 for the following proposals:

Besides, we are building partnerships with other projects being developed in the Cardano and Catalyst ecosystems, such as the Proposal Mentor Marketplace (https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/369749-48088).

Our team site ( https://winwin-team.web.app/ ) has additional information on each team member incl. LinkedIn and/or Github links.

Matthias Sieber

• Professional Software Engineer for over 20 years
• Worked on Liqwid through MLabs internship
• Conflict Resolution Specialist (Mediator, Facilitator, Peacekeeper, Educator)
• BA in Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, and Peacebuilding
• Master of Dispute Resolution
• Community-elected Moderator on Cardano Stack Exchange
• Plutus and Prism Pioneer (1st cohorts)
• Project Catalyst Community Advisor and Veteran Community Advisor
• Catalyst Circle member representing the Cardano Foundation
• Cardano Ambassador
• Built successful marketplaces, startups, SMBs, and mission-driven teams
• Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member

Eli Selkin, L.C.S.W., M.S

• Professional Software Engineer for over 5 years
• Plutus Pioneer
• Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member
• MS in Computer Science, specializing in Machine Learning
• ML architect
• B.A. in Psychology
• Masters of Social Work
• Licensed clinical social worker

Victor Corcino

• Energy Industry Engineer for 6 years
• Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member
• Member of the 1st Catalyst Circle as Community Advisors representative
• Catalyst Veteran Community Advisor and Proposal Mentor
• Co-creator of AIM Community Tools (CA/vCA Tools, Voter Tool)
• BSc Chemical Engineering and MSc Chemical Engineering and Software Development
• Specialization in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
• PhD candidate, researching the field of Machine Learning applied to Computational Fluid Dynamics

Ganesh N

• Professional Software Engineer for over 8 years
• Plutus Pioneer (1st cohort)
• Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member
• BTech in Electronics and Communication Engineering
• Has led development of large scale applications
• Experience in the financial services industry

Budget

• 1 Plutus developer part time for 2 months: $1300 x 2 = 2600
• 1 Front end + 1 backend developer part time for 2 months = $1300 x 2 x 2 = $5200
• Tech services (hosting, GCP, GSuite etc.) 1 year: $2000
• Total: $9800