Can blockchain applications be popularized?
It has been more than 15 years since the birth of the first Bitcoin block in 2009. The most popular blockchain applications are still highly concentrated in financial services, making it difficult to penetrate into developed countries and encountering high levels of supervision by governments. We often hear this question: When will blockchain applications become popular (mass adoption, also translated as mass adoption)?
Gamified finance (GameFi) is one of the few blockchain application fields that has ever "out of the circle". For example, Axie Infinity, which focuses on making money by playing games, or STEPN, which makes money by running, have become popular. Either affected by the financial bull-bear cycle or due to the large number of short-term arbitrageurs, these blockchain applications are difficult to sustain and grow steadily. They often plummet in price after becoming popular and then go silent.
From the perspective of traditional application development, the positioning and value of the product itself, the degree of refinement, the balance of various mechanisms, and the continuous positive feedback from the user community are the key factors for continued growth. Current blockchain applications often place too much emphasis on spending money on marketing or profiting from early currency issuance. Just like in the early web1 period, many Internet companies rushed to the public market before achieving stable revenue, which eventually led to the Internet bubble. . Companies that survive have become dominant players in today's information industry, are based on effective financial discipline, and continue to develop excellent products.
Therefore, we might as well look at it from the product side. We can get a glimpse of the thoughts of the designers and operators behind each product, and whether it is enough to become the nutrient for continued growth.
What are the features of the food community Fooday app?
Fooday is a food social app developed by a Taiwanese team. In view of the many fake reviews on the Internet, it attempts to create a food social platform with "real reviews". How to do it?
First of all, Fooday provides an incentive to "eat and earn". You can receive corresponding rewards by writing restaurant reviews, which are distributed in the form of cryptocurrency $FOOD.
The photo must be taken using the built-in camera of the Fooday app to ensure that the photo was taken at the location of the restaurant and to confirm that the reviewer actually visited.
To write a review or withdraw money, you must first purchase a Foodca camera. The lowest price on the market before the deadline is 65 FUSD (equivalent to 75 USD, approximately NT$2,400). You can write a review approximately every 16 hours. It raises the entry barrier for comment laundering or short-term arbitrage.
It is worth mentioning that the Fooday app experience is quite good. For example, the interface for writing reviews will automatically bring in the map location of the restaurant address, and when selecting photos, photos near the store will be prioritized. From these details, it can be seen that the team really pays attention to the product experience. Fooday team members have worked in the inline restaurant reservation system, bringing with them past successful experience.
Fooday has made new explorations in community management. Different from the traditional web2 platform-centric way of handling reports, Fooday allows community members to serve as "anonymous whistleblowers" and initiate "challenges" to remove poor quality reviews. The platform randomly selects community members to vote, which strengthens the values of web3 community autonomy.
In such a process of continuous iteration and product improvement, it is difficult to take into account the integration of blockchain technology. So far, Fooday only has rewards that can be withdrawn to the Polygon blockchain, and the Foodca camera has not yet become an on-chain NFT. We also expect that the community governance mechanism will be gradually transferred to the chain, in line with the values of long-lasting and non-tamperable blockchain data.
Blockchain applications still have to face competition from existing applications. For example, Fooday's entry barriers inhibit the scale of user growth; the mandatory use of in-app camera positioning also makes it difficult for food bloggers who shoot with single-lens cameras to enter; the map exploration interface is similar to Google Maps, but the total number of comments is still relatively small few. These competitive factors have nothing to do with blockchain technology, but are issues that any application product needs to face as it grows and becomes more popular.
Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple, emphasized at the 1997 WWDC conference that we should build product technology based on user experience rather than conceiving the product appearance based on new technology. This discussion is still very useful today.
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