Author: TechFlow
The market is dull. Apart from betting heavily on MEME, what new projects and narratives will make people feel different?
A slightly joking answer might be that for the leeks, quitting gambling may not be as good as quitting smoking.
For VCs, after investing in infrastructure, it’s time to quit smoking.
Yesterday, Puffpaw, a project on berachain that focuses on “Quit Smoking to Earn,” completed a $6 million seed round of financing led by Lemniscap, with participation from Volt Capital, Spartan, Folius Ventures, Karatage, Seed Club Ventures, Hypersphere, Panga Capital, EVG, Corner, Social Graph Venture, and Nonce Classic.
And our imagination about DePIN is still too poor.
Quitting smoking to earn may sound funny, but Puffpaw has its own DePIN device --- it records users' smoking behavior by installing sensors and blockchain interfaces on smart e-cigarettes to achieve monitoring and incentive effects.
By switching to an e-cigarette, you can also earn some coins at the same time. This model seems to have advantages in terms of promotion resistance and public welfare reputation, and it seems easier to implement.
DePINning e-cigarettes and gamifying smoking
Obviously, Puffpaw is essentially an e-cigarette device.
However, data shows that the global e-cigarette market will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.49% from 2023 to 2030. The value of the entire market is expected to increase from US$18.32 billion in 2022 to US$46.98 billion in 2030.
This means that Puffpaw appeared in the rising period of the e-cigarette market. Compared with gamers, technology geeks or athletes (see StepN), the number of smokers is definitely larger, and the smoking habit is easier to maintain.
This is indeed a huge market. But you may ask, isn’t e-cigarette still a cigarette? Can smoking in this way help you quit smoking?
Don’t be impatient, let’s take a look at PuffPaw’s own e-cigarette project, which is described as “Vape” in the English context.
Vape is short for "Vaporizer", which usually refers to electronic cigarettes or electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS). In layman's terms, it is an electronic cigarette device that heats liquid into vapor for users to inhale.
The difference from traditional cigarettes is that tobacco is not burned, so tar and many harmful substances related to combustion are not produced; the nicotine intake can be precisely controlled, and steam is produced instead of smoke, with a lighter odor.
This thing has a very obvious feature: the device is DePIN-ized and smoking is gamified.
DePINning a device means that it has built-in sensors and blockchain interfaces that can record users’ smoking behavior data in real time, such as smoking frequency, duration, nicotine intake, etc.
Puffpaw’s official Twitter account stated that an e-cigarette device can be regarded as a node in the project network. While contributing data, it is encrypted and uploaded to the blockchain to ensure privacy and security.
At the same time, anonymized health data can be provided to medical research institutions, insurance companies, etc., so that users can obtain additional benefits.
On the other end, Puffpaw encourages you to reduce the nicotine content in e-cigarettes through gamification and get more tokens, the so-called "Vape to Earn".
The core of this gamification is to transform the smoking cessation process into a fun and rewarding experience.
The first step is to set goals. Users can set a daily limit on the number of cigarettes they smoke or set a goal to gradually reduce the number of cigarettes they smoke. Secondly, they will receive token rewards after achieving the goal or reducing the amount of smoking.
In addition, Puffpaw has also designed a social element. The electronic cigarette devices of different players can recognize each other's data through embedded NFC, and users can connect immediately by simply tapping their vapes together. This also creates conditions for quitting smoking groups or finding like-minded "smoking friends".
According to Puffpaw's public information, the reason why it can help people quit smoking is mainly based on the following gamification strategies:
Gradual reduction: By precisely controlling nicotine intake, users can gradually reduce their dependence.
Incentive mechanism: Using low-nicotine or nicotine-free e-cigarettes can get more token rewards, encouraging users to gradually transition.
Factor trade-offs: With the addition of game and token rules, smokers must weigh and combine several factors to maximize their chances of obtaining tokens.
For example, if you choose a liquid with a high nicotine content, the more you smoke every day, the fewer tokens you can expect to get; conversely, if you choose a liquid without nicotine added, you will get more tokens at the same smoking frequency.
At the same time, the project also considers some virtual NFT gameplay, such as different physical electronic cigarette devices have different NFT levels bound to them. Under the same conditions, higher-level NFT tokens will definitely produce more.
So overall, this is a kind of DePIN + GameFi gameplay, which makes up for the part where StepN lacks real running shoes.
Is it possible?
Taking into account the domestic situation, Puffpaw is definitely targeting larger overseas markets; and e-cigarette sales agencies in different countries may become partners of this project.
Currently, Puffpaw has cooperated with local e-cigarette liquid brands in South Korea to research nicotine-free e-cigarette ingredients and jointly launch related products.
At the same time, the project’s blog shows that it has received support from the Berachain Foundation. As the first DePIN project on Berachain, it benefits from Berachain’s infrastructure and community.
Considering that there are other DeFi projects and NFT projects in the Berachain ecosystem, it seems easy for Puffpaw to cooperate with these other projects. For example, holding an NFT can correspond to the right to use your own e-cigarette device, or accelerate the efficiency of quitting smoking to earn.
Berachain is somewhat unique in terms of both its image and mechanism design, and this smoking cessation project can easily become an interesting attraction and topic.
Back to the project itself, if someone is a smoker, the conversion cost is lower than other previous projects.
You may be lazy and don’t want to wear an NFT running shoe when running; you may have poor equipment and don’t have a good computer to play blockchain games; you may be afraid and dare not scan your iris to upload your identity information...
But when I switched to an e-cigarette, the resistance did seem to be much smaller.
Finally, smoking is harmful to health, and the correct attitude is to look at new projects and models in a healthy way.
