Brainstorming Faucets, Funnels, and Referrals in 2.0

[roadscape]

@CryptoPrometheus mentioned this thread in the last mumble and I'll put Bytemaster's response here for reference:

"Anyone who's running the server software we have (which is our faucet and what you have to license) has a version of the wallet that when you go to create an account you check that you're not a bot (and potentially enter a captcha) and it will automatically create your account for you and pay your fee and sign you up. And it will also automatically do referral tracking and affiliates so you can divide up the registration: who referred the user, who the registrar is, and what the percentages are. And that server software is what we're providing and licensing to people like ccedk and banx. Anyone of course is free to create their own infrastructure around tracking affiliates, verifying users aren't bots and signing up people with a version of the wallet that's customized for whatever backend you have. And if you do that you can sign people up all day. If you use our software and sign people up, we ask for 50%. We provide the tech, you provide the user, we split it 50%. 50% probably goes to the affiliate who spread around the referral links, and the other 50% is split between someone like CCEDK and us. Regular users who are passing around links to ccedk or banx or anyone who's licensed from us (and we're licensing to basically anyone who wants it and is willing to share with us 50% of whatever referral income comes in from using the system). So it's our way of funding development and generating money.. by proving the tools to capitalize on it. But it's a short term benefit because anyone could create an open-source alternative."

[roadscape]

Very good thinking!!

Let me drop in this project:
https://www.moneypacket.org/

It basically allows to send bitcoin per mail .. kind of ..
and with the bitshares wallet being written in JS you can basically send a whole wallet in a mail
Totally unexplored way of thinking and marketing!

This is great.. almost like a trust-free paypal system. Could it be combined w/ the referral system? If the recipient is new to BTS, they'll need to create an account to claim the funds, right?

A bts money-packet could contain a pre-registered account for the recipient to use. (Although they would need to trust that the sender isn't holding onto a copy of the private keys, so not sure this is viable.)

I think this is a good topic to discuss.

Are faucets going to be built-in hosted wallet providers?  It shouldn't be necessary to have to go to two places just to get started.

Also I figure most people will create multiple wallets at various providers and leave the wallets they don't use empty. 

From what I understand, the hosted wallet will come with some sort of built-in faucet. I'm assuming they'll be easier to use and that's great. But if 3rd party faucets are more cumbersome, their conversion rates will be minimized.

[merivercap]

I think this is a good topic to discuss.

Are faucets going to be built-in hosted wallet providers?  It shouldn't be necessary to have to go to two places just to get started.

Also I figure most people will create multiple wallets at various providers and leave the wallets they don't use empty. 

[lovejoy]

 

You've put a lot of time and thought into understanding the contours of these ideas, thanks for laying it all out in an easy to grok format!

I feel like I've seen people on and off the forums discussing various faucet / referral arrangements, but how is it going to work, really?

It would be great to hear other people's thoughts on the matter! 

Marketers and content creators will need dead simple ways to funnel and sign up new users... it would be good to get some clarity on this before it's go time!

Very good thinking!!

Let me drop in this project:
https://www.moneypacket.org/

It basically allows to send bitcoin per mail .. kind of ..
and with the bitshares wallet being written in JS you can basically send a whole wallet in a mail
Totally unexplored way of thinking and marketing!

This is amazing Xeroc!  I'd never considered this possibility!

[xeroc]

Very good thinking!!

Let me drop in this project:
https://www.moneypacket.org/

It basically allows to send bitcoin per mail .. kind of ..
and with the bitshares wallet being written in JS you can basically send a whole wallet in a mail
Totally unexplored way of thinking and marketing!

[roadscape]

Brainstorming Faucets, Funnels, and Referrals in 2.0

BitShares is different from other chains because it requires the use of a faucet to get started. Faucets as we know them today are merely registration forms, but they will play a bigger role when the referral system is launched. It’s not yet clear how all of this will work in Graphene, but I’d like to share some ideas of what might be possible. 


Ease of use

We lose referrals because the current faucet system is inconvenient. To take full advantage of the referral program, we should streamline the current faucet system without losing its flexibility.

Ideally, users would start at the faucet and then go to the web wallet. No hopping back and forth.

Instead of website→wallet→faucet→wallet I’d like to see just faucet→wallet. More on this below.


Cross-compatible wallets & faucets

CCEDK, BANX, and BunkerDEX will run their own skinned BitShares web wallet. We may have 'stock' wallets similar to wallet.bitshares.org. And we’ll have 3rd-party wallets like Moonstone.

The idea is for wallets to remain compatible so users are not locked in.
You should always be able to migrate to any wallet/provider at will (to paraphrase BM).

Could we make faucets and wallets completely interchangeable yet seamless?
For service providers, this would make A/B testing trivial. And they could take it to the next level by leveraging free market forces via the power of independent marketers/developers.

Every user on the chain only needs to interact with a faucet once.
Marketers will compete to reach various market segments first.
If marketers have powerful tools, we’ll have a very healthy race.


Faucet variants

• Invite-only faucet
  • Generate invite codes for printing/emailing. Perfect for meetups.
  • "Create a free account at bitshares.org & enter code RTYSDTF to claim your 5 BitUSD".
  • A benefit of this approach is that no email verification is required.
  • Valentine explored a similar approach last year, but 2.0 changes things.
• Skinnable faucets
  • Allow marketers to easily create highly-targeted funnels for different markets
    • traders, goldbugs, remissions, Greece, etc.
    • e.g. combine https://faucet.bitshares.org/ with http://whatisbitusd.com/
  • We could have endless user-generated keyword-rich signup pages.
  • Anyone with basic HTML skills could create single-page funnel-faucets.
• Tipbot faucet:
  • Receive a tip on social media.
  • To claim it, you verify your login and create/link a BTS account.
  • If the user does not yet have a BTS account, they create one
    • Tip-sender and tip-bot split the referral income
  • Great way to incentivize tipping
• LocalBitShares faucet/service:
  • We need P2P on/off-ramps, this would be great for grassroots efforts.
  • You can register and guide first-time BTS buyers
• Ad-supported faucet:
  • e.g. Allows you to register a premium name if you complete an offer
  • Doubt there would be much interest in this, but it’s interesting nonetheless
• Plain faucets
  • Probably what most built-in wallet faucets will look like. (CCEDK, BANX, etc)
  • It would have to use either email or social sign-in, to prevent abuse
  • Example: https://wallet.mynxt.info/

Example: emailable/printable invite code faucet

Something like this would be *perfect* for meetups. The basic flow:

• You get a an invite code for 5 BitUSD (via email, meetup, etc)
• Go to btsfaucet.com, type in the redemption code
• Select an account name
• Choose your wallet (CCEDK, BunkerDEX, etc)
• You are redirected to the chosen wallet
• Initialize your wallet, set your password
• Within seconds, your account shows up with a balance of $5

The same scenario, from a more technical standpoint:

• Marketer goes to btsfaucet.com and prints an "invite coupon" for 5 BitUSD
• Receiver of voucher (new user) goes to btsfaucet.com, types in the redemption code
• Faucet guides the user in picking an account name
  • Why? The faucet allows the user to dip into their $5 credit to register a premium name
• User selects which wallet they would like to use (CCEDK, BunkerDEX, etc)
• User is redirected to their chosen wallet
  • in the URL are 2 parameters: account_name and faucet_callback_url
• Wallet guides user through wallet creation (password, recovery key, etc)
• Wallet adds the (still unregistered) account_name
• Wallet makes a backend call to faucet_callback_url with account_name, account_key, owner_key
  • Faucet registers the account, and
  • transfers the coupon balance to it
• Done. Account is registered and has a balance of $5.

This is just one way to implement it, but it’s very secure because it does not require users to reveal/migrate their private keys nor for the faucets to be https.


Conclusion

There’s plenty more to cover but I wanted to share my thoughts and start a discussion. I'd love to start coding something (perhaps the invite faucet or tipbot faucet), but there's a lot of unknowns. I'm sure others are in a similar position.

Developers: Are you willing to implement the basic functionality into the web wallet that would make these faucets possible?
Marketers: How do you want to use faucets? What are your plans for 2.0? What tools would help you?

The possibilities of DPOS2 and the referral system are almost overwhelming. Let’s map it out and narrow it down!