The article at a glance:

• Web3 revolutionizes brand partnerships, as seen with Adidas and BAYC collaborations.

• Identity-layered NFTs enable secure audience sharing, benefiting brands and users.

• Nested wallets (EIP-6059) simplify cross-brand experiences, boosting customer value.

• This tech could replace costly API integrations, especially in travel.

• Web3 fuels brand integration, enhancing user experiences.

Will Web3 Loyalty Replace API Integrations in the Near Future?

In the realm of brand partnerships, the community-driven nature of Web3 is proving to be a game-changer for tapping into new customer segments quickly. 

A prime example is Adidas' collaborations with brands like BAYC, which facilitated the successful launch of digital goods tied to physical Adidas merchandise.

By implementing an identity layer at the NFT level within one brand and securely sharing it with another, brands can access each other's audiences and potentially acquire new customers. 

This mutually beneficial approach extends to highly engaged users who can earn loyalty points, proof of attendance, and NFTs, enhancing the overall user experience. 

It's also a step towards creating an ecosystem spanning metaverses, as some digital assets can be used across them.

The introduction of the nested wallets standard, EIP-6059, paves the way for nested NFTs, simplifying cross-brand experiences and boosting customer lifetime value (LTV) for both partners.

This technology promises to expedite brand integrations, gradually phasing out the need for costly API integrations. 

It holds significant potential, especially in the travel industry, encompassing air travel, ground transportation, hotels, cruise liners, and tours and activities. 

Here, NFTs can leverage loyalty from one brand to another, revolutionizing the travel domain both digitally and physically.

What are your insights on this exciting development?

#Web3Loyalty #APIIntegrations #BrandPartnerships #DigitalGoods #NFTs #CustomerLoyalty #MetaverseEcosystem #NestedNFTs #CustomerExperience #TravelInnovations

Web3 unlocks various opportunities and enables new, innovative business models which have the concept of community at their basis.  The monetization equation will be very different in modern businesses, with a complete new way of thinking about product persona as such and metrics / KPIs.

Based on the Product Canvas as a strategic tool, here are some directions of adaptation / food for thought for product managers when considering future business models:

• The Customer / Market Segment is part of the company ecosystem and can participate in earnings as well with a vested interest to contribute and grow with the community.

• Monetization: is LTV still relevant? Yes, but in another way! Earnings and cumulated tokens / cumulative token value makes a lot of sense to track. Showing the value earned from the community as such can be an important catalyst to attract new members into the community and enable economies of scale, enhancing adoption and leveraging network effects.

• Will retention be such a big concern? No, not really! It will come as a natural side effect of participating into the community, rather than requiring complicated techniques and metrics to measure in order to truly make it work.

• Problem pivot - will be less rare since the community will likely be involved in early stages of any product and have their say in its development. Already movements in this regard are performed in the film industry - author Ben Mezrich. 

• Solution pivot - also less rare because of the reason above, a natural inclination for the creative process to be part of the community.  

With all these, the boundaries between the wide market as such and the company ecosystem will vanish in so many ways. The market will be much closer to the company from different perspectives: motivation, inclusion, network effects, utility at a large scale.

Currently there is a limited adoption of Web3, if we think specifically in terms of NFTs and DAOs, especially because of the relatively high entry barriers for non technically verse people to enter the space and interact with it.  Fact is that there is still a few years to go for Web3 to be propagated to the masses, if we think about the order of magnitude comparison for OpenSea versus eBay for example, in terms of Monthly Active Users (MAU). For OpenSea there are, at the moment of writing, 300K MAU, while on eBay there are 200M MAU, a 7X difference. 

However, there are already some interesting moves from a few companies meant to leverage the transition from Web2 to Web3, in other words, to build a bridge easier to cross, which will make the transition much quicker.  The adoption of crypto and NFTs happened, in the last 3 years at a very fast pace, which could also lead to an accelerated adoption in the years to come.

If we look at the space, there is a huge opportunity to build a marketplace which would simplify the user experience for both Demand (the users or buyers) and the Supply (the creators). Some players already entered the space.  To encourage mass adoption, building a marketplace such as OpenSea for NFTs is not sufficient because enablement is needed to simplify the user experience and to decrease the cognitive load for the average user or creator to get onboarded to Web3.

This is a high level overview of changes in some important aspects of product and marketing in Web3, from a strategic perspective, considering the various areas of a product canvas, where the approach is completely different:

• Customer Segment & Early Adopter - the principles of customer segmentation change entirely since the main criteria for grouping users are rather psychographics and not demographics and geographies like before. Common traits and interests are more important than where you live or how much you earn, although this still has quite a lot to say in terms of social tokens / NFT ownership. From a classical product management perspective, a basis for conducting such a segmentation can be still the "Jobs To Be Done" framework, perceived from a larger angle, with a focus on interests and going beyond professional careers and goals, tapping more into the life as a whole and the expression of one's personality.

• Network effects - still remain very important, especially in micro-communities sharing the same values, principles and areas of interest.  Such a micro-segment or niche will be the early adopter segment which will trigger further expansion and will allow crossing the chasm.

• Branding - the community is king and the Creator is the center of everything, with perpetual possibility of generating income based on the use of smart contracts. Here marketing would insist on the community built around the creator as a mechanism to nurture the brand.

• Monetization - the smart contract will allow creators to earn continuously from the initial selling in secondary markets and in subsequent resell actions. However, there is also an important shift here in terms of retention and LTV for a product manager to consider since the community would have much to say in how a product evolves, influencing the creator.  Concrete examples of these in book publishing and film industry is already seen with the NFTs from Ben Mezrich.