It’s no secret I’m a fan of creative usages of crypto-tokens, and the resulting mini-economies they create. As a refresher, please refer to 2 seminal blog posts I wrote 4 years ago:
The Theory of a Blockchain Circular Economy and the Future of Work and
The Relationship Between Cryptocurrency Tokens, Value and Work.
Since then, I’ve had direct experience and involvement in the first social currency that showed a decent adoption, Steemit, as well as with Kin, another large-scale cryptocurrency for socially-minded mobile apps.
[disclaimer, I was an early advisor to/holder of STEEM, and am currently on the Kin Foundation board, and hold KIN]
While both Steemit and Kin reward the end-user for their activity, the user is required to use their common currency, STEEM or KIN. There is nothing wrong with that model, as it fits a wide range of use cases. Kin, for example has been adopted by 57 mobile apps, and garnered more than 4 million monthly active users in that ecosystem who participate in a variety of earn/spend social actions.
This brings us to wondering: How about a personal token for a brand or individual that is tied to their unique online presence, and one they directly own, control and use to coordinate how value is created across their community’s touch points?
That’s where Roll comes in. Roll is social (crypto) money that a personal brand can use to incentivize a variety of earn/spend activity for their community. Think of it like a personal loyalty points program, with the difference being:
- you receive and manage your points as crypto-tokens in a special wallet, which means that you have custody of these tokens, and no one can take them away from you or arbitrarily force an expiry date.
- you can spend them inside the community where you earned them, or across other services in the crypto universe- that’s the equivalent of using your United MilagePlus at a hotel or restaurant seamlessly.
- you can exchange them for another cryptocurrency like ETH or BTC without asking anyone for authorization, so the equivalent would be to redeem your mileage points for their actual face value in dollars/euro/etc, with the additional twist that these points might appreciate in value based on a various demand/supply factors related to the economic strength of that specific currency.
To get this started, Roll has minted 10 million $WAM tokens, and that supply is fixed. It will never be increased nor change. Roll holds 12% of that supply, and I was given 2 million initial $WAM that I plan on distributing across the community I touch via this blog, social media or events I produce, such as the Token Summit. Every month, for the next 3 years, I will be issued a new number of $WAM that I can continue deploying.
How do you start?
You can earn $WAM via an action you take, or via a redeem code I share with you.
Specifically, here are some options to consider:
- Redeem code: Just click on this link, and if you complete the steps which include signing-up for Roll (or downloading the App), you will find 100 $WAM auto-magically appear in your wallet. Note this is available only to the first 30 that respond within 3 days. So, it’s a one-time offer (and I will receive your email from Roll).
- Subscribe to any one of the 5 blockchain-related news content portals that I’m personally curating. Each new email subscription between June 10-15 that doesn’t un-subscribe for at least 1 week will receive 50 $WAM into their wallets.
OnCoins - General blockchain market news
OnEthereum - Ethereum ecosystem news
OnDeFi - Decentralized Finance news
OnStablecoins - Stablecoins and Digital Currency news
OnDGov - Decentralized Governance and Decentralization news
3. Leave a comment on my blog with an idea on how to “spend” $WAM, and I will send you 200 $WAM. One idea could be to redeem them as a discount for a future Token Summit ticket, or potentially for early access to my next book, or something exclusively available to token holders, but I’m looking for creative/interesting/valuable ideas.
As a sidepoint, last week, during a virtual presentation on Decentralized Autonomous Associations, I pre-announced $WAM and offered 100 $WAM to the first 50 users that subscribe to the Decentralized Governance news portal, and they will be receiving their $WAM shortly.
$WAM is an ERC-20 token. This means that the Roll wallet allows you to send your $WAM to another ERC-20 compatible wallet you may already own, and in the future, you will be able to trade it on the Roll Exchange (similar to Uniswap).
How do you spend $WAM?
Currently, the “Spend” options for $WAM are limited, which is why I’m asking for feedback in point #3 above. Another spend idea is that $WAM could be used as a currency to purchase a digital asset on the OpenSea marketplace.
Recap:
Sign-up to one of the curated news portals. Start here: OnCoins.org
Redeem the special code to earn $WAM if you sign-up and download a Roll wallet
Learn more about Roll. Here’s a great podcast the 2 founders, Bradley Miles and Sid Kalla. (Some of you may remember Sid as a speaker at the first Token Summit in 2017 when he was an analyst at Smith+Crown)
Or, download Roll for iOS on the Apple App store and Roll for Android on the Google Play store, and get familiar with it.
Finally, here’s a handy FAQ on Roll.