Learn About Web3
Posts
🧠 Starbucks Copies Reddit and Fintech Cuts Out Exchanges

🧠 Starbucks Copies Reddit and Fintech Cuts Out Exchanges

December 16, 2022

🧠 Starbucks Copies Reddit and Fintech Cuts Out Exchanges

Gm 👋 and welcome to Learn About Web3 where we keep up with Web3, so you don't have to. This is your 🏠 to learn about Web3 in 3 minutes or less.

Happy Holidays, and welcome to all of our new subscribers!

Here's what we have this wintery week:

Starbucks' NFT strategy looks familiar
Fintech giants are giving exchanges the cold shoulder
A look at decentralized data with Dolpin
News rollup, VC funding, and the reading list

Let's dive in.

Get your coffee and an NFT ☕️

Starbucks is taking its coffee connoisseur community into Web3 by disguising it as a “journey"

The coffee company is integrating NFTs into its existing customer loyalty program.

What does this look like?

You sign in, pick an avatar, and go through an onboarding experience that teaches you about “Journeys” and “Stamps”. Here's what the Odyssey profile looks like:

As you participate in the “Odyssey” program and complete actions like taking quizzes, going to the store and trying new drinks, you’ll be able to earn a “Stamp”

This sounds cool, but where’s the Web3 element?

Here's the catch - Stamps are actually NFTs. Starbucks is hiding crypto phrases just like Reddit.

Just like any other online purchase, you can buy “Stamps” with a credit card.

You don’t even need to own a crypto wallet, own cryptocurrency, or have any understanding of Web3 to participate.

Starbucks CMO Brady Brewer states, “It happens to be built on blockchain and web3 technologies, but the customer – to be honest – may very well not even know that what they’re doing is interacting with blockchain technology.”

Just like Reddit disguised its NFTs as Avatars, Starbucks is disguising its NFTs as Stamps. Intentionally avoiding crypto vocabulary helped Reddit's Web3 offering gain mainstream adoption, and Starbucks is following this exact same strategy.

What does this mean?

Although the first invitations have just been sent to a select group of members, we believe that avoiding crypto vocabulary will only help fuel this new program's success.

Fintech giants are cutting out the exchange ✂️

With Stripe, you can now buy crypto using your credit card. The new fiat-to-crypto onramp widget simplifies the process of buying cryptocurrency.

The widget can be embedded in any crypto product, so you can use your credit card and hold crypto without ever to an exchange.

Now, what’s PayPal up to? Looks like the same thing…

You can now use your PayPal account to add funds to your MetaMask. You can select your Paypal account as a payment option to buy ETH within the MetaMask app.

This integration makes it WAY easier for you to purchase crypto and avoid using an exchange.

So why does this matter?

Let's say you want to buy crypto and add it to your wallet. Here's how this process used to look:

Send money to an exchange to buy crypto
Send crypto to your wallet
Hold crypto in your wallet

and here's how this process looks now:

Buy crypto in the app
Your crypto is in your wallet

What's the takeaway?

Web3 needs to be easier, and large institutions recognize this. Simplifying the process of buying crypto will allow more people to enter the space.

Easier onramps = easier introductions. For mass adoption, Web3 user flows need to be easy, simple, and intuitive.

Company Spotlight - Dolpin 🐬

Looking at Decentralized Data

As the world slowly pivots to Web3 - Storage has been overlooked.

Despite creating, using, and churning a huge amount of data every day, you don’t own your data.

Let’s say you want to launch an NFT project, but you don’t have a storage solution set up. Storing NFT images & metadata on Dolpin is the safest way to ensure permanence.

Dolpin is a decentralized media management solution built for the new frontier of creators. Dolpin keeps your files safe and ensures that no unwarranted party views it via encryption.

To learn more, check out the Dolpin Website, Twitter, and Discord.