EarnOS: A Pivotal Launch

EarnOS, a project I am enthusiastic about for many reasons, launched on XION last week. I have been working with the founder, Phil George, for a few months and many have heard me talk about his immense potential. While EarnOS’s incredibly successful launch is exciting, even more exciting, is what it means for our industry.

Bringing Novel Web3 Concepts to the Mainstream

I often preach about the novel concepts of Web3 as they relate to digital scarcity, incentive structures, and new ownership models. I believe these concepts have found product market fit, as demonstrated by successful NFT communities, DAOs, and growing ecosystems. However, I also believe these concepts are confined to the echo chambers of the industry.

XION exists to bring the novel concepts of Web3 to the mainstream.

EarnOS is a perfect example. In our industry, the concept of rewarding a user for an action has morphed into the well-established airdrop meta. It isn’t necessarily a novel concept, as demonstrated by the abundance of loyalty & rewards systems of traditional businesses. However, for years Web2 companies have wasted astronomical amounts of money on growth without proper incentivization structures, under the guise of “growth marketing”.

Phil and his team realized early on that novel reward incentivization models, currently existing in this industry, can be adequately applied to Web2 growth models. I applaud them for recognizing that. They are now disrupting a $1Trillion digital advertising market by blending their extensive experience in the fields of Web3, fintech, and consumer experience from industry giants such as Lens, Typeform, AAVE, Uber, and BCG Digital Ventures to name a few.

Why XION?

EarnOS empowers brands to effectively acquire, reward, and engage users in novel ways, pioneering a new future of digital advertising. The main obstacle, as in much of this industry, is the users. Unfortunately, crypto has created an excruciating amount of complexities that consumers aren’t ready to deal with. Citing my very first article on the topic:

“How can we redefine ownership if only the highly technical have access?”

One of the main reasons we’ve enjoyed working with this team so much is because they understand this issue. If the goal is to attract users to a product, then having a terrible value capture funnel, high-friction experience, and requiring prior knowledge is not conducive to the mission. When you are finally able to take the “crypto” out of the equation, the focus shifts to solving actual problems.

Case in point, through XION’s chain abstraction, the EarnOS team was able to tackle the digital advertising market’s rising issues by solving real problems such as, “how do we send $5 to 2 million people globally?”.

A Use-Case Focused Approach: The Numbers Speak for Themselves

Following their successful launch, EarnOS has now secured over $12M in committed spend, onboarded over 500 creators, and is working with 40+ global brands and agencies. They launched their beta product with Uber Eats, Baskin Robbins, Sunglass Hut, The North Face, and have many more to come.

To say they have traction is an understatement, and it has taught me a lot about the role of a layer one blockchain as it relates to brands.

Without naming names, there are many examples of large-scale brands entering the space with their failures amounting to upwards of 8-figures. And, with nothing to show for it.

What I have come to realize is that these were purely the perpetuation of the solutionism this industry has seen since its inception. As a consumer-focused chain, it naturally feels as if these brands are a symbol of success. But, the idea of direct brand-to-blockchain simply doesn’t make sense. It is not our role as infrastructure layers to “onboard brands”. Why? The conversation simply becomes, “Here, {Brand}, have some {Crypto}”, for no reason other than the fact that {Brand} is interacting with {Crypto}.

That being said, as infrastructure layers it is our job to provide the EarnOS’s of the world the tools to meet brands where they are. We must offer actual solutions to the problems that have kept products from attaining real adoption outside of the industry.

With that in mind, I truly see the launch of EarnOS as a turning point not only for XION but for the industry as a whole. We’re ushering in a new era of Web3 where products can finally be created to solve real-world use cases. The market of crypto, once previously capped at the number of seed phrases stored, now has the ability to reach the world.