The points system implies airdrops, why do new projects like to "PUA" users to earn points?

Written by: Chloe, PANews

The reward programs pioneered by the NFT markets Blur and Tensor are sweeping through the DeFi space. These DeFi protocols offer points to users who complete specific tasks, such as trading or locking tokens. The market currently views this as a new way to attract and influence user behavior.

It seems that almost overnight, the "points system" has become an emerging incentive tool in the crypto space, with project developers leveraging this tool to enhance user retention and engagement.

Many projects have demonstrated that these points could potentially translate into tokens with real economic value in the future; in other cases, users have already gained confidence in the value of these points, and most understand that points indicate that the corresponding protocol may consider conducting an airdrop.

Points System Becomes a Tool for Projects to Incentivize User Participation

On August 11, Friend.tech launched on the Base chain and quickly gained popularity, but by the end of the month, the trading volume had noticeably declined. It wasn't until September that Friend.tech surged again, surpassing Opensea in trading volume, due to several reasons, one of which was user anticipation for its token release. For actively participating users, every point they earn could potentially be converted into a token airdrop worth $1-5.

At that time, Friend.tech officially stated that it would distribute a total of 100 million points over 25 weeks, further leading the market to believe that these points represented opportunities for token airdrops, closely related to the total investment amount within the app, holding time, and user activities, including clicks, time spent, and interactions.

Next, on November 21, Blur's founder launched a new L2 project called "Blast," which attracted $230 million in TVL in just 48 hours, making Blast the third-largest ETH staker in the market. According to the points chart released by Blast (Blast Points), the official airdrop is scheduled for May next year, and a corresponding points ranking has been established, with the number of points directly affecting the contribution to the airdrop.

For general users, there are mainly two ways to earn Blast points: one is simple, just deposit assets into the Blast L2 network, and the other is to invite more users to participate in the Blast L2 network. Additionally, Blast will reward users based on the number of friends they successfully refer. Riding on the expectation of airdrops is one of the main reasons for the increase in Blast users, making it a win-win strategy for users.

Bringing the timeline closer, on December 13, the crypto wallet Rainbow launched a points program aimed at rewarding existing users and attracting new ones. Previously, Rainbow had captured a snapshot of Ethereum user activity, allocating at least 100 points to each Ethereum user as an incentive to explore the platform. Furthermore, Rainbow also targeted Metamask users, who could receive points rewards as long as they had used Metamask services in the past year, with the reward amount depending entirely on their trading volume.

From the Rainbow wallet providing points rewards to users in ETH, to Friend.tech building its user engagement loop with points, and to the NFT platform Blur's new L2 Blast, the application of points systems is becoming increasingly widespread.

Not Committing to Token Distribution Can Avoid Regulation?

This trend indicates that applications in the crypto space are seeking broader market fit and actively attracting user attention during the bear market. This shift reflects that founders and developers are not only continuously pursuing innovation in their projects but also considering how to maintain product competitiveness and long-term user engagement in a highly competitive environment.

It can be said that the proliferation of points systems not only provides users with more motivation to participate but also offers projects a way to create ecosystems and attract sustained attention.

Specifically, the points system allows protocols to implicitly inform users about upcoming airdrops while guiding them to recognize which activities will be most valuable and rewarding. This enables project teams to intentionally steer user behavior. Kellan Grenier, co-founder of Parcl, believes that "without a points program, it's hard to keep users engaged with our product, let alone attract new users or new funds."

However, more interestingly, these protocols may have found a way to circumvent regulatory issues by utilizing the points mechanism.

In other words, protocols can package points as an attractive mechanism to draw users in without having to commit to distributing any tokens, which is particularly useful in countries like the United States, where the legal status of tokens remains contentious.

Although this deliberately arranged mechanism brings many benefits to the overall protocol, it has also sparked considerable controversy. Some argue that this practice is fundamentally predatory, exploiting users' expectations for future project airdrops while avoiding corresponding responsibilities.