Web3: From hype to real-world application
You are probably familiar with the term “Web3”, which many refer to as the next stage of the internet. Around the tech industry – and in many others – exploring new alternatives is always tempting. With something as exciting as Web3, it is almost like Garfield trying to keep his hands away from freshly baked Lasagna. Simply seems impossible.
All hype or actually useful?
It is essential to ask whether this new, shiny tech solves a problem for you or if you are making your business model more complicated. While today’s hype can easily be the future of tech tomorrow, your business might be better off sticking to the traditional ways of the internet. Therefore, we always encourage our peers to look at Web3, blockchain, etc., as a platform to solve customer needs rather than pinning it as a solution before fully getting to the core of the problem.
Our recommendation will always be to identify the need based on user insights and then look at the tech and platform solution.
The idea around Web3 is that it is based on decentralized peer-to-peer networks taking place on the blockchain, where applications are distributed across computers participating in a specific network. A significant amount of the spotlight comes from the sphere of crypto, NFT, and the metaverse, consistently bringing headlines for all the right – and the wrong – reasons. However, by looking at blockchain technology and what this can do, we begin to uncover real-world problems where blockchain can solve actual needs.
We have done this with Kollektiv, an endurance sports training platform leveraging deep-tech to help world-class coaches create personalized training plans for athletes like you and me.
Providing total ownership to personal trainers
When we first began talking to Kollektiv, they came to us with a revolutionary vision to democratize personal training and make excellent coaching available for everyone. They had identified a need to break free of traditional personal training platforms such as social media and instead allow trainers to form their unique communities. One, where pro athletes’ followers could benefit directly and exclusively. The pro athletes act as coaches and own their community by doing so. In this case, blockchain turned out to be the obvious choice of technology.
Leveraging blockchain to challenge real-world problems
We concluded on tech stack during a discovery workshop in Copenhagen, bringing everyone together for three days of problem identification and solution exploration.
Fundamentally, we wanted to dive into how to solve three core needs.
- Empower personal trainers and provide 100% ownership of their community
- Sustain the incentive to keep athletes on their path
- Ensuring transparency by enabling proof of pro-athletes coaching abilities
As mentioned, we discovered that the blockchain would provide us with the right “out-of-the-box” technology to meet all our requirements. For Kollektiv, blockchain and Web3 went from hype to a problem-solving platform.
To empower personal trainers and transition them from pro athletes to coaches, we leverage the power of Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) to help them form their personalized communities. The DAO allows complete ownership and enables them to build and manage their communities in a democratic and censor-free fashion.
Athletes will be granted a utility token when getting access to the network. The token allows several functionalities outside of simply being your ticket to play. It obtains voting rights for the DAO network and enables you to purchase community-related offers and services. Additionally, we have implemented a new method of motivating clients by establishing a “train-to-earn” token as an incremental payment system. The setup allows users to earn money back as they progress in the training plan. The more you train, the more you earn back on your initial cash commitment.
To validate the coaching skills of pro-athletes, the “train-to-earn” token works as a decentralized ledger to support past performance and experiences with the individual trainer. It serves as an anonymized and immutable database containing all athletes’ prior performances in the trainers’ unique community. This makes it possible for new potential athletes to make informed decisions based on past results, completion percentages, etc., which makes picking a personal trainer much less of a shot in the dark.
Continuing down the path with Web3
Together with Kollektiv, we will continue to explore, define, and validate the individual functions and capabilities in the Web3 solution and how these will interact. We will be focused on enabling the DAO communities to flourish and leveraging the “Move to earn” token in the best possible way, e.g., adding further utility to the token by making it redeemable for physical goods and services relevant to athletes.
If you want to learn more about Web3, blockchain, or how we might be able to help you understand more about the topic, please reach out. We’re happy to discuss this further over a coffee to see how we can help address your needs.
Lachezar Blagoev
Head of Product Management
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Lachezar Blagoev is the Head of Product Management at Lab08. His responsibilities include defining product roadmaps, managing backlog, and coordinating development efforts in order to ensure that milestones maximize the value we bring to all of our customers
He is acting as the link between customers and business by representing the user’s perspective
Lachezar has made essential decisions regarding all aspects of a product strategy including but not limited to UX, technical approach, business purpose, and compliance with regulations
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