Let’s Shed Some Light on Usher
As some of our readers might know, getting an initiative started in the Web3 space is a more challenging task than it may seem at first glance. Once you get past the trivial task of building the blockchain infrastructure of the future, you might stumble onto the next challenge – how can I bring my shiny new invention to the people who need it most? Many projects have struggled to entice users to engage with their platforms, and it seems the team at Usher has taken notice.
What is Usher?
Usher is a referral network built on the permaweb that aims to bring transparency and immutability to the advertising process for both brands and partners. Projects can now create campaigns with clear requirements on Usher’s platform, which are then stored as smart contracts on the blockchain and that can then be easily accessed and fulfilled by partners.
Let’s take the example of a simple affiliate campaign in which a brand wants to reward affiliates for visits generated to their websites. In the past, the brand and the affiliate had to either enter directly into a contract that defined the rewards for each generated visit and trust that both parties would respect the contract in good faith (pay out the rewards, generate real visits to the website, etc.) or use an intermediary to facilitate the execution of the campaign and incur a management fee.
How does Usher work?
With Usher, brands can now create campaigns free of charge for which both the rules and the payouts are set in the beginning and which are then stored in a smart contract. The execution of the campaign also occurs through the smart contract, as all visits to the website generated by the affiliate are logged on the blockchain. This ensures that the brand cannot change the terms or the rewards of the campaign and that all traffic is accounted for, providing security for affiliate partners. On the other hand, through their platform Usher can ensure that the partner engaging with the campaign is human and that the generated visits are not bot-related. At the end of the campaign or throughout, the partner can easily withdraw the earned rewards directly from the smart contract without any involvement from the brand, creating a trustless and permissionless system for effective advertising.
Usher for Web3 brands
Brands can already head over to Usher’s dApp and start designing their own permaweb campaigns today. As standard, Usher currently supports the creation of campaigns on the Arweave, Polygon, Avalanche, and Moonboom blockchains with payouts in AR, USDC, ETH, or any other custom PST or ERC20 token. Partners can even be rewarded through NFTs for their successful participation in a campaign.
When creating a campaign, projects can choose the right type of partnership depending on their needs as Usher supports affiliate marketing campaigns, referral programs, and even reseller programs. Additionally, the platform supports defining clear conversion events for your campaign, as a brand might only want to reward partners when a user signs up for their dApp or stakes their first AR. When it comes to payouts for partners, these can also be easily configured in Usher, enabling brands to either pay a fixed amount for each converted user or a variable one based on the generated revenue (as an example, partners might be rewarded 1% of the value a referred user stakes). All these options are then translated into smart contracts providing security to partners so that their efforts will be duly rewarded.
Currently, for the creation of campaigns, brands need to complete an onboarding form and the team at Usher will assist them further, but the team is working on developing an automated UI experience so that brands will be able to generate new campaigns by themselves in the near future.
Usher for partners
If you’d like to participate as an affiliate partner, for now, you’ll need to be invited by a brand that is currently running a campaign using Usher. As an alternative, you can participate in Usher’s own campaign, where you can earn AR and help promote the first referral network built on the permaweb. You’ll just need to head on over to Usher’s website and sign up using your ArDrive wallet and email address.
Do keep in mind that in order for you to claim those hard-earned rewards, you’ll need to pass Usher’s “personhood verification” that safeguards their platform from bots. It’s a simple biometric verification that needs to be performed using your mobile phone but do not worry, as the team at Usher has taken special care to protect your privacy and no media captured for biometric processing leaves your device.
Check out more details related to Usher and start engaging your audiences on the permaweb at the following link – Usher – a growth engine for the Permaweb
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