We’ve entered a new era of marketing.
One where runnings promo happens natively onchain - directly in a social feed.
Now I know what you’re thinking - oh god, ads, here we go again!
But here’s what makes them unique and how to use them to your benefit as someone building an audience onchain.
What are Boosts?
Boosts are sponsored transactions.
It’s when a creator, brand or company subsidizes the gas and platform fees to make a mint truly free.
Boosts are different from an airdrop because the end user consciously collects it - versus it being passively being placed in their wallet without them knowing.
We’ve seen boosts unfold over the last few weeks on Farcaster with the release of Frames. More on Frames here.
In short - the creator will fund a wallet to pay for the gas and platform fee associated with a transaction.
We’ve seen this tactic employed for tokens and NFTs starting with this Frame.
Coop Records Boosts
Here are a few boosts we’ve run since Frames dropped:
With each of these mints - we experimented with subtle nuances on what makes the Boost unique.
In our most recent Frames - a requirement to mint was following the /coop-recs channel - resulting in nearly 3k new followers this week.
These Boosts resulted in Coop Records having 7 of the top 10 songs on the Sound Viral Chart last week.
How it Works
Running a Boost for a song on Sound incurs the following costs:
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Sound Platform Fee - 0.000777 ETH
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Gas (on Base) - 0.00001 ETH
This means that for every mint on Sound, we must sponsor a cost of ~0.000778 ETH - or roughly $2.
The vast majority of this fee makes its way back to the creator as follows:
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0.000555 ETH to the artist
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0.000222 ETH to Sound
We take 10% of any onchain sales as a label.
This means that for every 0.000555 ETH (~$1.40) the song generates, we earn 0.0000555 ETH or ~$0.14.So - in the case of JUMPER and KEEP ON DANCING - we spend ~$2 to earn $0.14.
Now this may seem like a bad business practice - but here’s where things get interesting.
Boosts as Digital Billboards
Once people have claimed their free edition - they are incentivized to consume the content with the ability to pay more if they like it.
The free claim acts as a boost to encourage collectors to pay full price.
This is best represented by my Farcosystem Landscape called the Farcosystem.
I deposited 0.2 ETH into the Farcosystem which was expected to cover ~10k mints.
With 14k editions minted - the drop itself has generated 0.66 ETH in mint fees from people either minting more editions or discovering the drop outside of the free claim.
It even inspired Boost to run this promo - allowing collectors to earn 2 ARB for every edition they collected.
You can think of the free mints as an ad spend to increase awareness of the content and encourage people to consume it on their own.
Why Should I Care?
Boosts are not net new.
Platforms like Boost and Layer3 have been operating for years and have driven a tremendous amount of value to partners running onchain ads.
In fact - we’ve been running Boost campaigns on our songs on Sound with a very similar logic.
If a song costs $5 to mint on Sound - we allow collectors to redeem 1 OP for every edition, essentially acting as a $3.50 rebate.
In aggregate - the drop earns $1.50 for every edition. The collector gets a scarce collectible of music from an emerging artist and earns a desirable token (OP) in the process.
For open editions that we’re running both Frames and Boosts for - we allow collectors to claim 0.5 OP or get the song entirely for free on Farcaster.
(Pro tip: technically speaking someone who gets the song for free through a Frame *could* also claim the 0.5 OP Boost too).
The difference is that now this can all happen directly from your social feed (like what you see above).
Here is what a Boost looked like before:
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Discover quests through platforms like Boost or Layer3
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Leave Boost/Layer3 to complete the quest on the targeted platform.
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Connect wallet on the target platform and switch networks if not currently on it.
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Make a transaction(s) on the targeted platform. (+ gas)
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Return to Boost/Layer3 and sign a message to prove you completed the campaign.
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Make a transaction to claim the reward.
Telling people where to claim rewards is confusing. For users collecting out of pure patronage - they see the following:
Here they are brought to a page where they must connect their wallet to claim the reward.
It feels weird and unintuitive to someone who is not used to airdrop farming.
But here’s how Boosts work now:
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Open Warpcast
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See a Frame for a song
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Follow /coop-recs
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Press Collect
No gas fees. No leaving the platform. All of this happens natively in the feed.
If they’re feeling inclined to listen to the song - they visit the Sound page where there is a much higher likelihood of them collecting additional editions.
But truthfully - once users get used to transacting in the feed, they will never leave.
Zoom Out
Eventually Frames will allow users to make paid transactions directly in the feed.
Now not only can sponsored mints be used to encourage people to claim a free token - they can encourage them to make a paid transaction on top.
In the case of our Sound Frames - let’s say that someone really loves the song they claimed for free.
They must currently leave Warpcast to go to Sound to listen to the song. If they like it, they must connect their wallet, sign a message, hit collect, switch networks, and then confirm the transaction (fee + gas).
That’s a lot of work to expect someone to do to spend money.
So let’s paint a utopian vision of what this can (and will) look like.
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Open Warpcast
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See a Frame for a song
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Choose to either complete the required actions OR purchase
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Press collect (free or paid)
This gives teams an infinite design space for what targeted actions a user must have to complete to earn their free edition.
Our latest Frame generated 3k followers on /coop-recs despite the fact that only ~600 editions could be claimed from sponsored transactions.
This means that more people completed the action than actually even claimed the free edition.
See a pattern here?
People will jump through hoops to get things that feel valuable.Whether that's a free edition of a good song, OP tokens or any infinite number of combinations - an onchain audience clicks first and thinks later.
So now is your chance to become an onchain marketing pro.
The design space is truly infinite.
What are you waiting for?
So you made it to the end of the article? Respond to this Cast with “Boost Boost Boost” - I’m giving the first 25 people to do it 5000 $DEGEN each.
Special thanks for Jacob Horne, Brian Flynn, Jess Sloss, Dee Goens, Justin Blau, Kevin Teng, Jesse Walden and Li Jin for their contributions to this article.