Let’s look at the following case within the framework of the current affiliate marketing system.
@AvsA Using your Dune Dashboard, we can understand that names, in addition to ens.domains, are registered using ENS Vision, ENS Fairy (which is not considered since it is a non-commercial project) and “Unknown Sources” (which are not considered due to lack of information).
I’ve already looked at the demographics of ENS, but let’s take a look at the same superficial statistics for ENS Vision.
ENS Vision Geography
It turns out that this affiliate program serves the same developed country market as ENS itself. And also uses the same marketing channels - Twitter mainly.
ENS Vision SM traffic
Our largest referral does not expand the scope of the community, but simply increases the number of registrations.
And here the main problem of the one-level referral system is revealed. While ENS carries some values and tries to be a global product, referrals think only about profit, working exclusively for a solvent audience - young adult men from the USA/UK/Hong-Kong/Japan. ENS can afford to create a market at a loss in a developing country. None of the referrals will do this.
Let’s say I’m an enthusiast from Uzbekistan who wants to be a referral and I have the funds to hire a team, create a website and set up traffic. Will I do this on the Uzbek market, knowing that with the same investments, I will earn hundreds of times more money on the US market? No.
This can be solved by creating a committee and selecting referrals. You can rank them by the markets they serve and pay more to those referrals who focus their efforts on mass adoption rather than earning money. But this violates the “permissionless” principle.
Look at companies that sold a digital product using a referral or vendor system as an example. Dropbox, PayPal, Evernote - all of these companies have achieved amazing success. But they never expanded significantly beyond rich countries.
I’ll ask again, who is Web3-Citizens? US/UK/Japanese citizens? Those who use the nickname “.eth” on a social network used primarily by US citizens? Those who find out about ENS through referrals who work for the market of developed countries?
Mass adoption is when all Americans put .eth in their Twitter handle?