Bringing Utility and Fun to WheelCoin for Moving Green
We launched the public beta of WheelCoin in early October as the first Move2Earn app focused on gamifying green mobility adoption.
Since then we have had thousands of new users providing amazing feedback as we work to improve the UX/UI as well as bring real utility for users and for WheelCoin, a type of “air miles for green mobility.”
UI Upgrade Coming by end of November
In the coming days users will be seeing a much improved landing screen which clarifies how many carbon emissions they reduced that day and how many WheelCoin (WHL) they have earned. The amount of emissions and WheelCoin earn automatically reflect whatever day the user is scrolling through, while the total balance remains updated at all times.
Of course our design team has some awesome enhancements coming in the future but I will save that for later when they are forthcoming.
UTILITY FOR WHEELCOIN
While UI improvements are always nice, when it comes to Move2Earn projects, what really matters for users is creating utility for the reward token. Why should I as a user care about downloading the app and earning the token reward?
What we have seen with many Move2Earn projects is that they struggle to create utility for the reward token, resulting in tons of sell pressure and no buy pressure. The law of supply and demand means that the outcome of this situation is that the reward token of many M2E projects tends towards zero.
Discounts on Green Mobility Services
Many in our community are aware that the team at Iomob has been building an Internet of Mobility (IoM) network since 2018. This had involved substantial engineering and commercial work to build a mobility marketplace that facilitates users to be able to discover, route, book/unlock and pay for a range of primarily green mobility services such as scooter sharing, bike sharing, taxis and ridehailing (with options to book EVs), DRT (dynamic buses) and more.
In 2023 we will start to inject the IoM into WheelCoin allowing users to not just passively be rewarded with WHL but also to book and pay for green mobility services inside WheelCoin. This is unique in the M2E space as we will be blending the gaming aspects of a M2E with IRL (in real life) mobility services. And when a user books a green mobility service, they will often:
a) receive further WHL as they move green
b) obtain discounts from many of the suppliers connected to the IoM
Until then, we are starting with the discounts first. Last week we were excited to announce our first five affiliate partnerships with green mobility services. These include:
Dott — one of the largest European scooter sharing services);
WiFly — a Madrid-based e-bike subscription service
hiyacar — a UK-based carsharing service
Ouno — a UK-based EV taxi service
Prague Boats — a Czech-based EV water taxi service
Each of these mobility service providers (MSPs) are offering discounts to WheelCoin users who burn WHL with us and receive a discount code for using their green mobility service. Stay tuned as we expect to add dozens more partners this year and eventually thousands in the years to come around the globe.
One comment about the geography of our MSP partners. Many of our users are around the globe such as Asia and the US. Once we have 10,000 active users in a country, our business development team will prioritize securing partnerships in that country. We have found that the MSPs respond better to partnering once we hit that threshold.
In the coming weeks, WheelCoin users will see a “coming soon” feature which will highlight all of our current discounts. And soon after that, users will be able to actually burn WHL and receive the discount code.
WheelCoin Collectibles
Move2Earn is a category of blockchain games. Games by nature should have a fun element. That is, we believe for M2E to be successful and sustainable, WheelCoin must also be fun to use and share with friends and family and not just be based on speculative hype around the reward token. Besides utility for things like discounts and green mobility booking, we are going to inject some fun that is not directly tied to “up only” financialization of everything.
So we are introducing WheelCoin Collectibles. As we, and our users, are passionate about green mobility, we are launching a collectibles program tied to important transit stops in major cities around the world. The first OG WheelCoin Collectibles entail 100 transit stops in 20 cities from the ten most active WheelCoin countries (Japan, USA, India, Spain, Indonesia, South Korea, UK, Germany, Taiwan and Nigeria).
In the first launch coming in December, WheelCoin users will be able to burn tokens to open a “mystery box” and discover which station collectible they have received. They will be able to view all of their collectibles from all of the cities around the globe. In future versions, users will also be able to trade (and perhaps sell) their collectibles. Note, we have chosen one transit stop in each city to be the most rare (i.e. the hardest to randomly obtain from the mystery box).
Gamifying Green Mobility
So the ambition of WheelCoin is to create a global community of people committed to moving greener. With COP27 in Egypt ending with further disappointment, the rest of us are left frustrated with the slow pace of change. Meanwhile there are growing concerns from people around the globe about climate change, but not sure what they can do about it.
One thing many of us do every day is move, and one thing most of us could do is to find ways to reduce our carbon emissions from moving, in our towns and cities and when we travel abroad too. WheelCoin is about gamifying and making it fun, and rewarding to move greener.
So we are launching the Green Mobility Challenge. The Challenge encourages people around the world to sign up and compete with people around the world for the most amount of carbon emissions avoided by choosing greener modes of mobility than a normal car.
All users will have to do is formally sign up to participate, download the app and move green for the month of January. The winner (i.e. most carbon emissions avoided for the month) will receive a brand new electric scooter (or something of similar value if they inform us they are unable to use a scooter in their community or store it properly where they live). Meanwhile the 2nd and 3rd place winner will receive transit cards or equivalent in the cities they live in.
Finally, we will have up to 10 more random prizes which all participants will be eligible for even if they do not have the most reductions. Was we know the greenest form of mobility is to not move at all (e.g. work from home) or walk and bike only. People living this type of green mobility lifestyle will not have as many avoided emissions using our calculations but should also be eligible to win prizes too!
CONCLUSION
In this post, I provided several updates about the near-term developments for WheelCoin. These include: UX/UI improvements, the launch of WheelCoin discounts and our first five partners, the introduction of the new WheelCoin Collectibles program and the Green Mobility Challenge which will last for the month of January. If you’d like to learn more or engage with our community come check out our Discord or if you want to jump right in, download WheelCoin today and start your journey to being a green mobility champion.
