The world and customers are constantly evolving. The pandemic has changed the way service businesses operate. Even as the world started to open up, consumers’ buying behaviour and habits have changed due to being cooped up at home for two years.

Consumers are willing to pay for goods online and are also willing to pay for services before coming down to a physical location. 

Businesses that do not adapt to bringing their products or services online and changing their marketing methods will be left behind. The days of running an advertisement on social media and getting prospects to meet face-to-face to sell them a service are outdated, ineffective, and expensive.

The biggest benefit of marketing and selling services online is working less and making more profits.

The traditional way of marketing and selling services are as follows:

• Step 1: Advertise online to gather leads
• Step 2: Call and capture a prospect’s information
• Step 3: Arrange a face-to-face meet up
• Step 4: Conduct a face-to-face sales presentation to educate and sell the services
• Step 5: Follow up manually to close sales

Each step requires optimising a moving part that bears an additional cost and increased drop-off rate. This process is not efficient.

However, choosing to sell and fulfil services online translates to fewer fulfilment costs, rental costs, and increased ability to serve more customers.

Also Read: 5 video marketing trends that marketers can leverage in 2022

Even traditional service businesses such as spas, facials and wellness centres can benefit from getting customers online.

As they can get customers to pay for their services beforehand, this greatly helps them manage their cash flow and secure sales as early as possible, therefore covering their advertising costs and effectively scaling their advertising campaigns faster. 

Here are two simple key points on how we did it: 

Using education content videos as a filter

Most businesses would educate their customers about their services before selling them their offerings.

For example, a facial parlour educates customers about their unique extraction methods before selling them a complete facial package. Before selling them a personal training package, a fitness company educates its customers about their unique weight loss methods. 

These are usually done during the sales process in a one-on-one setting where it is time-consuming and not the right fit for unqualified prospects.

Instead, we at Ascend Marketing help these businesses educate 100 to 1000 people in 30 to 90 minutes by creating advertisements to promote a free educational video or a free live event using an online sales funnel. This can easily be set up in 30 minutes and done at scale or even automated.

The educational video content will function as a filter to sniff out interesting prospects and encourage them to book a video call.

This will help save time and resources doing outbound calls and increase closing rates as business owners speak to customers who are genuinely interested.

These high-quality prospects are also more willing to make a purchase right after the video call and before physically coming down. 

Also Read: Circles.Life marketing head Delbert Ty shares their viral campaign recipes

We also help business owners seamlessly set up payment pages, issue invoices and collect payments through integration to a payment gateway.

Strong automated follow-up systems

The fortune is in the follow-up. In today’s market, consumers prefer to be contacted on their terms and timings, and some might prefer text messages while others prefer emails. Many dislike outbound phone calls unless they are informed ahead of time.

With this in mind, we strongly recommend having automated nurture sequences such as email marketing and text marketing. The beauty of such sequences is that they are automated. Business owners only need one series of messages and automatically set it up for all prospects. This ensures a consistent sales experience.

The automated sequences we have in place are behavioural-based, meaning different sequences are sent out based on what the lead does.

For example, if a lead did not book a call, they will be sent a reminder sequence to encourage them to book a call. If a lead did not sign up, they will be sent a nurture sequence to educate them on the sales process and eventually sign up for our clients’ services.

As these sequences are automated, new leads are nurtured 24/7 into becoming paying customers. These automated sequences will reduce manpower costs and human errors.

As a result of having done many successful marketing campaigns for varying clients from different niches in the past, Ascend Marketing have created template emails and text sequences for any business owner to use for their own business. They can deploy these templates, clone and have automated follow-up campaigns ready to go.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

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Global venture capital firm Antler has committed to investing US$100 million in early-stage startups in the Southeast Asian region.

The funding is expected to fuel the expansion of more than 300 new companies in Southeast Asia over the next four years.

Antler has invested in over 127 companies in the region to date. Among its investees are XanPool (open financial C2C software), Reebelo (a marketplace for affordable and sustainable tech devices), Appboxo (super-app), Sampingan (a blue-collar workforce platform), Airalo (global eSIM marketplace), and Homebase (a proptech startup).

It will continue to focus on high-growth industries and invest in founders in multiple geographies who are launching the defining companies of tomorrow.

Since its launch in Singapore in 2018, Antler has expanded its global network of offices. It recently established operations in Vietnam and Indonesia.

Also Read: Antler closes over US$300M, to provide follow-on capital for its portfolio startups

Jussi Salovaara, Co-Founder and Managing Partner Asia at Antler, said: “Southeast Asia is a breeding ground for innovative startups, and we want to give exceptional founders the investment, support, and expertise they need to realize their visions from the earliest stages. It is our ambition to help unlock and accelerate technological innovation in the region, and we are excited about the positive impact the founders we enable and invest in will create over the coming decade.”

In October 2021, Antler Singapore announced the close of over US$300 million in funding from Schroders, Vækstfonden, and Phoenix Group. Early that year, Antler said it would invest US$100 million in Indian startups over the next four years. The fund will support exceptional founders from the idea stage all the way to Series A and B.

Southeast Asia’s internet economy is poised to reach approximately US$360 billion by 2025, according to the latest e-Conomy SEA report by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company. Technology is permeating into the region at an accelerated rate and Southeast Asia’s tech ecosystem is showing signs of maturity as 14 unicorn tech companies reached a US$1 billion valuation in 2021.

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Pakistan startups, the last massive untapped opportunity in the world
After two decades of uncertainty and confusion, Pakistan’s tech startup ecosystem appears to have finally found its feet; In 2021, a record US$352M was raised by 50+ startups, statistics by consulting agency Invest2Innovate shows.

The collapse of UST and LUNA was devastating, but there is still hope for crypto
What exactly happened doesn’t really matter; What really matters is that when something bad happened, Terra couldn’t handle it; What really matters is that an undercollateralised, algorithmic stablecoin will fail no matter how long it succeeds.

Zilingo creditors recall their loan due to unfulfilled obligations
This prompted the firm to hire an independent financial adviser “to explore options for the company,”; This comes at the heels of CEO Ankiti Bose’s suspension amid a probe on an alleged accounting mishap.

Indonesian SaaS firm Mekari bags US$50M in Money Forward-led round
Founded in 2015 by the name of Sleekr, the company rebranded itself as Mekari following successive M&A actions with four SaaS peers, including Talenta, KlikPajak, and Jurnal; It currently has more than 35K clients and 800K active users.

Merah Putih fund secures first close at US$300M
The fundraising milestone comes less than six months after the government launched the vehicle in December last year; Merah Putih was set up by the government in partnership with the VC arms of some state-owned enterprises.

Temasek tops up Amazon, Pinduoduo stake
The investment firm boosted its holding in the two firms by over 15%; It first revealed its purchase of Amazon shares in 2017 and Pinduoduo shares in 2020; Temasek earlier trimmed its interests in Airbnb and Lumen Technologies.

Elon Musk mulls Indonesia visit for investments after talks with Widodo
President Joko Widodo reportedly invited Musk when they met on a Space X site in Texas; The president’s camp said that the Tesla and Space X boss is “hopefully” eyeing November for the trip.

SG
Software security provider GuardRails scores nearly US$4M in funding
Investors include Sequoia’s Surge Ventures, Cocoon Capital, and SingtelInnov8; The GuardRails software runs security scans in the background and provides real-time alerts of important vulnerabilities once it is integrated into a workflow.

B Capital co-leads US$2.8M round of Indonesian personal finance app Finku
Global Founders Capital and Trihill Capital also participated; Finku allows users to track their transactions across several bank and e-wallet accounts and gives them real-time insights into their expense behaviour.

Binance CEO slams Terraform for lacklustre response
Terraform Labs, the company behind plummeting stablecoin TerraUSD, has not responded to Binance’s request to restore the network, burn the additionally minted token Luna, and recover the UST peg.

Elon Musk says US$44B Twitter deal on hold
Twitter, in a filing earlier this month, had estimated that false or spam accounts represented less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users in the first three months of the year.

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I was 22 years old when our product was sold for five-digit UK pounds. It was the beginning of everything.

Studying in the UK gave me exposure, and I participated in a start-up competition called the Venture Catalyst Challenge with my classmates. We have used the Internet of Things (IoT) technology to control household items such as TV sets and curtains remotely. It was a great motivation for my interest in exploring entrepreneurship. 

Later, I returned to Hong Kong and worked in a bank to save some capital for a start-up. Three years ago, my two partners and I developed a takeaway mobile app, allowing users to order meals through apps picked up on their own while enjoying a generous discount.

However, our project ended after running for six months because the takeaway market in Hong Kong was already overcrowded. In six months, I burned through six digits’ worth of funds and had to fire seven employees, one of the hardest decisions I had ever made to date.

After that, I twisted the app idea and created an all-in-one communication app tailored for hotels. Yet, I realised that my second idea wouldn’t work towards success after joining an international exhibition named RISE.

I got a chance to talk to the potential customers directly, but there were no inquiries from hotels, only from people in the e-commerce and retail sector.

It seems that I was unlucky, but I don’t think so. I have learned some things from these two experiences, which have driven my success with SleekFlow today.

“There is no such thing as overnight success or easy money. If you fail, do not be discouraged; try again.” – Henry Sy

Keep optimistic but don’t love your product too much

To develop an error-free product that can satisfy the market’s needs, you may experience many trials and failures. Like my previous two start-up experience, I thought my ideas were good at the beginning stage, but later I discovered some bugs.

Also Read: How this founder went from being a tutor to a modern day mompreneur

I tried to make improvements or even twisted to another idea when I found that they may not be possible or unable to fulfil the market’s needs. So, failure always happens when you develop your products, and you have to be optimistic.

Also, you cannot love your products too much. Otherwise, you will not be able to improve them when you discover any problems.

Know your market

Understanding the market size and the market behaviour is vital when you try to create a product or start a new business. You can develop a prototype first and let people try this Beta; you may receive constant feedback.

It’s okay if your first idea isn’t perfect. Find out your niche advantage, leverage it as a starting point, and then keep promoting and expanding.

For example, when we first started with SleekFlow as an omnichannel chat management platform, we only carried a message of “multiple logins” for our customers. Other than constantly assimilating the technical knowledge for our tech start-up, we have had to take the initiative by collecting the opinions of clients and those in the industry.

Even competitors are our source of information and learning. Fast forward to this day, we have expanded with a wide range of functions according to their needs and requests, making it a sales accelerator that generates conversions through conversations.

Use low resources to make a minimum viable product

You won’t know whether your product is suitable for the market or if there are any bugs if you don’t have any viable product. However, developing a small sample of products may require a high cost, and it may not be affordable for start-ups.

No worries! Actually, there are many resources for you to grab for free. You should leverage low resources and make a minimum viable product first to test if it works. There are also some useful podcasts sharing insights from industry experts that could be inspiring for you!

Don’t be afraid to seek advice

Advice brings you surprises sometimes! I found out that my second idea, an all-in-one communication app tailored for hotels, wouldn’t work either after joining an international exhibition.

Also Read: Investor-turned-founder on building SEA’s EV motorbike ecosystem

I heard a lot of opinions from that exhibition and got tangible resources plus industry networking. I used to be afraid to seek advice, but now I know that advice is essential for your future success.

You can get advice from others by simply messaging people on LinkedIn or joining an incubation program like mine. People always share their insights genuinely, and what you have to do is just write a proposal and struggle through a series of interviews.

Make evaluations from time to time

The budget for a start-up is limited, so you have to be careful in making every step. You should not merely spend on increasing the number of users but make evaluations from time to time.

You have to evaluate whether the current customers are worth it for you to spend lots of resources to retent and whether your business model can generate income and be sustainable. By making evaluations frequently, you will be able to find problems and solve them immediately to ensure your business is running smoothly the right way.

Success will follow if you don’t give up

Starting a business is not easy, and I experienced it twice before starting my current business. The best advice that I can offer is not to give up easily. Keep trying and squeeze every last drop of success out from failures. I wish every one of you the best of luck.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

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Being an entrepreneur is not easy. Whether bootstrapped or raising the next round, the founder experience comes with life lessons. Every founder’s journey is different from the other. Full of challenges, burnouts, small joys, and aptly glorified highs, this roller coaster of a journey deserves to be told.

Even if you have just joined the bandwagon, your story is valuable and inspiring. Building a SaaS product to help small businesses or working on climate change innovation; revolutionising health, education or any other consumer space; the ecosystem wants to know you and what you are building.

At e27, we always strive to serve the ecosystem. This time around, we want to open up our platform and its wide reader base for founders of all ages and backgrounds to share their stories.

Inspire the next generation of founders, share life lessons with your counterparts, attract investor attention, and even present your idea/product/MVP to the ecosystem via the e27 Contributor Programme: Share your story campaign.

What you need

All you need is about three hours on your calendar, a calm space to gather your thoughts, and the will to share your story with the world. We will do the rest of the heavy lifting for you.

Use this magic template and follow the instructions.

Also read: How to use the e27 editor to write great articles

What will founders gain

As a startup, you don’t always have the luxury of hiring a particular PR person to build media relations. Getting your founder story published with e27 will make it easier for you to take it to investors and establish greater credibility.

Investors are looking for founders with a story, and your article can you get your foot in that door. Sharing your motivation and product expertise will build a stronger case for your startup when fundraising in the market. This also shows how passionate you are about making your startup.

We will share your story just like all other e27 articles amply on your social media and send it to our entire newsletter audience. The added validation of your ideas from other founders and professionals in the community will greatly endorse your ideas.

Managing Partner at RHL Ventures, Rachel Lau, says: “The visibility has been great. Like, someone from LinkedIn would occasionally say to me ‘Hey, I read your article on the Vietnam stuff, and I think it’s great”, and it’s nice to get that kind of message. I think the contributor channel has the right exposure from the right target audiences, which also becomes a challenge to me to write to the right target audiences.”

We have groomed a thriving community of two million readers in the tech and startup industry, making it a great place to reflect upon the interests of the startup economy in Asia. The e27 Contributor Programme is your chance to share your thoughts and opinions with this community.

With the anticipated slowdown in the tech space, it may be hard to keep the spirits up, but we need each other even more at times like these. Plus, a little bit of fame never hurts.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

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Blockchain Fest 2022 is set to be held in Singapore next month with a lineup of speakers that includes Andy Meehan, ex-Captain of Special Investigations who had spent over a decade in Asia as a private litigator and in-house counsel for cryptocurrency and blockchain international institutions. Meehan currently works at Gemini APAC as Chief Compliance Officer and will present his point of view about the state of crypto regulation in Singapore and the region.

In addition to Meehan, the event is also set to bring in Anndy Lian, business strategist and author of the best-seller Blockchain Revolution 2030. With a 15-year of experience in the business field, the Chief Digital Advisor of the Mongolian Productivity Organization will explain how the technology will revolutionise and redefine traditional business.

These two speakers are just two of the industry professionals that you will get to meet at Marina Bay Sands on June 2-3, 2022. As Asia’s largest international B2B event on Blockchain, Exchanges, Cryptocurrencies, DeFi, GameFi and NFTs, Blockchain Fest 2022 covers top-level content from leading brands and speakers.

Also Read: AI enhanced blockchain: Changing the security game

Through a series of formal and informal events, the conference agenda is created to explore the convergence of these technologies in one place: a series of keynotes, interactive panel discussions and speeches from honoured speakers with impressive expertise in blockchain.

Besides Meehan and Lian, it has also confirmed Co-Leader of the Financial Inclusion and CBDC Working Groups at the Global Impact FinTech (GIFT) Forum Dr Oriol Caudevilla and Executive Director of the Inatba Marc Taverner.

Tickets to Blockchain Fest 2022 are available under the online, standard, business, or VIP categories. To purchase these tickets at a discounted price, head over to the event website.

For the latest updates on the conference agenda and speakers, follow Blockchain Fest 2022 on social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Telegram, and Twitter.

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Image Credit: Blockchain Fest

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Tokocrypto Sembrani Blockchain Accelerator, a programme run by Indonesian cryptocurrency exchange Tokocrypto in partnership with BRI Ventures, has announced US$40 million investments in its participating startups.

The investees are VC Gamers, nanobyte, Avarik Saga, Creo Engine, Eizper Chain, Duckie Land, Play Fix, Play it Forward DAO, Mythic Protocol, getKupon, Avarta and Survey.

The startups were also provided with the necessary tools for fundraising, team culture, blockchain development, listing advisory and tokenomics to develop the skills required to make a mark within the blockchain industry.

“The startups selected reflect the flourishing blockchain ecosystem in Indonesia, and this is just the beginning. Two years ago, the term blockchain seemed foreign, but today it is a digital powerhouse in NFTs, decentralised finance, and even GameFi,” said Tokocrypto CEO Pang Xue Kai.

Also Read: Tokocrypto, BRI Ventures launch blockchain accelerator programme

Tokocrypto Sembrani Blockchain Accelerator is part of the multi-dimensional TokoVerse by Tokocrypto created to bolster blockchain technology adoption in Indonesia and beyond. It focuses on four primary pillars: branding and marketing, investment strategies, investment landscape tactics and access to fundraising opportunities.

The programme’s mentors include Nicko Widjaja (CEO of BRI Ventures), Pang Xue Kai (CEO of Tokocrypto), Teguh Kurniawan Harmanda (COO of Tokocrypto), Lai Chung Ying (CSO of Tokocrypto) and Nanda Ivens (CMO of Tokocrypto).

As per a statement, the programme has initiated the support of over 50 investors, including Tokocrypto, Binance Labs, Cydonia, Solana Labs, Signum Capital, YGGSEA, Alameda Research, Huobi Ventures, Crypto.com, QCP, Avocado DAO, and Intudo Ventures.

Since the programme’s launch, Tokocrypto has connected the participants with global mentors such as Tamar Menteshashvili from Solana Labs and Nicole Zhang from Binance Labs. Investors listed previously were invited to the programme’s Demo Day, which took place on April 11 2022, where participants demonstrated the progress and achievements that have been made to date.

Together with TokoLabs, Tokoverse has developed Asia’s first crypto hub, T-hub, Indonesia’s first and largest NFT marketplace, TokoMall, and an educational mobile app, Kriptoversity, to name a few.

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The fast spread of COVID-19 in India highlights the critical significance of public health. There has been an ardent need to strengthen public health services to serve India’s population beyond the pandemic by offering them instant access to healthcare solutions.

With India being one of the second-fastest adopters of digital services, constituting about half a billion internet users, there is an immense scope to unlock an additional economic value of US$1 trillion through inclusive growth.

Additionally, with the right application of digital to the Indian healthcare sector, the issues of access and affordability are getting tackled. The accelerating need for medical care is steering the country in the right direction amid a Medtech revolution.

The digital healthcare market in India stood at US$116.61 billion in 2018 and is expected to increase at a CAGR of 27.41 per cent to US$485.43 billion by 2024, according to The ‘Digital Healthcare Market in India 2019’ report.

The underlying challenges

However, despite the positives, the country still faces the acute problem of an unequal healthcare system where the wealthy have access to the best care while the impoverished are restricted to limited options.

It can be addressed by improving hospital and clinic infrastructure, bringing in telehealth facilities, channelling resources in the most disadvantaged areas, building awareness around chronic diseases, and prioritising early diagnosis.

Also Read: Modern solutions to modern problems: How Plusman LLC innovates healthcare

The other challenge is the lack of uniformity in record keeping. In most instances, local healthcare facilities or hospitals cannot uniformly document all records for services, especially in rural areas.

This results in repeated diagnostic tests and consultations, delayed treatments, concealment or ignorance of medical history etc. This can lead to a wrong diagnosis and further increase treatment costs.

Even in hospitals where digital records are maintained, there is no provision for the electronic transfer of patient records from one service provider to another. The lack of access leads to either the patient physically carrying the medical records or having no access to them.

Digitisation for bridging the healthcare gap

Through the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) announced in 2020, the government endeavours to create a digital health ecosystem by leveraging the existing digital infrastructure (including frameworks related to Aadhar and UPI) and the pan India coverage of internet-enabled smartphones. The other objective is to ensure equitable real-time healthcare service delivery in India.

Healthtech has a crucial role in tackling the problem of an unequal healthcare system, thereby bridging gaps in India’s healthcare ecosystem, especially preventive healthcare and disease management.

This is evident with the vertical recently witnessing exponential growth, prompting trends like online patient consultation, e-pharmacies, telemedicine, integrated digital insurance memberships, etc. Investors are accelerating their funding in this sector due to the pandemic.

Democratising healthcare solutions

But the need of the hour is affordable real-time healthcare solutions encompassing OPD, IPD and wellness, facilitating instant access for different classes of the population.

We have been trying to democratise the affordable healthcare experience for SMEs, MSMEs, startups and growing businesses and their workforce across India by providing them monthly, comprehensive employee healthcare, including group health insurance, discounted telemedicine, teleconsultation etc.

More organisations should provide inclusive insurance to reach the unserved, underserved and low-income households. This will ensure deeper penetration of health insurance to families at grassroots levels.

What also works are innovative healthcare solutions in the form of sachets offering preventive care like doctor teleconsultations, affordable health checkups, discounted medicine, group mediclaim and accidental covers and hospitalisation support related to claim processing and reimbursements. Similarly, more startups should work on innovative, inclusive initiatives to improve India’s health equity.

Also Read: Bolstering healthtech: Thailand’s bid to become Asia’s medical hub

The insurance industry, which has always been under the dark cloud of mistrust due to rampant mis-selling, is now seeing disruption and innovation with Insurtech startups driving the transformation by leveraging technology.

Hence, there is an ardent need for them to deliver quality service that they have promised to rebuild trust with their customers. However, a lot of work needs to be done to change long-held consumer perceptions. But it’s not impossible.

Thus digitisation has the potential to bridge the mighty healthcare gap and improve the quality, access and affordability of health services by penetrating at grassroots.  This can lead to public-private partnerships, the birth of indigenous start-ups, path-breaking ideas, and thereby more skewed investment in India’s healthcare and healthtech sector.  

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

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In a typical Silicon Valley startup, you look to start with an innovative product or service and then match that to customer demand, testing out your hypothesis with an MVP (minimal viable product) before seeking to scale up the business backed by VC funds.

The VC model seemed in decline during the crypto ICO boom years in 2017/18, when an ambitious whitepaper and an impressive founding team and advisors were enough to gain token investment.

But nowadays, as the world of DeFi, the metaverse and NFTs all usher in the Web3 world, that’s certainly not enough. Projects need to have purpose and be community-led, in a real sense, in terms of both governance and tokenomics.

As Maggie Hsu, partner at top crypto VC Andreessen Horowitz pointed out regarding the nature of Web3 projects earlier this year, “It means having a strong community, not just being “community-led” or “community-first,” but also being community-owned, blurring the distinction between owner, shareholder, and user. What allows for long-term success in Web3 is a clear purpose, having an engaged and high-quality community, and matching the right organisational governance to that purpose and community.”

That being said, how does the current practice of whitelisting, allowing early pre-sale access to NFT and DAOs, square with this Web3 vision? When there is an opportunity from being lucky enough to be whitelisted to make a significant short-term profit, is that right from the longer-term view of the project.

What is whitelisting?

Before we get into the expert discussion, let’s briefly consider the focus of this article. Whitelisting was introduced in the NFT space near the end of 2021 after NFT enthusiasts identified a critical issue during the launch of new projects.

Also Read: NFTs: The good, the bad, and the future

Before the concept of whitelisting became popular, NFT projects with a lot of hype were usually ‘botted’ on the mint day by NFT whales (people who hold large amounts of crypto), leaving little to nothing for retail investors. Using trading bots allows the whales to buy the NFTs before community members have a chance to buy.

As explained in the NFT Examiner, whitelisting is when a specific crypto wallet has been approved for minting a specific NFT.

“As an example, Neo Tokyo is a project where participants have to pass a test to become eligible to mint a Neo Tokyo Identity NFT. If they solve the challenge, they are added to the whitelist, allowing the participant to mint the highly sought after NFT. Without being on the whitelist, buyers could attempt to mint the NFT, but the transaction would fail.”

In the NFT world, whitelisting typically means that a crypto wallet address has been pre-approved for the minting of NFTs on specific dates and times.

Furthermore, due to the high demand for these projects, particularly on the Ethereum blockchain, there were usually ‘gas wars’, with transaction fees reaching thousands of dollars, which was a bad look for the NFT sector and hampered user adoption.

In addition, pre-approved users on the whitelist can spread out their minting so that they are not all transacting simultaneously, avoiding a sudden spike in transaction prices caused by demand. Most new NFT projects layout their whitelisting requirements on their respective

Discord servers, with different tasks and assignments ranging from chatting to a certain level, posting fan art, promoting the project on social media platforms, etc.

In some ways, it’s an evolution of the practice of ‘bounty campaigns’ used in the days of ICOs in 2017/18 to market token offerings by offering giveaways in return for tweets and Facebook likes to help promote the coin offering.

The lure of big profits

Of course, the popularity of getting yourself invited onto an NFT or DAO whitelist isn’t just about being part of an exclusive community, to be part of a long term Web3 project; for too many people simply a chance to make a quick buck.

In his video explainer on the power of whitelisting, YouTuber ‘_DB’ points out that if you get access to a pre-sale token, it usually sells between US$10 to US$20 or even US$30, though how much can vary according to the amount of hype behind a project; with a limit in the amount of pre-sale tokens typically set between US$1,500 to US$2,000.

The new NFT drop from the High Sloth Society (HSS) of 10,000 Elite Sloths recently organised a public sale that was sold out in 29 minutes for US$1.2 Million.

Also Read: 3moji aims to transform the way NFTs are used in metaverse with its composable avatars

The High Sloth Society NFTs started their public sale at noon UTC on the 28th of April. Then on the next day, they sold another 1,000 pieces at 0.08 ETH each at their whitelisting event.

“The High Sloth Society is a group of people that are no longer interested in money but want to focus on what money cannot buy. By owning a high sloth, the users are granted the opportunity to have a direct interest in the ancient artefacts. The Korean National Treasure is just the first one,” Leon Kim, Core Contributor of HSS, said.

What’s the benefit for the community?

The purpose of whitelisting serves two core purposes. The first relates to the fact that if you are going to have any degree of success, you need to build a community around a project. Achieving this involves driving online engagement through social media.

And using a whitelist is an excellent way to do this. For the user, it’s a way of getting preferential access to a project, providing an incentive for a community to rally around a project.

“It can be a really good way to start getting people again, like talking about things on social media, retweeting, commenting, sharing pictures, all that sort of thing, because if you if you make things obvious, then you’ll get like, you’ll get some pretty good organic traction,” confirmed Ben Baldieri, Director of a Web3 tech consultancy Disintermediate Ltd.

The future for whitelisting

The whitelisting method currently dominating the NFT space is relatively new. Therefore, while it’s successfully prevented botted NFT project launches and conserving gas fees, they need to be used with the community in mind.

BigONE Chairman Anndy Lian said, “While the whitelisting practice was founded on good intentions, it has been tainted by some bad actors in the NFT space; this ranges from over-stringent requirements for being considered for a whitelist to some Discord server moderators giving out multiple whitelist spots to their family and friends.”

“I believe that commonly agreed best practices for the NFT space are the logical next step forward to ensure all participants’ safety and security in this exciting marketplace. NFTs have a lot of potential as their utility develops from collectibles to allowing fans to connect directly with artists and creators and their role to prove ownership in the metaverse and GameFi projects. But as things move quickly, we need to ensure we get the balance right in such a fast-changing technology,” Lian added.

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