TL;DR: Kiyo & haryu703, members of the First Place team from the Bitcoin Cash SLP Token Virtual Hackathon, joined CoinSpice for an exclusive interview from Japan to talk about their project, Hamingja, a hopeful upgrade to the traditional loyalty card idea, and how it could help with spreading crypto adoption.

Bitcoin Cash SLP Token Hackathon Winners

Asked who did what on Team Ignite, Kiyo told CoinSpice he “was in charge of concept design, UX/UI design, frontend coding and presentation slides,” while “haryu703 was in charge of software architecture, server and backend coding.” Kiyo also explained he’d had the idea for what he calls a “loyalty points system using SLP token right at the time SLP hackathon was announced. It was just good timing, and a friend of mine recommended that I enter.” He quickly enlisted mate haryu703 for coding, and the two were off and running.

Traditional loyalty cards have some well-known benefits. They’re easy to use, somewhat permissionless in that anyone can use them for the most part, and they carry a certain amount of privacy. But they’re also highly forgeable, can often rip apart or get destroyed in an instant, expensive for merchants to print, and if customers collect a lot of cards they’ll quickly find they become a storage pain in wallets and purses.

“It was a new experience for us as a virtual hackathon team, but we definitely enjoyed the event,” Kiyo mentioned of the competition. “I enjoyed many technical elements and the implementation,” haryu703 agreed. Asked if they thought their idea would wind up winning, Kiyo answered confidently, “Yes. Although our main goal was to be creative and to enjoy the hackathon itself. I definitely thought we had a good chance to win first place.” Team Ignite coder haryu703 was less optimistic, explaining he “thought I would win third place or higher, but I didn’t expect first place.” Both said they were looking forward to spending their share of the prize money.

That Venerable Loyalty Card Idea’s New Spin

A digital spin on that venerable loyalty card idea has a lot of potential, and they’re gaining in popularity among traditional retailers. They’re highly portable, seemingly much more durable, usually frictionless. However, they come with a set of permissions and stipulations. They can be difficult for both customer and merchant to navigate, and are often expensive to monitor and use — not to mention they’re much easier to track in terms of surveillance.

Hamingja appears to have all the good qualities of digital loyalty cards/coupons with very few of the negatives. End users don’t need to know much about the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network nor even SLP. And considering the transaction costs and speed of BCH, Hamingja could be a way less expensive alternative for merchants — only a fraction of bitcoin cash is required to create an SLP loyalty card. What’s even more enticing are the privacy aspects for both merchants and users. Anyone can create a loyalty card with Hamingja, no matter how big the business or project.

On the technical end, Team Ignite employed Bitcoin Cash, SLP Tokens, Spedn, BITBOX, Angular JS, Ionic, Firebase, Express Node.js, and routing controllers to accomplish Hamingja. The project is still under construction in some parts, but looks to be coming along nicely. They were especially motivated by the prediction of how the “global loyalty management market was valued at USD 2617 million in 2018 , and is expected to reach a value of USD 9280 million by 2024,” a compounded growth rate of over 20%, according to the team’s website.

“Our project is based on the need for a product that has mass adaption capability,” Kiyo elaborated. “We want more people to use the Bitcoin Cash network. If we correctly design the product for SLP tokens we can engage more people to use the Bitcoin Cash network. Non-tradable SLP tokens are necessary in terms of usability. However, such tokens weren’t available by default so it was a great subject for the hackathon project.” He also revealed they’re accepting offers to bring Hamingja to market, and said the response has been positive. “Everyone I’ve spoken to is excited about the project,” Kiyo stressed.

*Special thanks to Akane Yokoo for arranging the interview.

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