#312: Intract and the Path to 1.5M MAUs
🛣️ Insights on attraction vs. retention, interesting features, and the roadmap for questing platforms
This piece is brought to you by Intract, a leading questing platform.
If you have a project that is looking to grow, Intract is offering its Project partner platform with all features for free for a limited time. If you want a direct intro, DM me or reply to this email.
February 2023
Over a year ago, I received a DM from Apurv, co-founder of Intract.
As we chatted over the months, I learned more about the questing platform he was building, and the ensuing conversations eventually got me to the point of writing about what he and the team were building a few months later.
I followed along as the Intract team continued to build. Fast forward over a year later, the team has raised a $3 million seed round, achieved profitability, and worked with top ecosystems such as Linea, Base, Blast, Arbitrum, and more.
I recently reconnected with Apurv and met Varun (B2B lead) asking a bunch of questions around growth inflection points, new features they are incorporating and scaling, and what their future roadmap looks like. The discussion got me excited about the realities of questing today and the brighter future of where questing is headed to create more meaningful ecosystems and communities.
Thanks to both of you for taking the time to provide insights on Intract!
By the numbers
Intract’s growth has been impressive over the past several months with June 2024 hitting all-time highs, with 1.5 million monthly active users. Some additional metrics that provide more context around scale:
In June, the Intract platform launched 851 new campaigns, 1.9 million new campaign starts, 160k new users, and averaged 575k DAUs
~50-60% of user signups are through a social login (Discord or Twitter/X), while the remainder are through a wallet
Intract has ~1,000+ active quests at any given time, with 5,000+ quests concluded. Over 100 new quests launch per week, with ~30% of them coming from larger ecosystems and the remainder coming from individual projects.
$1.5 billion has been bridged from users through platform quests
Intract is partnered with over a dozen ecosystems, and will be launching Solana and Cosmos support soon.
Note: Those are some MASSIVE user numbers and it’s fair to look at them with a more discerning eye. That said, the numbers are directionally notable and suggest that the platform’s reach and scale are large.
3 growth inflection points
As I followed Intract’s journey over the past year, it was clear to me that they were showing signs of product market fit, evidenced by the fact that the platform kept adding new ecosystem partners, features, and users. There were 3 main inflection points that helped the team reach the stage they’re at today.
‘Anchor tenant’ partners
When I think about ecosystem growth, I often think about malls and the concept of anchor tenants. We might not care about a particular mall or shopping center, but we do care about the stores they have. Popular malls create a baseline level of consistent foot traffic by signing on these anchor tenants, such as an Apple Store, Whole Foods, or Nike.
In a similar fashion, Intract was able to onboard 3 major ‘anchor’ partners in the early stages of launching the platform: Polygon zkEVM (first come first serve 2k participants), Linea (332k participants), and Tabi (299k participants).
The digital mall has no physical limitations, so scaling the mall with more ‘tenants’ isn’t an issue 🛍️
Focusing on KOLs (key opinion leaders) and creators
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, KOLs are an important member of the ecosystem when it comes to marketing, growth, and promotion. Intract realized this was a wedge to leverage when it came to providing value to their partner projects (need users and ideally high quality ones) and creators (need partners and alpha), creating aligned incentives and resulting in the KOL Marketplace.
Projects can look through the vetted KOL list by various filters, get a better overall picture of audience sizes, and directly DM them through the platform, reducing a couple steps in the due diligence process.
Constantly adding and testing new features
As I checked in Intract over the past year every now and then, I noticed new features and sections pop up over time, such as Academy, streaks, notifications, and Alpha Feed. These deserve it’s own section so I’ll go over them in a separate section 😉
Testing and iterating new features
Intract Academy
Intract Academy is a new section of the website geared for newbies unfamiliar with crypto and airdrops and more importantly gets new users (regardless of expertise) accustomed with the platform.
Several observations about how Academy is currently positioned (I encourage you to check it out yourself vs. just looking at the screenshots):
The Academy section of the website has a purple ‘New’ badge next to it in the top nav bar. Nice way to attract attention.
The dotted line path draws the user’s attention to follow along each of the steps. Although you can’t see it in the screenshot, the dotted line path is highlighted in purple and is animated, indicating progress and what step the user is at. As the user goes through the Academy, the highlighted portion of the dotted line continues toward the next step. Visual cues 👀
The Academy journey has a Chapter —> Quest —> Task hierarchy. For example:
Basics of Crypto —> 6 Quests —> 6-11 tasks per Quest
Introduction to Airdrops —> 4 Quests —> 7-11 tasks per Quest
Assignment —> Reward: After the completion of each chapter there’s a reward. For example, after completing the Basics of Crypto chapter, users can claim an ‘Intract Certified: Learner NFT’. These claimable moments serve as a nice dopamine hit to acknowledge the accomplishment, along with a cute cat meme sporting an Intract branded beanie. Additionally, there’s a checkmark logo above the image which I assume will light up upon completion. Another visual cue 👀
Assignment —> Reward amplified: The rewards don’t stop there. After completing the second Academy Chapter, users get to receive their first airdrop, 10,000 $PEPE. Sounds like a lot but in reality worth ~1 cent 😂
Additionally, Academy graduates have a chance to join an exclusive paid community focused on airdrops
After completing Academy, users (especially new ones) experience Intract in a nutshell, completing multiple engagement loops. They:
Completed multiple tasks, earning XP
Claimed and minted NFTs, acknowledging completion
Received an airdrop
Entered a raffle for an exclusive benefit
Streaks
A feature and growth tactic as old as time (and a feature incorporated by many platforms and projects), streaks are always a great way to keep users engaged.
Streaks extend beyond the standard login style format, and have expanded to become ecosystem-specific as well.
Notifications
Another feature and growth tactic as old as time, notifications are a core part of the Intract platform, notifying users of new campaigns and quests.
Notifications on Intract aren’t static though. Upon login, they prominently pop up temporarily on the bottom left corner (unfortunately didn’t capture the screenshot for this), elevating the notification into an announcement for a short period of time.
Additionally, the notifications icon is temporarily animated (like a ringing bell/alarm) bringing additional attention to the notifications.
These modifications and optimization for personalized notifications have resulted in a 200% increase in notification engagement.
Alpha Feed
The Alpha Feed was the most interesting feature I came across when chatting with Apurv and Varun. It serves as a sort of news hub, covering updates happening in the space. Instead of focusing on bringing the user back into the platform, clicking on the stories actually takes them out, to the source of the news.
For example, if I click on ‘Know More’ for the Scroll Canvas story, it takes me to an X post about the Scroll Canvas campaign. Which account posted it? Alphaleaks by Intract. Smart 😏
This approach doesn’t apply to every story in Alpha Feed though. For example, the second story is around Anoma Foundation’s Namada mainnet security program, and the link goes directly to the announcement on X.
15-20% of Intract users engage with Alpha Feed on a daily basis and the team is continuing to experiment with ways to increase engagement for the feature while providing value beyond what farmers typically look for.
For Projects
One feature that Intract has built for projects is the Dynamic Auto Verification Engine (DAVE), a no-code tool that helps verify onchain actions. Think of it as a version of onchain Zapier, creating simple ways for ‘if-then’ types of rules.
In the below example from Linea, Intract confirms that the user has minted and claimed a NFT on Linea after completing a series of quests on Intract. This information could later be used to determine who qualifies for additional Linea quests, rewards, or other creative approaches on or off the Intract platform.
Future Roadmap
As Intract continues to evolve its platform in parallel with the evolving landscape itself, the high-level roadmap Apurv shared provides an idea of where Intract is headed, but the broader space as it pertains to questing, points programs, and beyond. Themes are from Intract, details are my extrapolations (and active imagination)
1. Incorporating onchain data from onchain users
As Intract has grown its user base into the millions, there are vast amounts of insights and data that the team can leverage to help users reach their end goal. Incorporating offchain data, particularly around social and actions taken on the platform is easier to do (Intract already prioritizes quests based on the projects and ecosystems the user follows), and the more complex but valuable challenge/opportunity lies with incorporating the onchain data, and combining the two where applicable.
Incorporating the onchain component (or any data really) has its own set of considerations:
What is high signal vs. low signal? What combinations of transactions are high signal vs. low signal?
How are new wallets or users with little to no history treated?
What experiments or features should use this data? And to what degree?
How does a wallet’s historical activity change after onboarding onto Intract if at all? If it does, how should that be treated?
This is interesting because this shows a single wallet/person can exhibit multiple personalities, which differs from a wallet with a singular purpose.
An IRL example of this is how we have different ways of acting or dressing based on our environment. Eg: We might dress more formally for work, but we prance around in our underwear and unwashed shirts while at home (not me, I promise. Please wash your clothes lol)
This could also lead to a different set of projects, not just crypto-native ones that start to be interested in platforms like Intract like gaming (already happening) or even…brands?!
Wishful thinking, I know. But one day it won’t be as far-fetched as it sounds with the right targeting capabilities. The addressable audience size is certainly large enough to be worth noting for something down the road.
On a separate note…it’s interesting to think of questing platforms as ad networks, as it creates a different frame of reference. Anyway, back to the roadmap.
2. Enhancing the platform with AI
This isn’t a surprise as AI is being incorporated into many facets of our lives. With Intract, it’s not only a questing platform. It’s a marketplace with several participants. Because of this, Intract can apply AI in ways that facilitate incentive alignment across these parties that often experience tension with each other. In marketplace terms, they can ‘match’ supply and demand more effectively:
Projects: Quest suggestions and creation, onchain event verification events with DAVE.
KOLs: Stack-ranked KOL suggestions based on the project’s description and info provided
Users: Personalized and optimized Alpha Feed and notification feed for more effective discovery
3. Improved airdrop retention strategies
The current state of farming and airdrops is more or less this:
How do projects and ecosystems retain users, especially after an airdrop has occurred? There are more fundamental answers to this, like having engaging and useful apps built on it. Besides the obvious, this is a large opportunity area that Intract is incentivized to tackle as well.
The area Intract has the most control over is user retention on the platform (growing the pie), enabled by the roadmap points mentioned above and below. They aren’t responsible for designing an airdrop and what happens after, but there is an opportunity to collaborate with projects to build better programs and tools to expand into retention.
I look forward to seeing what Intract comes up with for the platform and its project partners. I do wonder if certain mechanics we’re seeing with Holdium, Yup, and Blast could be of inspiration. The team is also exploring industry tools like OpenBlock to help inform incentive design.
4. Rewards experimentation
With project partners
When we think about rewards in crypto, we often associate it with a direct financial incentive or outcome. However, we often see it as in the form of an airdrop whereas the financial incentives can be much more dynamic.
Some examples of this could include mint discounts, gas rebates, or APR multipliers (if DeFi related).
Platform-specific
Intract also has its own platform-specific rewards consisting of gems and XP coins.
Gems can be used for certain benefits, such as repairing streaks or early access to specific quests.
What if they could be used in more dynamic ways though (yes Apurv and Varun, I want you to explore these ideas 😈)?
For example what if there was a community competition where users burn Gems or XP coins to support the ecosystem or project of their choice? Users who contribute to the top project get a special NFT for that ecosystem that’s worth an additional boost for a future airdrop or reward. Top contributors (regardless of which project they support) receive an additional benefit. ‘Losers’ still win something for participating.
What if we expand the competition to include Intract’s KOL partners? Change the perception of KOLs from financial mercenaries to community captains that champion certain projects, adding another layer of gamification that creates a win-win-win situation:
Projects win with increased engagement with a fresh set of gamified dynamics
KOLs win by getting paid and engaging with users and projects in a creative way
Users win because even if they're farming, this approach is fresh and fun
If successful, this can turn into a competition that has seasons, a tournament, and/or break out into vertical-specific leagues. Farming Olympics anyone? 🥇
This would be a massive undertaking, and potentially a worthwhile one if the right pieces are in place.
The future of questing platforms
As tiresome as questing and points platforms might be, they’ll likely stick around. As you exhale the audible sigh after reading that sentence, platforms like Intract and their project partners realize this as well, and they’re working together to provide ways that create more effective discovery and meaningful engagement.
Intract is doing some cool stuff to make that happen and I’ll be sure to continue checking on that progress.
If you have a project that is looking to grow, Intract is offering its Project platform with all features for free for a limited time. If you want a direct intro, DM me or reply to this email.
See you Thursday!