When it comes to registering for events, it’s no surprise that more times than not the number of people who RSVP versus actually attending are disproportionate. In the case of highly demanded talks and meetups, this can be problematic to those who wish to attend, but are unable to sign up only for there to be open seats when the event actually takes place.
To combat this issue, a rising project called Kickback is using a contract-based registration system to hold attendees responsible for their commitments. In practice, the system makes users think twice before spam-registering, thus ensuring that the quality of the attendees is raised along with setting a small technical barrier by requiring users to know how to acquire an Ethereum-based asset (ETH, DAI, etc.) in order to attend.
Kickback was created during a London Ethereum Codeup hackathon by Makoto Inoue, an ENS smart contract developer. Makota is joined by two other developers, Jeff Lau and Ramesh Nair, each playing vital roles as it relates to front and back end support.
How Does It Work?
As it commonly works today, there’s nothing to lose (financially speaking) when you don’t show up for an event you registered for. With Kickback, users are required to put up a deposit (usually 10 DAI) prior to attending an event. When they show up and confirm their attendance, they are able to reclaim that deposit when the event ends. Better yet, anyone who didn’t show up loses their stake, with the rest of the pot being divvied up amongst everyone who went.
“Everyone commits a small amount of ETH when they RSVP, which is refunded after the event check-in. Any no-shows lose their ETH, which can then be split amongst the attendees.”
In order for this to work, users are promoted to “sign in” by connecting to a web 3 wallet. At the time of writing, Kickback lists Metamask, Brave or Opera for desktop or Stratus, Trust or Coinbase wallet for mobile connection.
When an event ends, a “cooling period” begins, marking a window of time (usually 7 days) when everyone is able to withdraw their original deposit plus their split of the pot. Anyone who doesn’t withdraw from the cooling period is automatically claimed by the event organizer.
DeFi Relevance
During this year’s DevCon 5, Kickback partnered with Orochi DAO , a new distributed events committee, to organize a #yearoftheDAO exclusive event. The event was funded by Meta Cartel and leveraged Kickback for registration. Moving forward, Kickback is likely to serve as the defacto platform for organizing high-status blockchain meetups and events. During DevCon alone, ten different afterparties used Kickback for registration.
Beyond existing meetups, the underlying concept of Kickback can be abstracted in a number of ways. The project has announced that they will soon be integrating support for other Ethereum-based assets (DAI being a good starting point), meaning that niche ERC tokens can use Kickback as a new mechanism for getting people familiar with how to acquire their token. Furthermore, the project mentions multi-tiered ticketing in their FAQ, signaling that in the future there may be an opportunity for event hosts to offer discounted rates for attendees that really have their finger on the pulse.
Conclusion
As Ethereum continues to grow, Kickback serves as one of the few applications that is both intuitive and rewarding. When attending Aragon’s “Dream DAO” party at Devcon, I actually ended up earning 2.5 DAI for attending. Not only did this make my attendance a financial “success”, but it also marked one of the first times when I was able to enjoy the full Ethereum-based product experience in under 5 minutes of total screen time.
As the industry looks forward to its next major run-up, Kickback will likely serve as a strong filter for being able to weed out the moon boys. Furthermore, it’s exciting to consider future possibilities such as integrating ERC721 tickets for an end-to-end Ethereum event experience.
In the meantime, be sure to stay up to date with Kickback via the official blog or by joining their Telegram announcement channel.
Cooper is the Editor of DeFi Rate and an active contributor to leading DeFi media outlets like The Defiant, DeFi Pulse, and Bankless. He works with early-stage teams through Fire Eyes DAO to incubate governance models and grassroots community development. He is an ambassador to Set Protocol and an author of a weekly publication called Token Tuesdays. To stay up with Cooper, follow him on Twitter.