Thoughts on Introducing the Concept of Coupons into the NFT Field

1. Overview of Coupons

Current e-commerce platforms widely use various types of coupons, and their reasonable distribution can achieve two main goals:

1. Stimulate consumption and increase total transaction volume
2. Reward users for completing tasks to increase daily active users, retention rate, and usage duration.

Compared to direct cash distribution, coupons have advantages in the following three aspects:

1. Limited scope of use: Usually set with many conditions, such as specified platforms, categories, discounts, etc., which can better promote the sales of specific products.

2. Low liquidity: By default, it is non-transferable, and the value is mainly reflected at the time of purchase due to different user consumption needs.

3. Cost lag: Costs are incurred only when used, not when issued.

In the NFT scenario, the effectiveness of coupons also depends on whether the NFT itself is a consumer good or an investment good. As an investment good, NFTs have higher liquidity, and the associated coupons also gain certain liquidity.

Coupons can be divided into two types: those issued by the platform and those issued by sellers. When issued by the platform, sellers are unaware and still collect payments at the original price, with the discount portion subsidized by the platform. When issued by sellers, the amount actually received after the discount is borne by the sellers themselves.

2. Coupons Integrated into the NFT Field

1. NFT issuance stage (mint)

At this stage, users interact directly with the NFT contract, paying on-chain currency to acquire NFTs. The project party can promote early publicity through coupon rewards or attract more users to participate in minting. This method only reduces revenue and does not incur additional expenses.

2. Secondary Market Trading Phase

This stage involves NFT holders, trading market contracts, and buyers. Coupons can be issued by three parties:

• Project party: A dedicated wallet needs to be established to subsidize the price difference, which will incur additional expenses.
• NFT holders: The trading platform needs to support the setting of coupon information. Currently, there are relatively few professional sellers, so this will not be discussed for now.
• Trading platform: A dedicated wallet subsidy needs to be established, which can cover all NFTs within the platform, but will incur additional expenses.

In the secondary market stage, whether it is the project party or the trading platform issuing coupons, it is necessary to weigh the costs and benefits.

The cost of issuing coupons by the project party is the total amount of coupons multiplied by the usage rate, and the revenue includes task completion and the improvement of NFT liquidity.

The cost of issuing coupons by the trading platform is also the total amount of coupons multiplied by the usage rate, and the revenue mainly comes from task completion and increased transaction volume. However, currently, users of NFT trading platforms mostly have clear purchasing goals, making it difficult to obtain advertising revenue like traditional e-commerce platforms.

3. Conclusion

In summary, during the NFT issuance phase, it is a suitable strategy for the project party to issue coupons. This can enrich the current promotional methods that mainly rely on social platform lotteries and whitelists.

In the secondary market phase, project parties need to carefully assess the costs and benefits of issuing coupons. The feasibility of issuing coupons by NFT holders and trading platforms is relatively low.

In the future, if this product idea is proven feasible, further exploration can be conducted on the implementation of coupon contracts and the corresponding modifications to existing NFT contracts.