About

Checkin (checkin.gg) is a location-based social app built on top of the Farcaster social graph. Users can explore, checkin and earn rewards for discovering the world around them.

Since launching at end of March 2024 as a Farcaster bot and later in May 2024 as a Farcaster client, Checkin has had 100K+ checkins and 4500 users. We’ve also airdropped 17,000 Places NFTs (onchain versions of IRL places) with 8,000 owners.

Checkin is bridging IRL to onchain identity (offchain to onchain) by tying IRL activities to wallets (e.g. earning Sushi Lovers badge by checking into 5 sushi restaurants or Gym Rat badge by checking into 5 gyms etc.). Users benefit from better personalization when they bridge IRL activities to onchain to interact with projects. Projects benefit from improved engagement and conversions when they have more context on who their users are beyond financial transactions.

Currently we are focused on Asia (Japan and Korea) due to high network density of IRL activities (”things to do”), as well as our extensive experience onboarding enterprise to web3 for this market. Japan also has a strong culture related to location-based games and move to earn - generating half of the $2 Billio location-based games market and move 2 earn games like StepN. Japan market is also heavily involved with “Stamp Rally” where people collect stamps from IRL locations to earn rewards.

Challenge

We believe there is a disconnect between onchain identities and our IRL identities.

Onchain data is only a small part of our identity; most of our lives are offchain or IRL data - IRL data has a lot of signal that can be added to onchain data.

Our conviction is that in the future in order to have meaningful engagement with users, we need to bridge IRL/offchain activities to our onchain identities.

Working with large enterprises, we know that one of the main hurdles for mass consumer adoption is the lack of IRL context of the user - missing who they are, what they like, where they like to go, when they go and why they go to places.

How we’re Solving It

Checkin is a permissionless way for users to enrich their onchain identity with IRL activities through checkins. As users checkin to places repeatedly they earn onchain attestations via badges based on their interests (e.g. Sushi Lover badge if checking into 5 sushi restaurants).

As users checkin to more places, they built more context of their IRL and onchain identity.

The vision for bridging IRL and onchain identity is for composability of new experiences that can be built on top of checkin data personalized to the user.

For example, receiving the “Ramen Lovers” badge after visiting 5 ramen restaurants, examples of new and composable experiences can be built based on that badge include:

• Interoperable loyalty programs for ramen restaurants for different restaurant chains and where the business model and rewards can be different than if it was initiated by just one restaurant chain
• Community dating app for ramen lovers or frequent goers of a particular type of ramen
• Location-based games like treasure hunts, scavenger hunts etc. related to their interests
• Payments with Crypto at the restaurants
• Better airdrops because of added IRL context but also preventing sybil attacks because of GPS verified checkins

Our Team

Bridging IRL activities to onchain identity requires experience in:

• Data
• Onboarding enterprise
• Market experience
• Quick to ship

Ed was a Strategic Analytics Manager for Canada’s #2 Telecom company to segment and create meaningful campaigns for users by leveraging location data and other factors.

We’ve also been working together for the last 2 years onboarding enterprises and their communities in Japan. One example is Kokyo NFTs - helping Japan Airlines launch Kokyo NFTs that unlocked RWA and IRL experiences across Japan. We managed the technology stack, launch and social marketing, growing community from 0 to 12K followers, with engagement campaign where ~8K completed weekly quests to get Waitlist/Allowlist spots for Kokyo NFTs.

We recently completed a campaign for TV Tokyo to create a campaign of IRL activations at the world’s busiest train station (Shinjuku) where users can mint a dynamic “Stamp Rally” NFT card to complete weekly quests. For about 2000 people it was their first NFT minted.

We have a lot of market experience in Japan as a trusted builder of web3 experiences and partner of Japan’s 2nd largest marketing agency, Hakuhodo.

Yuki (Japan)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuki-wakiyama-60137baa/ https://twitter.com/yukiw_eth https://warpcast.com/yuki

Ed (Japan)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardon https://twitter.com/jackalpha_xyz https://warpcast.com/jackalpha

Jijin (India)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pjijin/ https://twitter.com/pjijin_ https://warpcast.com/jijin

Pawan (India)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavvan/ https://twitter.com/pavvannn https://warpcast.com/pxvvxn

Roadmap

https://imgur.com/a/s7IPsNX

We first launched Checkin app in May 2024 at FarCon and have since generated 100K checkins globally. Our next set of activities include expanding to conference partnerships where high density of crypto-natives are gathered and looking for recommendations of IRL activities to build their IRL identity.

We recently launched MAP NFTs where locals can create, curate and mint maps of hidden gems for visitors to discover. Soon we will be launching to non-Farcaster users and building location-based games with partners.

Funding Sources

Hackathon winnings: Deploy on DEGEN Week grant recipient ETHGlobal Frames Hackathon Finalist