Referrals

Pakt’s core API features a baked-in Referral functionality that empowers chainsite admins to jumpstart the growth of their Chainsites and shepherd them towards viral scaling.

The nuts and bolts of the referral program are easy to remember:

1. Every admin can set their chainsite to have either an unlimited amount of members or a limited amount of members

2. Every admin can set user referral links to either grant access to an unlimited amount of members or to a limited amount of members

3. Every admin can set their users to have either an unlimited amount of referrals or a limited amount of referrals

4. If an admin has set users to have a limited amount of referrals, they can set conditions for how many referrals they get (within a certain timeframe or based on behavior)

5. Lastly, every admin has their own “god mode” that allows them to send invites to as many users as they want.

Operating from these simple principles, Pakt’s Referral settings mechanism is designed to strike a self-reinforcing balance between:

• Building genuine communities consisting of strong relationships

• Constructing the mathematical rails to organically scale Chainsites

• Providing tools for admins to dynamically adjust in order to “garden” their ecosystem

Strong Relationships

A common pitfall of many online marketplaces or social media platforms is the anonymity of its users. Even if a name and profile photo are posted, jobs tend to end up as financial interactions between impersonal profiles, not human beings. The result is platforms become “communities” in name only, really just marketing-mumbo jumbo for a flimsy webwork of tenuous ties.

Pakt intends for its Chainsites to be strong communities of interwoven strong ties.This is why Pakt Chainsites are set by default setting for every user on a Pakt-based Chainsite to require to be invited a referral (aside from the admin). This ensures that every talent, client, or community member will start with at least one “strong relationship” on day one. Every new user will have an experienced user to help them navigate the Chainsite, answer questions, and shepherd them through their first collaboration or interaction. While “invite only” is not mandatory for every Chainsite,

Pakt intentionally nudges this community behavioral dynamic towards increased adoption.In order to ensure these Chainsite relationships are strong rather than spammy, admins can set parameters for their referral flow, such as allowing each user to have only three invites per week. Conversely, if an admin seeks to open the floodgates to new users and experiment with quantity over quality, they are free to do so (although we wouldn’t recommend it).

In instances of enforced scarcity of access, a well-shepherded influx of new users reinforces two of the core pillars of the Pakt Reputation Score algorithm:

a) earning points for referring talent or clients who earn 5 “star” reviews

b) the “Squad score” where referrals’ reputation scores directly impact the score of the user who referred them

By combining these incentive feedback loops with a limited number of invites, it strongly links new users and their referrer via shared “skin in the game.” Users will be motivated to win and help win with real people they genuinely care about, the very ethos of the group dynamics that organically build strong communities.

Mathematical Rails for Scaling

Some may consider limiting referral flows too constraining to growth hack “blitzscaling.” We would counter by pointing out that if every user of a chainsite successfully onboarded 3 new users per week for 3 months, that Chainsite would have over a billion users. Gmail famously capped their invites at 5 per user - we’ll gladly approach the cold-start problem for each chainsite with the tactic that worked for the most used email platform on the planet.

Additionally, a significant benefit from a weekly user cap is that it imbues new Chainsites with “perceived exclusivity”, aka FOAM-O. (Sorry. Had to.) The forced scarcity will juice early demand for Chainsites that offer genuinely appealing value propositions; DALL-E access invites are a recent example of this working to intended effect.

Lastly, a steady rate of x per week should increase the manageability of Chainsite growth. For the founders of Chainsites, this initial growth rate cap will provide the opportunity to analyze early user behavior dynamics in a microcosm before x^n compound user growth scales their chainsites into macro-success too large to manage with hands on white glove service. Plus, x per week/month/year should provide a manageable amount of user influx for existing users to provide personal assistance to their new referrals, helping to offload the burden from the Chainsite team.