Blackbird, Blockchain Restaurant Loyalty App, Goes Live With Flynet Mainnet
Blackbird, the restaurant loyalty platform based by Resy and Eater co-founder Ben Leventhal, shared Thursday that its Flynet mainnet is reside, bringing restaurant funds on-chain.
Flynet is a layer-3 blockchain primarily based on prime of Coinbase’s Base chain. Base, a layer-2 community, permits customers to transact on prime of Ethereum for sooner and cheaper.
The workforce claims that having a layer-3 advantages the restaurant trade, as a result of “by dealing with funds and loyalty packages solely on Flynet, Blackbird eliminates conventional middlemen, reduces transaction prices, and introduces a brand new mannequin for rewarding each diners and companions.”
Blackbird had beforehand launched a funds platform, letting customers pay for his or her meals with $FLY, the platform’s native token, which customers may earn by means of the packages loyalty program by eating at taking part eating places, or by buying it within the Blackbird app utilizing the USDC stablecoin.
With Flynet reside, $FLY might be utilized in the identical method, however now eating places can use the token to pay platform charges as nicely. As well as, the workforce is releasing a brand new token, $F2, for use for fuel charges on the community.
The workforce mentioned that they are going to airdrop 13% of the $F2 token provide to early customers and eating places, with distribution relying on sure exercise metrics. The remaining 87% of $F2 will go to “insiders, the treasury, and we have now one other six seasons after this that we’ll allocate tokens to the individuals,” Leventhal informed CoinDesk in an interview.
In response to the workforce, Blackbird has $85 million in funding with backers from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase, Spark Capital, and American Specific. In 2023, a16z raised greater than $24 million for the platform in a Sequence A spherical.
Blackbird at the moment is offered in New York, San Francisco and Charleston, and lets diners earn rewards at a few of their favourite eating places. Leventhal informed CoinDesk there are roughly 500 eating places as a part of their loyalty program.
“What we predict we are able to do is construct one thing the place transactions grow to be a lot less expensive, and the levers that eating places have to draw and retain prospects will grow to be huge,” Leventhal informed CoinDesk on how he sees the restaurant trade and blockchain intersecting. “And people two issues, greater than the rest, is the explanation why we’re constructing on-chain.”
Learn extra: Blackbird, Web3 Startup From Resy Co-Founder, Needs Diners to Pay for Meals in Crypto
