An Australian university is replacing points with Ether, hoping students will be more motivated to spend if rewarded with digital currency.
An Australian university has partnered with Blockchain startup to offer Ethereum-based rewards program. Students at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) will soon be able to earn Ether tokens for purchases made on-campus. The program runs from October 6 to November 20, 2017.
According to the startup’s managing director, Andrew Lowe, they are excited to monitor how the student members will respond to the program due to the sharp rise in the value of Ethereum.
“Last month, the value of Ether rose by 30%, so we’re excited to see how members respond to this type of loyalty currency vs. traditional approaches such as points. We’re confident they’ll find it much more engaging, but the research will give us a more definitive answer.”
Brief details of the loyalty program
The Unify Rewards program is limited to 500 participants who previously signed up. It focuses on the utilization of a mobile application that can be used by the participants to buy at the school’s campus near Sydney, NSW. Participants can earn $5 worth of Ethereum for every 10 transactions they make using the app.
The program is supported by several departments at the university, including the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the School of Business. UNSW and its Blockchain partner intend to collect enough data to analyze the behavior of participants in the program once they start to receive Ethereum as a reward. The results of the study are expected to be published by the partners in the near future.
The Unify Rewards program can be compared to the initiative previously advanced by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In the project, the researchers distributed Bitcoin tokens worth $500,000 to the institute’s undergraduate students.
