Discover the incentives of Bounty Programs in ICO (Initial coin offering) and how they work.
Everything about blockchain is relatively new, so are blockchain startups. It’s not surprising that some investors are still hesitant to dip their toe in the water.
To ensure as much market penetration as possible, launching ICO campaigns is the ultimate strategy for blockchain startups to attract investors and raise funds for their projects within a short period.
Leveraging on the success of Ethereum and Ripple, many cryptocurrency startups now choose Bounty Programs as an integral part of their digital marketing and promotional enterprise.
What are Bounty Programs?
Bounties are incentives offered by organizations to participants for various activities related to an ICO. These incentives are usually in the form of cryptocurrency tokens or fiat currency (this option is however rare).
During Bounty programs, the ICOs introduce their cryptocurrency projects and offer rewards to people in exchange for performing certain tasks spread across social platforms, bug reporting, or even improving aspects of the cryptocurrency framework.
In the crypto space, bounties have become a conducive part of any ICO campaign as they offer great benefits for both startups and participants alike.
ICO Bounty Framework
Typically, there are two stages to an ICO. The first stage, known as pre-ICO Bounty Program, is marketed to prospective investors. In the second stage, known as post-ICO Bounty Program, the focus shifts to fine-tuning the released blockchain. As long as you meet their requirements, you can join one, multiple or all tasks from a bounty program to max out your earnings.
Pre-ICO Bounty Program
This is the type of bounty program conducted before the launch of an ICO. The purpose of such bounties is to get the buzz going, and to give the project an improved presence on social media, generating awareness to get maximum participants. Informal marketing channels are utilized to increase market penetration. As participants carry out various tasks, the people in their network will take notice and join the ICO project. Frequently, activities in a Pre-ICO Bounty Program include:
Social Media Bounties
This involves tasks that promote the ICO on social media accounts of participants. Rewards are based on engagement rates generated by such posts. These rates can be measured by likes, comments, views, shares, and retweets. Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are popular social media platforms used for pre-ICO bounty programs.
Content Writing Bounties
Participants who have blogs with a fair number of audience can join this activity. They can earn rewards by writing featured articles on their blogs. Usually, an article should contain approximately 500 words about the ICO.
The best way to approach the ideas of an ICO is through its whitepaper. The rewards will depend on the engagement levels of the articles and blog posts. However, keep in mind that some bounty programs won’t accept articles on certain platforms like Blogspots.
Bitcointalk Signature Bounties
Bitcointalk is the biggest forum about cryptocurrency. This bounty is specifically open to the forum members. The ICO releases a signature with an embedded code. By posting the signature in the forum, participants will receive an amount of stake based on their rankings. Most bounty programs are only available for Jr. Members and above.
Translation Campaign Bounties
This involves translating all documents related to the ICO (Whitepaper, website) and moderating different forums (Bitcointalk announcement, Bounty thread). It’s a perfect bounty for native or fluent speakers of languages like Japanese, French, Spanish, Dutch, and German, etc. Thus, the payout is usually the best!
Post-ICO Bounty Program
At this stage, the ICO has been completed and funds have been raised. Post-ICO Bounty Programs focus on making improvements to the projects based on community suggestions.
Bug Hunting and Reporting Bounties
This includes technical tasks that are aimed to improve the project beta software/service. Investors are not going to be thrilled with the user experience if they keep running into issues. That is when bug hunters come into place. A good bug report identifies issues with the project clearly and concisely. If you are a tech guy, don’t hesitate to join this entertaining and rewarding activity. Depending on the program, this activity is also about reporting bugs on the website of the ICO.
Community Management Bounties
After launching, the ICO team will follow up communication with their new community to keep the momentum going. By joining their community, you can receive airdrops from the ICO foundation.
Keep in mind that there isn’t a hard and fast rule as concerns for activities of Pre-ICO and Post-ICO campaigns. Crypto ICOs can decide to use any of the aforementioned activities in either Pre or Post-ICO bounty programs.
Information about the percentage of the total coin supply can usually be found on the ICO’s website, whitepaper or Bitcointalk ANN thread.