We've heard this many times. Conference tickets. Event accommodations. NFT mints. Exclusive access. The costs add up, and the people with the most to contribute often have the least to spend.

This is the distribution problem at the heart of web3. How do you allocate scarce resources fairly? How do you give opportunities to people who deserve them, not just people who can afford them or got lucky?

One of the default answers has been raffles. Random selection. Everyone gets a chance. But after years of watching web3 raffles play out, we've learned something uncomfortable: randomness isn't the same as fairness.

This post proposes a different primitive: conviction-weighted selection, where communities decide who wins through stake-backed evaluation.

The Anatomy of a Raffle

Before we fix raffles, let's understand what they're trying to do.

A raffle is a distribution mechanism for scarce resources. You have something valuable (tickets, access, prizes) and more people want it than can have it. The raffle decides who gets it.

Traditional raffles usually optimize for one thing: equal chance. Buy a ticket, enter the pool, random selection picks winners. The appeal is simplicity and perceived fairness. Everyone has the same odds per entry.

But equal chance isn't the same as fair distribution. Consider what a random raffle actually selects for:

Random selection treats all entries as equivalent. A bot farm with 1,000 wallets has 1,000x the chance of a genuine community member with one wallet. A whale who can afford unlimited entries dominates someone who scraped together funds for one shot.

The mechanism is simple, but the outcomes often aren't fair at all.

What's Actually Broken

The common thread across existing mechanisms: they don't measure what matters.

If you're giving away conference tickets, you probably want them to go to people who will engage meaningfully, contribute to conversations, and become lasting community members. None of the mechanisms above select for that.

If you're distributing access to an exclusive community, you probably want members who will participate actively and add value. Random selection doesn't care about that.

If you're allocating grants or scholarships, you want recipients who will use the resources well. Lottery tickets don't measure capability.

The mechanisms optimize for what's easy to measure (wallet count, token balance, task completion, speed) rather than what actually matters (merit, need, contribution potential, community fit).

And beyond measurement, there's a deeper problem: no consequence for bad selection.

In most raffle mechanisms, voters or selectors have nothing at stake. A committee member who picks their friend faces no penalty. A social task that gets gamed costs the gamer nothing. There's no feedback loop that improves selection quality over time.

Without consequence, there's no signal. Just noise dressed up as fairness.

A Different Primitive: Conviction-Weighted Selection

What if we designed a raffle mechanism from first principles?

Requirements:

1. Open participation (anyone can enter)

2. Community decides winners (not random, not committee)

3. Merit can surface (the "right" person can win)

4. Evaluators have skin in the game (consequence for bad judgment)

5. Curation work is compensated (evaluation isn't free labor)

6. Sybil-resistant (gaming is expensive)

This is what we built at Incented. The core mechanism is conviction voting: stake-weighted community evaluation where correct judgment earns rewards and incorrect judgment has a cost.

Here's how it maps to raffle primitives:

Traditional Raffle → Incented Program

The Key Differences

Entries are evaluated, not drawn. Instead of random selection, the community reviews applications and stakes tokens on who should win. This creates actual signal about merit.

Voting has consequence. Stake tokens FOR a submission you believe should win. If it wins, earn rewards. If it loses, lose a percentage of your stake (the "slash"). This filters out casual voting and creates genuine evaluation.

AGAINST votes matter. You can also stake AGAINST submissions you believe shouldn't win. If they lose, you earn. If they win, you lose stake. This creates a quality floor, not just a ceiling. Bad applications get filtered by community signal.

Evaluators get paid. The voting pool compensates people who do the work of assessment. Curation is labor. The mechanism recognizes that.

Sybils are expensive. Every fake account needs real tokens to stake. Gaming requires capital at risk. The economics flip: attacking costs money, defending earns money.

How Conviction Voting Works for Raffles

Let's walk through the mechanics.

Setup (Example):

• Prize: 1 conference ticket ($500 value)

• Voting token: Community token (or SEEDS)

• Award pool: The ticket (or equivalent value)

• Voting pool: 100 tokens to reward evaluators

• Slash rate: 10% (lose 10% of stake if you vote incorrectly)

Phase 1: Applications

Anyone can apply. They submit why they deserve the ticket: what they'll contribute, their background, what they want to get from the event. The barrier is effort and authenticity, not money.

Phase 2: Rallying

Applicants share their submissions. "I applied for the DevConnect ticket, here's my application." Their networks can see who they are and decide whether to support them.

This creates discovery. The community learns about people they didn't know. "Wait, you're building what? I want to meet you there."

Phase 3: Voting

Token holders stake on applications:

• FOR: "I believe this person should win"

• AGAINST: "I believe this person should not win"

Staking isn't free signaling. Your tokens are locked until settlement. If you're wrong, you lose a percentage.

Phase 4: Settlement

Program closes. Net votes calculated. Highest net votes wins.

The winner receives the award. Correct evaluators earn rewards. Incorrect evaluators lose stake.

The Result:

The person who wins isn't random. They're the person the community, with skin in the game, decided was most deserving. Voters who did their homework earned tokens. Voters who staked carelessly lost some.

The mechanism produced signal, not noise.

Configuration: Tuning for Your Use Case

Incented programs are configurable. Different raffle types need different settings.

Single Winner vs. Multiple Winners

Voting Duration

Slash Rate

Application Requirements

Full configuration guide

Case Study: Castle Quest

We're running this mechanism ourselves. Carrot Castle is a community house during major crypto events. Rooms cost $750-1,150. A real barrier for many.

Community members kept saying: "I'd love to come but can't afford it."

So we created two programs:

Castle Quest Denver (ETH Denver, Feb 15-22)

• 1 private room ($1,150 value) sponsored by Incented

• Community votes using SEEDS tokens

• Winner receives CARROT CASTLE COIN redeemable for the room

Castle Quest Boulder (Boulder Week, Feb 12-16)

• 1 private room ($750 value) sponsored by Artizen

• Community votes using $ART tokens

• Same redemption model

The mechanism is identical. The difference is which community participates. Denver draws from the Incented community. Boulder draws from Artizen's creative funding community. Both help each other grow.

Why this works for us:

1. Transparent allocation. Sponsors (Incented, Artizen) can verify the community decided, not a committee.

2. Community engagement. Applications create content. Voting creates participation. The giveaway becomes an event, not just a transaction.

3. Right person wins. Not random. Not whoever knows the organizers. The person the community signals should be there.

4. Voters earn. Community members who evaluate thoughtfully get compensated. Curation labor is recognized.

5. Discovery. We'll meet applicants we didn't know. The Castle gets more interesting people because the selection surfaced them.

The Community Support Loop

Here's what makes conviction-weighted raffles genuinely different from random giveaways:

The mechanism creates mutual support.

Imagine you're a community member who can afford tokens but not the room. You participate by voting thoughtfully, earn from the voting pool, and help someone who needs it more get their spot.

Imagine you're someone who can't afford either. Apply anyway. If your community believes you deserve it, they rally behind you. Their stakes become your path to the prize.

The people with resources help select. The people who need resources can win.

Both sides are rewarded. Winners get the prize. Voters get compensated for judgment. The community strengthens because people supported each other through mechanism, not charity.

This is what coordination infrastructure should do. Not extract value, but create systems where communities support each other with aligned incentives.

When to Use What: A Decision Framework

Conviction-weighted selection isn't always the answer.

Use conviction voting when:

• The "right" winner matters (not just any winner)

• You want community engagement, not just distribution

• Merit, need, or contribution should influence selection

• You're willing to reward evaluators for their work

• You want Sybil resistance through economic cost

Use random when:

• Any winner is fine

• Speed and simplicity trump precision

• Stakes are low enough that gaming doesn't matter

• You can't fund a voting pool

Running Your Own Conviction Raffle

The pattern works for any community giveaway:

Setup steps:

1. Design your program (prize, tokens, duration, requirements)

2. Create the program on Incented

3. Announce and open applications

4. Promote voting to token holders

5. Settlement distributes prize and voter rewards automatically

What you get:

• Transparent, verifiable selection

• Community engagement (applications, voting, discussion)

• Sybil resistance through staking

• Compensated curation labor

• Signal about who your community values

Beyond Giveaways

The same primitive that powers fair raffles also solves harder coordination problems:

The building blocks are flexible. Top X winners or quorum-based. Fixed prizes or proportional splits. Single rounds or recurring cycles.

The primitive works wherever you need fair distribution with community signal.

The Carrot Pulls

We started Incented with a simple thesis: incentive alignment produces better coordination than top-down control.

Raffles are a perfect test case. The traditional approach is either random (no signal) or committee-based (gatekeepers). Neither produces the outcome communities actually want: the right person getting the right opportunity.

Conviction voting offers a third path. Open participation. Community decision. Skin in the game. Consequence for bad judgment. Rewards for good curation.

The stick makes the carrot meaningful. When incorrect votes cost tokens, people vote carefully. When curation work is compensated, people do the work. When merit can surface through community signal, the right person wins.

Castle Quests Boulder & Denver open for applications January 19th. If you can't afford a room but you'd be valuable at the Castle, apply. Let your community decide.

If you have tokens and want to help select who represents your community, vote thoughtfully and earn.

And if you're running a community that wants to give back without gatekeepers, consider what conviction-weighted selection could look like for your next giveaway.

The mechanism exists. The infrastructure is live. The community decides who wins.

Get Involved

Apply for Castle Quest:

• Denver: carrotcastle.xyz

• Boulder: carrotcastle.xyz

Learn the mechanics:

• How to apply

• How to vote

• Rewards and slashing

Run your own conviction raffle:

• Program design guide

• Creating a program

Get voting tokens:

• SEEDS: Juicebox on Base

• $ART: Artizen Endowment

The Castle awaits. Let your community decide who joins.

But here's the part everyone's missing: the failure wasn't incentives. It was incentives without consequence.

InfoFi didn't prove that permissionless coordination is dead. It proved that unconditional rewards are a mechanism design failure. And there's a crucial difference.

The Vision That Almost Worked

InfoFi was trying to solve a real problem. Attention has value. The people who create buzz, surface alpha, and amplify quality content are doing real work. Why shouldn't they get rewarded for it?

The original vision was compelling. Kaito's Yaps aimed to be "freely accessible, fully public, and purely merit-based." Cookie DAO positioned itself as the data layer for measuring social impact. Galxe built task-based incentives for community activation. The pitch was the same: democratize attention, reward contribution, let merit win.

But here's the question nobody asked: who actually verified the merit?

When Yaps measured "mindshare," what were they measuring? Impressions. Engagement counts. Reply frequency. These are proxies for attention, but attention and quality are different things entirely. A bot farm generating thousands of "Great thread!" replies creates attention. A controversial hot take generates engagement. Neither creates information value.

The systems assumed that high engagement equals high quality. They assumed that if something gets attention, it deserves attention. But that's circular reasoning dressed up as mechanism design.

ZachXBT called it out directly: these platforms were encouraging AI bot spam at industrial scale. The merit-based promise was always an illusion because there was no mechanism to actually evaluate merit. Just metrics that could be gamed.

The vision was worthy. The verification layer was missing.

Where It Broke: Farming Without Consequence

InfoFi's model was deceptively simple:

Post → Get Points

No filters. No consequences. No skin in the game.

Think about what this incentivizes. If posting earns points, you post more. If engagement earns points, you engage more. The quality of that engagement? Irrelevant to the reward function.

The result was predictable to anyone who's studied mechanism design. When rewards are unconditional, you get what you measure, not what you want. Goodhart's Law, weaponized:

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

This isn't a new problem. We've seen it play out before. Steemit rewarded content with tokens and devolved into voting rings and bid bots. BitClout tokenized social profiles and became pure speculation. Friend.tech created access tokens that collapsed when the speculation cycle ended. Reddit's Moon tokens degraded the quality of r/cryptocurrency so badly they discontinued the experiment.

The pattern is consistent: unconditional rewards for social activity produce gaming, not quality. Every single time.

So people optimized for the measure. Bots flooded timelines. "gm" spam drowned out signal. AI-generated slop proliferated. Engagement metrics spiked 1,224% on some days while actual information value collapsed.

The specific failure modes across the InfoFi ecosystem:

• Reply farming: Generic "Great thread!" comments everywhere, optimized for touchpoints rather than insight

• Coordinated engagement rings: Groups gaming each other's metrics through mutual amplification

• Mercenary switching: Attention flowing to whoever offered the best points-to-effort ratio, destroying any authentic community

• AI content farms: Passable crypto commentary at scale, no human insight, indistinguishable from real analysis

• Sybil attacks: Multiple accounts amplifying the same content, multiplying fake signal

Kaito tried to fix it. They experimented with "tighter eligibility, higher thresholds in leaderboards, social + onchain filters and different incentive designs." Cookie tried selective access models. Galxe moved toward credentialing. Every platform tried to patch the symptoms.

But as Kaito admitted: "issues of low quality and spam largely remained."

You can't filter your way out of a broken incentive structure. Adding eligibility requirements just raises the bar for gaming. Adding AI detection creates an arms race with AI generators. Adding onchain filters just means gamers need wallets with history.

The problem wasn't who could participate. The problem was that bad participation had no cost. Wrong tweets had no penalty. Spam had no consequence. Every attempt at gaming was free. When the downside is zero, the rational strategy is to try everything and see what sticks.

The carrot was there. The stick was missing.

The Overcorrection

Kaito's conclusion hit hard:

"A fully permissionless distribution system is no longer viable."

Their pivot? Kaito Studio: "a tier-based traditional marketing platform, where brands selectively work with creators who meet defined criteria."

This will work. It's the same model that's worked for decades in traditional marketing. Brand approves creator. Creator delivers. Payment flows. Cookie is exploring similar directions. The infrastructure pivots from open platforms to curated marketplaces.

But let's be honest about what this means: the web3 ethos got abandoned.

The original promise was that anyone can participate and merit wins without gatekeepers. That new voices could emerge based on quality, not connections. That the playing field could be level.

That promise has been replaced by the familiar model of selected influencers and brand approval. The same system crypto was supposed to disrupt. The same dynamics that concentrate power in established voices and make it hard for newcomers to break through.

There's nothing wrong with traditional influencer marketing. It serves a purpose. But it's a retreat from the original vision, not an evolution of it.

Discovery suffers. When brands select creators, they select from who they already know or who has existing metrics. The unknown contributor with a brilliant idea never gets seen.

Innovation slows. Curated systems optimize for what's worked before. Permissionless systems let weird ideas surface and occasionally one of them changes everything.

Power concentrates. The gatekeepers decide who gets access. Over time, this creates the same insider dynamics that web3 was meant to escape.

Authenticity fades. When creators are selected and briefed, the content becomes marketing. When contributors participate freely and the community validates, you get genuine signal about what resonates.

They threw out the baby with the bathwater. The problem was never openness itself. The problem was openness without accountability. Because there IS a path they didn't see.

The Evolution: Permissionless + Community + Consequence

Here's what we've been building at Incented: permissionless participation where the community is in the loop and consequence creates signal.

It's still open:

• Anyone can submit work

• Anyone can vote on quality

• No gatekeepers deciding who's worthy

• No brand approval required

But the community actively participates in quality evaluation. And that participation has real stakes.

There's a mechanism we call the Carrot & Stick:

Stake FOR what you believe deserves to win. Put tokens on the line. Stake AGAINST what you believe doesn't belong. Same deal.

Your stake is your conviction, and your conviction has consequences.

When voting closes:

• Correct voters (backed winners OR opposed losers) earn rewards from the voting pool PLUS slashed tokens from incorrect voters

• Incorrect voters lose a percentage of their stake, redistributed to those who got it right

This creates something InfoFi never had: two ways to earn, both requiring real judgment.

Contributors earn from the award pool when their work wins community approval. But there's also a voting pool that rewards the people who do the work of evaluation. Curators, reviewers, community members who take the time to assess quality: they get paid for that labor.

This is the missing piece. InfoFi rewarded content creation but treated curation as free. Incented recognizes that quality evaluation is work, and compensates it accordingly. The people promoting your brand or organization aren't just posting: they're actively curating what deserves attention and what doesn't.

Here's why the mechanism changes everything:

Spam dies because staking on spam means losing tokens when the community votes it down. That "gm" reply? Would you stake $50 on it winning? Then don't submit it.

Quality emerges because voters who do their homework get rewarded. Skim a submission and guess? You're gambling. Read it properly, evaluate thoughtfully? You're making an informed bet that pays off.

AGAINST votes matter because identifying what shouldn't win is just as valuable as identifying what should. InfoFi had no mechanism for this. We reward it explicitly. Voting AGAINST a losing submission is as "correct" as voting FOR a winner. This creates a quality floor, not just a quality ceiling.

Sybils struggle because every fake account needs real tokens to stake. Gaming requires capital at risk, not just free API calls. The economics flip: attacking the system costs money, defending it earns money.

Newcomers can compete because conviction voting doesn't care about your follower count. A thoughtful evaluation from a new participant carries the same weight per token as one from an established player. Merit actually means something when it's backed by stake.

The insight is elegant: permissionless doesn't have to mean unconditional. You can maintain open access while requiring consequence. You can have the web3 ethos of anyone-can-participate while filtering for quality through community-powered mechanism design.

Consequence is part of truthful coordination.

Beyond Content: Coordination Infrastructure

Here's what the InfoFi conversation misses: incentivized coordination isn't just about content marketing. It's about any situation where communities need to surface quality and distribute rewards fairly.

The same primitives that make content curation work also solve harder coordination problems:

Grants programs are a natural fit. Traditional grant committees are small groups making subjective decisions. Conviction voting opens evaluation to the broader community while ensuring evaluators have skin in the game. The people closest to the work—developers, researchers, community members—can participate in deciding what gets funded. And they're rewarded for good judgment.

Bounties become more reliable. The classic bounty problem: someone submits work, there's a dispute about whether it meets requirements, and resolution is messy. With stake-weighted validation, the community determines whether deliverables meet the bar. Validators who correctly identify quality work (or correctly flag subpar work) earn from the voting pool. The incentives align.

Governance gets more thoughtful. Most token voting suffers from low participation and whale dominance. When voting requires staking and incorrect votes get slashed, participation becomes meaningful. You don't vote unless you've done the work to understand the proposal. Drive-by voting disappears.

The building blocks are flexible: Top X winners or quorum-based approval. Fixed prizes or proportional splits. Single rounds or recurring cycles. The primitives work for whatever coordination problem you're solving.

Real communities are already running programs:

• Coordinated Creation runs ongoing creative sprints where contributors earn for quality work and voters earn for accurate curation. Multiple cycles, recurring participation, growing quality bar.

• Based Creators activates their community through stake-weighted evaluation. Community members don't just consume content, they actively shape what gets amplified.

• DAOs using conviction voting for treasury allocation, moving beyond plutocratic token-weighted voting toward judgment-weighted decision making.

These programs run without spam floods. Quality emerges because the mechanism rewards quality, not volume. When incorrect voting costs you tokens, you pay attention.

Bridging to Social Channels

One question we hear: "How does this connect to our social presence on X, TikTok, or other platforms?"

The answer: Incented handles the coordination and reward distribution. The content itself can live anywhere.

This is actually the key architectural insight. InfoFi tried to build reward systems on top of social platforms, dependent on their APIs and subject to their rules. That dependency proved fatal. When X changed policy, the entire ecosystem collapsed overnight.

A more resilient approach: separate the quality evaluation layer from the distribution layer.

Here's a practical workflow:

1. Run a content program on Incented where contributors submit their work and the community evaluates quality through stake-weighted voting

2. Winners get rewarded from the award pool, voters get rewarded from the voting pool—both pools funded by the organization running the program

3. Curate winning content based on community signal—you now know what your community actually values, validated by people with skin in the game

4. Distribute across channels using tools like Postiz for scheduling and cross-platform posting to X, TikTok, LinkedIn, wherever your audience lives

The content flows from coordination layer to distribution layer. The quality signal comes from your community. The distribution happens on whatever platforms make sense for your brand.

This architecture has several advantages:

Platform independence. Your coordination infrastructure doesn't depend on any single platform's API policies. X can change their rules; your community's quality signal remains intact.

Authentic signal. The content that gets distributed is content your community actually valued enough to stake on. That's a stronger signal than algorithmic engagement metrics.

Contributor alignment. Contributors know their work will be evaluated fairly and distributed if it wins. They're incentivized to create quality, not to game platform algorithms.

Measurable impact. You can track which community-validated content performs best on which platforms, creating a feedback loop that improves both curation and distribution over time.

We're happy to help organizations integrate this workflow. The goal is community-powered curation feeding into your existing social strategy: real signal, not engagement farming noise.

The Path Forward

InfoFi's collapse doesn't mean incentivized communities are dead. It means the primitives need upgrading.

Kaito concluded that permissionless doesn't work. We respectfully disagree. What doesn't work is permissionless without consequence. Open access without skin in the game. Rewards without stakes.

Permissionless ≠ unconditional.

This distinction matters beyond the immediate InfoFi conversation. As crypto matures, the question of how to coordinate communities at scale becomes more pressing, not less. DAOs need better governance. Grant programs need better evaluation. Content platforms need better curation. The problems InfoFi tried to solve are real problems.

The answer isn't to retreat to gatekeepers and curated access. The answer is to build mechanisms that make open participation work. Mechanisms where quality emerges from incentive alignment, not from filtering at the door.

Brands can still activate communities without gatekeepers. Creators can still earn based on merit: real merit, validated by people with skin in the game. And those validators earn too. Communities can still coordinate contribution and reward.

The ownership economy isn't dead. It just needs better tools.

The stick makes the carrot meaningful.

What's Next

If you're rethinking your community activation strategy after today's news, we'd love to show you what's possible.

Genuine permissionless coordination with consequence built into the mechanism. Two ways for your community to earn: creating quality work and curating it. Community-powered signal that feeds into your broader social strategy.

Explore how Programs work: docs.incented.co

See live programs: incented.co/explore

Schedule a conversation: Book a call

This post was written on January 15, 2026, in response to X's ban on InfoFi platforms and the shutdown of Kaito Yaps and Cookie Snaps.

Last year's story in one breath

2025 was the year Incented stopped being “an idea we were passionate about” and became something we could point to, run live, and trust under pressure.

We started the year with outside validation, spent spring in a shipping frenzy, hit the summer with real users forcing real priorities, and ended the year with two things every platform eventually needs: a clearer philosophy and a bigger surface area (multi-chain, richer programs, deeper workflow).

If there’s one thread that ties the year together, it’s this:

Coordination doesn’t fail because communities don’t care. It fails because the system around them doesn’t make caring legible.

Incented is our attempt to fix that, by making coordination programs easy to run, contributions easy to evaluate, and incentives easy to distribute fairly.

Four Day Funk - Jeff Hopp - Coordinated Creation Cycle 12

Validation - Q1

The win that made it real

The year began with a moment that changed how it felt to show up to work.

Artizen

@Artizen

Congratulations to Season 4 Creators! $852,145 awarded to 160 amazing projects.

1st - @iamsvenh raised $159,726.

2nd - @ClaudiaBuenoArt raised $119,160.

3rd - @futuronativo raised $108,021.

↓ Submissions now open for Season 5.

148

4:55 PM • Jan 24, 2025

On January 24, we won Artizen Season 4. We got more than funding, we got validation. The kind of external signal that lands in your chest and rewires your week. It wasn’t “good luck, have fun.” It was “we believe this problem matters and we believe you can solve it.”

But belief doesn’t ship. The win didn’t reduce the work. It allowed us to quadruple it. Because once someone else believes, you don’t get to treat the product like a prototype anymore.

The foundation work, a lot of it

Under the hood, Q1 was about turning a concept into a product you can trust. We shipped 394 commits worth of structural work: settlement testing, demo seeding, permissions refinements, UI edge-case cleanup, docs improvements. The kinds of things you only notice when they’re missing.

We also made a small change that ended up being a big one: we renamed “Grants” to “Programs.” It sounds cosmetic until you realize it’s a worldview. Grants are just one use case Incented can improve. Programs are repeatable coordination engines. We weren’t building a payout page. We were building a system communities could run like infrastructure.

We went to ETHDenver to prove Incented exists outside our heads

On February 23, we launched a new Incented website. It was a line in the sand: no more “coming soon,” no more “we’re working on it.” But a public front door.

Incented

@GetIncented

New website is life. Would love to know whatscha all think.

incented.co

Incented Protocol

Human Coordination & Fund allocation Management - Grants, Hackathons, Bounty Programs and more. Incented's permissionless incentivization and coordination protocol and platform makes coordinating...

4

1:34 PM • Feb 23, 2025

A few days later, we brought it to ETHDenver. We pitched at the Startup Battle.

Incented

@GetIncented

Beyond excited to have made it to the @BufficornV semi finalists to pitch Incented at @EthereumDenver. We built our first prototype last year at the Buidlthon, and now we are back with a live product.

2

11:19 AM • Feb 27, 2025

But if we’re being honest, the thing people remembered wasn’t the pitch. It was the swag.

We dropped custom Incented merch. Every single piece hand made by our founder. He even made more at the AirBnB in Denver cuz we ran out.

People loved it!

That week gave us a simple lesson we carried all year: coordination is emotional before it’s technical. People participate in systems that feel alive.

Rhic

@0xRhic

Coolest merch I've seen, like ever, from @GetIncented
Creativity max from @iamsvenh

18

1:32 PM • Mar 1, 2025

Beta launch - Q2

Shipping like it matters (because it did)

Spring was pure output. May and June were high-velocity months. Q2 became our most intense quarter: 459 commits of expansion and hardening.

From the outside, these months can look like “random product updates.” From the inside, it was the moment we started preparing for people who don’t have patience for alpha vibes: better file handling, upload reliability, onboarding improvements, clearer constraints and limits, more defensive design.

Creator tooling: not just running programs, enabling the ecosystem

In May, we launched a Social Media Kit in collaboration with with Alana Magazine.

Incented

@GetIncented

Our friends @alana_xyz are hard at work to help our team get better on the socials to keep y'all informed about the goings on at Incented.

So greatful to work with amazing, value aligned people like the ALANA team . And special thanks to @stellaachenbach.

4

11:44 AM • May 30, 2025

On paper, it’s “assets for creators.” In reality, it was a statement: Incented does not just rewards output. It helps communities make output easier to share, easier to amplify, easier to turn into community signal.

If programs are the coordination engine, distribution is the oxygen. Thanks Stella for helping us put this resource together for our clients.

Relationships are product surface area

We leaned deeper into the relationships and community collaboration, including work around Alana Magazine with Stella Achenbach.

ALANA

@alana_xyz

@iamsvenh, we are so proud & honored to have you become an integral part of the next edition of ALANAmagazine thanks to being our first Impact Supporter via @ArtizenFund !

Your show of support means the world! We can't wait to climb down the @GetIncented rabbit hole with you

Sven Hermann

@iamsvenh

I just grabbed 1/2 of what may just be the bargain of a lifetime. Their @ArtizenFund project is still live for another 41 days. But i would not wait too long. If you know @stellaachenbach and the @alana_xyz project, you know this is a no er. Stella does everything with 110%,

10

8:39 AM • Jun 16, 2025

This mattered because Incented’s “market” isn’t a single user type. It’s a loop: organizations running programs, contributors submitting work, communities voting, and everyone needing a shared language of what “good” looks like. Those loops aren’t built by code alone.

June: Our first real customer program

We launched the Based Creators Catalyst Program.

Incented

@GetIncented

Introducing: The Create Catalyst Fund
@basedcreators are launching an innovative new grant program— and applications are now open!

Applications open for 2 weeks
70m $CREATE for applicants
7m $CREATE for community voters

Apply now → thecreators.com/grant

10

5:59 PM • Jun 18, 2025

Real "money", real creators, real stakes. Nine winners. Community voting. Full pipeline:

announcement → submissions → evaluation → settlement.

We’d been building the system. Now we had to run it.

You could feel the tension in the work. Not “will this feature ship?” but “will this hold up when it matters?” That’s the moment a product becomes real.

BizarreBeasts.base.eth

@bizarrebeasts_

Excited to share our $CREATE Catalyst application, "BIZARRE Summer Campaign"! This is all about proving how an artist can truly build thriving token economies around creative momentum, not just speculation!

As an independent artist, I've been building the BizarreBeasts ( $BB

16

10:01 AM • Jul 3, 2025

Proof of concept - Q3

The quiet truth: fewer commits, more reality

Q3 had fewer commits on the product side. From the outside, that could look like slowing down. From the inside, it was the opposite.

When you’re running a live program, priorities snap into focus. Reliability beats novelty. Observability beats aesthetics. Every edge case becomes personal, because someone’s work is on the line. You start caring less about shipping “more” and more about shipping “right.”

This was the quarter Incented stopped being a place we built and started being a place people flocked to.

Based Creators concludes: the loop worked

On August 15, the Based Creators Catalyst concluded. Creators have cast 110.938.430 $CREATE to vote on the @BasedCreators Catalyst program.

Incented

@GetIncented

The @BasedCreators - $Create Catalyst winners are HERE!

These 9 projects are about to shake up the world of creativity & web3 in the best way possible. Let’s meet the dream teams below

incented.co/details/3e05c3…

8

9:56 AM • Aug 15, 2025

The product did what it promised to do: turn a messy, manual process into something structured, auditable, and actually usable.

If you’ve ever run one of these programs manually, you know how rare that is. Submissions scatter. Feedback gets emotional. Rewards become political. Timelines slip. People leave the process feeling confused.

This time, the system held. That was our first true proof of concept.

The operational upgrades that come from real usage

We didn’t stop shipping. We just started shipping what mattered most to operators.

Incented

@GetIncented

The Organization Dashboard is live for org admins!

One place to:
Manage your grant programs
Track Submissions + contributors
Manage Users, Transactions, ...

No more scattered spreadsheets.
No more DMs to ask who did what.

This is onchain coordination

5

8:00 PM • Aug 1, 2025

We launched and improved an Org Admin Dashboard, which made running programs less like juggling knives and more like having controls.

We also shipped improved voting, because voting is the most important element. It’s the core governance mechanism that determines whether a program feels fair.

Incented

@GetIncented

New Incented Voting Update just dropped:

You can now vote multiple times on a project.
More carrots (or $CREATE) = more conviction.

You can change your vote from FOR AGAINST
You can only add more weight — no rage unstakes.

Think before you bet the farm

7

9:00 AM • Aug 2, 2025

This was the meta-lesson of Q3: if you want coordination to scale, you have to make the operator experience feel calm.

Scale and vision - Q4

Dogfooding: Incented runs Incented

In October, we made a decision that shaped the rest of the year: we started dogfooding Incented publicly.

We launched Coordinated Creation, our way of building in public and using our own product to coordinate a creative community.

Incented

@GetIncented

30 cycles
120 days

A continuous rhythm of creativity:
2 days to create → 2 days to vote → repeat.

600 USDC for creators.
1500 $SEEDS for voters.
First cycle goes live in tonight.

Bring your memes, your art, your ideas.
link.incented.co/garden

6

10:03 AM • Oct 31, 2025

The premise is simple: 4 day cycles, open-ended creative submissions, community signal. If Incented is coordination infrastructure, it should coordinate weird, cultural, joyful things too, not just “professional” work.

And it did / does.

Even before the program finished, the numbers are telling:

70+ submissions | 14 cycles completed | 56 winners already

But the real evidence is the variety:

• A game you can play right now

• Songs: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

• A movie poster: Submission

• A comic strip: Submission

• And so much more

  

Coordinated Creation became our favorite kind of proof: the product didn’t just work, it produced culture.

Funding + Alignment: Juicebox and SEEDS

Early October, we launched our Juicebox project.

This is the starting point for our way of making the next phase possible: programs that can sustain themselves, communities that can fund what they value, and coordination that doesn’t depend on a single sponsor or a single moment.

We also published our SEEDS strategy.

SEEDS are a points system and a governance experiment. Our way to reward participation, attention, and care. A way to make “showing up early” legible. Less about gamifying for its own sake and more about building ownership loops that compound.

The “why” became explicit: the IKEA effect and co-creation

Late October was also when we started being more direct about the philosophy behind Incented. Many may have heard our driving mission statement before:

Create a world where everyone can work on whatever they are most passionate about, while being rewarded equitably for their efforts.

We shared a vision pitch and we talked about the IKEA Effect: people care more when they’ve contributed. When they’ve added an egg. When something is partly theirs.

Incented

@GetIncented

Ever heard of The IKEA Effect?
People value things more when they help create them.

In the 1950s, cake mixes failed because they were too easy. --> It felt like cheating.

So companies changed the recipe, now you had to add an egg. Suddenly, bakers felt pride again. The

8

12:19 PM • Oct 9, 2025

That’s what Incented is really about. Not just rewarding output. Creating systems where contribution turns into ownership and ownership turns into better signal.

Product surfaces catch up to the vision

As the philosophy got clearer, the product had to get more expressive as well.

We shipped a new Cycle UI and a Share on X feature to make participation easier and the output more visible.

Incented

@GetIncented

We are so close to launching V1.5 of Incented
Just putting on final touches in the UI. Check out the snazzy new cycle selection menu.

5

12:33 PM • Oct 14, 2025

Incented

@GetIncented

Afraid to push an update to Production hours before a big program launch? Not us!

We just made it easier for our creators to share their submissions.

We are mere hours away: link.incented.co/garden

9

2:08 PM • Oct 31, 2025

Under the hood, 2025 ended with a major platform transformation: rich media support (audio/video/document previews), notification infrastructure (in-app + email + preferences), and admin surfaces for token and chain management.

This is the part that matters if you’re an operator: Incented started feeling less like an app and more like a system you can run for months.

December Expansion

Early December, we launched a new customer program: ZABAL, a content sprint with ZAO DAO.

Incented

@GetIncented

Launching Tomorrow
The ZABAL December Content Sprint
Hosted with @thezaodao & @bettercallzaal
“Create the Future. Shape the Culture. Build the Empire.”

December is ignition month, and @thezaodao is turning the entire ZAO ecosystem into a creative battleground.

Creators

12

8:13 PM • Dec 3, 2025

Weekly prizes in USDC. Voting powered by $ZAO Respect. Wide-open creative submissions. A perfect showcase of Incented’s flexibility for culture programs and creator ecosystems.

And importantly: this launch marked a broader expansion. We now supported additional chains like Optimism, Arbitrum, etc, and Incented was becoming multi-chain on EVM, not as a marketing line, but as a practical requirement. Communities live where they live. Coordination tools have to meet them there.

ZABAL V1 was a success, so on December 20th, we shipped ZABAL V2.

Incented

@GetIncented

ZABAL Content Sprint V2 is live.
incented.co/details/37c4ae…

Before we move forward, a quick look back

Sprint 1 results:

15 submissions across 2 cycles
6 winning creators
60 USDC distributed

Culture > noise, every round

Creators showed up. The community voted. Signal emerged.

7

4:11 PM • Dec 20, 2025

That’s a subtle milestone: we weren’t just shipping “for customers.” We were iterating with them.

Philosophy goes public: the carrot, the stick, and the garden

On December 16, we published “The Carrot, the Stick, and the Garden” right here on our Paragraph.

🥕 The Carrot, the Stick, and the Garden

Noises from the Rabbit Hole

Dec 16, 2025

People keep asking us about the Incented logo.Why a carrot? Is it a meme? A joke? A farming metaphor gone too far? The short answer: no. The long answer is a story about incentives, disincentives, and...

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This was the essay people kept asking for. The one that explains why Incented isn’t just another “rewards product.”

Most systems lean on one over index toward the carrot, giving strangers some sort of monetary incentive to join their community. Incented is built around a different premise: signal emerges when people can express belief, not just chase rewards. Vote for what you think is right. Vote against what you think is wrong. Earn for being right. Be lightly penalized for being careless. Not because punishment is the point, but because consequence is part of truthful coordination.

Late December: the major release with Solana support

We ended the year with a major release.

Solana support shipped. Major UI updates landed. The platform expanded from Ethereum-only roots into a multi-chain system supporting EVM & Solana.

From the engineering perspective, this wasn’t just “add a chain.” It was a maturity upgrade: chain-agnostic terminology, multisig abstraction, Squads integration, token management, safer CI/CD workflows, and settlement-level fixes that only show up when real programs are running.

The final months of 2025 felt less like sprinting and more like becoming durable.

2025 by the numbers

We like stories, but we also like receipts.

Development

• 845 total commits

• Peak months: February (198), May (170), June (159)

• The pattern: Q2 speed, Q3 operations, Q4 strategic expansion

Programs & community

• 2 new customers (Based Creators, ZABAL)

• Coordinated Creation: 70+ submissions, 14 cycles, 56 winners (and still running)

• Multi-chain: EVM & Solana

Major milestones

• Won Artizen Season 4

• Pitched at ETHDenver Startup Battle

• 🌐 Website launch

• Juicebox launch

• SEEDS strategy published

• Solana support shipped

What we learned

1) Vibes matter.

ETHDenver taught us that people don’t share what’s “correct.” They share what feels alive.

2) Dogfooding beats roadmaps.

Coordinated Creation taught us more than any planning session could, because it turned product assumptions into real behavior.

3) Multi-chain isn’t optional.

Communities aren’t going to move for your architecture. The coordination layer has to travel.

4) Philosophy scales when product matches it.

“The Carrot, the Stick, and the Garden” wasn’t a marketing piece. It was a compression algorithm for the year. We are eager to build on that.

5) Velocity isn’t progress.

Our lowest-commit quarter was when we proved the system held up under real stakes.

Looking forward

2025 was the year we went from “can this work?” to “how does this scale?”

We shipped multi-chain support. We onboarded our first customers. We ran programs that didn’t fall apart. We built richer media, better notifications, better admin tooling. We learned what it means to operate a coordination system instead of just building one.

But the most important thing we shipped was clarity.

Incented is a coordination layer: a place where belief has weight, where incentives reveal signal, and where communities can align without centralized control.

We don’t build empires. We plant belief.

And in 2025, we planted a lot of seeds. We cannot wait what 2026 will bring.

Now, go grab a carrot and wait for the fireworks.

Happy new year y'all!

Why a carrot? Is it a meme? A joke? A farming metaphor gone too far?

The short answer: no.
The long answer is a story about incentives, disincentives, and why most systems fail to balance them.

The Old Fable Was Wrong

For as long as humans have tried to organize themselves, they’ve argued about motivation.

Some believed in the stick:
rules, punishment, authority, force.

Others believed in the carrot:
rewards, bonuses, praise, upside.

Both camps were partially right.
Both were dangerously incomplete.

The stick creates compliance, but kills creativity.
The carrot creates motion, but often without value alignment.

What most systems missed is that incentives and disincentives don’t exist in isolation.
They shape behavior together.

The real lesson was never carrot or stick.
It was carrot and stick, in balance.

Why a Carrot?

We chose the carrot not because it’s cute but for its representative nature of directional desire. A carrot doesn’t force you to move, but rather invites you to participate

But here’s the part that matters:

A carrot only works if you’re allowed to walk away from it.

If there’s no cost to being wrong,
no downside to careless action,
then rewards turn into theater.

That’s why, in Incented:

• You can stake FOR something you believe in

• You can stake AGAINST something you think is wrong

• You’re rewarded for being right

• And lightly penalized for being careless (the stick)

The carrot pulls.
The disincentive shapes.
Together, they produce signal.

The Garden Fable

There’s a small story we like to tell.

Once, there was a garden full of rabbits.

At first, carrots were free.
Everyone took as many as they could.
Soon, the soil was empty.

Then the gardener tried rules.
“Only take one carrot.”
The rabbits complied, but stopped caring.

Finally, the gardener changed the system.

Carrots would only grow where rabbits planted seeds.
Seeds could be lost if planted carelessly.
But when planted wisely, the garden flourished for everyone.

Suddenly, rabbits didn’t just eat carrots.
They thought about where to plant them.

The garden no longer needed control.
It had alignment. They coordinated.

What the Carrot Means in Incented

The carrot in our logo represents:

• Incentives as guidance, not coercion

• Belief with skin in the game

• Reward and accountability in the same motion

• Markets for coordination, not domination

Incented is about revealing what people actually believe. At Incented, we plant belief.

The Core Idea

• Incentives don’t corrupt — they reveal

• Carrots alone create hype

• Sticks alone create fear

• Balanced incentives create truth

And truth, over time, grows systems that last.

That’s why Incented isn’t a company in the traditional sense.
It’s an experiment.

A garden for coordination.
A place where belief has weight.
And where every incentive is a vote for what the world becomes next.

We don’t build empires.

We plant belief.

And this is where innovation somehow happens?

We all know it to be true. Every year amazing things come from EthDenver! Projects from all over the world gather together to share their progress with an eager, receptive crowd of potential users, contributors, and investors. Deals are struck, friendships are made, and bonds are formed!

And all of this happens on a stage somewhere, with a person holding a mic while standing in front of a slideshow!

Ok, that's a lie. No deals are struck during a mainstage presentation. No friendships are formed while vigorously taking down notes from a slide deck that is probably floating around the internet somewhere anyway. And the bonds that people truly remember rarely are formed while sitting in an uncomfortable chair being monologued at by someone talking too fast!

This is the true magic sauce of any major event. Everyone knows the side events and the afterparties are where all the action goes down!

EthDenver is no different. Which side events are you going to? Did you get your ticket for the secret rave? Make sure you have your phone charged and Uber loaded up to get you around so you don't miss out on a single thing! Good luck... whether you're an old pro at tech events, or this is your first time, it is guaranteed that you will miss out on something, somewhere. Your fomo will not be abated, not here!

Projects, teams, and communities everywhere are dangling figurative carrots to entice all you mad hoppers to bounce over to their little corner of enticement. The Carrot Castle, however, is taking a much more literal approach:

We're giving out actual carrots.

No, for real. There's going to be so many carrots we're ALL gonna be orange by the end of the week! Fresh carrots, carrot juice, carrot cake, carrot suits... if it can be made out of carrots, we've got it.

But here's the real twist for you: Carrots are Money.

Yes, you heard that right. "But that doesn't make any sense" you say?

It might not make any sense, but it's true. We're giving out carrots all week long, and somehow, at the end of it all, people are going to get money for carrots! We did say that we were going to fix funding in web3, after all! Didn't we? Well, we're fixing funding! With carrots!

How's that for a..... well... carrot!

But what if you're tired of all the carrot-chasing and tail-wagging hype? We started out talking about making bonds and building friendships, after all...

The true heart of the Carrot Castle is the sofa. Just like our actual, literal carrots, we have an actual, literal sofa. We're just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the main stage, and we'll be there all week. Chilling, eating carrots, hot tubbing, and chatting with some of the coolest people in crypto. That's what the Castle is all about!

Starting first thing in the morning, we've already got water boiling ready to brew some tea or coffee. Grab some bagels to share and head over (or just come, someone else probably already brought bagels anyway) and hang out with Trigs around the sofa before heading off to get talked at all day, and instead talk at him about interesting stuff like your personal knowledge management strategies in the age of AI, or perhaps convince him to go for a casual morning hike through the park if it's sunny out!

Throughout the day, in between the big events, the Castle will be a slow-paced hub of casual activity. Drop by for personalized demos and workshops with unprecedented access to the amazing people that make events possible, and learn directly from their experience how to bring your own local events onchain! If you hang out for too long, you'll probably find yourself sucked into a conversation about onchain credentials for digital reputation or impact analysis strategies for funding allocation programs. Or you might find yourself judging a Pitch Battle, so watch out!

As the day winds down, you can always count on Sven to be winding it up at the Castle. If you're looking for a better time than a headache and a bar tab, late night chilling at the Castle is where you want to be. Grab some beverages, order in some food, we'll provide the sofa! We'll be hacking on grants, trying to figure out how to fix funding. Or how to fix a carrot themed whiskey sour; either way it'll be a lot more fun than not being able to hear people talk while potentially having a flashing light induced seizure. Or maybe you just didn't get invited to the Rave, but you want to pretend like you chose not to go...

We won't judge or pry, promise! We'll just hand you a carrot and welcome you to the castle.

If you've gotten this far, you're already down the rabbit hole, my friend.

Carrot Castle, aka 'the sofa' for EthDenver 2025

RSVP today, and don't just cheap out and get the free one. We've got a very angry carrot farmer who apparently doesn't understand what "public goods carrots" means.