Award Pool, an integrated platform designed to connect brands and content creators to fans, today announced the upcoming launch of its platform that will reward community engagement with nonfungible tokens.

Founded in 2020, Award Pool makes it possible to create gamified campaigns – using social media, challenges and other mechanisms – in order to increase engagement and loyalty by catering to communities.

Content creators on the platform can generate nonfungible tokens as rewards, which are a type of crypto asset representing digital items on blockchains, such as artwork, images and in-game items. In the case of Award Pool, the NFTs can be brand-related collectibles, which fans can collect, trade and sell.

The platform is designed to be as friendly as possible, with no crypto-related knowledge required for creators or fans. It will even manage the NFTs, allowing them to be minted on several different blockchains including Celo and Ethereum.

“Our mission is to give brands and individuals the power to build vibrant groups of followers, fans and customers,” said Award Pool Chief Executive Reuven Cohen. “To accomplish this, Award Pool has developed an innovative platform that enhances experiences and gamifies community engagement, enabling users to collect unique amazements securely in one place.”

Brands and creators can award fans with NFTs by giving them points to “buy” them by providing a series of campaign challenges for them to participate in. For example, watch a YouTube video, post on Instagram, follow on Twitter, enter an in-game competition and so forth. After gaining enough points on the platform, users can then purchase the NFT and add it to their wallets.

Cohen told SiliconANGLE that Award Pool began as a family project and this taught him how the market for NFTs could be used to reach younger generations through gamified content.

“The initial intention was to build something as a family, teach our three kids about how to build a start-up,” Cohen said. “Our goal was to excite our kids and therefore find a way to engage the digital generation, Gen Z primarily. As we developed the platform, we discovered the best way to reach that generation was with gamified engagement challenges and NFT rewards.”

The digital generation, he explained, doesn’t see a difference between tangible and intangible rewards. In some cases, there’s more excitement about skins in a videogame such as Fortnite or an exclusive video clip from a favorite TikTok creator than there might be for some physical item.

NFTs represent a massive intangible reward market for content creators and brands, with over $2.5 billion in sales volume during the first half of 2021.

Award Pool today also announced its first partnership with So.Co, a curated, image-based platform for music and related culture. Together the two platforms will allow musicians and bands on the site to create customized NFTs and reward users for participation in campaigns and challenges with collectibles.

The company said that its platform is slated to launch by the end of the month and is mobile-first by design, it will be available for any device.

Image: Award Pool