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The web3 landscape has changed dramatically over the last year or so. With the highly-publicized downfalls of Luna, FTX, and others adding momentum to the bear market, we’ve seen many once promising NFT projects run out of lifelines. The current market landscape is no longer conducive to previously viable models driven by primary sales and residual royalties. Times have changed and they have changed quickly. You’ve now got to build for the long term with a sustainable business plan based on web3 technology that focuses on solving a real genuine problem. Gimmicky reskins of web2 concepts won’t do either with customer needs already fulfilled by legacy players. That’s why I’m building MintPass using web3 to solve travel sharing.
When I went full time web3 in 2021, I was in search of passion areas that could be better served by technological advancement, and specifically in this case, non-fungible tokens. Leisure travel stood out as the obvious answer. At the time, we were just emerging from the strictest of pandemic lockdowns, and travel was still in a precarious position. Travel enthusiasts were coming out of an extended period unlike few in history where travel was an impossibility, and for the most passionate of travelers, who often attach key parts of their identity to the places they love to visit, this meant losing a key part of oneself in the process.
NFTs as a web3 technology work best as digital objects for enjoyment and connection. They provide a means for bringing people together, no matter where they are in the world, to partake in, celebrate, and share what they are most passionate about. In the context of travel, there is a clear need for this connectivity in a way that extends the value of travel itself beyond the bookends of a physical experience. There is potential for this technology to vastly improve every stage of travel from planning before, to enjoyment during, to commemoration after.
At MintPass, our belief and bet is that this value can be rooted in travel sharing as a means for bringing intrinsic fulfillment through social commemoration, along with deriving inspiration from the travels of others to guide future travel decision-making. But what does this look like in practice? Let’s first take a step back and see how travels are shared and commemorated today through the lens of the physical.
For years, my wife and I have collected Christmas ornaments from every new destination to which we travel. It’s made our holiday centerpiece a reflection of our global experiences. We love the nostalgia attached to each and the memories associated that can be shared with others that visit our home during the season. The traditional collectorship experience isn’t broken in its own right, but it’s inherently limited by spacial constraints both in transit as well as home storage, while also not scalable in shareability limited in impact to those who are physically there to appreciate.
We’re solving this at MintPass by creating a digital destination to curate, share, and preserve travel memories. We provide an app-based solution to collect souvenirs digitally, with each being custom and unique to your experience, where your collection becomes a visualization of travel identity and a repository for your most treasured memories. This is where the fun begins as your souvenirs unlock unique opportunities to share, connect, and compete with friends with a shared passion for travel through news feeds, achievements, and leaderboards.Â
While the base collecting experience is retrospective, the real value comes in the future in using our concierge service to make travel recommendations based on your past trips. As you collect, your profile will evolve to get to know your travel tendencies, allowing us through future AI means to make bespoke suggestions based on what travelers like you have enjoyed. We believe every traveler, their behaviors, and preferences are all wonderfully unique, and we want to provide a custom experience accordingly that becomes more impactful than a cookie-cutter ‘Top 10’ travel listicle you’d find online while planning a trip.
Selfishly, I’m building MintPass for myself as a passionate traveler whose experience could be so much better. Along the way, I’ve found many others like me for whom MintPass will be the ultimate travel companion app. Therein lies the crux of the web3 future we need by creating real value for real people. No longer will we over engineer solutions built on complicated technology to solve problems that don’t exist. Like we are at MintPass, it’s time to hyperfocus on what people want, and as applicable, utilize the tech to build that solution.
MintPass is the ultimate companion app to curate, share, and preserve travel experiences digitally. Collect one-of-a-kind digital souvenirs from every flight you take to build your travel profile. Share with friends, compete on leaderboards, unlock achievements, and receive customized travel recommendations all in a single destination. Sign up for the waitlist today at www.mintpass.com.
