Mantle Journey was born from a realization that most web3 ecosystems, both layer 1s (L1s) and layer 2s (L2s) alike, suffer from mercenary capital/attention and a lack of stickiness.

Most such ecosystems will get an influx of Total Value Locked (TVL) and users at key milestones of their roadmap (i.e., airdrops), but see said TVL, users, and even developers fall away for the majority of the time. Whilst one can argue that this is the unshakeable nature of profit and yield-driven markets in general, there is still a need to better understand how greater coordination and synergy between the base ecosystem, and the decentralized applications (dApps) built atop said base layer, can lead to greater user and builder-stickiness.

Our thesis is that this greater coordination between the ecosystem and dApps, and by extension — ecosystem stickiness — can be fostered via two main ways, both of which are premised upon the development of an ecosystem-level indexing engine.

First, the development of the aforementioned engine will allow for swiftly-coordinated user-acquisition and/or user-retention strategies and campaigns as and when the ecosystem and/or the ecosystem dApps require them, especially in periods of slumps or attention-drain.

For example, such an engine will allow for a seamless, almost-automated, and fair disbursement of rewards and incentives (airdrops, fee rebates, etc.) for users and/or dApps who hit a certain onchain-activity threshold or yardstick within a certain timeframe. Users and dApps alike will be rewarded proportionally and commensurately based on the value they provide the chain with, while an additional benefit for the latter would be that they will further be able to run dApp-level campaigns in a very fuss-free, nimble, and targeted manner (wherein they can focus on their power users and/or user-profile they want to target) as and when they want or need to.

This allows for both the ecosystem as well as the dApps to flexibly ride the peaks and troughs of capital and user-inflow and outflows, and to ensure that they will always be able to bootstrap and/or retain users at the most crucial times, and in the most targeted and focused manner. On top of this, the user acquisition costs for both the ecosystem and dApps will be greatly reduced, and rendered way more efficient.

Next, said engine will also greatly synergize with, and empower, the developments of various ecosystem partners (dApps) to create a never-ending flywheel that will benefit both the base ecosystem, as well as the ecosystem dApps.

To evince: if a particular dApp that is building on Mantle Network has developments that they want to run user-acquisition campaigns for, we can incentivize said protocol’s power users (we will be able to very quickly identify them because of the engine), or just all Mantle users in general to partake in said developments, via disbursement of points (calculated via the engine) for participation.

This will empower the dApp to tap on the network effects of the ecosystem at large, something that will then grow ecosystem activity in a way that accrues a lot of value to it. This is exactly the value-flywheel that was mentioned above — one that will exponentially amplify the efforts of both dApps and Mantle as an ecosystem.

Flowing from this, Mantle Journey is indubitably the cornerstone engine of our entire ecosystem, out of which suites of innovative marketing, user-acquisition and community-engagement tools, campaigns and mechanisms can be developed. The possibilities are endless.