Deform: A More User-Friendly Web3 Form than SurveyCake
Deform: A More User-Friendly Web3 Form than SurveyCake
#611
GM,
First:
Blocktrend is airdropping nearly 5,000 $OP tokens to thank everyone for their support (based on membership status as of January 29, 2024). Members who wish to claim $OP should click this link to fill out their membership account and wallet address. The deadline is June 30 at 24:00; if you miss it, I'll have to fill in my own wallet!
Blocktrend will resume publishing three articles per week in July, with articles on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a podcast on Wednesdays.
After last week’s article on RWA was published, the world's largest stablecoin issuer, Tether, announced the issuance of another RWA stablecoin — aUSDT (Alloy Tether).
aUSDT is backed by gold as a reserve asset and issues stablecoins equivalent to 1 USD, using gold to hedge against risks associated with US Treasuries and bank failures. In theory, as long as Tether continues to operate and its vaults remain secure, aUSDT will not become worthless electronic signals. However, if there's one thing I've learned from years in the crypto space, it's that "nothing is impossible." Now, let's get to the main topic.
This article introduces the Web3 form platform Deform. The product positioning of Deform is straightforward; you can think of it as a blockchain-integrated Google Form.
Last week, I used Deform to collect members' wallet addresses and received a lot of positive feedback. Many people used an online form integrated with a cryptocurrency wallet for the first time, and some members praised Deform's user experience as being quite simple. I could feel the excitement from these comments even through the screen.
To understand the innovation of Web3 forms, we need to start with pizza.
Pizza Day
Every year on May 22, we celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day, commemorating the 2010 event when someone "foolishly" bought two large pizzas online for 10,000 bitcoins. This day is memorable not only because of those two historically expensive pizzas but also because it answered a question that people would have about Bitcoin for the next decade: "Can Bitcoin be used to buy things?"
Pizza can be considered the most important food in the history of internet development. The world's first online transaction was also for a pizza. In 1994, Pizza Hut pioneered an online ordering site called PizzaNet. Consumers could fill out an online order form, providing their name, address, and phone number, and then receive a call from Pizza Hut to confirm the order. Payment could be made over the phone with a credit card or in cash upon delivery.
This pizza order form unexpectedly became the ancestor of online forms. However, Pizza Hut didn't know how to set up a website back then, so PizzaNet was managed by a technical service provider, Santa Cruz Operation. Let's see how journalists reported this innovation 30 years ago:
Pizza Hut has just launched an online ordering service called PizzaNet, the trendiest tech fashion. Pizza Hut's Sales Director Payne admitted, "The hardest part is getting online; otherwise, the rest of the process is quite easy... PizzaNet users must first have a computer with internet access, a web browser called Mosaic, and connect to the server at Pizza Hut headquarters in Kansas via www. Customers will see a menu, enter their personal information, and finally, this data will be sent back to Pizza Hut headquarters over the internet. To prevent online pranks, the restaurant will then call the user to verify the order and complete the payment over the phone." Although this wasn't as simple as picking up the phone to order pizza, Payne said there were increasing signs of online orders.
Ordering online allows customers to see the full menu, promotional packages, and customization options more efficiently. However, 30 years ago, most people didn't even have a computer, let alone renting internet service, setting up a modem, opening a browser, and then figuring out how to connect to PizzaNet. If you weren't a tech enthusiast, who would be willing to go through all that trouble just to order a pizza? Some might even mock, "Will a pizza ordered online taste better?"
A pizza ordered online certainly doesn't taste better. But today, going online is no longer an issue, and if an older person calls to order a pizza, the younger generation might ask, "Why not order online? Does a pizza ordered by phone taste better?"
Although this might sound a bit self-congratulatory, Blocktrend is like Pizza Hut back then, and the protagonist of this article, Deform, is the technical service provider.
Web3 Forms
Let's start with Deform's self-introduction:
Deform is not just a form builder; it's also a powerful marketing tool. Form creators can seamlessly verify on-chain digital asset holdings or track community engagement. Deform allows you to easily manage NFT marketing campaigns, create Web3 questionnaires, and analyze respondents' community backgrounds without writing any code.
Blocktrend is not the first company to create Web3 forms, and its scale is far from that of Pizza Hut. However, like Pizza Hut back then, Blocktrend is providing new experiences for people in an era when technology is not yet widespread.
Blocktrend's survey form only includes three fields: Email, Wallet Address, and Comments. If you're not a tech enthusiast, you might not understand why you would need to use Deform to create a form. After all, these three fields are quite common and can easily be handled by Google Forms or SurveyCake, both of which are completely free. Using Deform to create a form costs $49 per month for a subscription.
Furthermore, the Wallet Address field isn't something everyone knows how to fill out. The form doesn't accept copied and pasted wallet addresses; users must connect their crypto wallet on their phone or browser and sign to confirm ownership. This signature is to verify that the wallet is indeed owned by the user, similar to clicking a "confirm subscription" button when signing up for an email newsletter online.
Strictly speaking, this increases the participation barrier for users. Blocktrend is even "worse" than Pizza Hut back in the day, as it doesn't allow users to copy and paste wallet addresses, forcing everyone to learn a new trick.
At this point, I can't help but ask myself, "What are the benefits of paying a subscription fee to Deform, which in turn increases the participation barrier for members?" The answer lies at the beginning of the article. Members filling out the form are like those who first experienced using PizzaNet by Pizza Hut back in the day. Although ordering pizza by phone was simpler, ordering pizza online was more stylish.
Aside from the psychological satisfaction of being more trendy, Deform's features can indeed solve many practical problems.
At every lecture I give, I distribute ETH to the participants. In the past, I used SurveyCake to collect wallet addresses and asked everyone to copy and paste, emphasizing not to input them manually. However, I still received manually entered addresses. I knew this because a participant actually included the "..." in "0x36F...38381" in their address 🤣. With Deform's wallet connection button, this wouldn't happen.
Going a step further, Deform can also help filter out ineligible respondents. For example, Deform once collaborated with Metown, an NFT project initiated by Hokkaido melon farmers. Those who purchased the melon NFT could become digitally certified promoters by the Yubari City Government, participate in farm activities, and receive a Yubari melon during the next harvest season.
Metown used Deform to filter respondents. Respondents had to connect their wallet first, and Deform would automatically check if the wallet held the melon NFT before allowing them to proceed to fill in the delivery address. This saved the Hokkaido farmer the effort of manually verifying each respondent's eligibility, thus saving time on administrative tasks.
These examples may sound as "intentional" as ordering pizza online did 30 years ago, but the barrier to entry for blockchain, like the internet, will gradually decrease over time. When on-chain activities become as simple as going online, the situation might change dramatically.
Open Data
Last year, SurveyCake launched a whitelist service. Form creators can upload an Excel file in advance to filter respondents. If the respondent is not on the whitelist, they cannot submit the form. This new feature is indeed much simpler than the melon NFT, requiring neither prior NFT issuance nor a Deform subscription. Introducing blockchain in this scenario might seem redundant.
But this is because the current on-chain data is still quite sparse. Most people's on-chain footprints are blank, and connecting a wallet doesn't provide any additional information. However, the value of an on-chain resume has been proven by cryptocurrency airdrops in recent years. The richer the on-chain resume, the more one can potentially earn from airdrops. And this is just the beginning. More and more companies1 and governments2 are gradually putting people's digital identities on the blockchain. As on-chain data becomes richer, Web3 forms like Deform will become even more practical.
Recently, I've had a headache just trying to calculate each member's total payment. The report formats and units from different payment channels are all different and cannot be directly merged. But if Blocktrend issued subscriber NFTs and all payments were made in cryptocurrencies, it would be much easier for me to distribute OP tokens based on members' total payments in the future. All the data would be on-chain, and it wouldn't be difficult to assign higher weights to specific groups, such as article NFT collectors or public funding contributors.
Thirty years ago, people imagined that online pizza order forms would continually evolve. Not only would you see pictures of the pizza on the screen, with a clear view of the toppings instead of just text descriptions of pork, beef, and green peppers, but you could also customize the pizza like creating an image with MS Paint, freely choosing where to place mushrooms, green peppers, and pepperoni. For instance, you could arrange the pepperoni in the shape of a heart or make a mushroom birthday cake pizza. Some of these imaginings have come true, while others were overly optimistic.
In comparison, people's imaginations about Web3 forms haven't been fully opened yet. Unless on-chain data stops increasing, Web3 forms integrated with blockchain, like Deform, will become standard for all online forms in the future. Although you don't have to pay $49 and can get the same answers with Google Forms, if spending $49 allows you to experience the future in advance, why not?
Blocktrend is an independent media platform sustained by reader subscription fees. If you find Blocktrend's articles valuable, we welcome you to share this piece. You can also join discussions on our member-created Discord or collect the Writing NFT to include this article in your Web3 records.
Furthermore, please consider recommending Blocktrend to your friends and family. If you successfully refer a friend who subscribes, you'll receive a complimentary one-month extension of your membership. You can find past issues in the article list. As readers often inquire about referral codes, I have compiled them on a dedicated page for your convenience. Feel free to make use of them.