This article focuses on the common pain points of the Web 3 growth stack in information distribution, and introduces in detail Aki Network's solution ideas starting from data and KOL network influence, product matrix, unique advantages, and a roadmap to open protocols.

On March 15th, Aki Network, a data-oriented Web3 project focusing on the KOL influence market, announced the launch of a new website. The website upgrade has greatly improved the visual effects of many popular products under Aki Network. The new website has been warmly welcomed by its more than 120,000 community members and more than 2,400 KOL users. At the same time, Aki Network also announced the latest cooperation with zkSync before its new website was launched.

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The information gap remains a pervasive problem in the current Web3 world

We who have been in the industry for a long time seem to seldom look back at ourselves when we first entered Web3 as a rookie. At that time, we were excited to contribute to each paradigm-changing project, eager to enjoy the joy of witnessing the fulfillment of the promise of cryptocurrency, and delighted to find like-minded fellow travelers in the community.

However, the real Web3 journey is more like an adventure in a dark forest: Novices are always unable to accurately obtain airdrop opportunities, and have to screen out all kinds of malicious hype; KOLs even have to face the reputation brought by Rug Pulls risk; the project party may be completely submerged in robot and Sybil attacks... If you want to change all this, you need to work hard from users, KOL and project parties to make the real and valuable information slightly confused here Stand out more efficiently in the Web3 market.

• The average user might follow a popular account on Twitter or join hundreds of AMAs and still get lost: Who should I trust? Which items are valuable? Where can I find trusted Web3 voices?

• KOLs or project parties are always racking their brains to attract real users: who is the right audience for the project party? How to accurately reach real users? How can ROI and sustainability be balanced while increasing impact?

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Aki Network's solution: Serving KOL-centric information network with data-driven product matrix

In Web2 Internet marketing, there is a common belief that KOL advertising is more cost-effective and attractive than traditional digital channels such as Facebook and Google Ads. Therefore, KOL promotion has also become an alternative to traditional marketing. In Web3, the KOL itself is also an indispensable information center, and can even match users and projects with each other more precisely than most marketing channels. Therefore, KOL will continue to be one of the key means to guide the popularization and application of Web3.

On a strategic level, Aki Network focuses on connecting and cultivating waist and long-tail KOLs or KOCs. Because they are usually aspiring opinion leaders, they are also more valued by a vertical, loyal and sticky fan base. More importantly, Aki Network is using data as a means to achieve this strategic vision. Data has become the backbone of targeted marketing and AI-driven analytics, and arguably the only way it can achieve this strategic vision.

Aki Network has built a comprehensive set of products and services for more users and KOLs, enabling them to obtain corresponding rewards for their contributions in high-quality project activities. Its products mainly include:

• Campaign Engine: Cold start is a major pain point of the Web3 project, but Aki Campaign Engine provides the project side with a more efficient and convenient way to achieve it.

1. Aki Network's in-campaign referral tracking feature ensures that the program can measure each influencer's marketing performance and analyze and attribute based on relevant data.

2. The data generated through Aki Network's KOL network and proprietary referral tracking mechanism are essential for the long-term and successful marketing of any Web3 project.

(Aki Network’s broad coverage of cost-effective mid-tier and long-tail KOLs supports superior campaign scale, ROI, and authenticity.)

StarMap is a user-friendly dashboard. Aki Network quantifies a KOL's Web3 influence into a score using an algorithmically derived in-house benchmarking system. The StarMap platform provides intuitive, meaningful metrics such as KOL follower engagement on social media, KOL awareness of GameFi, and more.

(Aki Network can fetch data from Web3 and Web2 data sources, such as Twitter and Discord.)

• Aki Network introduces two pages, Aki Profile and Aki InScore, allowing unlicensed Web3 individual users to log in, so that as much community data as possible can be loaded into the StarMap database.

KOLs are more willing to disclose their various information on Aki Profile through the feedback of new user traffic and project commercial exposure brought by StarMap.

(The average Web3 user might use the Aki Profile as a starting point to find Web3 voices and ideas they like.)

• Aki Badges: Aki Badges are soul bound non-fungible tokens (SBT). Currently published on the BNB chain, it is used to define the contributions made by users and KOLs in marketing activities hosted by Aki Network.

1. Aki Network incentivizes users to actively acquire Aki Badge through Aki Reward, usually in the form of cash stablecoins and in the future in a way designed to enable all participants to benefit from contributing to the rapid growth of Aki Network Give back to users.

2. Similar to the recommendation tracking mechanism, Aki Badge SBT will serve as important on-chain data to identify valuable KOLs and real users.

(Aki Badges are minted quarterly and upgraded to top event contributors and most loyal users, entitle them to share Aki Reward.)

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Advantages of Aki Network: It can bring unique information and business value to all ecological participants

Aki Network is not just a place to find tasks, nor is it simply a platform for generating and verifying on-chain credentials.

• Search for the best items:Aki Network's exclusive research team carefully selects the highest-quality projects for KOLs and users; and provides license-free event hosting tools for all users.

• Prioritize user education:Aki Network selects key information about projects and presents them to users along with a task list to help them learn more about the projects they are interacting with.

1. Aki Network's unique StarMap provides KOL influence indicators calculated based on artificial intelligence. Then it provides users with a very simple way to find their favorite KOL and conduct industry research in Web3.

2. Aki Badge ensures that users' hard work is accurately recorded and effectively accumulated for future opportunities to be rewarded. (Includes direct rewards from Aki Network or related incentives from other projects.)

• Incubating the future of Web3:Aki Network can enable long-tail KOLs with insufficient influence to directly contact real users and high-quality projects.

• Higher Marketing ROI:The waist and long-tail KOL network created through Aki Network enables the project party to not only obtain user contributions in promotion activities, but also establish familiarity and rapport among KOLs, and accumulate highly valuable historical data.

Since its establishment at the end of 2021, Aki Network has held 120 events and established partnerships with 2,400 waist and long-tail KOLs, more than 114,000 social media followers, and more than 177,000 mature personal networks. Aki Network's ecosystem partners include CyberConnect, Mask Network, Ceramic and Alchemy Pay, as well as many undisclosed industry leaders and top investors.

Not only that, Aki Network also launched a joint marketing campaign with Sequoia Capital-backed Web3 electronic agreement signing application EthSign, which attracted more than 35,000 real participants in just 2 weeks, 78% of whom completed all Task. Aki Network also helped SynFutures, the leading DeFi protocol on the Polygon chain, gain more than 15,000 Twitter followers in 21 days. In both campaigns, Aki Network's users and KOLs generated 80% additional traffic with extremely high conversion rates through links powered by referral mechanisms.

At the same time, Aki Network also released a recent roadmap, which includes many exciting technology upgrades and business development:

• Q1 2023: multi-chain integration with zkSync and Aptos;

• The second quarter of 2023: launch a large-scale event for the Japanese market, optimize Aki InScore, and officially launch the micro-influencer incubation plan;

• Q3 2023: Introduction of zkSNARKs to improve data privacy;

• Q4 2023: Add Aki Network's proprietary AIGC tool to support content creation in events, form Aki Governance DAO;

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From Aki Network to Aki Protocol, an open data repository leading the Web3 growth stack

It is worth mentioning that the Aki Network team is working hard to further embrace the open, permissionless and autonomous nature of the Web3 world. According to Aki's white paper, Aki Network will gradually become a basic data layer for building a new and practical Web3 code set (Web3 library) -- that is, Aki Protocol.

Aki Protocol is an open infrastructure, multi-chain knowledge base that provides expression oracle services. , and at the same time reward data contributors. Aki Protocol will become the "Web3 Google" of the future - Aki Protocol will introduce an open application program interface (API) to respond to various project-level queries, such as "list of fake accounts on Arbitrum" or "Ethereum Top 100 power degen NFT traders".

Essentially, the answers to these query questions are packaged and classified into clusters of addresses on the blockchain by Aki’s Proof of Association technology, and then given meaning and labeled accordingly by Aki Protocol participants. Aki Protocol's open API products can only be realized through Aki Network, because Aki Protocol's open API products need to collect and index the latter's ever-expanding KOL and user base data through Aki Network to expand its service scope.

It is reported that Aki Protocol will also use zk-SNARK technology, and then make the product logic and results of Aki Network verifiable on the chain. Such as scores, rankings, tags, etc. on StarMap and Aki Profile. These data will be open to everyone to view and verify on the blockchain. Undoubtedly, zero-knowledge proof technology will further help Aki Protocol's open library API protect the original data of Aki Network data contributors from privacy infringement during the call process. .

In the future, Aki Protocol's flywheel between communities, activities, and data will spin rapidly. By focusing on the "KOL promotion" field, Aki Network and Aki Protocol are bound to become powerful data leaders in the Web3 growth stack. More importantly, based on a data-driven approach, Aki curates a unique Web3 experience for all stakeholders. This strategic positioning is clearly superior to other competitors, allowing it to expand in Web3 to meet its next billion users The long-term alpha is captured in the process.