“With Great Power comes Great Responsibility”, reinforces Viet Anh Tran

I had an interesting conversation with Viet Anh Tran, the CEO & Founder of Islander. The concept of learn-to-earn in the decentralized world is starting to develop in the blockchain ecosystem. Islander is one of the first projects to follow this path and realize the massive potential that blockchain unlocks for decentralized affiliate marketing and exploring the prospects of the sector. The project is on its way to paving the way for a whole new marketing world and accelerating mass crypto adoption. This exclusive conversation will give you a gist of Islander that you definitely shouldn’t miss out on.

Enjoy the interview!

Islander is an online learn-to-earn and decentralized platform to manage and market your own projects in a unique way. Project owners (crypto project managers, influencers, content creators) can quickly engage their audience’s attention and nurture them in the long term by giving out interesting and interactive quests as well as tradable NFT items, which are either pre-made by the platform or customized by its users.

Shilika: Reminiscing about your blockchain journey, how did working on something exciting as Islander?

Viet: Having spent almost half a decade as a community builder, I was first inspired by Blockchain technology a few years ago. I was then already working very hard to build our Spiderum to be the Medium of Vietnam as it is today. Moving forward, I jumped into the Crypto World and have been a retail investor and entrepreneur in this world since then.

As I mentioned briefly earlier, while working on Spiderum, I could really understand the pain point of a community builder. Though Spiderum is one of the biggest online publishing platforms in Vietnam, when launching a product, I still find it quite hard to leverage the full potential of community engagement to achieve our goals. It was important for us (Myself and My Co-Founder Nga Levi) to reassess our subsequent steps to solve this puzzle. It was during this time, I started actively participating in the Blockchain space and saw the huge potentiality of this technology that would help us overcome the challenges Spiderum was facing.

As the dots connected, I envisioned an Island-Verse where every player, from crypto projects, and influencers to individuals, can connect, exchange values, and gain benefits in a gamified economy would be an amazing future. Users can reclaim land, own and trade NFTs, build communities, and earn crypto rewards by playing and contributing to the development of the Island-Verse.

Shilika: Despite there being abundant projects in the crypto space at the moment, what are some of the key aspects that stand out in Islander?

Viet: I believe Islander offers a solution to old-fashioned marketing techniques. Traditionally, crypto projects attract their supporters through digital marketing activities such as SEO, SEM, and advertising. This whole process of getting users on board, getting them to understand the project, waiting for their feedback, and letting them take the first action is often long and cumbersome. Islander found a way to make it easier for all parties involved with the use of gamification.

In Islander’s words, the crypto world can be seen as thousands and thousands of separated islands, with each island representing a standalone crypto project and the project owners taking on the role of “Island Lords”.

Whether a crypto project is successful or not depends on how many supporters it can get and how frequently its product and token are used. In Islander, we call these crypto adopters “Residents”. Sometimes the residents will find their own way to get to the island, sometimes they will need a boat. And the Boat owner here represents an influencer in the real world.

With Islander’s toolkit,  crypto projects, influencers, and content creators will be able to communicate their marketing efforts in a fun and interactive way. Monetization will be robust and immediate. Users will benefit greatly just by participating in different activities aka “quests”.

In short, we utilize the innovative learn-to-earn & NFT-powered affiliate model to empower a new economy and build an Island-verse for web 3.0 content & marketing.

Shilika: With different metaverses incepting in this booming space, what is the biggest difference between the Play-to-Earn model used by many other platforms and the Learn-to-Earn model developed by Islander?

Viet: The biggest difference between Play-to-Earn and Learn-to-Earn is, that the former focuses on entertainment and some financial benefits as by-products, while the latter emphasizes knowledge transfer with financial benefits. However, Islander’s approach to knowledge transfer is not through textbooks and exams but gamification.

For example, on Islander, Crypto Projects can create quests (a prominent element we take from video games) with unique narrations and rewards to engage with their supporters. We also have ranking and leaderboards to promote the most active projects, influencers and content creators on our platform.

Shilika: What can the users expect from Islander in the near future?

Viet: We will focus on solving the gas fees problem, launching NFTs and their use cases on Islander. After that, multichain will be definitely what you can expect from Islander.

In terms of measurement, we choose Total Distributed Value as one of our most important indicators. With that in mind, more potential projects with high-budget deals will be our approach to both support projects and investors/communities. I highly recommend our supporters to follow the ICE (Initial Community Education) program which Islander collabs with Avalaunch to promote every Avalaunch IDO on Islander; and the Islander Headstart Program which helps projects promote themselves even when they have not generated their token yet.

Conclusion

We are grateful for the little plugins of your valuable experiences and expertise that you have shared with us during this interview. We can’t wait to delve into the realms of Islander, quite literally.