Blackbird, the restaurant loyalty platform based by Resy and Eater co-founder Ben Leventhal, shared Thursday that its Flynet mainnet is dwell, bringing restaurant funds on-chain.
Flynet is a layer-3 blockchain based mostly on high of Coinbase’s Base chain. Base, a layer-2 community, permits customers to transact on high of Ethereum for sooner and cheaper.
The crew claims that having a layer-3 advantages the restaurant trade, as a result of “by dealing with funds and loyalty packages completely on Flynet, Blackbird eliminates conventional middlemen, reduces transaction prices, and introduces a brand new mannequin for rewarding each diners and companions.”
Blackbird had beforehand launched a funds platform, letting customers pay for his or her meals with $FLY, the platform’s native token, which customers may earn by way of the packages loyalty program by eating at taking part eating places, or by buying it within the Blackbird app utilizing the USDC stablecoin.
With Flynet dwell, $FLY shall be utilized in the identical manner, however now eating places can use the token to pay platform charges as effectively. As well as, the crew is releasing a brand new token, $F2, for use for fuel charges on the community.
The crew stated that they’ll airdrop 13% of the $F2 token provide to early customers and eating places, with distribution relying on sure exercise metrics. The remaining 87% of $F2 will go to “insiders, the treasury, and we’ve one other six seasons after this that we’ll allocate tokens to the individuals,” Leventhal advised CoinDesk in an interview.
In response to the crew, Blackbird has $85 million in funding with backers from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase, Spark Capital, and American Categorical. In 2023, a16z raised greater than $24 million for the platform in a Sequence A spherical.
Blackbird at present is offered in New York, San Francisco and Charleston, and lets diners earn rewards at a few of their favourite eating places. Leventhal advised CoinDesk there are roughly 500 eating places as a part of their loyalty program.
“What we predict we are able to do is construct one thing the place transactions turn out to be a lot more economical, and the levers that eating places have to draw and retain clients will turn out to be huge,” Leventhal advised CoinDesk on how he sees the restaurant trade and blockchain intersecting. “And people two issues, greater than anything, is the explanation why we’re constructing on-chain.”
Learn extra: Blackbird, Web3 Startup From Resy Co-Founder, Desires Diners to Pay for Meals in Crypto
