Token-gated websites are Web3’s virtual velvet rope

Now, the retailer is creating a design contest and the option for members to submit ideas on which the community can vote via Discord. People can elect to sell their membership tokens to transfer membership, but Guerra is hopeful that the promise of future perks will keep people around. “The focus now is getting this right — setting the blueprint and making the customer experience up to par,” he says.

YSL Beauté media and 360 activation director Diane Hecquet says that the brand sees NFTs as the future — “or at least as an interesting complement to classic CRM programs”. She points to a laundry list of incentives for the brand’s investment, including: NFT holders don’t need to give their data, they own something from the brand that holds value (compared to an email login), and because experiential rewards create more memorability and attachment than transactional perks. On the brand side, wallet notifications enable YSL Beauté to have “direct contact with holders on a touchpoint that is less crowded than emails or text message”.

Brands can also target specific holders of collections and tailor the experience based on what’s in their wallet. For example, “You could say, ‘You can access this content only with a wallet with two YSL tokens, this POAP (proof of attendance protocol) and one Bored Ape,’ or, ‘This call to action or section should only be accessible to a wallet with the digital twin of this watch and the membership diamond hand token,’” says Pierre-Nicolas Hurstel, co-founder and CEO of Arianee, who worked with IWC and YSL Beauté on their strategies. And, it’s not just access to a specific product; IWC is planning a virtual event space, while others might offer chat rooms for holders.

These types of perks can extend to the physical world. At a recent event in Stadium Goods’s Soho New York store, people who owned a Gutter Cat Gang NFT got access to associated merch, which was token-gated using the Tokenproof app that displays a QR code to confirm ownership. Gutter Cat Gang NFT holders could also pay using crypto (BTC, ETH, USDC). “Stadium Goods believes that Web3 technologies are going to be increasingly and seamlessly woven into our daily lives, and we wanted to get ahead of that curve,” says Stadium Goods chief strategy and chief product officer Laura Sartor, adding that the retailer’s audience is “embracing it more and more”.