How much volume can you build with a points program in web3?

Today, I wanted to drop a quick case study on MarginFi, a lending protocol in Solana

Launched in July 2023, they are one of the first and most extensive point programs in crypto 👇

⚡️ Buiding /fuul (a16z CSX), the affiliate marketing protocol
🎓 @MIT

2/ But how does it work?

Users can earn mrgn points by:

• lending/ borrowing assets
• referring new users to the platform

Notably, while lending = 1 point per dollar/ day, borrowing = 4 points for the same amount, encouraging active borrowing within the ecosystem.

3/ Here's MarginFi's liquidity after the program launched, according to 
@defillama 👇

5/ 
3. deep referrals (getting points for the referees that the referrer invites)

4. making it easy for users to see how they’re performing on the affiliate program through a leaderboard (https://app.marginfi.com/points)

fuul

6/ To sum it up, I think there's a lot of lessons to learn here on how a points program can bootstrap early growth. 
 
At /fuul we’re excited to help projects launch their own referral and points programs. We in fact recently released infra for points

If you're thinking of launching one, please feel free to DC me

7/ Here's our announcement on points to learn more on how points programs work on /fuul

7/ Here's our announcement on points to learn more on how points programs work on /fuul 

https://www.fuul.xyz/blog/points-programs-are-now-live-on-fuul

4/ Few notes to make:
- Program didn't sky rocketed since day 1
- Certainly points had more of a "novelty" factor than now

But this program launch has been really well executed:
1. simple communication (more liquidity = more points)
2. making *referrals* the soul of this points program