Recently, Starbucks announced that it will suspend its NFT product Starbucks Odyssey program, according to the official website, the program will end at the end of March, and holders can still continue to trade on the Nifty Gateway platform.
Starbucks has gone all the way from the deep bear in the crypto asset market, a successful case of Starbucks entering the Web3 field as a physical brand, and has played Web3 digital marketing with great success, why did it suddenly stop Odyssey NFTs when the crypto asset market was about to warm up?
Starbucks officials only gave a vague answer on the FAQ page of its official website, but only gave a vague answer: “The Starbucks Odyssey Beta must end in preparation for the next step in our continued development plan.” ”
In 2022, Brady Brewer, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Starbucks, was confident in the Odyssey program, saying that “leveraging Web3 technology will allow our members to have experiences and ownership that were previously unavailable.” At the time, it was a bear market in the crypto asset market, but the floor price and sales volume of Odyssey NFTs were rising, and the experiential activities to accompany the program continued to innovate.
After only one year of implementation, the plan to improve Starbucks’ customer loyalty system has come to an end. Checking the price of related NFTs found that the vast majority of the Odyssey NFT collection were in a state of breakage, which may be one of the reasons why Starbucks pressed the pause button.
And Starbucks is not the first traditional brand to withdraw from the NFT market, with game retailer GameStop and South Korean telecommunications company KT also recently shrinking their NFT product territory.
01 Most of the Odyssey NFTs are broken
Last Friday, Starbucks announced that it would end its Odyssey Beta customer loyalty program.
Open Starbucks Odyssey, and if you’re still planning to join the program, you’ll see a farewell message pop up: “The Starbucks Odyssey Beta will end on March 31, 2024.” This will direct you to Starbucks’ Starbucks Rewards registration page.
This means that Starbucks Odyssey, a Web3 product that once aimed to improve member loyalty, will be discontinued, and the Web2 membership system “Starbucks Rewards Club”, which has been built for many years, will take off the coat of Web3 and return to its original appearance.
As for the reason, Starbucks explained on the Starbucks Odyssey FAQ page: “The Odyssey Beta must end in preparation for the next step in our continued development plan”. This explanation seems to have laid some foreshadowing that Starbucks “is working to provide a place for members to connect in the future.”
It is still unknown what this future place will be, and some netizens ridiculed on social networks, “Could it be the metaverse?” and some people speculated that it could mean a “game system”. Starbucks did not respond explicitly to outside speculation.
For users who already hold Starbucks Odyssey NFTs, Starbucks said that everyone can still continue trading on the NFT trading platform Nifty Gateway.
The well-known coffee brand’s testing of NFTs began in late 2022, and the Odyssey program bills as an extension of the existing Starbucks rewards system, offering discounts to users who purchase coffee and other products in-store, increasing engagement, and rewarding them with rewards such as NFT stamps, drink-making classes, and a visit to a coffee farm in Costa Rica.
At that time, Odyssey planned to launch a closed beta version on the Polygon blockchain, and the news received attention from the Web3 market as soon as it came out. So far, Odyssey plans to launch a series of NFTs with 27 different themes, among which, the total sales of stamp NFTs at Nifty Gateway are $3.4 million.
In March 2023, Odyssey plans to release its first limited-edition NFT stamp, 2,000 Siren Collections were snapped up in less than 20 minutes, and the official website was even inaccessible due to excessive traffic, and in August 2023, the “Green Apron” NFT series was launched, up 23% in 15 hours. You must know that the NFT market at that time was still in a variety of “deep bears” that kept falling and falling.
Traditional industries and the Web3 field are waiting to see if this traditional brand can use Web3 technology and related products to improve the physical business link. Starbucks Chief Marketing Officer Brady Brewer has also confidently stated that the program will bring a “revolutionary Web3 experience” to Starbucks members.
Now, the crypto market is picking up, but Starbucks has chosen to stop the Odyssey program at this time?
According to overseas media Techcrunch, Starbucks community leader Steve Kaczynski has said that the NFT market may decline significantly from its all-time high, so it is hoped that the brand and loyalty program can still play its value in new ways to attract fans.
Indeed, the floor price of Starbucks’ more popular NFT collection is now facing market decline.
It is not difficult to find that except for the Siren series, the other series of NFTs have fallen below the offer price, and most of them have shrunk by more than 90%. This means that the users who bought and held the Odyssey series of NFTs in the first place are likely to be in a loss-making state.
The floor price of the NFT obtained by users for free by doing tasks has also fallen to single digits, which cannot cover the cost of completing the tasks in the first place, and some are not even enough to buy a cup of coffee.
02 Starbucks is not the only traditional brand that has suspended NFTs
It is undeniable that the Starbucks Odyssey NFT program, once regarded as a textbook for Web2 brands to enter Web3, has been abruptly terminated, bringing quite a shock to the industry. And Starbucks’ exit has a lot to do with the overall downturn in the NFT market.
Since February 2024, the crypto asset market has generally risen, with BTC (Bitcoin) hitting a record high, ETH (Ethereum) approaching the pre-record high, and the rise of the Meme and AI sectors has also brought returns to many crypto asset investors, but the NFT market seems to be trapped in a “cold winter”.
According to the CoinGecko report, NFT trading volume in 2023 is less than half of what it was in 2022, falling from $26.3 billion to $11.8 billion, down $14.5 billion month-on-month. In addition, NFT sales for the whole of 2023 will be about $8.7 billion, a decrease of 63.35% from $23.74 billion in 2022.
According to real-time data from NFT trading platform Blur, the floor price of blue-chip NFTs has generally fallen, and the leading NFT series “Bored Ape” BAYC has fallen continuously, down 7% in the past 7 days; Pudgy Penguins, LilPudgys, and Azuki also saw a 10%-20% decline, and DeGods floor prices fell by more than 40% on a daily basis.
The NFT market has been tumbling for half a year, and the “leader” BAYC has fallen from 75 ETH all the way to around 13 ETH, and the decline continues. KOL Bunny, who once held BAYC firmly and firmly held, once said, “The BAYC chart makes me want to kill myself.”
In addition to Starbucks, many traditional brands such as GameStop, Social Media X, and Nike have begun to shrink the layout of their NFT products.
In February 2024, game retailer GameStop announced on its official website that due to regulatory uncertainty, the company will begin phasing down its NFT marketplace on February 2, at which time, customers will no longer be able to buy, sell, or create NFTs. Prior to this, GameStop had already removed support for NFT wallets in November 2023.
GameStop, a U.S.-listed company with more than 6,000 offline stores around the world, finally showed weakness under the impact of the epidemic, losing money for two consecutive years in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, GameStop began to shift its focus to the crypto market, launching its eponymous NFT platform in July, with $2 million in trading volume on the day of its launch.
The enthusiasm of crypto players pushed GameStop NFT into the top 10 of the market rankings, but this record did not last long. In the past month, the GameStop NFT site has traded only about $40,000.
In addition, KT Corp., a South Korean telecommunications giant, will also shut down its NFT platform MINCL on March 4, citing “changes in business conditions.” According to the notice, the relevant NFT holders can transfer the NFT to an e-wallet outside of MINCL, and after the end date of the service, users will not be able to view any remaining NFTs.
In January, Elon Musk’s social media platform X also stopped supporting NFT avatars, and metaverse concept giant Meta ended its NFT plans as early as early 2023.
The suspension of the Odyssey program cannot be ruled out to be related to the sharp drop in NFT prices, and it has been less than a year since the official start of NFT sales under this plan, which is also roughly in line with the meaning of “beta”. This Web3 marketing method may only be a one-year test for Starbucks, and it has not broken Starbucks’ inherent “Starbucks Rewards Club” membership system.
The withdrawal of traditional brands and the collapse of Web3 native blue-chip NFT projects have made people have to admit that NFT, the darling of the last round of crypto asset bull market, has fallen into a sluggish market environment.