Blackbird, Restaurant Loyalty Platform, founded by Resy and Eater-Medter Ben Levenhal, shared on Thursday that its Flynet Mainnet is live, bringing restaurant payments on the chain.
The Flynet is a LAG-3 blockchain based on the top of Coinbase’s basic chain. Base, a LAG-2 network, allows users to shop on top of Ethereum for faster and cheaper.
The team claims that having a LAG-3 benefits the restaurant industry because “by dealing with payments and loyalty programs completely on the Flynet, removes Blackbird traditional middlemen, reduces transaction costs and introduces a new model to reward both diners and partners.”
Blackbird had previously released a payment platform that let users pay for their meals with $ fly, the platform’s original token, which users could earn through the loyalty program program by eating at participating restaurants or by buying it in the Blackbird app using USDC StableCecoin.
With Flynet Live, $ fly will be used in the same way, but now restaurants can also use the token to pay platform fees. In addition, the team releases a new token, $ F2 to be used for gas fees on the network.
The team said they will air 13% of the $ F2 token supply to early users and distribution restaurants depending on certain activity metrics. The remaining 87% of the $ F2 will go to “Insiders, the Treasury, and we have another six seasons after this, that we will award tokens to the participants,” Leventhal told Coindesk in an interview.
According to the team, Blackbird has $ 85 million in financing with backers from Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), Coinbase, Spark Capital and American Express. By 2023, A16Z traveled more than $ 24 million to the platform in a Serie A round.
Blackbird is currently available in New York, San Francisco and Charleston, letting eateries serve rewards at some of their favorite restaurants. Leventhal told Coindesk that there are about 500 restaurants as part of their loyalty program.
“What we think we can do is build something where transactions become much more cost -effective and the handles that restaurants have to attract and retain customers will be big,” Leventhal told Coindesk about how he sees the restaurant industry and blockchain crosses. “And the two things, more than anything else, are the reason why we build on-chain.”
Read more: Blackbird, Web3 startup from Resy-Medstifter, want eateries to pay for meals in crypto
