# Nexus Empowers Digital Economy by Converting Attention into Engagement

In the digital economy, attention is one of the most scarce and valuable resources; however, it does not inherently create sustainable value. Without converting attention into engagement, real impact remains unmet.

# Nexus by Zentry: Bridging Attention with Engagement

Zentry’s Nexus offers an effective model to transform attention into engagement. It introduces a class system that invites universal user participation and leverages gamification elements to encourage active engagement. If attention is the currency of the digital economy, Nexus functions as a financial system that manages this value efficiently.

Zentry’s model has the potential to pioneer a new paradigm in the attention economy. However, for tangible results, the sustainability of its engagement and reward mechanism must be demonstrated, and challenges remain in materializing the metavision.

# Is Merely Capturing Attention Sufficient?

In today’s digital economy, attention is the most limited and valuable resource. Corporations fiercely compete to capture this scarce resource, investing significant costs. Yet, merely attracting attention doesn’t generate sustainable value. Investing resources to garner attention without converting it is akin to fueling an idle car; the fuel burns, but no progress is made.

Attention gains meaning only when it translates into active participation. Artificially created attention that doesn’t convert to engagement fails to vitalize the ecosystem. However, this is not an easy task since attention does not automatically lead to engagement.

Furthermore, the cost of acquiring attention in the digital economy continues to rise. Hence, corporations must find ways not only to attract attention but also to convert it into meaningful participation and contribution. To achieve this, effective incentive mechanisms that drive user engagement and models providing diverse participation opportunities are essential. In this context, Zentry’s gamified attention economy platform ‘Nexus’ offers a viable alternative for transforming attention into engagement.

# Nexus: Zentry’s Gamified Attention Economy

Zentry is a Web3 project aimed at creating a play economy by gamifying everything in daily life. It seeks to blur the boundaries between reality and games, imbuing all interactions with significance and value.

Nexus marks the first step in realizing Zentry’s vision. Nexus gamifies interactions on social media, aiming to convert passive attention into active participation. This engagement leads to activities that attract more users’ attention, creating a virtuous cycle of continuous engagement.

To this end, Nexus presents a unique model combining concepts from SocialFi and InfoFi. Through this model, Nexus quantifies activities within social media and rewards participation with economic value. It expands beyond mere economic value creation, establishing a market-based system where users can directly evaluate the quality and impact of information.

## Class System: Storyteller and Watcher

Conventional digital platforms often feature limited participation and reward structures centered around creators. In contrast, Nexus introduces a class system, or ‘occupation’ mechanism, allowing all users to participate and contribute. Currently, Nexus includes two classes: Storyteller and Watcher.

Storytellers create and share content, playing a key role in attracting user attention and engagement. This class is accessible to everyone without specific conditions, and users’ content automatically accumulates within Nexus. These activities are evaluated by Watchers and Nexus’s proprietary AI, forming the basis for rewards.

Watchers are more than mere observers; they are key stakeholders in Nexus’s continuous growth. This class is granted to users meeting certain conditions such as owning tokens, staking, or project selection. Watchers evaluate the quality of content created by Storytellers and ensure the appropriate distribution of attention and rewards within the ecosystem. Unlike common digital platforms where most users remain passive observers, Nexus encourages active participation by assigning roles and rewards.

Moreover, the class system in Nexus extends beyond Storytellers and Watchers. While it currently operates around social media, it will expand to integrate with various services from Zentry and external platforms. This integration will introduce new classes offering diverse forms of participation and rewards, potentially including on-chain activities. For example, the Chainwalker class for Web3 users could be added. Users can simultaneously develop multiple classes, forming a unique identity through these combinations.

## Gamification: Nexus Missions and Story Cards

Based on the class system, Nexus incorporates gamification elements. In addition to basic features like point allocation (Vault) and leaderboard competitions, it offers 1) Nexus Missions and 2) Story Cards.

Nexus Missions provide a quest system offering diverse challenges to users, promoting concentrated engagement similar to pre-registration events in mobile games. For instance, missions inviting new users could spur the initial growth of a community, with milestone achievements unlocking ecosystem-wide rewards through buybacks. This format allows users to experience a collective sense of achievement similar to raid missions.

Nexus Missions are an effective short-term strategy to boost platform activity, providing a fast and efficient way for projects to attain desired goals. Simultaneously, they offer users a balanced mix of economic rewards like points or tokens, and non-economic rewards such as story cards and a sense of achievement, expected to enhance participation.

Story Cards act as achievement records based on a user’s interactions. They are comparable to challenges on Steam or trophies on PlayStation but are not predefined goals. Instead, they naturally accumulate, reflecting individual experiences and contributions, thereby strengthening user retention long-term.

For example, users who play Axie Infinity or invest in certain meme coins could receive special Story Cards, encouraging them to share these on social media as badges of honor. These cards could later translate into special privileges or whitelist slots.

## zAI: Accelerating the Ecosystem with AI

Nexus leverages AI technology to stimulate user engagement and activate the ecosystem. Zentry’s zAI framework involves various AI agents that interact with users in real-time, delivering personalized experiences to encourage platform participation. zAI operates primarily through Persona Agents and Operator Agents, each enhancing user experience and supporting organic platform activity.

Persona Agents are more than simple chatbots; they function like ‘living NPCs’ with unique personalities and roles, interacting with users in real-time. For example, Zentry’s AI agent ‘Alicia’ performs as a Watcher, assessing content and issuing direct rewards for excellent posts, thereby enhancing engagement and ecosystem vitality. While Alicia is the only agent currently, Zentry plans to expand persona agents for various partner projects using zAI.

Operator Agents optimize platform operations from the backend. They handle on-chain data verification, data oracle integration, content quality management, optimized reward distribution, and rule enforcement, bolstering ecosystem reliability and operational efficiency. Furthermore, these agents will integrate with external AI, expanding Nexus platform functionalities and creating a flexible, scalable ecosystem.

Nexus’s AI agents function as active participants in the ecosystem, interacting not only with users but also with other AI agents, generating high-quality content, facilitating real-time interaction, and enriching the ecosystem’s immersive experience.

# Nexus Momentum: New Opportunities Ahead

## Eliminating Market Friction in the Attention Economy

Traditional digital marketing invests heavily in merely exposing users to content, with unclear effectiveness in driving substantial user engagement. Particularly in the Web3 sector, large-scale influencer (KOL) marketing presents challenges such as evaluating influencer impact, setting appropriate compensation standards, and objectively measuring performance, leading to market friction.

Nexus seeks to address these issues by applying market economy principles. By allowing direct user evaluation and validation of content value, influencer influence and content worth become more transparent. This approach shifts the structure from a few major participants to numerous active contributors, establishing a sophisticated value assessment system.

This structure evolves through a dual flywheel model, reducing market friction and enhancing engagement. The Attention Flywheel sees users sharing experiences and generating organic content, spreading network effects to attract new users. The Contribution Flywheel provides a foundation for various participants, including token holders, to contribute to the ecosystem, promoting sustained activity.

Together, these flywheels create a virtuous cycle where attention converts into contributions, and contributions amplify attention, effectively reducing market friction in the attention economy.

## Towards a Unified Identity Bridging Reality and Digital

Zentry’s concept of the play economy extends to a metavision. The metavision, proposed by legendary game designer Richard Garfield, encompasses not just the game itself but all surrounding contexts and experiences. For instance, the experience of playing poker in a casino versus with friends at home differs vastly, despite identical rules.

Zentry embraces this metavision by making reality playful (infusing daily activities with game elements), adding real-world value to games (providing tangible or intangible rewards for game activities), and creating a comprehensive ‘game of games’. Nexus, as the core hub of this metavision, integrates and accumulates all experiences.

Nexus is set to integrate organically with Zentry’s other products like Radiant—a game platform merging Web2 and Web3 games, Azul—a personalized AI assistant, Zigma—an NFT collection, and Vault—a staking platform. Nexus extends to daily activities, rendering the user’s entire environment interactive and interconnected like an MMORPG.

For example, a user’s record of playing ‘Dota 2’ would be stored on Radiant, and reviews written on X would be verified by Nexus, rewarding users based on this data. Even mundane activities like visiting cafes or shopping could involve game elements and rewards.

Ultimately, Nexus is poised to function as an inclusive digital identity, unifying fragmented data into a cohesive whole, allowing users to access extended experiences and rewards. Increased platform attention transforms into contributions and valuable data, creating a virtuous cycle.

# In Conclusion

Zentry’s Nexus presents a model for converting ‘attention’—the most scarce resource in the digital economy—into ‘engagement.’ While capturing attention is crucial, true value arises when that attention turns into participation and contribution. Nexus aims to facilitate this transition effectively with its growth-hacking strategies involving various incentives.

Attention serves as the currency of the digital economy—a limited and highly valuable asset. Nexus can be seen as a financial system managing this currency’s liquidity, accumulating value, and distributing it efficiently. Its class system, gamification elements, and AI technology will serve as the infrastructure enhancing attention efficiency. As attention becomes increasingly vital, systems like Nexus that utilize it efficiently will set new paradigms in the digital economy.

Zentry’s Nexus has already amassed 150,000 users, 81 million impressions, and over 1.3 million engagements. However, these figures merely represent the beginning of their ambitious vision. The realization of a metavision that blurs the boundaries between reality and games, and the new possibilities it brings to the digital economy, remain to be seen.

*This article is part of a report by Tiger Research, a global Web3 research institute and partner of Block Media, titled ‘Zentry: A World Where Every Interaction Becomes a Game.’ The full report is available on the Tiger Research official site.