'Earn' mechanism and the SELF wallet

One of the core use cases of the SELF web app and browser extension is the 'Earn' mechanism. SELF will establish affiliate partnerships with a large number of companies within a range of industries – ranging from travel, health and beauty to software, entertainment and finance. We’re targeting at least fifty partners for the beta version and the list of partners will grow over time, eventually ranging in the thousands.

When the user asks SELF for assistance involving a possible purchase, such as asking for recommendations or requesting a summary review of a product/service, a referral link is included in the reply. Off-chain processes track the purchase made through the link and once payment has been confirmed, an automated purchase of $SELF is initiated on a decentralised exchange on behalf of the user, amounting to a significant percentage of the referral commission for that product or service. Some tokens are also burned during this time (see tokenomics).

The web app and browser extension will have a built-in EVM-compatible crypto wallet utilising a new technology called account abstraction which allows the user to create a secure EVM-compatible crypto-wallet within seconds without having to create a seed phrase, through registering with a Google account. No other information is shared with Google, however, some users might still prefer a traditional wallet with a seed phrase and private key and that option will also be available.

$SELF is credited to the user's wallet once the purchase is confirmed, which tends to happen quarterly. The tokens will be locked for a certain amount of time to account for refund policies, to prevent users from abusing the system by purchasing something through SELF, selling their $SELF tokens, and then requesting a refund of that item or service.

This mechanism creates a perpetual buy pressure on $SELF which could be very beneficial to the price, although not guaranteed (there are many factors in play that influence the price of a crypto token and this is not financial advice). There will also be various incentives in place for the user to hold on to their $SELF tokens instead of selling them.

Prior to the Token Generation Event (TGE), users will receive a placeholder token that will be converted to $SELF tokens at TGE.