I became a Dish influencer to get a 5G NFT

For several months, Dish has promised one thing about its mobile network – that it would come with NFTs. (And also that it would cover 20 percent of Americans, as it is required by law to do.) I’m glad to report that after about a month of testing, I’ve finally acquired one of these NFTs and can tell you exactly what all the fuss is about. Spoiler alert: Do not set your expectations high.

Even as someone who has become numb from the mention of blockchain-based tokens, their presence was hard to ignore while I was testing the service, known as Project Genesis. Dish’s welcome email mentioned them, and every time I opened the Project Genesis app, it told me how close I was to getting an NFT. Doing the tasks required to earn an NFT proved to be the easy part. Thanks to an unfortunate series of events, it was much harder to get it into a crypto wallet, and it took much longer than I expected – but unlike the difficulties I had in registering for the service itself when it was launched, this time mostly my fault.

Before we get to the part where I embarrass myself, I should address the whole influencer thing from the headline, which gets to the heart of why NFTs are involved in Project Genesis at all. Given that Dish is basically building its network from scratch, it needs one a lot of data about what kind of experience users have – what kind of services they get in certain places, do they have enough bandwidth to actually use their phones, what does real-world coverage look like, etc. One of the ways the company collects this data is through The Project Genesis app, which users are pressured to download and use both a sheet of paper that comes with their phones and a step during the actual Android setup process.

The app allows you to perform various tasks every day, such as checking in at a new location, sending a text message or watching a YouTube video. Performing these tasks gives you points, which go towards increasing your rankings – you start as a “member”, but if you call your mother enough times, you can eventually become an “influencer”, then a “pro” and more end a “Reasons.” Each level comes with a set of rewards. You will initially receive a Project Genesis cup as soon as you register for the app, but it will constantly remind you that the real prizes are not yet coming: just collect 9,000 points, and you will receive Project Genesis earplugs and a Limited Edition NFT.

Of course, there is also the unspoken reward: If you give enough feedback through the surveys and answer the question “how are things working right now, thumbs up or thumbs down” enough times, your service can be better. During a conversation with some people at Dish, including Meredith Diers, chief communications officer, and Jeremy McCarty, vice president of wireless retail, I was told that the company’s actual engineers look at the feedback from the app and will sometimes contact people for more information.

As funny as it is that Dish has gamified the experience of complaining about poor cell reception (there is a leaderboard in the app and everything), it’s actually nice to have some kind of feedback mechanism. With other carriers, all you can do is stave off irritation when you hit a death zone that just shouldn’t exist. With Dish, you have at least one chance for the company to do something about it.

Who cares about things like “quality of service” and “customer feedback”? I did not sign up to try this service because I wanted to experience the attempt to launch a new large operator. I did it because I … want to! that! NFT! (Also, it’s too early in the service rollout in Spokane to say how much effect my feedback actually has.) So for over a week after receiving my Project Genesis phone, I dutifully logged on to the app and did every single task. apart from calling 10 people that the app asked because, as a zoomer, I refuse to talk on the phone once.

Finally, a completed task, an eruption of confetti and a pop-up box. I had received NFT; all I had to do was enter my Cardano wallet address to claim it.

Now, despite writing a whole explanation about blockchains, I was wondering, “what the hell is Cardano?” I thought it must be a blockchain, just one I had never heard of, and went to search for a wallet I could use to get an address and finally see Dish’s NFT. (For the uninitiated: wallets are the apps you use to access cryptocurrencies, such as coins and NFTs.)

This is where I made a mistake. When you Google «Cardano wallet», the first result is from the actual Cardano website, which talks about «Daedalus». Without looking into it, I downloaded the Daedalus Wallet, installed it, grabbed a receiving address, and put it into the Project Genesis app. It told me that I could expect my NFT to arrive within 48 hours.

It may well have it, but I would not have known it because it took me days just to get Daedalus started. You see, it’s not just a wallet like Metamask or Coinbase’s wallet, where you simply set it up and can add and view assets pretty instantly – instead it downloads a copy of whole Cardano blockchain (which currently takes up around 73 GB on my SSD) and validates every single transaction that has ever happened on it. This meant that it took my laptop about a dozen hours to run full tilt to get Daedalus set up.

This is not a small matter on Daedalus, to be clear, nor is it Dish’s fault that I accidentally downloaded this particular wallet without doing enough research. There are reasons why you want a full node wallet; it’s just that it was completely wrong if all you want to do is collect an NFT that you should look at right away as part of your job. Although, as a note to the Project Genesis team, it may not be a bad idea to have a button that says “how do I redeem this NFT?” There is a button labeled “Find out more about NFTs”, but learn about things in the abstract and find out which app I should use to redeem this specific are two different things. (To be clear, the button may have led me to a page with that information – I just did not click on it because I realized I already knew what an NFT is.)

But after a few nights with my computer at full tilt (I could not sync Daedalus during the day because macOS would slow down to a crawl), it had finally downloaded the entire blockchain and, with it, the transaction that contained my NFT. I finally had it, put in my wallet. It was the moment of truth; I went to see what it was I had earned for all my hard work (read: to press the “sms a friend” button and then immediately go back to the Project Genesis app because it apparently counted).

This is what I was met with:

In case you were wondering if everyone gets a unique NFT, it does not seem like it. The transaction that deposited this lovely artwork in my wallet also sent some other influencer-level NFTs to other people, and the picture that was included seemed to be exactly the same for these people as well. However, the “Pro” level NFT is different. Do you want to see it? Too bad it’s here anyway, along with the top “Founder” for good measure.

Grid view

• Image: Project Genesis
  

• Image: Project Genesis
  

Was it worth all the trouble to get my own NFT from a tattooed dog in Las Vegas – a city I technically have never even been to? All the watts I had to pump into my computer so it could confirm transactions on a blockchain I had never heard of?

Of course not. But! I ended up getting a nice surprise two weeks after I first ranked, in the form of an email from Project Genesis. “Welcome to the Influencer level,” it said, reminding me that my 10,000 points had given me an NFT and a pair of Project Genesis Earbuds (the process of claiming these simply involved clicking a link and entering a code and my address). As an added bonus, it told me I had received three months service for freewhich is automatically applied to my account.

Given that Project Genesis’ unlimited plan for smartphones costs $ 30 a month, it’s worth $ 90. Throw in NFT, and it’s worth a whopping $ 90.01, just because I press a few buttons in an app a few times a day. Wow, I really feel like an influencer.