For millions of online chess players, tracking progress and earning recognition has been a game of scattered pieces, until now. WorldChess’ new blockchain-powered loyalty program, The Tower, is revolutionizing how players claim ownership of their achievements and unlock rewards.
Online chess players occupy an active, passionate corner of the internet, but for years, they have not been able to track their progress or build recognition across various chess platforms. As an example, most of the 1.6 million players in the International Chess Federation (FIDE) use platforms that feature leaderboards and rating systems.
The problem is, the platforms don’t “talk to each other” across apps - they operate in isolated data silos, leaving the player with a fragmented accomplishment record. Players juggle multiple accounts linked to traditional, centralized databases holding their data. They don’t truly "own" the big picture of their historical progression and accomplishments.
Without a standardized, transparent, and globally accessible system for documenting milestones, the dedicated player's progress and skill are unrewarded and invisible to the community.
The Tower by World Chess: An online chess loyalty reward system
World Chess, the official online partner of FIDE, is taking innovative action to address the fragmentation challenge. It launched “The Tower,” a new loyalty program that rewards players, consolidates overall progress, and highlights their status to the global World Chess community.
The Tower transforms the player experience by improving how they track their accomplishments and receive rewards for progress. In the Tower “vertical player progression system,” players earn Progress Points (PP) for every game played on WorldChess.com, redeemable for both digital and physical rewards.
By accumulating points, players move up through levels of named Floors, acquiring identity, status, and exclusive rewards. A player’s Floor level is public, sharing their World Chess identity, status, and rewards with the community.
As the official partner of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), World Chess integrated the Tower into all FIDE-approved games played on its platform. Players working toward official FIDE-recognized ratings and titles can now track their progress within a structured, motivational environment.
Elite PRO members can earn points faster and gain access to exclusive upper Floors. These top levels reward the most committed players and even offer the possibility of playing against chess legends.
The Tower: Powered by Algorand
World Chess records all player progression on the Algorand blockchain, its official blockchain partner since 2019. The integration connects to Algorand-compatible wallets and stores Progress Points and player achievement data on-chain.
The wallets allow players “portability,” or the ability to take their data with them across platforms. Rather than logging into a siloed platform that only recognizes their history on a single platform, players can connect their wallet and The Tower app then aggregates their performance, results, rewards, and accomplishments.
Building on-chain with Algorand offers distinct advantages compared to traditional loyalty systems:
- Transparency and trust: Every transaction and data point related to player progression is recorded on a secure ledger, creating trust-building transparency between World Chess and its players.
- True ownership: Players control their Progress Points and achievements across platforms, stored securely in their Algorand-compatible wallets.
- Interoperability: The Tower's on-chain architecture allows players to unlock benefits and earn recognition across different games and digital ecosystems in the future.
- Enhanced security: The inherent cryptographic security of the Algorand blockchain significantly reduces the risk of fraud and tampering, protecting both the platform and its users.
- Modernized engagement: Blockchain technology enables innovative reward mechanisms and community interactions that traditional databases cannot support.
- Lowered costs: Administering a rewards system on-chain improves accuracy and automates transactions, while significantly reducing overhead costs compared to traditional methods.
The powerful combination of Algorand blockchain technology and seamless wallet integration is the foundation for The Tower’s innovative, secure, and player-centric rewards system.
Excitement is building as World Chess is partnering with Algorand for 'Blitz to the Top,' a three-day Arena Blitz tournament series running from August 12-17. Players will compete for a 5000 ALGO prize pool and exclusive World Chess sets, with progress securely recorded on the Algorand blockchain. The powerful combination of Algorand blockchain technology and seamless wallet integration is the foundation for The Tower’s innovative, secure, and player-centric rewards system.
Intermezzo: The future of on-chain engagement
The launch of The Tower with World Chess is more than an exciting new loyalty program for chess players; it is a clear demonstration of Algorand’s enterprise readiness.
World Chess built The Tower on Intermezzo, Algorand’s enterprise custody solution designed to significantly reduce complexity for businesses implementing use cases like loyalty programs, treasuries, multi-tenant custody, and single-sign-on.
Intermezzo takes care of the complex technical details involved in building decentralized apps, like enterprise key management. This freed up the World Chess engineering team to focus on the reward program design without worrying about the blockchain integration.
Intermezzo underscores Algorand’s core strengths, including a unique Pure Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, lightning-fast transaction speeds, low cost, and instant transaction finality. These factors are essential for managing high-volume loyalty programs with speed and security.
Similar to the Universal Chess Passport partnership and many other enterprise use cases, the Tower initiative illustrates a successful collaboration between Web2 and Web3 to enhance the user experience.
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