Starbucks Is Shutting Down Its Odyssey Beta NFT Rewards Program — Will It Return? - Decrypt

I wish that programs like this were successful, but I’m not surprised they are turning this down.

Coffee giant Starbucks announced Friday that it is shutting down its Starbucks Odyssey Beta platform, which provided NFT-based rewards minted on Ethereum scaling network Polygon.

Let's think for a moment about why a loyalty program would be implemented with crypto. I think there are two reasons.

1. It is open and public, so other systems can build on top of yours. For example, if you have achieved some level in the Starbucks loyalty program you get a benefit in a different, unrelated one.
2. You could do it cheaper. By putting the transactions on the blockchain you don't need to keep the database and manage the information yourself.

Starbucks didn’t do either of these. I don't think the tech and user experience is far enough along to do the second item yet.