51%
of users had at least 10 battles
Case study / Blockchain Rio 2025
BlockSpirits Activation
How we engaged attendees and drove lead gen for our sponsors with blockchain battles and on-chain rewards.
Back to Case StudiesClient
- Blockchain Rio
Industry
- Web3
Services
- Event experience & design
- Application Design & Development
- Onsite staff training
- Marketing
Overview
In 2025, a rift opened above Rio de Janeiro and the COZ team descended on the Blockchain Rio conference to deploy a major, event-level experience including multiple booths and nearly 1000 visitors over the two day event.
For this experience, we deployed the AeroGlyph card, a general availability iteration of Non-Fungible Item (NFI) technology that allows users to interact with the blockchain using open hardware infrastructure. An advanced version of the BlockSpirits game was also deployed, which introduced revised versions of viral gamification mechanics and unique lead generation concepts which have been piloted in previous work and are novel to the conference experience.
Challenge
Optimizing the onboarding workflow and harnessing virility for our community
This opportunity was unique for us in that we had complete creative freedom over experiential. We were also coordinating with multiple stakeholders (some of whom did not have a booth) to maximize their lead generation using our experiential work.
In the past, we've hit levels of ~200 users/staff-day for onboarding. For this experience we planned to double that number by significantly improving the self-service, community-supported, language agnostic, and digital-native considerations for our experiences.
Solution
Rising to the challenge
In our spot activations, we apply a special emphasis to onboarding workflow. The conference environment is overstimulating and an optimistic engagement time per visitor is ~30s. There are some exceptions to this data (see Consensus 2023), but a 30s touch point to close a multi-hour engagement is our goal.
Merch
To draw visitors, we introduced the best merch at the conference.
These included exclusive stickers, pins, shirts, and skateboard decks produced by our industry-leading design team alongside a set of Nintendo Switch 2 that could be purchased at a retail popup.
Visitor pack
The AeroGlyph card dominated at Blockchain Rio.
Each visitor received a lanyard, badge holder, and AeroGlyph card, branded to represent one of our sponsors and were self-service onboarded by scanning a qr-code or tap-scanning the card. AeroGlyph cards are a blockchain-native physical asset (NFI).
For this activation, we soul-bound a procedurally generated "BlockSpirit" character to each AeroGlyph card.
Tap scanning the cards, summons the on-chain spirit for battle against others. Users battle to earn FLUX tokens that can be used in our shop. The battle mechanic created a low-barrier ice-breaker for networking and deal flow.
Arena Bosses
Each of our sponsors received a special, high-visibility lanyard and custom "Arena Boss" BlockSpirit. Guests who engaged the Arena Bosses, were rewarded with extra tokens, creating an engagement funnel for the sponsors that is clearly visible in the results.
The Big Bad Evil Guy
Each arena had a themed "BBEG" that would appear on the conference floor at the end of each day. AeroGlyph card holders could battle the BBEG for a chance to land the finishing blow, for rare loot that allowed them to buy the Nintendo Switch 2 at the ITEM Shop.
Application
Booth design
Results
Efficiency through innovation
The activation was an incredible success and we were able to hit our onboarding target metric (400 users/staff-day) as well as identify further streamlining opportunities to push it even further.
The engagement on the activation nearly tripled compared to the previous BlockSpirits activation. There are some regional considerations here, but we believe that the primary contributors are experiential enhancements and product saturation, which drives virility. We've also received near unanimous feedback from the activation sponsors (both with and without booths), that the deployment positively improved their ability to generate leads. We also received a number of testimonials communicating that it was an award worthy experience. The data presents a similar story. AeroGlyph card holders battled over-night to accumulate FLUX and a line for merch was waiting for us on the morning of the first day.
In numbers
4814
Battles in production
1341
leads generated for sponsors
Experience and Testimonials
Request a call
Want to make a lasting impact at your next event?
Get in touch with our team and discover how our solutions can fit into your art & entertainment project.
Get in touch