You upload a model on MakerWorld, you get magic internet points. Even though the users technically gets them for free, its a loss of profit for Bambu Labs. There is a lot of product requests, people want different features.
Why don’t combined these? Instead of me getting a bunch of filaments for my reward, why cant I spend them on an idea/feature. Instead of Bambu Labs losing money on giving me free filament, why don’t you look at current product requests, estimate the man hours to make them, then let us the customer buy them for Bambu Labs unrealized loss.
Its of no loss to Bambu Lab, they will make these functions anyways it will just be differently prioritized by the consumer, which feature they want the most.
Example:
I would like an m191 command, lets say this takes 16 hours to implement, average pay is $25 an hour(For example). That means the feature would cost Bambu Labs $400 to implement. They plan on implementing it in 2 years when they are done with other stuff, but the community wants to ramp this up. So instead Bambu Labs lets the community build a pool where you can donate these reward points. $400 in gift cards is 4,900 points. If 4,900 user each donates 1 point. This feature gets ramped up to priority 1.
Outcome:
Bambu Labs doesn’t loose $400 worth of free filament they would have given away as reward.
Since this feature was planned for the next 2 years its no increase in the budget.
The community gets the features they feel they need the most.
It’s very interesting, I Got my first 350 prusa points, and exchanged them for filament, it turns out it’s more expensive to ship prusa filament to Mexico than what it costs to buy some other brand locally. So I understand when you propose to vote with your "influence"gained with work and dedication to the brand / platform.
I don’t agree that rewarding quality content creators who populate the platform, which in turn drives traffic and brand awareness to BL, is a loss of profit. BL’s success is partially attributed to the influencers whom they gave free product to en masse.
A DAO-type structure for feature implementation is interesting. It could be partially driven by a voting system that requires staking some points. I’m hesitant to say votes should need to be bought.
The core pillars of a DAO though are decentralization and autonomy and I’m not sure if that will happen here. BL seems to be following more of an Apple-style approach to the market rather than a Web3 one. Just my two cents.
All those reasons would still remain, the only difference would be Bambu Lab didn’t have to send out free stuff, just reprioritize stuff they already have budgeted for, hence by definition loss of profit.
I’m not talking about staking your reward points, I’m talking about burning them. If you want to bring in crypto terminology. Making the unrealized loss disappear.
Yep, does rarely make sense unless you have a ■■■■ ton of them or buy from the store regularly anyways. I could buy my own filament if that means I get useful and relatable features faster.