The coffee company, Starbucks, discontinued their customer loyalty program known as Starbucks Odyssey. After the announcement on March 15th, 2024, Starbucks gave users a reasonable period until March 25th to conclude all activities on the Odyssey program and exit the Discord channel.

What went wrong?

Just like many other large companies, Starbucks caught the web3 FOMO and introduced an NFT reward program for its loyal customers. The Starbucks Odyssey program involves a series of activities for customers to complete, earning them NFTs called Stamps as rewards. They also created the Odyssey marketplace for customers to buy, sell, and transfer stamps.

In an effort to enhance user experience, they eliminated the need for crypto wallets and allowed the use of credit cards for all stamp purchases. All of this was set to take place on the Polygon blockchain.

However, despite being exclusive to a select few, the program never made it beyond the beta stage. The actual reason for its closure was not disclosed, except for the promise of 'we are excited for you to see what comes next and are grateful for your consistent engagement and feedback.

Crypto users on X think differently.

Some people believe that the program's failure was due to a lack of awareness. They argue that most Starbucks customers were neither interested in nor even aware of what NFTs or Web3 meant, and therefore did not participate in the program.

In contrast, TechCrunch revealed in an interview with Steve Kaczynski, former community lead for the Odyssey program, that over 58,000 people participated in at least level one out of the five levels of the program.

There are also speculations that the founder of Polygon Blockchain sponsored big traditional companies like Starbucks to hop on the crypto wave and hype the chain. In 2022 and 2023, Polygon made several moves; several popular companies announced their migrations to the Polygon blockchain, and everyone thought Polygon was performing exceptionally well.

It was alleged that these were all marketing gimmicks employed by Polygon to increase engagements and transactions on the chain