The Monster Raffle works great as it is. Individual community members pledge prizes to donate and then take responsibility for shipping those prizes around the world, wherever they are won. As a Concept this is not something that I think we want to change, however in a community where one size doesn’t always fit all I think we could benefit from having an alternative way too. Thus I want to float the idea of introducing Prize Hubs to the next Monster Raffle.
The basic concept is that we have a reputable community member who volunteers (and is endorsed by the community) to put together a Prize Pack on behalf of 1 or more other members who want to contribute together. Those members can donate to the Prize Hub directly in the form of Silver or Crypto or indeed any form of value that is Previously Agreed and Accepted by the organiser of the Prize Hub. The Prize Hub organiser collects those donations and contributions and bundles them together to assemble a Prize Pack of Precious Metals that then goes into the Monster Raffle as a single big prize item.
I believe that this concept can effectively lower the barrier to entry for newer members and smaller stackers who might be getting involved in their first Monster Raffle and want to contribute. It also could be a good option for members who live in countries where there are stricter restrictions with customs, have reliability issues with postal services or have to deal with excessive postage expenses.
I acknowledge that these are not issues for most of our established North American stackers, who I hope will still be involved with the Monster Raffle in the awesome way that they have in the past. This idea is not an attempt to change that AT ALL. It’s about giving more people the opportunity to get involved and broaden our participation and accessibility of the Monster Raffle for stackers more globally.
Possibly the idea will flop, and as a trial I’d be super happy to see just 1 or 2 Prize Hubs given a try in the next Monster Raffle just to see how the idea goes. I have been talking with one of our members about putting together a Prize Hub for Europe, but if anyone wants to get involved and volunteer to set up a Prize Hub for their own region, or is interested in contributing directly to a Prize Hub then please reach out to me on Discord.
On a more personal level I think there could also be a tangible benefit for our community having Regional Stacker Hubs for our members to build relationships and collaborate more locally. We do already have a few sporadic, ad-hoc real-world meetups between members which is always good to see. If our members want to take some pride in their region and represent their part of the world while building some friendships locally then I think that could also be a really good thing for SGS in the long run.
What do our members think? Is a Prize Hub idea likely to work? Do you see any issues? Would you be interested in setting up a Prize Hub for your region, or even contributing to one?
