Introducing Flynet: Blackbird's Onchain Transaction Network

It's here, our transaction network for restaurant industry participants, by restaurant industry participants

If you visit Blackbird’s headquarters in New York City, you will find restaurant artifacts, memorabilia and souvenirs lining our walls. Many colleagues at Blackbird have restaurant industry prior experience and those who don’t have a restaurant-something side hustle. We are all genuinely obsessed with these fine places. The Blackbird team is built this way on purpose: we are a team that will fight to ensure that restaurants see a bright and bold future.

We strongly believe that the industry’s path to this, to economic sustainability, will be based on it executing on two fronts. First, it must retain more of the value of restaurant-based commerce, and not let it leak out to misaligned third parties; second, it must develop a rewards and loyalty ecosystem that optimizes for connectivity between restaurants, their customers, and the people who work in restaurants (all three constituent groups are equally important). We have said these things before, but today we are happy to announce a major milestone on our path to this outcome.

As of today, February 27, the Flynet mainnet is now live.

Flynet? Yes, Flynet. Technically, Flynet is a blockchain, a layer three Ethereum network that operates on top of Coinbase’s Base chain. It exists to process transactions and memorialize actions that take place anywhere in Blackbird’s restaurant network between any two of the three restaurant industry network contributors—as mentioned just above, restaurants, restaurant workers, and restaurant guests.

Flynet is Blackbird’s purpose-built transactions network for the restaurant industry. Ecosystem contributors will overtime become partners of Blackbird in this endeavor. In contrast to every other large-scale restaurant system that has come before it, it is a decentralized network that will come to be controlled by its users—holders of $F2, Flynet’s native token. Abracadabra.

Flynet is a new set of financial ‘rails,’ for the industry. In chorus with the Blackbird app, it does four really groundbreaking things for restaurants:

1. Cuts out expensive middlemen – Credit card fees can be high, upwards of 3.75% of every transaction or more. Flynet is a flat rate network for restaurants, currently 2%, instantly returning 1.5% of topline revenue to restaurants to reinvest in customer acquisition and retention.

2. Puts control back in the hands of restaurants – Control and ownership of data are the same thing. Right now restaurants have neither. On Flynet, instead of data being locked away by banks and payment processors, restaurants get direct insights into their customer relationships because customers own their own data and share it as they please.

3. Creates a seamless, modern dining experience – Made possible by perfect combination of Blackbird and Flynet, customers no longer have to fumble with cards or wait for checks when using the Blackbird app. Check payment happens the way you’d expect, if modern technology actually, finally, made its way to restaurants.

4. Unlocks a whole new economy – Flynet allows restaurants to build loyalty programs, reward frequent diners, and even develop new experiences that weren’t possible before.

We have in the past published the Flypaper, which got its most recent update in early February and is now the Flynet Operating Statement, a document we will continue to update. For those wanting to understand the particulars of how Flynet works, or know more about what we mean by co-ownership, hopefully you will find the paper informative.

We have also launched this site, which will be geared towards Flynet insiders, both $FLY points holders (and therefore $F2 holders) and developers and others wishing to build something on Flynet. If you’re a developer reading this, build something!

Very soon, anyone who has used Blackbird and therefore has earned $FLY rewards, will be eligible to claim their allocation of $F2. This will be the first of seven claim seasons, each one triggered by a growth milestone for the platform. We have said from the start that this is a network built by restaurant industry participants, for restaurant industry participants. And we mean it. Go here for more info on $F2 and the airdrop.

In 2024, we went from zero to 10,000 daily transactions. Here are a few other metrics:

• 242,097,729.05 total $FLY distributed to participants

• 107,568 wallets holding $FLY

• 6.2 transactions per wallet on average

This year we’ll make these numbers seem infinitesimal by comparison. The future is exciting and we’re so happy to have you with us on the ride.