Why Rewards Rule Us—and How Web3 Could Break the Cycle

We are driven by survival, connection, and have a knack for figuring things out. Master Yoda would say, “Curious humans are.” But what kind of digital Web3 are we creating that meets our natural behavior?

Back in the day, our ancestors hunted, gathered, and camped around fires. It’s easy to see that they were motivated by primal needs: food, safety, and belonging. These weren’t incentives in the sense we would talk about today—no gold stars, paychecks, or even tokens for gaming. I mean our natural instincts that are wired into us. As societies grew, so did our systems. Barter turned into coins, tribes into empires, and behavior got tangled up with rewards. It’s interesting to look at what drives our behavior. Philosophers like Aristotle saw virtue as a driver, while economists like Adam Smith claimed it’s all about self-interest.

I lean back in my chair and look at the digital world we are creating. We’re bombarded with incentives—likes, tokenized rewards, governance tokens after participating. This is clearly shaping how we act, often without us noticing. Someone once said that the only thing not incentivized is walking the dog.

I don’t have to say that I’m pro-Web3 technology, but I do need to say that we need to be mindful of what we’re building, because you and I will increasingly spend our lives in the digital space.

So what’s natural to us? We’re social creatures who thrive on meaning, not just rewards. Studies show we’ll help strangers without a prize, create art for no pay, or stand up for beliefs against the odds. Incentives nudge us, sure, but they don’t own us. We’re also naturally built for cooperation, like sharing a kill back in the day or liking a post today. But we also seem to enjoy competition.

The Web3 space is leaning heavily on incentivizing us to do certain things. It’s built on incentives: earn crypto for creating, stake tokens to vote, trade NFTs for profit. Web3’s pitch is freedom through reward—a system where every action can pay off.

Even my own work with the Proof of Good framework is about incentivizing actions that benefit society, like transparency or sustainability, using Web3 tools. But the incentives are human-centric in theory: aligning rewards with well-being, not just profit.

It’s clear that Web3 is an incentive-heavy model that taps into our love for rewards. A 2024 study by Robert Mowry, explains how rewarding active participation in crypto communities can lead to greater success for projects. He found that giving incentives for meaningful involvement in discussions helps these communities thrive. Another 2024 study shows that even small rewards, like $0.10, can encourage more people to complete tasks in blockchain systems, with some cases seeing a 12-fold increase in participation. Additionally, a review article in Frontiers in Blockchain explores how thoughtfully designed reward systems can boost involvement in local community activities. But…

I’d argue that incentives shouldn’t always rule us—and Web3 risks overdoing it. We don’t just chase carrots. We’re messy, meaning-driven souls. I’ve seen it in my work as a health professional. People exercise for joy, not just for a slimmer waist, and my readers tell me they seek spirituality for peace, not points.

If Web3 connects every action to a token, it could take away our natural motivation—the kind that makes us human, not machines. As a health professional working with behavior science, I see this in self-determination theory: too many rewards can actually weaken motivation.

Web3’s human-centric promise shines when it balances incentives with freedom. Take Bitcoin: it’s about sovereignty, not just profit. Or consider NFTs—beyond the hype, they’re about creators owning their work. But if it’s all gamified pay-to-play, we might lose the soul of it. A thriving digital future needs room for humanness, curiosity, and quirks—not just wallets.

Frankly, I know that incentives should not always steer us. They’re tools, not the ultimate solution in creating a human-centered web.

Web3 could align with our nature if it honors both our reward-loving and meaning-seeking sides. Take the reward of kindness itself, for example. Will it prevail over the power of greed?

Put differently, if Web3 chains us to endless token hunts, it’s less human-centric than it claims. My incentive for this article is the joy of writing. Priceless. We need more initiatives that are priceless and deeply connected to our humanness—not just to our wallets.