Scarcity as an API

Dopamine Labs, later called Boundless, provided a behavioral change API. The promise was that almost any app could benefit from gamification and the introduction of variable reward schedules. The goal of the company was to make apps more addictive and hook users.

If we accept that scarcity drives status if correctly applied, and that humans will change their behavior and open their wallets to attain status, creating it reliably and repeatedly should be valuable.

What would Scarcity-as-an-API look like?

Like Dopamine Labs, a Scarcity API would likely be net-evil. But it could be a big business. What if a new software company could programmatically “drop” new features only to users with sufficient engagement, or online at the time of an event? What if unique styles could be purchased only in a specific window of time?

In some instances, scarcity produces status. The "drop" is one mechanism to create scarcity that has had a profound cultural effect in apparel and beyond. Going forward, we may see such practices used by software companies, potentially opening the door for "programmatic scarcity."

We may live in an age of abundance, but with our sense of self tied to the proprietorship of rivalrous assets, scarcity will need to exist. Even if we must code it ourselves.

As tech and culture further co-mingle, we should expect more startups to follow MSCHF’s lead, using drops to win attention. In the process, programmatic methods may rise to contrive scarcity reliably, at scale, online.