The idea of play-to-earn video games has already caught on in a big way, and now Chingari is trying to expand the concept to the world of social media with the launch of its new “engage-to-earn” and “create-to-earn” model for content creators.

Chingari may not be the most familiar name in the social media world but that may change with the launch of its new GARI Mining program today, which enables users to earn cryptocurrency each day for interacting with the app. It’s already a huge name in its home nation India, where it ranks as one of the most downloaded apps in the country, ahead of Instagram, Facebook and others. It currently boasts more than five million daily active users and 40 million monthly active users, each of whom will now be able to expand their earnings potential.

With Chingari’s GARI Mining program, app users can now earn rewards paid out in GARI tokens for creating new content, watching videos, hitting the like button, sharing content and more. Chingari said it will pay out a whopping $12 million each year in user rewards, based on the current price in U.S. dollars. Each day, it will create a pool of 50,000 GARI, with 5,000 reserved as a daily login bonus and the rest going to those who interact with the app in other ways.

In addition, users will be able to use the GARI tokens they earn to buy NFT GARI Badges that will enable them to multiply their earnings. Chingari said it’s offering five kinds of badges, ranging from basic, bronze, silver, gold and diamond, that will multiply their earnings by as much as ten-times.

The launch of the program is the final stage of Chingari’s carefully considered plan to integrate its popular video sharing app with crypto. From the get-go, Chingari’s aim has been to create a more democratized creator economy that allows every single one of its users to get something back from the app.

Chingari launched the GARI token amid lots of fanfare last year, notably getting its brand ambassador, the Bollywood superstar actor Salman Khan, on board to promote it. That helped it to raise an impressive $16 million through an IDO last December. Since then, Chingari has integrated a wallet with its app and onboarded over 600,000 users.

According to Chingari’s CEO Sumit Ghosh, the GARI rewards will help creators to reduce their reliance on sponsored posts as their only viable income stream. With platforms such as YouTube and Instagram most users only receive a very small share of the advertising revenue their content generates, forcing them into advertising branded products to generate more income.

“It gives us immense pleasure to announce the GARI Mining program,” Ghosh said. “We promised to democratize the creator economy when we launched Chingari a few years back and the GARI Mining is at the vanguard of that process. This program will ensure a level playing field for big and humble creators.”