Case Study: How EarnOS Eliminated 99.9% of Fraud While Cutting Customer Acquisition Costs by 79%

The Company

EarnOS is a consumer engagement platform that pays users for completing verified brand missions. Think of it as the anti-ad model: instead of paying platforms to show ads to users who may or may not care, brands pay users directly for proven engagement—placing an order on Uber Eats, making a trade on Robinhood, liking a post, leaving a review.

The platform has attracted over 100 global brands including Uber, Amazon Prime, BMW, Temu, Lacoste, and The North Face, creating a new category of performance marketing where engagement is verified at the source before rewards are distributed.

The Challenge

EarnOS faced the core problem that plagues every performance marketing platform: how do you verify that users actually completed the missions they claim they completed?

Traditional solutions rely on platform-reported data (easily gamed), self-reported information (even easier to game), or document uploads (screenshots can be faked in seconds with basic photo editing). The fraud surface area was massive, and the cost of fraud prevention was built into every campaign budget.

Worse, without reliable verification, brands couldn't safely offer high-value rewards. A $300 reward for placing an order or making a trade sounds great in theory—until you realize you have no way to verify the user actually completed the action. So brands kept rewards low, which meant they couldn't attract the high-quality engagement they actually wanted.

The platform economics were stuck: low rewards meant low engagement from valuable users, but high rewards without verification meant getting destroyed by fraud.

The Solution: Burnt's Verification Infrastructure

EarnOS integrated Burnt's zkTLS verification technology to create cryptographic proof of user actions—without ever touching PII or requiring API partnerships with data sources.

Here's how it works in practice:

For transactional missions: A food delivery company wants to reward users for placing their first order. Instead of relying on self-reported screenshots or hoping the brand's internal tracking catches everything, they launch a campaign through EarnOS that requires verification. Users complete the mission—placing an order—then log into their account through a secure session. Burnt's infrastructure generates a zero-knowledge proof confirming "this user placed an order on [date]" without revealing order details, payment information, or any other sensitive data. The brand gets deterministic confirmation. The user receives their reward instantly.

For engagement missions: A retail brand wants to reward users for leaving verified product reviews or engaging with their social content. Instead of dealing with bot farms and fake engagement, they use EarnOS with Burnt verification. Users complete the action—leaving a review, liking a post—and prove it happened by logging into the platform where the engagement occurred. The brand gets cryptographic proof the action is real. The user gets rewarded instantly.

The verification happens at the source using zero-knowledge proofs. It's mathematically unforgeable, privacy-preserving by design, and completely permissionless.

The Results

Since integrating Burnt's verification infrastructure, EarnOS has processed over 1.4 million verified brand interactions. The impact on campaign economics has been dramatic:

79% Reduction in Customer Acquisition Cost

When brands can verify mission completion with mathematical certainty, they can safely increase reward amounts to levels that actually move the needle with users. Higher rewards drive higher participation rates and better quality engagement, which means brands acquire customers at a fraction of their previous cost while simultaneously improving customer quality metrics.

99.9% Fraud Reduction

Source verification with cryptographic proofs eliminated essentially all fraudulent claims. AI-generated screenshots, forged documents, and manipulated data simply don't work when verification requires an authenticated login session that produces a zero-knowledge attestation.

The "fraud tax" that forced platforms to keep rewards low and over-engineer manual review processes disappeared. Brands can deploy missions with confidence that every dollar spent goes to a verified user who actually completed the required actions.

Campaign Launch Speed: Months to Days

Strategic partnerships between global brands that would have required 4-12 months of legal negotiation, data-sharing agreements, and technical integration now launch in days. Co-marketing missions between non-integrated partners go live with the same speed and simplicity as single-brand campaigns.

For agencies and brand partnerships teams, this changes the entire strategic playbook. Opportunities that would have been killed in legal review now ship in the same week they're conceived.

Real Campaign Examples

Transactional missions: Food delivery, ride-share, and e-commerce platforms rewarding users for placing orders or making purchases, with cryptographic proof that the transaction actually occurred—eliminating the need for manual review or internal tracking systems that miss conversions.

Financial services missions: Trading platforms and fintech apps rewarding users for making their first trade or opening an account, with verified proof of completion that protects against referral fraud and fake accounts.

Social engagement missions: Brands rewarding verified actions like leaving reviews, liking posts, or sharing content—with cryptographic proof that the engagement actually happened, eliminating bot farms and fake engagement that plague traditional social campaigns.

Why It Worked

The EarnOS and Burnt integration solved a problem that most platforms try to address with better fraud detection. But fraud detection is fundamentally reactive—you're analyzing behavior patterns and trying to catch bad actors after the fact.

Source verification is proactive. If the proof itself is unforgeable and generated directly from the authoritative data source, there's nothing to detect. The fraud simply can't happen.

This architectural difference unlocked economics that weren't possible under traditional verification approaches:

• Brands could increase reward amounts without increasing risk
• Users could prove completion without sharing sensitive data
• Platform operations could scale without manual review overhead

The combination of instant payouts with source-verified proof created a new category of engagement marketing that works for mainstream brands and mainstream users—no technical expertise required on either side.

The Broader Implication

EarnOS and Burnt together represent a different approach to the signal loss problem plaguing digital marketing. While the rest of the industry focuses on probabilistic targeting with degraded signals, verified engagement flips the model: prove completion, then reward instantly.

For brands navigating cookie deprecation, iOS privacy changes, and collapsing attribution, this isn't a workaround—it's a fundamentally different acquisition motion. One where "verified engagement" isn't based on what a platform's algorithm thinks happened, but on what users can cryptographically prove they did.

The 1.4 million verified interactions processed through EarnOS suggest the model works at scale. The 79% CAC reduction and 99.9% fraud elimination suggest the economics are real. And the roster of global brands building on the platform suggests this isn't experimental—it's becoming infrastructure.

Want to build verified engagement into your campaigns?

Whether you're launching reward programs, partnership campaigns, or dynamic incentive strategies, we can help you eliminate fraud and target with precision.

Schedule a demo or learn more at burnt.com.