Winning Web3 Creator Platforms Will Do This
And They’ll Do It Fucking Well
Last year $GME bounced from under $2 to over $350. Why? Because a bunch of redditors came together & YOLO’d thousands of dollars into the stock.
They found out Wall Street was shorting it. Expecting it to go down. When the redditors started buying up all the supply, prices skyrocketed. Forcing lots of rich people to liquidate their positions.
This was vigilante financial justice against Wall Street for the 2008 recession. When the economy crashed, ordinary folks were screwed. But Wall Street got bailed out.
The redditors never forgave. And will never forget.
As someone who threw a small amount of money into $GME, I can tell you that there was nothing in the world like it.
There was a real feeling of camaraderie among us. Not only did we believe in the same mission. But our financial incentives were aligned.
Nothing in the world unites human beings like shared financial incentives. This will change the creator economy forever.
The Puzzle Pieces
The traditional creator economy was pretty amazing. For the first time ever, people could create content without permission. And they could build a business & brand for themselves.
Instead of working for a media company, creators could go directly to the market.
But the creator economy of the future is going to be a lot different.
Numbers Go Up
Do you know why venture capital is so exciting? The idea of investing in the next big thing. The next Amazon. Netflix. Facebook. It’s exciting to think that your investment can 100x.
But ordinary people can’t do that. You have to be an “accredited investor.” Basically, you’re only allowed to buy stock that pumped a long time ago.
Then, there’s crypto.
Speculation drives the entire crypto market. New projects launch every day. And any of them can go up 1,000% or more.
That’s why small cryptocurrency projects have cult-like communities. They have:
A shared financial incentive
The speculative hope that they get rich
And thanks to innovations in Web3, it’s only a matter of time before we can apply that dynamic to the creator economy.
Web3 = Speculation + Creator Economy
Web3 combines the excitement of trading volatile assets with the joy of creating & consuming content.
This is how the future might look.
The YouTube Casino
The future creator economy will be similar to the one we’ve got now.
But with Web3 built in.
There’s certainly going to be the next generation YouTube. People love video. That’s not going away. But here’s the differences:
Ownerless platform - The platform itself will be community owned and operated. It’ll be governed by token holders & contributors. It’ll be open source so if there’s ever an unpopular change, the community can fork the project.
NFTs for everything - every piece of content will be available to buy as an NFT. And it won’t just be the video. It’ll be the thumbnail, video assets, even the top comments. If it can be turned into an NFT and traded, it will be.
Media DAOs & collaboration - there will be tools and structures to help coordinate. The line between creator and viewer will get blurry. More on this below.
These platforms will have 2 giant benefits over traditional creator platforms.
Fund Small Creators
It’s notoriously difficult to earn your 1st dollar as a creator. But not in Web3. You’ll be the equivalent of a new cryptocurrency. Something that has the potential to go up in value. A lot.
If a creator starts out strong, they’ll be able to sell NFTs like it’s nothing. That initial funding will go back into the content itself. Making it much easier to kickstart a creator’s career.
Viewers Get Paid
You’ll be able to make a living by watching videos. Which videos are good and which ones suck? Bet against the bad ones and buy NFTs of the good ones.
If your favorite creator wins, you win too. Viewers go from commodities to investors.
Let’s do it together 🤝
The Web2 creator economy is hyper individualistic. There’s typically a single workaholic behind an entire brand. There’s little to no room for collaboration. After all, why would you? It’s difficult for multiple people to capture value.
One person creates. One person gets paid.
That’s why there’s so few tools for creator collaboration. Even if the tools existed, not enough people would want to use them in the first place.
Web3 fixes this.
Multiple people can work on a single project and get a piece of the pie. Everyone gets a token.
This will create demand.
The best existing example is Git. It’s a tool to allow programmers to easily work together.
It lets you:
Easily organize changes
Keep track of who does what
Experiment without changing the core project
It’s only a matter of time before we start having a Git for X. Everything from video editing, writing, audio production, and much more.
Creators will work together like never before.
Better Content
Content will be better than ever. As more people work together, the quality will go through the roof.
This will be the key difference between the old creator economy and the new one. Better incentive structures have better outcomes.
Simple as that.
I don’t wanna go as far to say that this change is inevitable. But I would be surprised if things didn’t go in this direction.
Financial speculation being part of the media business model
Software that allows for easy collaboration between different parties - Git but for video editing, podcasts, writing, etc
Media DAOs
Articles like this can be a little abstract. So let’s run through an example of how things might look.
SpookyDAO
Let’s assume a few things.
There’s a Web3 creator platform like the one described above
Web3 tech is mainstream & easier to use than right now
There are better creator collaboration tools
Let’s imagine a DAO of horror enthusiasts. SpookyDAO. The only goal is to create amazing audio horror content. It’s governed by an ERC-20 token.
The DAO enables cooperation between the different kinds of creators behind good content.
Writers
Editors
Voice actors
Musicians
Sound FX
Audio editors
These different roles could be organized into guilds. The guild could make changes according to popular sentiment.
Once a guild was happy with a project, they could present it to the entire DAO. Then, the entire community could vote for or against it. And if it passes, it goes to the next guild.
Once the project is finished, the NFT gets auctioned to the public. The profits go back to the creators depending on how much work they did.
This kind of media organization would kill it.
Creators can specialize at what they do best
Every creator gets paid
The content would be better than a single creator trying to do everything themselves (which is the case right now)
This is content creation in the future. It might not look exactly like this. But this will be the general structure. Depending on the kind of content they create.
Final Thoughts
Content creation is basically dead right now. There’s few ways to collaborate. And the most profitable content is often the worst to consume. Case in point: the news.
Web3 will enable creation on a whole new scale.
And that future will be built on:
Speculation
Collaboration
Shared Financial Incentives
Crypto market this week:
