written by Blake Finucane
The Boys were at FEST last week with The Superchain and we stayed busy! We were really on our content creation game — fit checking, scavengering, dancing to DJ sets and capturing the upsides and possibilities embodied in the culture that crypto facilitates. And the stakes are super high to execute on this, imho. Highlighting the creative capabilities that this technology allows for is the primary way we’ll get out of our tech echo chamber and continue to attract a diverse set of onchain creators.
Trevor McFedries first designed Friends with Benefits as an economic vehicle to capture social capital. Its’ design countered the typical series of events: the “cool” kids start a niche trend amongst themselves, early adopters catch on, which quickly and inevitably leads to bigger brands/corporations taking notice, who widely disseminate that once exclusive aesthetic. Rent where those original trend setters live eventually goes up and the clothing they wear is now being replicated on designer runways, selling for prices they can’t afford. They see no economic upside for the cultural impacts they’ve made. The $FWB token and DAO structure was a way to solve for this. FEST is an extension of that idea, a means to foster community for these innovators and early adopters, where crypto tooling is used to build, capture and reward culture.
Needless to say, it was an incredibly inspiring weekend in Idyllwild. The highlight talk for me was between the brilliant Maria Paula Fernandez and the incomparable Latashá called “Creative Compossibility,” where they tackled the question of what a sustainable relationship between blockchains and creators really looks like.
Plastered up on the screen was MP’s tweet from a couple weeks ago that highlights the exact dynamic we must better internalize for this industry to see its full potential: “Creators don’t need blockchains, Blockchains need creators.”
Unfortunately, it is often understood as the inverse.
It becomes clearer everyday that crypto NEEDS creators to adopt and imaginatively use the tools that developers so vehemently build. We need visual artists, academics, journalists, poets, musicians, fashion designers, stylists, photographers, film makers, lifestyle influencers…all of them and more of them.
These types of creators make “culture.” They (can and do) demonstrate why blockchains can be important and fun and cool beyond simply (unpromised) economic upside. They use crypto technology to make us think, make us laugh, make us learn (beyond just making us money) — and ultimately bring us closer to one another. They make this often abstract and confusing technology tangible, relatable and human. It’s way harder to exit a community that inspires you with people you relate to than to exit a liquidity pool.
So the question becomes, how do we make it easier for these kinds of creators to come onchain? How do we communicate that there are meaningful alternatives to tech conglomerates who will censor you, gatekeep follower lists and implement impossible to crack algorithms? How do we convey that there are extraordinary economic upsides to tokenization, that won’t necessarily get your followers to stay (culture does though!), but will support you in finding income streams and cultivating fan/follower relationships not possible before.
There isn’t an easy answer, but I do think one of the most powerful ways to accelerate a call to action is to lean into what’s already working, highlighting the different ecosystems that are prioritizing creators and getting them onchain. I hope this list below can make it easier for you to discover content and creators that speak to you or maybe discover the gaps and fill them yourself.
Zora: A media-focused L2 built on Optimism, with an emphasis on faster, cheaper and gas efficient mints. They’ve made it incredibly easy for anyone to create and distribute their own NFTs and have prioritized artists and creators in this process.
Farcaster: A social media protocol now built on Optimism, easiest to describe as a “decentralized Twitter.” Our dear friend Ted is a standout power user, she’s done ingenious things with “Club Ted,” her onchain membership club.
Shape: Creator-forward L2, built on Optimism, the testnet is now live with mainnet coming soon. I love their “gasback” mechanism, where the network directs 80% of sequencer fees back to contract owners. Sharing the majority of gas fees with the contract deployer demonstrates how focused they are on rewarding content and onchain contract creators.
Cyber: Social-focused L2 built on Optimism in the midst of their 6 week Social Summer campaign. This includes daily mints showcasing new projects and artists, interactive articles and rewards for making content about The Superchain.
The Superchain: A network of L2 chains that share security, bridging and communication layers. It will contribute protocol fees back to the Optimism Collective which is a band of companies, communities, and individual people working together to reward public goods. This crucial emphasis on sustainable funding is a mechanism they’ve titled “Retro Funding.” Basically, this term describes an economic flywheel that powers the Optimism Collective, incentivizing contributions to the Superchain. I’ve also really appreciated their airdrop strategy and how they’ve prioritized creators in the process. They’ve committed to giving 19% of the total initial token supply via airdrops and their 4th installment (Airdrop #4) of this rollout was the standout for me. It was designed as a thank you to the artists and their contributions to the Optimism Collective. It allocated a total of 10,343,757.81 OP to 22,998 addresses, primarily focused on rewarding the creation of and engagement with NFTs, with bonuses for being early and active on chain (approx 560m OP remains for future airdrops, FYI). This network of chains are all standardized, meaning they can be used interoperably (Zora and Farcaster included). This allows for shared values across multiple chains, making it easier to build a shared culture, a significant net positive for creators. Developers are able to build applications for the entire Superchain, and abstract away the underlying components. Everything is programmable and customizable, with the ultimate goal of scaling Ethereum, which in turn makes onchain creativity way more accessible — an environment ripe for creators to tap into network effects. If you’re a video person, watch this.
Pods: A fork of Zora and integrated with Lens, it’s a platform to monetize podcasts via publishing them onchain, which genuinely innovates on the typical economic model for audio. I think Adam Levy with his Mint Podcast is really leading the way on this.
Orb: A decentralized social network, built on Lens. Some of the most interesting and experimental artists are making and distributing their work on Orb. Their “group” function continues to be innovatively applied to curate fantastic art shows including AI Gods and Girlfriends, featuring digital art pioneer Arvida Bystrom. You could even mint her work in feed. My favorite crypto art gallery, Yeche Lange also has a group and Latashá just launched hers too! You can mint Zora NFTs directly on Orb as well.
I sincerely believe the best way to understand crypto’s creator economy is to participate in it. So the real call to action is to go explore one of the platforms/ideas above, whether that’s supporting a creator or creating something yourself.
The future is onchain, and I’m optimistic.
