For as long as I've been working in crypto, people have been trying crypto-social experiments aimed at rewarding content creators. I know because I've been one of those people. I previously cofounded Cent, a web3 social network that ran a ton of different experiments: incentivized upvotes, incentivized subscriptions, incentivized subscriptions, you name it. Our "breakout" moment was when we tokenized posts and sold Jack Dorsey's first tweet as an NFT. Before us, there was Steemit. After us, came Bitclout, then Friendtech, and most recently Zora. History does not repeat, but it certainly does rhyme.
Intuitively, it makes sense that if you're creating something, and millions of people are consuming it, it has value. But the path to realizing that value has historically been loosely correlated. At best, you'll get a sponsorship deal, some paid subscribers, or revenue from ads. But the incentives always feel tacked on, because they ARE tacked on. The expectation is that first, you must create "for free." If you don't, someone else will. Getting capital "upfront" is an assumption I don't expect to change.
Recently, there has been a push, particularly from the Base team, to tokenize creativity on Zora. The intentions are pure and good: creators want more money, and web3/internet capital should be able to deliver that somehow. The disconnect lies in what most creators do not - and will not - do: make themselves the subject for others' profit and loss. This model is actually WORSE than the models of the previous era - labels, galleries, platforms, et al – because now the loss is no longer just the artist's to bear. It's on their fans, too. The ones who bought their coins after snipers, the ones who are sitting on losses, the ones who are exit liquidity if - god forbid - an artist wants to reap some of the benefit for themselves and sell.
In many senses, memecoin traders are worse than labels. Their time preference is high. There are no long-term commitments, they're not dependable, they're always looking for the next place to reallocate their poker chips. If you're an artist, you probably don't want retail funding your creativity this way. You think your label or manager is annoying? Try a horde of psuedo-anon tokenholders busting your balls on your token price.
No fucking thanks.
