Crypto Creator Economy Roundtable with Megan Lightcap of Slow Ventures

Welcome to Mint, the podcast exploring the Web3 creator economy. I'm your host, Adam Levy, and every Tuesday and Thursday I'll be showing you what's happening at the corner where crypto meets creators by interviewing Web3's top creative entrepreneurs, collectors, and founders. This episode is brought to you by the composable and decentralized social graph Lens Protocol, who's ready for you to build on so that you can focus on creating a great experience, not scaling your users. Guys, I've talked about this on the podcast before. We as creators need to break through a new paradigm of social networking apps that we control rather than them controlling us. Lens Protocol isn't a social media app. It's designed to let Web3 social apps bloom. Own your content, own your social graph, own your data. Lens Protocol is the last social media handle you'll ever have to create. Now, this is where it gets kind of fun. Listeners of the Mid Podcast are eligible for claiming a Lens profile. Go to the show notes and fill out the survey in order to get allowlisted for a Lens profile. You need the secret passcode also linked in the show notes to submit the form, which is valid for the next 24 hours. So go create your profile, go find me and follow me. I'll see you there. This episode is a little bit different from what you typically hear. Instead of me interviewing someone, I was interviewed this time by Slow Ventures creator principal Megan Lightcap, who basically talked to me about all things, the Web3 creator economy, from on-chain data to understanding why Web2 is so different than Web3 for creators, the pseudonymous creator economy, and so much more. I had a really good time talking with her, and, uh, this will also be featured on her YouTube channel, which you can find in the show notes below. So without further ado, let's dive right in. So my name is Adam Levy. I've been in crypto since 2017. I got started in college. I did community college for 2 years and then later transferred to USC's Marshall School of Business. Around that time, it was like 2017, I sort of saw Bitcoin at its $20K peak, which was like its all-time high. And I was like, how the hell can something be trading at like $20,000? I never saw something like that, at least on the public markets. So that's what caught my attention. But what kept me in was seeing what you can do with blockchain tech. So I thought that was really cool.

Were you—

sorry.

Sorry to interrupt, but were you like a stock person or like a tech person?

No, I'm a drummer. I'm a drummer. I've been playing the drums since 5 years old. But—

So what caught your attention?

My dad is very like the tech person in the family. My dad migrated from Israel and he was like one of the first people to come to LA from like the social circle. And he was always on the frontier of all tech, like everything tech related. So I think my love and interest for that came from him. And also I think a little bit of the music stuff. So what kept me in was seeing what you could do with the technology, but what it was doing for musicians. So very much like in parallel. So at the time there was a company called MediaChain, if I'm not mistaken. I think like Jesse Walden started a company, got acquired by Spotify. I was like, oh, you can do more than just like day trade with this stuff.

Yeah.

So that's sort of what like kept me in and read the Bitcoin white paper. I was fascinated. And this was around like my winter break. So I had like 4 weeks just to like catch myself up on everything that was happening. And then I started writing in Facebook groups on campus. If you want to learn about like peer-to-peer payments on a Saturday at like 3:00 PM, do like a whiteboard session.

Okay, okay.

Don't laugh. I know. But like 3 people showed up and then did it again the next week, like 5 people showed up. And then at the time there was like a club that was starting. What sort of was like 5 people on a weekend then slowly turned to like 350 students on campus, at least measured by like the newsletter and like type of event attendance that we had. Where we did white paper roundtables, we did recruiting events for Coinbase, we did hackathons. Oh wow. We also like started like a venture arm where we'd invest in like projects, which was through a separate organization, but Yeah. So around that time I got my first internship in the space too. I got started like working at a VC fund, one of Tim Draper's like subsidiary funds. It was a small fund. The other two partners were Elon Goran and Joseph Holm and then Tim Draper.

Cool.

And learned a ton from them. Was working with them for about a year. That ended. And then I had the opportunity to study abroad and I told my advisor I wanna study in Switzerland. And this was maybe early 2019. In Switzerland there's a small city called Zug. Which is known for Crypto Valley. I wanna go study near over there and try to find work over there, 'cause Europe is way ahead of the game than the US. Was there for 5 months trying to find job, working like illegally with different startups over there, only to graduate. I moved to Vienna, worked with like a blockchain IoT startup. Was there for a few months. They had an offer to get acquired. They dropped me and I came back to LA and joined the fund that I was interning for full-time. I was the only full-time employee between the 3 partners. and it was great. We had like 22 portfolio companies by the time I quit. And, uh, I learned a lot from Alon, Joseph, and Tim. Um, I really credit them for like a lot of the marketing and like PR stuff that I saw.

Are they still at the fund now?

Yeah. Yeah. So the 3 partners, they're great. But the podcast then came about, long story short, and, um, podcast is called Mint. Kind of goes back to my roots as a drummer, as a creative, seeing the overlap between the creative and like the tech side. So I wanted to cover where crypto meets creators. I thought that was super interesting and super hot. So I started this podcast as a way to just like selfishly learn about the space. but also documents what we're doing over here. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome. How long has the podcast been running?

So over 120 episodes, over a year. And I'm very lucky to talk to 3 types of people on a weekly basis. Crypto-native creators, collectors/investors, and founders, all sort of building for the Web3 native creator economy.

Great. Well, we'll have to get some Slo folks on here. Yeah.

There you go. Yes. Yes.

Close to the docket.

Yes.

So we first got connected through Caroline and Clay, 2 of my colleagues at Slo.

Yes.

So I guess you ran into them at an NFT NFT NYC, correct?

Yeah.

On the topic of NFT NYC, what was your diagnosis of this year's kind of events given the market kind of backdrop? So kind of more broadly, and then with respect to the creator lens.

So we're in a bear market right now. Right. And typically when there's a bear market, a lot of, a lot of the noise gets like sort of fleshed out.

Yeah.

But surprisingly enough, it was still, I think, the biggest conference they've had to date. And NFT NYC is like a creator-first conference, right? So even when you were picking up your badges, you were able to identify what type of creator or individual you were in the space, whether music, art, fashion, like they had all these different lanyards, which I thought was really, really unique. So yeah, I think overall, like it was a great conference. I think what's even better though, are the side events and the type of people that sort of like showed up to the side events. I didn't really spend too much time at the conference, but all the NFT-related side events were really strong. And it really curated the right crowd.

But was there discussion of what's happening in the macro backdrop, or was it kind of like, let's look the other way and pretend it's not happening?

Yeah. So what do you mean by that?

Was there discussion of what's happening more broadly in crypto markets, or were people kind of continuing on as if we're in 2021?

I think it was a combination of both. I think we have no— like, everybody realizes that we have no choice but to continue, right? But I think there was also a lot of speculation as to what the future really entails, because the first wave of NFTs was very gambler degenerate driven, right? But through the cracks, we're seeing really innovative communities kind of come together. We're seeing really interesting creators sort of come about, new types of technology sort of give birth that supports this new class of users. But it's crazy. It's cool for me to see because when I got into crypto, it was even before DeFi sort of started. And like NFTs were just like starting with CryptoKitties when I was taking like Solidity classes at USC. And we like built apps, but nobody really knew what CryptoKitties were like. It was just like a cool, fun thing to do. And I remember when I was at Draper-Gornholm, the whole DeFi summer like sort of kicked off. And for the longest time, it's either you were basically like, just like crypto was DeFi, right?

Yeah.

But then culture came into the picture and NFTs and DeFi sort of like emerged. But now we're at a stage which I kind of learned from NFT NYC that now DeFi and NFTs are sort of converging, right? Which is super interesting because to be an NFT user, you probably also need to be a DeFi user at the same time, right? For you to get access to different currencies, you have to use Uniswap. right? And now there's people sort of like lending and borrowing their NFTs. So you're seeing like the two sort of overlap in real time. And I think NFT NYC was like a good hub as a, as a way to kind of see like, what do the next few months look like? I also think though, with large crowds comes the deterioration of quality people too, which we love everybody, everybody's welcome. But if you're really trying to get like inside alpha, you go to FWB Fest, you know, or you go to MCON where it's like the people who are actually like leading the frontier and like actively building, whether developers, or you go to DEF CON, right? Those may be the better examples of trying to understand what does the next few months look like or years look like from a tech point of view.

Yeah. I mean, that feels like a very technical-first approach versus if I just put my simple consumer hat on, it still feels— crypto broadly still feels pretty inaccessible. And my litmus test is having this conversation with friends of mine outside of finance and outside of crypto. And what their sentiment, almost doing a sentiment analysis of them and kind of their point of view. And I mean, talking to them now, they're like, isn't crypto dead? Isn't it over? Why are you still talking about this? Which is like, it's just an interesting barometer of where are we in the cycle.

See, my bet is that every creator is going to be some type of crypto native creator. That's my bet.

Okay, well, we'll get into this. Yeah, we'll unpack this. I guess in that vein, I'd love to break down the question of And with the kind of the creator hat on, you know, what is crypto enabled that Web2 doesn't? And if we can think about it kind of in 3 broader categories, one, NFTs, kind of what their utility is, what's their purpose, DAOs, and then social tokens. So starting with NFTs, what does the technology enable for creators and how can they use, in your perspective, NFTs most effectively? And understanding that like there's also different types of NFTs, be it music or art or IP or whatnot.

I guess I could talk about about how I'm using them as a creator.

Sure.

And sort of other use cases that I've seen from other creators. Perfect. Okay. So for me as a creator, I'm very much like a Web2 and Web3 creator. I can't be a Web3 creator without Web2 right now. Right? So I need the virality algorithms of Web2 platforms in order to funnel users to my Web3 products. Right? That's just the reality of it. So from my point of view, the way I build an audience in Web3 is by issuing NFTs as sort of tokens that are touchpoints to kind of realize who my listeners were as every season progressed. So I've been giving out free NFTs to my listeners since season 2 as a way to sort of thank them for being a participant and a listener and for them to have this ego thing where they found me before other people were able to find me.

But just to double-click on that, what is the tangible value that they accrue by being a token holder? For an NFT holder?

Financially, nothing.

Financially or otherwise?

Financially, nothing. But the NFTs unlock a level of utility of additional content that other people won't have access to.

So could they not just get a friends and family discount? I'm trying to push you on this.

Yeah, please.

What are the tools, the Web2 tools that could achieve the same result that don't necessarily have to be Web3-denominated? Right, like if you want to give them special access to content or a one-on-one with you, it feels like that could be achieved streaming together, like Patreon, etc.

Sure, but it technically can, but in the grand scheme of things, like there's pros and cons to it. If I were to be a Patreon creator and do that exclusivity and they pay a subscription or they just subscribe for free, right, I'm bounded to the success and the foundation of Patreon itself, right? And you see this oftentimes, like some creators have hesitation with using these platforms because then they become so platform dependent and then it's hard to kind of do anything else beyond that platform. We saw this happen in real time with the introduction of TikTok too. You saw a lot of Instagram creators sort of not do as well on TikTok because they weren't able to one, transfer their audience directly from one platform to another. And a whole new class of creators arose through TikTok that otherwise maybe won't be as powerful on Instagram.

Well, what you see now, which is really interesting, is you have these 2-part or 3-part TikTok series and they pause right at the cliffhanger and they're like, go to my Instagram to see how this story ends. And you're like, damn it.

There's so many funnels. Web3, which you can't do with anything else in Web2 because platforms are sort of siloed onto their own islands. And Web3, there's this new sort of like wave coming about with this like concept of fan interoperability. Okay. So in Web3, creators are the platform, not depending on platforms to be creators.

Sure.

So what does that mean in actuality? In Web3, when I have an NFT-based audience, I can sort of take those followers with me from platform to platform to platform to platform so that I can never get shadow banned by the blockchain. Right. I can take my audience with me depending on whatever primitive that I want to sort of like experience with Next, whether it be an email list, whether it be Cameo-related videos, whether it be whatever, a new Twitter type of thing. I can take those followers from platform to platform to platform. In Web2, I can't do that. The same problem a lot of creators sort of like experience in Web2, where if I didn't get on the TikTok trend, then I'm fucked, you know? And then I'm just limited to that platform. And it also, Web2, you're also so dependent on like building and adjusting your growth strategies per platform. And you have to start from scratch many times. So that's like one utility.

Yeah. But it's— and sorry to interrupt, but it's not to say that the platforms are not valuable because they are still valuable in terms of discovery. Like if everyone is their own independent platform, it's too fragmented a world in which it's impossible to find and seek out, you know, your niche or whatever. So I think the perfect world is like this coexistence between these platforms, but then also owning your own data.

Yes. I think also the way platforms build moats in Web3, and maybe moat is not the right word, but Web3 is very much like the financialization of everything. Right. So being able to create incentives, like financial-based incentives for creators to sort of be co-owners along with the platform is something that's super interesting that I often talk about on the podcast. Yeah. So you really build, like in crypto, you really build them up through like user experience because the applications still suck for the most part and through liquidity. Right. How that sort of pertains on a social platform level is to be determined because we're still early there. But I think the ones who end up sharing the value with the creators, right, will be the ones that sort of prevail long term. Right now we're the product of the platform.

Right.

Right. In Web3, it's like the other way around. Like we are the platform, we bring our audience. Like there needs to be the right incentives for me to start using your tool. And one of the biggest ones is like me being able to take my audience from place to place. So if you don't have that, like I gotta start from scratch again. So that's through NFTs. Also, there's the obvious of issuing a community-based collection and minting millions of dollars and building the minimum viable community and then finding the common interests and common themes. And then trying to productize that somehow or doing experiences and events or conferences, which sort of what wouldn't be able, like you wouldn't be able to do that prior to this technology because there's also like the primary and secondary marketplaces of being able to sort of be aligned with the financial incentives that come with collecting something. Again, it comes to the financialization of everything. As long as it's digital and you can tokenize it, then there's a market for it, whether it be big or small, which I think is like part of the innovation here.

Yeah. I think it's broadly like how do you bring liquidity to these previously super illiquid things, be it like member of a community or an illiquid asset class or what have you. It's interesting though, I mean, with respect to creators, I think one thing I hear a lot from creators is they have an endless to-do list between content, editing, production, business development, sales, all that stuff. They're running in many instances small, not even small businesses, real businesses. And educating themselves on Web3 or NFTs or what have you is so low on their priority list. So knowing that to be true today, do you kind of see this bifurcation of creators between pure Web2 creators and then Web3 creators?

Yeah, Web3, just like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, email, Substack, all these things are their own individual platforms. Same thing applies to Web3 right now. So you typically hear the phrase, or maybe I say this, I might be the only one, but there's crypto-native creators. So they use these Web3-based alternatives as a way to build, monetize, and own their audience in ways that they can't really do so on traditional platforms because they're bounded to the monetization channels and funnels of the platform itself. But what's interesting is because there's a new class of creators, it's like what happened with TikTok. It's like when new class of creators were emerging on TikTok, a lot of the attention started to shift over there because they were either willing to, able to build audiences in a viral way like never before, or they were able to get brand deals because they built that level of attention. Like same thing is happening in Web3. You're seeing crypto-native creators sort of emerge and a lot of the attention is being forced on them because now they're finding new ways to monetize and grow community, but also on a smaller scale. So I think there's a really good tweet that RAC pushed out a few months ago where I forgot what the numbers were, so don't quote me on this.

The musician.

The musician. Yeah. The artist, I think Grammy award-winning musician, producer. So he basically pushed out a tweet. He's like, I had a music NFT drop and 136 people generated the same amount of value, monetary value, that over 9 million listeners would sort of generate on Spotify, which is crazy to think about in the grand scheme of things. Now you may question it and be skeptical. Okay, how scalable is that?

Sure.

Because a lot of— REC is like OG Ethereum, you know, or like OG creator on the Ethereum network. And a lot of collectors understand him and have seen him around the blocks and they'll bet on him. Is that scalable for other creators? I don't know. But also if you look at the revenue model for Sound.xyz, for example, even being able to crowdfund 1 ETH, like $2K right now, how many listens it's required to make $2K? Yeah.

I mean, I think that also speaks to the unfortunate economics of the music industry.

Right.

That's a whole separate—

But it's also for views on YouTube, right? It's also for views on YouTube, Facebook, right?

Yeah.

On TikTok.

TikTok, I'm on TikTok also.

Like TikTok has the creator fund. I may be misinformed, maybe they've changed it since then, but from what I remember, like the creator fund is capped versus like YouTube may be more available because it's based off like the ad revenue, for example. So that's on the NFT base. Let's move into DAOs. So I may have a hot take. I think DAOs are more—

We love hot takes.

Yeah. I think DAOs are very much romanticized right now. I think there's a spectrum to DAOification. And I think a lot of people maybe want to try to be a DAO, but they're not yet a DAO. The way I see it for DAOs to really operate successfully, and the way I understand DAOs is like everybody needs to be very much like of a go-getter and very independent themselves to sort of like co-create amongst each other in a way where they don't need to be micromanaged or led. That's how I sort of envision a DAO. Now, obviously it's not like that right now. Like you have people form pods within DAOs as a way to sort of like organize and make sure things are being delivered upon and whatnot. So there's a spectrum to being a decentralized organization. I think from a creator point of view, there isn't really like a decentralized creator if we're looking at it from one creator to an audience. But if you look at it from a brand, right? From like a community of creators to a group of collectors, there's a ton of those. Like Bored Ape Yacht Club, again, one of the most like profound communities. Everybody, almost everybody knows about them. I'll just use them because people may know them. Yeah. They, for the longest time, sort of just like had the NFT as like the access pass to the community. You could draw on the whiteboard, you could attend the events, whatever. And now they started to DAO-ify with the social token, the ApeCoin, right? And now they have a DAO committee where if you're an ape holder, you can vote on things for the ape DAO. So I like thinking about it like, what does a modern day fan club look like? Yeah.

Right?

And I see NFTs in the form of membership passes as the entry point for starting a modern day fan club. And depending on which rarity traits you purchase or depending on how many you buy determines your contribution, your level of monetary sort of like dominance over the organization. So if I love Lady Gaga and she was more of a Web3 native person, I could see myself buying multiple NFTs just to support and have a voice in the community because I love whatever, Monster community, whatever the brand thing is. But what's interesting, which we have yet to like crack the code on, The best community builders today don't manage the communities. If you go on Facebook groups and you search Lady Gaga, you'll see hundreds of Lady Gaga fan clubs where the Lady Gaga fans, they manage that group without any monetary incentive, without any sort of aligned whatever, without any tokens, without any NFTs, without any snapshot, none of that stuff. They just do it because of love. So that's why I'm not sure where this sort of fits in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah. As you're—

You get my dilemma?

No, I do. And as you're talking, I'm really struggling to understand why, if you take the fan club example, what about a DAO structure is advantageous?

The advantageous part is that financial incentives are aligned, right? And you can sort of quantify the financial incentives through participation. Where either one token equals one vote. And if I'm a big fan of, let's say, I think the best example is Daniel Allen. He's one of the top music artists in the space. I love collecting his stuff. I've been a big fan of his music as well. So I now feel like I have a much more personal connection to him and his music because I've actually spent money collecting his stuff, participating in the Overstimulated DAO, being able to vote on things. Whereas if you're on a Facebook group type of homepage, it's disconnected. It's like sick. It's powerful. It's great. but it's a different type of community. Yeah.

Right.

So with Daniel, like I know if Daniel continues to deliver value to the tools that he's built and to the, to the assets that he built in Web3, then I know as a listener, I'm gonna really benefit because he's just gonna do better cuz I'm able to, uh, uh, front run his success through, through capital. Right. But also I may have upside because I, I got in early on Daniel Allen before the rest of the world got in on Daniel Allen. And if he actually ends up becoming, and I believe he will be, right? Someone who's like huge, like great, traveling the world, like super talented DJ, his audience is gonna grow. And the limited amount of NFTs and tokens that he released very early on in his career may be hot items. And by the way, you're already seeing that pieces prevail with like his early sound drops. His 25 base editions, I think have like a 5 ETH floor because they're just so like iconic, like memorabilia-based collectibles, right? What's up guys? Sorry for the quick pause, but I wanted to tell you about Bello, a new blockchain analytics tool I built that helps Web3 native creators and communities learn more about their collectors and their on-chain behavior. Through a simple search, Bello's intelligence can help you figure out a price for your NFT drop, show you what other communities your collectors are a part of, and empower you with insights to make confident decisions on how to grow your community. I built Bello with you in mind. So as a creator myself, Bello's helped me make money by finding sponsors for the podcast and allowed me to curate better content for you guys. And now it's ready to help other creators too. If you're a Web3 native creator, NFT project founder, or community manager, join the waitlist to try Bello's beta product today by signing up at bello.lol/join. That's B-E-L-L-O dot L-O-L forward slash join. All right, back to the episode.

Do you think this is ever going to break into the mainstream, or do you think it stays within these Web3 native creators?

I don't think it's everyone, just like not everybody collects baseball cards. Right.

Yeah. But baseball card collecting broadly is, is pretty mainstream.

It is mainstream, but I also know a lot of people that don't really align with that. Right.

But what I mean by mainstream is that there's really no like educational barrier to, to be a baseball card collector. Whereas I feel like there's a huge technical gap. If I'm a regular Wei music aficionado, right. Like for me to participate in this structure feels like a really big step versus what I'm used to today. And it may just be that the consumer interfaces on some of this stuff have just not evolved to that place.

I look at it from this point of view, okay? There's this great interview on YouTube from the early days of the internet. I think it was one of the late shows. I forgot who was the host and who was on there, but it could have even been a news segment. I don't remember. Old school.

I think I know what you're going to say.

Go on. And they're talking about the internet, but the way they talk about it, like, "There's this crazy new thing called internet." And when they say there's this crazy new thing called internet versus like the internet, it makes you think how early we were at that time, but how things got super more approachable and all the inconsistencies within the technology and the user experience sort of improved over time. I may be drinking the Kool-Aid too much. I may have too much money invested, but I do think it's here to stay. And it goes back to my thesis, like every creator is going to be a crypto-native creator. Yeah.

I guess I straddle this world of like, so like non-crypto people, but then I also have a lot of exposure through work and otherwise that like, it feels like this consistent struggle trying to reconcile these two worlds and like, when does it actually converge and what is the catalyst that drives that convergence? But anyways, conversations. So the last category are social tokens.

Right.

So, I mean, we touched on it briefly. How do you think about social tokens for creators and how to leverage them? And are we too early? Where are we kind of?

Yeah. Yeah, good question. So I do a Sunday newsletter. I've been doing it for almost a year. I think this Sunday is going to be issue 50. And when I started doing it, social tokens were really hot. And I'm at issue 50 now and I can barely find news around social tokens anymore. And I tweeted this a few, I think a couple months ago, I was like, why am I not seeing any activity around social tokens? Like, what's going on? And it's interesting because you saw a trend sort of shift from communities that are being built off like fungible tokens now shifting to non-fungible tokens. I think the best example that I recall is some, a group like DeveloperDAO, where at the time, if you look at all their peers, they were typically launching communities using ERC-20s, but DeveloperDAO sort of issued like membership passes through NFTs to get rid of this, the, I guess, the speculative nature of what an ERC-20 may bring to a community versus what a membership pass may bring. Right now, like taking consideration, like NFTs are also speculative, very much so. But the way I try to understand them is like it's in human nature to receive a ticket to get into something. Versus buy like stock to get into something. So I think from like an end user point of view, there's just more of a level of comfort and a level of understanding from doing that. So that's number one. Two, social tokens for the longest time have been tied to fungible tokens like ERC-20s, but NFTs are becoming social tokens too. Originally, the initial vision for social tokens was like human stock markets and, uh, creators sort of being publicly traded and being able to sort of make a bet on a creator through its fungibility. Which don't get me wrong, I still think there's a promising future for it, but I think for creators it's more threatening sort of to be publicly traded.

Yeah. I mean, it's like, imagine having your stock traded. At the end of every day you see where your price has quote unquote settled. That feels like a really big step from where we are today versus just patronage and fandom and whatnot.

But when I do see it, I do see it as a currency. For the community. So maybe Lady Gaga won't have the Gaga token.

Sure.

But you'll have the Monsters token. So the token can sort of be used just by naming it differently. It sort of like insinuates a different purpose for it. So you're not publicly trading Gaga, you're more of using the currency as a form of a token within the community. So for example, okay, let's look at someone like Allie Macpherson. Okay. She's a gaming creator. I think she's on the Rally network.

Yeah.

While she ended up using her name as a token, symbol, she now does like brand collaborations where she uses the Ali coin as a form of currency to be able to purchase things, right? And to get sort of like exclusive discounts and perks just by using the currency as a form of like, uh, as a currency within the community. Yeah. Also, if you look at the platforms building for like fungible token creators, like they're not doing like so, so well for the most part. Um, and a lot of them also introduced NFTs as a new type of token because they're seeing a lot more creators. And I look today, I saw there's over 146,000 collections, NFT collections on OpenSea. A16Z sort of measures the number of creators in Web3 based off that number. Their 2021 report, they said that there's 22,400 creators on Web3 measured by the number of collections on OpenSea. So if we continue with that same, same train of thought, there's over 140,000 Web3 native creators measured by like number of collections in the space. There's not over 140,000 social, like ERC-20 creators, right? So obviously there's something about like the, non-fungibleness for a community that makes much more sense. I think it may go back down to the point of, okay, sure, there's a speculative nature of being able to tokenize everything, financialize everything. But my point of view, it's like, I get the concept of purchasing one thing to get into something versus—

Yeah. It's like if you're a stockholder of whatever, you get invited to the annual shareholders conference, but that's pretty much it.

Right.

Other than that, What does that get you access to outside of a future of—

Yeah, it's like buying 75 FWB to join FWB. Why don't we just buy a membership pass to enter the community? And maybe there's like tiers to the membership pass where you just buy one thing versus going Uniswap and swap 75 things. I don't know, I could be thinking about it wrong, but that's just like my point of view.

Yeah, well, you've given this a lot more thought than I have. So two more meaty topics. One I know that you're super passionate about is how creators can use on-chain data to better serve their communities, build communities, and just be a little bit more intentional about how they use that data. Do you want to share what—

Yes. Okay.

The work that you've done there.

Let's talk about a Web2 creator, like a music creator, like a music artist. Okay. There was another tweet just to back this up a little bit more. I forgot by who, but he basically tweeted, he's like, "I have over 27 million listeners on Spotify, but I can't really tap into them. I don't know who the hell they are." And maybe if I'm lucky, Spotify will give me the ability to sort of tap into that 1% feature that they have. Maybe it's a few more percentage. I could be butchering the percentage, but it's a much lower proportion to what I'm actually delivering value to. Whereas, In Web3, everything is open. Everything is transparent. As long as we're building on like an open network and everything is built with like the same consensus algorithms and the same sort of like primitives and the same amongst different, like if we're all building on the same sort of mission, right? Which is let's say the Ethereum blockchain, then everything is publicly accessible. So this goes back to my thing as a creator. Like if I'm posting on Twitter, like sure, Twitter provides me data and analytics around social metrics. But I don't really get much more than that. Right? If you look at like Facebook ads, like sure, I can sort of understand what my audience is and I can target accordingly, you know, but I don't really know their level of affluency. In crypto, because the blockchain is so open and transparent by design, we as creators, like the reason why everybody should be a crypto native creator is because of all the data that you can get on the blockchain, you know, of understanding who your audience is and creating better content accordingly, growing your audience accordingly, and monetizing it more strategically. What do I mean? I give out free NFTs to my listeners. Like I said, every single season, majority of them are now sold out NFTs. I think it's like over 10,000 NFTs today. For the longest time, I knew nothing about who my collectors were, which sort of like—

collectors being listeners in this—

my listeners, but those who sort of minted my free NFT. I know who they are off-chain. I have Google Analytics, I have Spotify data, I have all these other data sources to sort of understand who the hell these people are so I can grow my podcast accordingly. But what's even more interesting is understanding who they are on-chain, okay? So that I can create better content for them based off the communities that they're a part of. So I know to sort of design maybe like, uh, beginner-level courses based off their wallet age. So if I know they just entered into crypto, maybe I should be doing more like beginner-friendly content versus if they're 3 years old in the crypto space, they've been through a cycle, I can do more like complex staking, DeFi-related type of conversations. So we built this tool called Bello, and Bello sort of allows a creator to understand more about their collectors from a very, uh, think of it as like a Google Trends point of view. So Google Trends, you search a keyword, you really visual data around it.

Yeah.

Same thing with this data tool that we built. I don't wanna show the data tool. I wanna sort of talk about like what it's allowed you to do. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

So I now see—

I'm very excited.

Yeah. I'm, I'm super excited about it because I think a lot of creators aren't getting the point as to why you should become a crypto native creator.

Yeah. Get in the cell.

Yeah. Okay. So I learned that A lot of my collectors, 27% of them collect on Zora. Okay. Why is that important? Because I've really never had someone on the podcast from Zora. I ended up bringing someone on the podcast from Zora.

What is Zora?

It's a marketplace. Okay. Whatever. It's too long. Not important. Whatever. 27% of my collectors collect on this one platform. I never had an executive from that platform on the podcast, and I should have honestly, but I had no way of knowing that that's what I should be doing. But I learned that there's an alignment and an interest between my on-chain audience. So I brought someone in from the team. We did an episode and that episode got 41% more downloads than a typical podcast episode. So I was using on-chain data as a way to understand who my audience is, and I had full transparency on who they were, right? Without sort of revealing intrusively who they were. And I was able to optimize accordingly. I also learned that a lot of them are also like DeFi degenerates on Aave and they hold MATIC. Aave recently released Lens Protocol, right? A new social graph on Polygon. There's an overlap between sort of getting a new sponsor based off that as well. We showed this tool to a music festival organizer, okay, where they sell tickets as NFTs. Now they're able to understand who their attendees are. Eventbrite doesn't give them data.

Yeah.

You know, Partyful maybe gives them maybe a little bit, like they don't give them the amount of data that they can sort of tap into if they were to use on-chain tools as a way to sell tickets and grow a community online. So we learned that a lot of them are already music NFT collectors.

Right.

And we also found out which artists they collect. Guess who's gonna be performing at the music festival? The artists that they collect. Oh, and on top of that, we also realize that a lot of them are like sand holders from Sandbox, the token SAND. That's a sponsor for the festival. Mm-hmm. Right. There's already an audience alignment over there. So you're able to see on-chain data as a way to sort of further guide your audience growth strategies, your monetization strategies. Another interesting thing is like when—

stupid question.

No superpowers.

Can this ever be, because I'm just thinking like GDPR, like California protection, all that stuff. Can this ever be regulated? Or like, but like what govern, I guess what governing body would step in and regulate this sort of complexion of data?

You know, you got to think about like to what level they would regulate it because everything is already anonymous.

Sure.

Without, unless you like, unless you're like me, like an idiot on Twitter where I go, let me me.eth, right? And you can see my address, right? Then that's on you, right? But I would argue there's more anonymous people than there are doxxed people.

And I guess the average address holder is not complex enough such that they're making multiple addresses for each different activity that they can really obfuscate.

Yeah. I don't know how to pronounce that. I think if anything, the government, it's crazy to say, but the government would actually love something like this.

Another hot take.

Yeah. Because they only have, I'm sure they have complex systems, whatever. I'm not going to doubt what type of tech they have, but this is proof. The reason why they want to create CBDCs, right? So they can have government-backed currencies, right? So they can sort of track everything that's happening on chain, right? That's the real value add sort of. But you can do it in a non-intrusive way without revealing your first name, last name, home address, social security. You don't have to do that unless you're an idiot and you dox yourself like that.

Right.

So from a creator's point of view, when you talk about building an audience, the more information you have on your audience, the better suited you are to create better content for them, to monetize better, to create better experiences for them, and to just be an overall better creator. Right. And already in Web2, the smartest creators in Web2 use data. They, they, they, they like MrBeast. There's a great interview with him on Joe Rogan where he talks about, he's like, he's obsessive over YouTube's analytics, tracking like thumbnail performance. And if he can't figure out what thumbnail to create for a video, he won't post the video.

But that's not user— I mean, it's user data insofar as you have click-through rates and views and stuff.

Exactly. But it's not like user, user data.

Sure.

Yeah. It's like performance-based data.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

No, I mean, I think there's definitely an opportunity there. Yeah. So in that same vein, in terms of anonymized data and whatnot, there's this whole trend within crypto in and around pseudonymity. I mean, you spend an hour on crypto Twitter and whatnot, and no one has their actual face in their profile picture or name in their handle. So how do you square pseudonymity with being a creator when being a creator by definition is personality-led and identity-led?

Good question. Another hot take, maybe. I think The creator economy will grow as a whole as more pseudonymous creators sort of get normalized. And what do I mean by that? It takes a lot to be a frontman or a frontwoman to go in front of a camera, right? And like do a dance and like be very vulnerable like that.

Mm-hmm.

Right? I know a lot of creators that do that, but I also know a lot more of people that really enjoy doing that but don't have the balls to go on camera and like do that whole entire thing. So being a pseudonymous creator actually reveals a new level of comfort for creativity where you can maybe feel more like yourself without really being yourself and construct the identity that you want to be seen by others. So I think it's actually very net positive for the space. And a lot of the Twitter characters online, if you haven't met them at conferences, you would otherwise think they're anonymous or pseudonymous, whatever it may be. And they post the most crazy shit online, but you don't know who they are in person. But that's part of their character. Like that's part of the personality.

And I think that the most important part is just the, like being consistent with that character, whoever it is. Right. It almost doesn't matter who's behind it. So as long as that's the same person through it or character or whatever through and through.

Yeah. And there's this one podcaster that I came across. Um, I think it's Jacob or whatever. I just remember his website being blue. Okay. And he has really top guests. He's killing, he's doing a great job, but He has no social profile online. And I maybe discovered him after he maybe doxxed himself, but I haven't really found anything. But I now know him as Jacob. I don't even know if that's his name, his real name, but I know him as Jacob Blue. That's what I remember him as. And he's a pseudonymous creator. He's a podcaster. And you're also seeing AI tools being built to manipulate people's voices so that they can sort of sound like who they want to be. And now you're seeing avatar-based tech sort of being creative so that they can become the PFPs virtually. Gmoney does this really well. There's another one, he helped start VaynerNFT. I'm blanking on his name, so forgive me, but he created this company where you can create avatars of your PFP, right? And be that character, whoever you want to be. Right.

Yeah. So no, I buy that. It actually expands the opportunity set. I think it brings more people. It makes being a creator more accessible to more people. And then I also think with respect to brand building, it's a really interesting opportunity just because it feels like the— because you can be whoever you want, right? You can be like a tree avatar or whatever. It can be anything, not just a single individual or a person. And so as you think about brand extension, you can just get a lot more creative.

Also, a PFP is like the perfect sort of template to sort of form yourself into a different character. Right? So I think a great example of this is Goblin Town, and they're sort of known for their like rabid voices that they create. That's like super funny. They had a Twitter space that went viral and that a lot of the community participated in and they sort of like, that's like a creative act.

Yeah.

And there's a tokenization element where it's financialized and a lot of like the floor went up like crazy and everybody that minted it for free made great money from it. So that's like an example of like creators as a collective. Right.

Super interesting. Well, what is one piece of advice you would give to creators that either want to learn more about Web3 or just get smarter on the space and just are very intimidated by it today?

So if you're a Web2 creator, for example, trying to get into Web3 and you have some type of an audience, do a Twitter poll, Instagram poll on your story and be like, who's interested in crypto? Who's not interested? Whoever says they're interested, DM all them a link to join a Telegram group chat, give them a free NFT, and then sort of start building some type of community. As long as you've given them some type of on-chain asset, whether it be a pull-off, whether it be something that you mint for free, whatever it may be, just get them involved. And I think that's the best way to sort of migrate your Web2 community into Web3. There's another concept in crypto called the minimum viable community. We first build out audiences and then we productize them. Creators are the definition of that. So there's never been a better user for crypto tools than the creator.

Yeah.

Right. They embody naturally what a Web3 sort of like environment sort of looks and feels like from a decentralized level. So go on Instagram, put on a poll, who's into crypto? Yes or no? Everybody that marks yes, DM them, send them a link to Telegram, and then send everybody a Plop. Just give them a free NFT. Just get that involved and then start from there. Do like a weekly session where you're just like, so what do you guys wanna do now? You know? Yeah. Like, yeah, I'm curious about this. What questions do you guys have? Yeah. And then if you wanna do a drop, like create videos on how to start a MetaMask. Ask and how to transfer money from one place to another and get your audience familiar and comfortable. Yeah, I think that's what I would say.

That's good advice. Yeah, that's the playbook right there.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for doing this.

For sure.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, you joining.

What's up, guys? Thank you for listening. If you've gotten this far, then you are a champ and I owe you a free listener pin. Go to adamlevy.io/NFT, fill in your info, and I'll distribute the NFT towards the end of the season. By collecting your pin, you prove your contribution to the season and get exclusive access to content, allowlists, and more. So be sure to collect yours. Also, please make sure to rate and subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening. This helps me out so much. And finally, hit me up on Twitter @LevyChain. I want to hear what you're building, the latest crowdfund you're trying to complete, or if you simply want to chat. I love talking about where crypto meets the creator economy, and it's no different if it's coming from you directly. So thanks again for your support. It means the world, and I'll see you on the next episode.