The Creator Economy | Jesse Walden, Li Jin, Cooper Turley

Come learn and hear about what the Creator Economy is, and what it has in store for our industry! Li Jin: @ljin18 Jesse Walden @jessewldn Cooper Turley: @Cooopahtroopa ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ 🎖 CLAIM YOUR BADGE: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/-guide-2-using-the-bankless-badge ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 💰 GEMINI | FIAT & CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/go-gemini 🔀 BALANCER | EXCHANGE & POOL ASSETS https://bankless.cc/balancer 👻 AAVE | LEND & BORROW ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING http://bankless.cc/uniswap ------ 📣 Ledger | Securely Exchange with Paraswap https://bankless.cc/LedgerYT2 ------ The Creator Economy Panelists: Cooper Turley, Li Jin, Jesse Walden The Creator Economy naturally erupts with the internet. Specialization allows creatives – artists, content creators, and everything in between – to carve out increasingly specific niches and build curated cultural communities. Art in all forms has an opportunity to blossom with the coordinative capacity of modern technology, and every active participant is inherently a creator. Smartphones and social media make everyone journalists, photographers, actors, and commentators simultaneously. With this budding paradigm, ownership of creations is paramount. The crypto industry lends itself elegantly to this need, blending creation and ownership. Web 2 has witnessed an explosion of distributed content, but centralized platforms determine the nature of how it plays out. Crypto offers a natural evolution to the creator economy, enriching the relationship between creator and community. This conversation takes a wide lens to the intersection of culture and the crypto industry. From MySpace to Instagram to Patreon, the ebbs & flows of internet culture and economy moves at a blistering pace. Our experienced panelists break these things down and discuss where we're going. ------ Resources: Li on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ljin18?s=20 Jesse on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessewldn?s=20 Cooper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cooopahtroopa?s=20 ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:30 Cooper, Li, and Jesse 7:30 What is the Creator Economy? 14:32 Evolving Creator and Community 21:31 Creator First vs. Platforms 28:35 The Internet Dream 36:16 Evolving Platforms 43:00 Sovereign Creation 47:19 DAOs and the Creator Economy 55:30 Creator Economy Platforms 59:27 Get Involved 1:02:08 Closing & Disclaimers ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey Bankless Nation, we are back. It is panel time. Panel time, David. Are you excited about panel time?

• 0:10David Hoffman?

  Dude, our last panel went absolutely fantastically. It was a current state of DeFi and everyone really liked it. People liked the energy, people liked the speed, and people like having three different takes all at once. And so we are doing the same thing with a subject matter that I really want to learn a lot about, which is the creator economy. And so we are bringing on the three biggest experts, in my opinion, as to what the creator economy is and what it's going to do for creators like us, Ryan, and also creative consumers like the Bankless listeners.

• 0:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's cool because this is so early, David. I feel like these experts are probably the biggest experts in the world on this subject, like as of now. But like everything in crypto, I mean, this is also, we're all still learning. So again, it's another case of three-year-olds teaching two-year-olds this subject. But what would you, how would you define the creator economy? I know that's going to be subject number one that we ask our panelists, but what's kind of your working definition of it, David?

• 1:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so the creator economy, I think, to some degree, starts really with the creation of maybe the internet itself and Web 2 platforms, like where a lot of content came alive. YouTube is a content platform, Spotify is a content platform, Twitch is a content platform. There's all these creators that are creating value and they're on these platforms. Yet, the Web 2 world has its flaws that we know about. And so there is a growing demand for more creative outlets, more equitable platforms perhaps, that really enable perhaps not just the top 1% of creators to really maximize revenue, but really the long tail of creators that these Web 2 platforms have really left on the sidelines.

• 1:50David Hoffman?

  I think that's, I think that's the gist of the creator economy. But I really want to get to these panelists because I think they have a much more complex and nuanced ideas about what the creator economy really is.

• 2:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we are going to find out exactly what it is. And I think Jesse Walden has called this the ownership economy before, and I'm curious to hear his take on the distinction. But it feels like NFTs are part of this movement. DAOs are part of this movement. DeFi is certainly part of this movement. The reason we're talking about it, guys, is because economy is the key word here. And with economies, there are new economic opportunities for you, a crypto native, to get involved, whether you're a creator, an entrepreneur, an investor, or just a fan. There are tons of new ways to get involved. So you can tune in on YouTube. If you're doing that now, we'll also publish this on the podcast. Make sure you like and subscribe. You can also throw in some comments in the chat box. We

• 2:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  may get to them if we have time. But with that, we are going to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible and then get right into the panel.

• 2:53David Hoffman?

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• 3:38David Hoffman?

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• 4:24David Hoffman?

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• 5:07David Hoffman?

  of this for you, all in one seamless transaction. So you don't have to repay loans in order to change the collateral you have backing them. Check out the power of Aave at ave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com.

• 5:27David Hoffman?

  All right, guys, we are back with this panel, exciting panel on the creator economy. I want to find out more about it. Here are the guests we have for you today. The first is Cooper Turley. Cooper is actively shaping the creator economy through projects like Audius. He also runs Friends with Benefits. He's part of that DAO and Pleaser DAO as well. He's an operator investor. Man, I feel like there's nothing that Cooper is not involved in in crypto and DeFi. See his name everywhere. Token launches as well. Governance through Fire Eyes DAO. Cooper, it's great to have you, man. How are you doing?

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Doing wonderful. Been a big fan of the podcast for a long time. It's a blessing to be here.

• 6:03David Hoffman?

  Well, we've been a big fan of you too. We also have Jesse Walden, who is a Bankless Podcast alumni. Jesse is the founder of Variant. His first check venture firm investing in the ownership economy. That is his focus. He was previously at A16Z and oh my God, those guys just raised another massive round. I think they're pretty excited about blockchain too. He led blockchain R&D there at Spotify too. He co-founded Media Chain, has a ton of experience. I consider him the go-to expert on topics like the ownership economy and the creator economy. Jesse, it's great to have you. How are you doing?

• 6:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Great. Good to be here. And we also have Lee Jin. It's her first time on the Bankless Podcast. Super excited about Lee. She works at a venture fund that's focused on the passion economy and the future of work. She's an expert on this space. She was previously Consumer Partner at Andreessen Horowitz as well, where she was a board advisor for companies like Substack, Imager, and more. And she also hosts a podcast called Means of Creation, which I'm absolutely going to check out. It's all about the creator economy as well. And Lee, why don't you pronounce the name of your venture company for us too? Because I don't want to butcher that.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm the founder of a VC firm called Atelier Ventures.

• 7:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Atelier Ventures.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  On the passion economy.

• 7:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Awesome. Panelists, it is fantastic to have you. Are you ready to dive into the creator economy?

• 7:28Speaker 02

  It's born ready, baby. Let's get it.

• 7:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, you guys are born ready. So let's start with some definitions because it's always good to start with definitions. Why don't we start with you, Cooper? Creator economy, those two words together, what does that mean?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think David killed it in the intro. For a long time, we've seen creators creating a ton of value for their communities and the ecosystem as a whole. There's never really been a way to share that directly with their fans and community members. So the creator economy to me is basically a relationship between creators and community to share value with one another.

• 7:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Jesse, what would you add to that?

• 8:00Speaker 04

  I just add that, like, we're all creators on the internet. Everyone is, you know, creating some kind of value, whether images, like, there's billions of images that get shared on social media every day. You know, there's different degrees of creativity online, but we're all making stuff and sharing stuff. That is the nature of the medium. And to, you know, points raised by both David and Cooper, the, you know, to date, there hasn't been sort of a ton of reciprocation for that value that's created by each of us as individuals. And I think crypto is going to change that in a meaningful way.

• 8:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Lee, build on to this too. And I'm kind of curious, after what Cooper and Jesse and David all said about this definition, it seemed like Jesse is introducing crypto into the mix here. So is the creator economy, is it bigger than crypto? Is it broader than crypto? Jesse said, we're all creators on the internet. What's the relationship between the creator economy and this new crypto web three thing that has come about more recently?

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the creator economy has existed ever since the internet existed, basically. Whenever interactive content and user-generated content was introduced to the internet, I consider that to be the start of the creator economy because that was the moment where people began actually creating content and creating value and accruing a reputation and influence online. And the creator economy is the process and system by which like those people are able to actually be able to monetize and accrue value financially for the content that they're producing online. And I think recently, what I have seen as the shift,

• 9:47Speaker 03

  one of the major shifts in the creator economy is that these creators are being recognized for the value that they're contributing to all of the platforms that they're actively using. There's a new range of different monetization mechanisms that they're exploring. It used to be really about ads, ad revenue share, branded content and sponsored content. Recently, we've seen a lot more exploration around subscriptions, direct user payments, tipping, patronage. And now, I think what crypto introduces is, like, one is like ownership, like it introduces the concept of digital scarcity and the ability

• 10:31Speaker 03

  to actually own digital media on the internet, which I think hadn't really existed before. Different platforms were trying to get to that element of digital scarcity, but they existed only within walled garden ecosystems. And that unlocks a lot of potential for monetization. And then B, I think the other intersection point I really see is around economic coordination and how to reward contributors and align economic incentives beyond just having fans be altruistically engaged with the creator.

• 11:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  So is this kind of like a, an act two, would you say, Lee, of the creator economy that kind of crypto brings? So when we talk about the internet, we really think of the internet as sort of a, you know, communication protocol, sort of an act one, but it's business model. The business model of the internet is really heavily advertising based. Does this add another business model for creators, which is like things like we can sell our assets? We can organize capital in new ways. What is crypto exactly adding? And is this a whole new chapter for the creator economy, do you think?

• 11:38Speaker 03

  I think we're actually entering chapter four, not chapter two. So I've, I think there's a few chapters in the history of the creator economy over the last decade. I would say creator economy, the first era was just the rise of social networking and UGC platforms. And when those first began, creators didn't really exist. Everyone was a creator, everyone was a user. They, they use these platforms just to communicate with each other. And in this 1.0 era of the creator economy, we saw the rise of more influential users, who other people started gravitating to, who, who they didn't know from the IRL world. So you had the rise of this creator class on the internet.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  I think creator economy 2.0 era was the era in which these people who started to amass influence and fame online, started to monetize that primarily through advertising. And then, so basically these creators became influential, but they were always the conduit for some other business to achieve its goals. So brands would use them as a channel for advertising. And then I think creator economy 3.0 era was creators realizing, actually, I can become the business. I don't have to just shell someone else's product and become the face of some other brand. I can be the brand, I can be the product, and I can be a business in and of myself.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  And then I think now we're entering creator economy 4.0 era, which is that the creators aren't just trying to Create a business in and of themselves and like sell a product and like have this transactional relationship with their audience. I think they're actually blending the line between the audience and the creator and they're creating micro economies and richer ecosystems beyond just a one dimensional monetization model.

• 13:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Lee, do you have examples in all four of those acts? So when you were talking about those, my mind was calling to examples. I'm not sure these are accurate, but like act one felt sort of MySpace-ish and the act two is maybe more social media, Instagram, and then act three is maybe something a bit more like a Substack platform and then act four is now where we are with with crypto. Are those good examples? Or what would you say?

• 13:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that was really apt. Like act one is like the rise of UGC platforms like MySpace, LiveJournal, Zanga, Facebook in its early days. Act two was Instagram, YouTube, like all of the platforms on which people are following in like a one directional manner. It's not bi-directional follows and mutual friendships. It's I want to follow someone. They might not know that I exist. Third era is like all of the current creator monetization products that exist, Web2, Patreon, Substack, etc. And then four is all of the crypto creator platforms that are rising.

• 14:33David Hoffman?

  So I would imagine all of these different phases of the creator economy and technology at large goes through these adoption cycles, right? Like it's adopted, it's great, and then it hits maturity and then we start to see some problems, right? So with our, the phase of the creator economy that we are in theory leaving behind, what are the problems that it's presenting creators and their fans that we are trying to solve in what Lee is calling the 4.0 version of the creator economy? What what does these crypto platforms, web three platforms solve for the problems that have been plaguing the current creators of the world? And Jesse, I'll turn that one to you.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  Sure, yeah, so, so I'm gonna riff off Lee here. So the earlier we talked about the the ownership economy, we did a whole podcast on it. In short, that's the lens through which I view what's what's happening in crypto and dovetails with my definition of the creator economy. In the sense that, you know, my definition is we're all creators, right? And the ownership economy is about giving everyone ownership over the value that they create. That's something that didn't happen in Web two, because, you know, many of the platforms, while they gave creators new tools, they also extracted value at the platform level.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  Value that was built on the back of the creators who who drove the value of those platforms, right? So in Web three, the opportunity is to build platforms, build networks that are built, operated, and actually owned by their users. And, you know, I I would defer people to the Ownership Economy podcast for like a much fuller exploration of that. But that's the specific problem that crypto solves, and it and it does so uniquely because it's now possible to move the value of ownership or move that economic value at this, you know, the same scale and the same speed that we move information. And, you know, we know from Silicon Valley's history that

• 16:30Speaker 04

  ownership is this really powerful incentive to get talented people to come and like contribute to your thing. That's how you get the best like engineers to come work at your startup. But it's not been possible to like, you know, distribute that to everyone in the world. Anyone with an internet connection who is a creator, crypto enables exactly that because you can literally send value tokens are like packets for value to anyone with an with an internet connection, regardless of where they are. So that that's the big new opportunity that crypto adds to the creator economy. And if you read my initial post on on the ownership economy and outlining this thesis, I actually referenced Lee's post on the passion economy. And of course, we overlapped in Endres, and so we were talking about this back then.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  But I see that the sort of ownership economy and which I would, you know, sort of say is synonymous with the creator economy in Web three as the next logical step or or sort of like, you know, 4.0 as as Lee puts it.

• 17:28David Hoffman?

  Cooper, you have an interesting place in this world because you are, from my perspective, both somebody who pays attention to the investment side of this industry, but also you participate in it as a creator. And so, maybe you could help illuminate us as to, what is, what's the reasoning for the migration, right? Like, what are the real incentives that this new ownership economy is really pulling people away from Phase 3.0, like Lee said, into Phase 4.0? Well, as a user and a creator, what's in it for you? And as a content consumer, what's in it for you?

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's shared upside in relationships. You know, as someone who interacts with a lot of creators, right now, it's very difficult to build a strong relationship with them. What the creator economy enables is a way to you to show your fandom at a much deeper level, you know, either financially by buying a stake in that project, or socially by working for it in a very deep level. And so, for me, as an active contributor to many DeFi projects, you know, this notion that there's no line between team and community, the notion that everything's shared with the community, those are things that we take for granted in crypto. But for many creators, you know, they don't really engage with their fans on a deep level. And so, what I really like about this movement is you're really challenging creators to go deeper with the audience that they're building, and give them shared stake in their projects. And I think, once we see that happen on a meaningful level, we're going to start to see all of these creator brands be 100x more valuable

• 18:52Speaker 02

  than they are today. And the biggest benefit there is that the fans are going to capture that upside along them, instead of just the creator themselves as the component of that.

• 19:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cooper, it seems to be the case, and this really hit me, when Dave and I had our conversation with Justin Blau, who's an artist, a creator in the music arena. And he really said, like, he doesn't, so much of what an artist does, at least a music artist, and I think many artists and creators feel the same, is through centralized intermediaries. These like massive aggregators of information that control them. So, like, his example's kind of like Spotify and record labels. And some of these are Web2 companies, but some of these are kind of legacy analog companies. And what he Really liked about crypto and NFTs is he could go directly to fans.

• 19:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that sort of what we've seen with the internet up to this point in kind of, you know, Lee's acts one through three? What we've gotten is a lot of centralization, a lot of aggregation. Does this movement, the creator economy, kind of disaggregate and remove these large aggregators? Disempower them and give power back to the creators?

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that as Lee highlighted, as the creator, you recognize you hold the keys and the power here. So you can go from platform to platform and bring your audience with you. You know, in Web two, I think that there's a lot of notion that you're following existed on that platform. If you were to leave Instagram, let's say you would leave all those followers behind you. But with something like Discord and these new creator economies, you're mobilizing across all these different platforms. So TikTok, Discord, Twitch, Patreon, OnlyFans, whatever you want to call it. People are following you around the internet. And I think when you recognize that you are your own digital nation state, you start to see the value being created. There'd be a lot more powerful, people go to bat for you a lot more. It's not about where you're releasing content, they're going to support you anywhere. And you can now become a weapon across any new platform you come into because you have this large force behind you

• 20:48Speaker 02

  that all of these brands and companies want to empower and partner with you because you have such a more loyal audience behind you. That's going to use your product and help bring value to the systems that you're using yourself.

• 20:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you can port your community and reputation in ways you couldn't previously.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 21:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, just, just to like tack on to that technically, like Web three enables this in a unique way, which is that you're all your identity, your, your data and the way you monetize are, is tied to one ID. So rather than having like 10 different IDs across 10 different platforms like Instagram slash Ryan, you have one address on chain where all this stuff that you do as a creator can be aggregated. And critically, it's not the platform that's aggregating, it's you as an individual.

• 21:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cooper, you said the individual operating as their own nation state and that just made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. We have a section in this agenda to talk about how it changes the personality and psychology of a person, but we're not there yet. First, I want to bring up a tweet that, that Lee said that you recently tweeted out. If you are a creator first company, your cap tagel should reflect that. What does that mean, Lee? What, what did you mean by that? Can you just elaborate on that tweet for us?

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  I think that creator empowerment exists on a spectrum. And right now, the notion of empowering creators and the language of creator empowerment is very popular and ubiquitous. And I think it's being co-opted by a lot of platforms that are arguably not that creator-friendly. And so if we look at, you know, creator empowerment on a spectrum from like,

• 22:32Speaker 03

  helping them to build an audience, to like sharing advertising revenue with them, to allowing them to build subscription revenue, to allowing them to like, create their own product offering, to like actually having them be part owners in the platform themselves. Like, I think the ownership element is like the furthest you can go in becoming a creator-friendly platform and actually empowering creators, because that means that they're not subject to like, you know, their interests are fundamentally aligned with that of the platforms. Whereas in all of the other centralized web two models, there is still this inherent tension of the platform needing to extract some value that the creator is contributing in order to be valuable as a company.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  And so this tweet, if you're a creator-first company, your cap table should reflect that. That was getting to like, how do we make creators owners of the platforms themselves? How do we have them not just build their own revenue streams and businesses on these platforms, but how can they actually benefit from the work that they're contributing to make that platform successful and help them get upside from that equity value appreciation? And I followed this up with a larger tweet storm about creator ownership of platforms and how creators need to go from just workers to worker owners. Which is really, really good to this point, but I, I think that is like

• 23:57Speaker 03

  the North Star for me in terms of what I see coming next for the creator economy.

• 24:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is so interesting that you talk about centralized platforms kind of co-opting the self-sovereign movement of the creator economy because like a lens that David and I often see through is, is we, we have like a lot of fake DeFi out there, right? And so like the bankless movement is all about, hey, you have freedom, you have self-sovereignty over your, your private keys. You can move your crypto assets wherever you want. You're not trusting a third-party custodian. And we want to maximize that even while knowing it's a spectrum. But like, I'm curious what this actually looks like for a creator. Like what, what would be an example of a, a platform that completely locks you in? Like almost like in our world, like a bank, right?

• 24:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Versus that's pretending to be DeFi versus a platform that is completely empowering the individual creator. Do, do you have any examples of that where like that falls somewhere along that spectrum?

• 25:00Speaker 03

  I mean, I think the examples are all around us. They're the apps that we use every day on our phones. Any sort of centralized social networking platform, I think falls within that camp. And it's complicated because I think in one sense, they are enabling these creators to build a following and reach audiences and they're enabling them to create content that would otherwise be really hard to create. But in another sense, like they are locking them in. If, if you're banned from Twitter, if you're banned from TikTok, like you don't have access to reach your followers anymore. And like if the platforms want to, they can monetize your content and not share

• 25:42Speaker 03

  or share an arbitrary amount with you, like that decision is made by the platform, you know, utterly. And so I think, yeah, all of the current centralized creator platforms have this tension of both empowering as well as disenfranchising the creator. I recently said, I think a lot of these creator funds that the social media companies are coming out with to pay creators are, are bread and circuses, meaning they're kind of like a distraction to make them, make the creators feel happy and appeased and feel like they're being enfranchised and heard and valued. But at the end of the day, like they're building their Creators are building their businesses on rented land when they're building on these

• 26:27Speaker 03

  web two platforms.

• 26:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  How can you, how can you even tell, like, how can you tell that you're not building it on rented land? So I think your, your tweet is super instructive. It's basically like a creator first company will give tokens equity ownership to its community. Right? So maybe that's a signal. But are there any other signals like in a creator first platform? Should I have the ability to just like port my entire profile, everything I create and like own it? Should I have the ability to realize upside on everything that I create? Are there some fundamentals that you would say, Lee, that, that exist in creator first platforms? Because I think sometimes creators don't even know where they are, like because of the marketing.

• 27:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I guess that, you know, almost like the psyops around some of these, these platforms that purport to be creator friendly.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Hmm. Yeah, I think the economic ownership is a huge element. And I think on top of that, I think transparency around decision making as another one. Like, how are decisions made? How are policies created? I think Twitter is kind of an example of like what transparency starts to look like because they recently revamped their blue checkmark program. And as part of that revamping, they solicited a lot of ideas and proposals from the community as to what the verification program should actually be like and what the process should be. Like, I think, like today, creators think of them themselves as passive recipients of platform decisions.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Like, you know, the YouTube ads and split rate is forty five, fifty five, and that's just what it is. And they're the passive recipient of that decision. I think going forward, I think people are going to start thinking of it as not just the platform made this decision and I have to accept it, but like, actually, how do I, how do I change it? How do I affect, affect change in the system? How was this decision arrived at? And could I be included as part of that process?

• 28:36David Hoffman?

  I want to turn the conversation to a little bit more about the economics behind the creator economy and the mental model of the American dream comes to mind. But if you talk to the average zoomer or millennial about the American dream, you get rolled eyes like no one really takes that seriously anymore. And I think part of the creator economy is trying to reinvigorate something like that back into the minds of people everywhere. And so Cooper, as somebody who is a participant, again, on both sides of the creator economy as a consumer and a contributor, tell us how you think that the creator economy might be able to reinvigorate just the average person to help kind of establish a name for themselves or some revenue for themselves?

• 29:21David Hoffman?

  And how is it different than the classic American dream meme that we know from the 50s and 60s?

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the most obvious answer is buying tokens. You know, you've seen very clearly over the past six months that millennials in particular love buying meme tokens, Dogecoin being an obvious example of this. It's my belief that the creator economy is an advanced version of meme investing where you're buying based on the back of a community rather than on the back of a financial statement. You know, I think that's a far ways away from becoming mainstream, but when that happens, you're going to see opportunities to earn financial capital and the brands that you support the most. And I think the biggest change here is that it's no longer about where you work being your paychecks that you can take that and go hang out with your friends on the weekend. It's a merge between the two with what you're working on a day to day basis is where you want to be spending your time. And there's now financial opportunities. You don't have to sacrifice your time for money anymore. The two things can be intertwined to build community and kind of better empower the things that you know and love.

• 30:14David Hoffman?

  And so making it like quote unquote, making it seems to be largely like out of reach for the average, the average person these days. There's just generally a pessimism in the air when it comes to just establishing a long term career. A lot of people just kind of feel confined to like a nine to five and renting an apartment for the rest of their lives. Is this something that the creator economy can fix?

• 30:35Speaker 02

  I definitely think so. I mean, you talk to people outside of their jobs and they're really excited about things like sports betting and about like, you know, what's happening on TikTok and staying up with like the Logan Paul Floyd Mayweather fight. You know, all of these events have financial markets around them, but I think the ways in which you participate in them has been very degenerate and speculative in nature. And what I hope to see is a more advanced evolution of that movement where if you have value to contribute to that conversation, you can bring it to a Discord, a governance forum, you can make a proposal to a community and get paid from the value that I have to offer. So in my mind, making it, I think is less about the financial capital that you earn and the number in your bank account and more about how free and sovereign you feel with the way that you spend your time. And if we can get to a point where you wake up every morning and you hop on your computer and you're stoked to go to work,

• 31:19Speaker 02

  I don't care how much money you have in your bank and account, that's making it to me.

• 31:23David Hoffman?

  Jesse, so

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Can I add something?

• 31:26David Hoffman?

  I was gonna give it to you anyways.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tee lead up to you. So sorry, I'm gonna make this like this is gonna be a two-part thing, but like American dream, I think is like goes, goes hand in hand with there being sort of a vibrant middle class. And I think the reason you're saying like, you know, people feel this and franchise the American dream is dead is like the middle class has kind of been shrinking over time. And you're seeing a lot more income inequality. And I would argue that's like one of the biggest challenges our generation faces because it's really hard to get anything else done if people are just trying to figure out like how they're gonna make ends meet. So so it's this fundamental issue. And I think in Web 3.0 or sorry, Creator Economy 3.0 and in Lee's framing, which is Web 2.0.

• 32:08Speaker 04

  The problem, the problem there is there's also a lot of income inequality where like the very, very top percent of creators, the ones like making all the money. And then there's this very long tail of people who are like barely making ends meet. We can speak a little bit more to that, but I think the, the big opportunity for like, you know, Creator Economy 4.0, or what I call the ownership economy, is that creators actually participate in the upside of the platforms that they contribute to building. And that helps them build wealth. So it's not just about like what they're earning day to day as creators, but you know, participating in the collective value that the platforms create. And that could be the difference between, you know, making ends meet and being in the middle class.

• 32:51Speaker 04

  So, so I, I, I want, I said that was a tip for Lee because she's, she's written a lot more extensively about the creator middle class and probably has something to add there.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think economic inequality is the most pressing issue of our time, full stop.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Like, it's only being exacerbated, the wealth gap is growing.

• 33:16Speaker 03

  Like, the returns on capital, the returns to owning capital are much greater than the returns to being a worker. Like, you can make more money through having money than you can make money by just using your time at a job. And that means people who have money are going to just become wealthier and, like, that gap is going to widen. I think this is such a huge problem and not enough people are talking about it, and it's something that I want to, like, devote my life to solving. Because I, I just don't think a world in which, like, people who already have a lot just accrue more is fundamentally fair. And the notion of the American dream, yeah, I think it's eroding because a lot of people feel like the American dream is out of reach now.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  And when I initially wrote my blog post a couple of years ago, The Passion Economy and the Future of Work, it was very top of mind for me how it intersected with the American dream and the notion of making financial stability accessible to more people. And I thought to myself, like, if we can make being a capital owner, a business owner, being an entrepreneur more accessible to way more people and lower the barriers such that people can set up their own businesses and own something of value, I think that's one possible mechanism to reverse the growing inequality that we have in this country. And when I started investing against this thesis of the passion economy,

• 34:39Speaker 03

  what I realized was that there was still rampant inequality in the creator economy, as Jesse said. Like, on the web two passion economy platforms, a very small sliver of creators are actually able to make a full-time living salary, and everyone else is just, like, cobbling together a little side income that, you know, supplements their day job, but they can't go full-time on being a content creator. And, and there's a lot of reasons for that. It's like how their algorithms are designed, the preferential attachment models that the algorithms use. The fact that discovery is controlled by a very small handful of platforms that are centralized. And so for me, a lot of my interest in crypto comes from how how do we tackle income inequality?

• 35:24Speaker 03

  How do we tackle societal problems? How do we make it more possible for people not just to earn a little bit of income here and there and piece it together and try to make ends meet? But how do we actually have them appreciate like benefit from the appreciation of the value that's currently accruing to the platforms themselves? Like to me, it's it's fundamentally broken that if you're a CEO of one of these creator platforms, you're making like thousands of times more money than the most successful creator is on the platform. Because arguably, like the platform would be nothing without those creators, whereas the internal employees are somewhat commodities. And so I think that that kind of value division is broken.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  And I think of, yeah, the ownership economy as a path forward for how we can make it a lot more equitable.

• 36:16David Hoffman?

  So with the creative creator economy kind of reinvigorating the middle class and and I love using that frame of reference rather than just the American dream. Because the creator economy is something global, right? Has nothing to do with America. The American dream is just a mental model that people understand. We have a lot of these platforms like YouTube, Twitch, that, you know, there's are perhaps there's hundreds of thousands of streamers on Twitch that have between at any given moment between zero and three viewers. And we have hundreds of thousands of YouTubers that just make content because they enjoy making content. So we know that there's like this energy of creative desire around.

• 36:54David Hoffman?

  It's just it's it's just that the the problem that I'm hearing you guys state is that these platforms aren't conducive towards the long tail. How do you envision these these new creator economy platforms to be more conducive to the middle class? How do you get? How do we bolster that that middle of the bell curve rather than just the top one percent of of creators and content producers? What's the core fundamental through line that these creator economy platforms are going to offer the middle class? And Jesse, I'll start with you.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  I think DeFi has sort of like some instructive lessons for like founders building this new sort of phase of the creator economy. So like take something like Uniswap, for example, right, which is, you know, one of the biggest DeFi platforms out there. It's an exchange. It's not unlike Coinbase, right, in that they both are places to trade crypto. But Uniswap is obviously different in one very important way, which is it's completely decentralized and it's owned by its users. So the users of DeFi who are on Uniswap who trade on the platform have gotten uni tokens, which are claim on fees generated in the Uniswap exchange. So the users own the platform. And if you were a user of Uniswap before that distribution was made,

• 38:07Speaker 04

  you got this airdrop of tokens commensurate with sort of how much you use the platform. And for a lot of users, that was a meaningful amount of money. Like, I think you guys may know better than me, but I think that thousands of dollars, like tens of thousands even. And so like, imagine, you know, you're living in India or something like that. That's, that can be like, you know, an annual salary for a lot of people that they made just from using a product very actively, being a power user. So I think that's like a pretty instructive lesson for, you know, how this new creator economy might play out. And it may be the difference between, again, like making, cobbling together scraps of income to supplement your day job and actively joining the middle class.

• 38:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cooper, what would you add to that?

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, double click on ownership. I think that's the most important piece of it. You know, earlier we talked about creator cap tables. And if you're a creator first company, you need to get them involved. What we've seen in the past is companies pick and choose the top creators to put on their cap table. They maybe allow them to invest in the company. They give them an advisor grant. But with crypto products, you see that ownership can be earned at any level of the stack. It doesn't matter if you're the smallest user on the chain or the biggest. If I put my money into Compound or Aave, I'm earning governance tokens as a result of that action. And I think what we need in creator platforms is more passive examples where ownership is earned through very small actions rather than it being given through investments or advisory positions or more hard pipe out positions. Add on to that, that peer to peer payments, I think are the biggest, you know, missing link here.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  We're really starting to build out now. So to me, something like OnlyFans is a great example of how this is actually panning out where you can connect across all of your followers around the globe in an instant way. And we're now starting to see payment channels where it doesn't rely on a black box to go and sit there for six months to collect your income. You can have that happen in real time. And so I think the more that we see payment channels that enable direct to fan relationships, the more that's going to be coupled with one another. You're going to earn ownership, going to earn equity, you're going to earn tokens. Then you're going to have so much more opportunity to build that up that, you know, to the least point, it's not about getting a couple of dollars that you're scrapping here and there. You have an income that's far beyond where you could ever earn bartending or doing these day jobs that a lot of creators are doing just to be able to create in the first place.

• 40:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is great, guys. It's been such an exciting panel. I think a lot of Bankless listeners are out there and just like wanting to get involved in this because they're tired of their nine to five. I don't know how many people I've talked to recently who are like, oh, my God, I wish I could just quit my day job and work for a DAO. And maybe this is what makes that possible. We are going to talk about DAOs. We're going to talk about some of the challenges to the creator economy and hopefully get some advice from the panelists in how you can be a creator, entrepreneur, participant in the creator economy, right after we hear from our sponsors.

• 40:49David Hoffman?

  Bankless is proud to be supported by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure. Instead of a cumbersome order book system where trades are matched with other humans, Uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on Ethereum, which is what Ryan and I call a money robot. No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum. Input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. Something brand new in the Uniswap ecosystem is the Uniswap Grants Program is now accepting applications for grants. We have been saying this for a while and we'll say it again. DAOs have money and they are in need of labor. If you think that you have something to contribute to the Uniswap DAO, apply for a grant to Uniswap.

• 41:33David Hoffman?

  Just look at the size of the Uniswap treasury. It's almost $3 billion. This mountain of capital is looking for labor. Do you have something of value? To contribute to the Uniswap DAO, no matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply for a Uni Grant at unigrants.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. That's exactly what we did to get Uniswap to be a sponsor for Bankless and you can do the same for your project. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring Bankless. Gemini is the world's most trusted cryptocurrency exchange. I've been a customer of Gemini since I first got into crypto in 2017 and it's been my main exchange of choice to make my crypto buys and sells. Gemini is available in all 50 states and in over 50 countries worldwide.

• 42:16David Hoffman?

  And on Gemini, there are markets for over 30 various different crypto assets, including many of the hot DeFi tokens. And it's one of the few exchanges that has liquid die markets. Gemini just launched their Earn program where you can earn up to 7.4% interest on 26 various crypto assets. If you're tired of paying fees in DeFi or you don't want to worry about DeFi exploits, but you still want to earn interest on your crypto assets, Gemini Earn is the product for you. Another product I'm stoked to get my hands on is the Gemini Crypto Back Credit Card, which gives you 3% cash back on all of your purchases, but paid to you in your preferred crypto asset. When I get my Gemini credit card, I'm going to make sure that I get my cash back in ETH.

• 42:58David Hoffman?

  So whenever I buy something, I get a little bit of ETH bonus back to me at the same time. You can open up a free account in under three minutes at gemini.com/goBankless. And if you trade more than $100 within the first 30 days after signup, you'll be gifted a free $15 Bitcoin bonus. Check them out at gemini.com/goBankless.

• 43:19David Hoffman?

  All right, guys, we are back with our Creator Economy panel. And this first question I want to turn to Cooper with, who already dropped a line that has already stuck in my head about how the Creator Economy allows you to be your own nation state. And a nation state is importantly called its own sovereign nation, its own sovereignty. And the cool thing about crypto and the through line about crypto is that you get to be your own bank, you get to hold your own assets, you get to be self empowered. And so Cooper, as a producer in the Creator Economy world, how does one's relationship with themselves change? If you are now the person that owns your own equity in yourself and you are the person that is empowered to create without being extracted, how does that change the person that is the creator?

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love that question. I mean, I think the obvious answer is that you become in charge of the way that you use social media. Social media is now your weapon. You know, for the history of social media, people feel like they're getting taken advantage of. They don't like the emotions they're feeling from it. They don't like the way they interact with it. But you know, with this new evolution, the creator economy, you're mobilizing audiences, you're mobilizing messages, you're earning income from it. And that switch in your mind, where social media is a tool to be taken advantage of, actually becomes extremely powerful. And so likening this to crypto, we see things like on-chain governance, where if you have valuable skills to bring to the table, you can present that to a project and get paid to bring that idea into the world. I think historically, we've only seen this be done with DeFi protocols and highly sophisticated financial products. But moving forward with the creator economy, if I have an improvement or a way that you as a brand

• 44:49Speaker 02

  can further your likeness in the wider social media landscape, I think there's a very real world where you're getting a monthly budget to run podcasts for a creator, to do content campaigns, to do media campaigns and sponsorships. And when you start to identify what your skills are as a fan of any artist, I think you're going to start to see that that relationship with the person you idolize so much becomes very, very close in tune. And you're now speaking with your favorite artists on a day-to-day basis because you guys are growing together and creating a shit ton of value together.

• 45:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  It does require like a different kind of thinking, though, Cooper. Like, there's, you know, people are using their day jobs just asking for permission for everything, right? Like, my instructions come from my higher-ups and the boss, and that's all determined by the CEO and the company. This is very permissionless. Like, you have to take, no one's going to tell you what to do necessarily, when you're partaking in the creator economy or part of a DAO. Can you reflect on that? Like, what skills do people really need to have to succeed in the creator economy?

• 45:46Speaker 02

  I would say social skills are probably the most important. And this is actually why I've loved working in the creator economy, is those human skills are favored far more than your financial capabilities. So going into a Discord, being able to moderate a discussion, being able to organize 10 people for a Zoom call across five different time zones, you know, these very weird skills that you never really think of, they're very minute in what they do, but you end up becoming a very core piece of the puzzle. So even if you're a passive participant who's not actively engaged in talking publicly all the time, you can serve a very important role behind the Scenes and I think what we need to challenge ourselves to do as DAOs and creator economy is be able to list those actions very granularly. So instead of having general creator economy come and get involved, you know, do whatever you want. Having different teams and organizations where you can get involved and having clear on ramps.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  I think it makes it a lot easier for people that are confused how to get started to have clear direction of saying, oh, I'm really into product. I'm really into writing. I'm really into marketing and then having a direction to go and do those things and eventually earn from those actions.

• 46:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  I just want to underline what Cooper said because I was not expecting you to say social skills as the skill you need in the creator economy. And there are a lot of people who who feel like kind of outside crypto because they don't know the cryptography. They don't know the like the technical side of things. They're not engineers. They're not programmers. But guys, that's not necessarily what the core need is in the creator economy. It's social skills, right? And so there's lots of opportunities to plug in here. Anyway, just wanted to underline that for folks.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Love that.

• 47:12David Hoffman?

  Jesse Lee, you guys want to build off of that before we move on to a different subject?

• 47:18David Hoffman?

  No? Okay. All right. So the creator economy we've established is both outside the world of crypto, but also inside the world of crypto. So I actually want to talk about where the creator economy and crypto overlap. And there's a lot of conversations to be had about digital organizations, which we call DAOs. How do DAOs fit into the world of the creator economy? How do DAOs make the creator economy better? Jesse, let's start with you.

• 47:42Speaker 04

  Cool. So so maybe before I answer that directly, I'm going to just back up and and and take take stock and sort of like where the creator economy has intersected with with crypto today. And like, obviously, NFTs were on SNL. Like, that was a really sort of important inflection point for the intersection of like the creator economy in the 3.0 version we discussed versus the 4.0. First time like, you know, creative people were making money in crypto, you know, selling NFTs for ETH. So that happened earlier this year. And since then, we started to see a lot of other crazy things happen. So like notably, like now, you know, there's this concept of DAOs or or, you know, people coming together and pooling crypto assets, crypto resources to do cool shit. So.

• 48:25Speaker 04

  There's, you know, Pleaser Dow collected Edward Snowden's NFT and and People Pleaser, another crypto artist. And, you know, what's interesting is this this collector, this buyer of the NFT is is is not a single person. It's a group of people on the internet who use, you know, Ethereum smart contracts to pool capital in order to beat all the other individuals, you know, competing to win those auctions. So that's an example of, you know, of of a Dow that's now sort of empowering the creator of, you know, this digital art. And and we're starting to see sort of like even crazier iterations of the same idea where some of those those DAOs, in addition to pulling resources to collect NFTs, are now starting to like build entire products.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  So there's like, there's this Dow called Party Dow that's building a product to do what Pleaser Dow did, which is pull resources and then go bid on an NFT. It their product will enable this to happen sort of like automatically in an instant versus all the like manual work that that that Pleaser Dow had to spin up. So now, like, if you if you keep pulling on this thread, where does it go, right? I think it goes as big as, you know, creators of value on the internet, building something as big and valuable, arguably bigger and more valuable than Facebook. It's not just these like, you know, individual sort of one-off collections of NFTs

• 49:49Speaker 04

  or or like one-off products like like Party Bit, but something as sophisticated as as Facebook. And and like, a lot of people kind of scoff at me when I when I say that, right? They're like, how could how could a bunch of random people on the internet like build something as sophisticated as as Facebook, which has like thousands of employees, you know, is led by this brilliant visionary CEO, Mark Zuckerberg or whatever. But I I like to remind people that, you know, the internet built Wikipedia, right? Which at, you know, in the 90s, if you told a bunch of people that a bunch of randoms on the internet were going to build the biggest encyclopedia, the most thorough, like, you know, the the the the best encyclopedia ever, they would have told you you're completely insane. But nevertheless, they did it. And so I would never bet against the internet hive mind out competing,

• 50:35Speaker 04

  you know, a a single centralized organization with with one CEO at home. And we're just very early in that process, but that's that's the potential of DAOs in my view.

• 50:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm hearing a prediction here, which is super interesting, Jesse. So if I'm I'm hearing what you're saying correctly, you're saying that there is going to be a DAO that is bigger and more significant and has

• 50:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Even greater sophistication than current Facebook at some point.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And just to like qualify that a little bit, because I know it sounds kind of crazy. Right? Like, again, you're a lot of your listeners are deep on DeFi. So I think there's lessons we can learn there. In, in, in the DeFi ecosystem, I'm going to keep running with the Uniswap example. Uniswap is a DAO now, right? Like, there's this big treasury. And it's governed by its users, the token holders. Uniswap Governance appointed a grants committee to go and like fund interesting new projects to grow the ecosystem. And what you get from, from, from that grants program is a bunch of, you know, upstarts building cool products. And so rather than having like one CEO, you know, call the shots on all the different products that need to be built to grow a platform.

• 51:44Speaker 04

  You have internal competition within the ecosystem, you know, to get these grants. And sometimes you have multiple applicants bidding for the same sort of, you know, request for proposals. So you, you have 10 different people building the same feature or the same, the same product idea. So that, that may be one way in which, um, you know, DAOs, these decentralized organizations actually outcompete their, their sort of centralized counterparts. There's just more talent in the pool competing to build the best thing.

• 52:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  The most talented people probably don't work for you. I forget who said it, but that quote comes to mind. Lee, what, what's your take on DAOs?

• 52:24Speaker 03

  I've been watching all of the activity with a lot of interest.

• 52:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, everything that Jesse said was super fascinating and I, I buy that vision. I, I don't think people should bet against the internet hive mind. And maybe just to sort of intersect that vision with the creator economy and creators in particular. I would just say, like, I think historically up till now, it's been viewed as kind of a bad investment to invest in a single individual creator. Because. Like it was thought that, you know, they can only get to a certain level of scale before their popularity taps out and they, you know, there's no more people who are going to like their content. Um, they can only monetize in certain kind of like pretty restricted ways, mostly through advertising and and brand sponsorships.

• 53:14Speaker 03

  Um, but I think if we, if we really delve deep into like why that has been the case and why creators have been limited from becoming bigger, I think a lot of it has to come down to like the economic value was not properly distributed and people didn't feel aligned and incentive aligned with their success at scale. Um, so when today, when social media creators get really large, they typically get signed to a talent agency. That talent agency takes, you know, a 10%, 20% cut of all of the earnings from the projects that they bring to them. Well, that economic equation, it works well to incentivize the agents to bring them a lot of opportunities.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  But it doesn't include the people at the end of the day, who are probably going to be the most pivotal in the creator's success, which are the fans, like the the end consumers of the creator's content. So I, I think in the future, creators can actually build much bigger businesses than they are doing so today. Because DAOs and crypto give them the toolset to economically align so many more participants and to give them

• 54:25Speaker 03

  a stake, both economically as well as politically um in their operations.

• 54:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Very cool. That now Cooper, I I know you're bullish on DAOs and you even put a timeline on this. I'm gonna read out a tweet you just tweeted before this panel began shortly. Which was, uh, DAOs today are where NFTs were a year ago. Brace yourself, you said. So what that, what that says to me, Cooper, is we're in for like a massive inflection up. We're, we're about to get SNL, maybe a year from now, we'll see an SNL skit on DAOs. Is that what you're talking about here? Why should we, why are you bullish on DAOs?

• 55:04Speaker 02

  I think DAOs are just the new LLC. You know, I think you look five years into the future and there's no difference between LLC today and a DAO tomorrow. You know, the core difference there is there's no longer equity in companies. There's tokens and networks. And when you start to think about all the positives that come with that, it seems obvious that everyone's going to be forming DAOs. And I think our challenge as an industry is to really advance and solidify what those are so that people can build them in a meaningful way beyond kind of the cool experiments that we're seeing today.

• 55:30David Hoffman?

  Guys, this has been a fantastic panel and we are coming down to the end of our time. So I want to do a quick breeze through of some of your guys' favorite creator economy platforms. What do you guys, where do you guys spend your time when you are trying to spend your time in the creator economy? And maybe these can be leads for the listeners and viewers as to where they should go if they also want to get a taste for the creator economy. Cooper, let's start with you. What's, what are your favorite creator economy applications?

• 55:55Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I'm going to kind of go rapid fire here because I'm involved with so many of them. Audios is a project that I worked very deeply with. I think this embodies exactly what a creator economy platform looks like in music. Friends with Benefits, this is a DAO that I've worked with for a long time. Great culture crypto community if you're new to crypto but want to get deeper involved with creator economy. Pleaser DAO, which Jesse mentioned, for NFT collections. There's going to be some really exciting stuff there. I want to give a big shout out to the Bankless DAO. I think what you guys did on the media side of things, democratizing ownership there has been fantastic. So DeFi, NFTs, social tokens, DAOs, there's a DAO for all of those that are involved in the creator economy. Take a little bit of a look on my Twitter and I think you'll find something you like.

• 56:32David Hoffman?

  Jesse, what are your platforms of choice?

• 56:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, so first, I'm just going to cosign everything Cooper said, but then I'll add a few. So Foundation and Zora for NFTs. I think Foundation, if you're an NFT artist, is Zora, if you, if you're more a developer wanting to build sort of your own platform that's NFT native. And then Mirror, I think is another one that's, that's really interesting. And it looks like a blogging platform. So if you're a writer, I think it's definitely for you. But if you squint a little bit further, it's a lot more than just a blogging platform in that they have all these widgets for crowdfunding and sort of splitting revenue. And so like, no matter what kind of creator you are, you know, any kind of like crowdfunding, any, any kind of like initiative you want to take with your audience, it probably starts

• 57:18Speaker 04

  as a blog post where communicating the idea. And so I would sort of view Mirror more as just sort of a way to connect with your fans and sort of monetize in Web3 native ways. It's toolkit for that. So that's, that's another one.

• 57:33Speaker 04

  And yeah, I'll leave it there. I'm sure Lee has more.

• 57:36David Hoffman?

  Lee, same question. What are your favorite platforms?

• 57:40Speaker 03

  Plus one to Mirror. I think their Write Race, which is the process by which new writers get onboarded to the platform, is like the social event of the week, with people actively campaigning to get more votes, which is fascinating to watch. Also, plus one to Foundation. That's where I made my NFT debut, so it will always hold a special place in my heart. And then lastly, I would say I've been spending a lot of time playing Axie Infinity, which has been an interesting adventure. And it's like, if you look into the numbers around the usage of Axie, it's pretty staggering. There's 250,000 daily active users on Axie. And by being a user, by being a player,

• 58:25Speaker 03

  you are earning income through collecting these in-game NFTs called Small Love Potions. And you can sell those Small Love Potions on any exchange for income. And so Axie has become the source of income that rivals a lot of in-real-life jobs, especially for people in developing countries where they're earning like $500 a month through playing Axie Infinity. And that kind of scale puts it on the scale of some of the largest employers in the world in terms of people who are earning income through this particular mechanism. So yeah, I think that's really interesting. And I think the future of work is increasingly going to look something like it, where there's no formal employer relationship,

• 59:10Speaker 03

  but you're earning income through doing things that feel as fun as playing a game.

• 59:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, your parents will never believe that you're earning a full-time income by playing Axie Infinity and selling Small Love Potions. But that is a possible future. Panel, this has been a lot of fun. I want to end with maybe some advice that you would provide for people who want to get into the creator economy, is it entrepreneur, investor, a participant in some way? Jesse, what advice do you have for people who want to get involved? What should they do?

• 59:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I think my my high level advice is like, don't be discouraged by the rough edges. Crypto is still in its sort of like nascent, nascent stage. And you know, right now, there's a lot of cruff you need to figure out. I think your listeners have largely figured it out because you've done a great job educating them on, you know, wallets and paying for gas and stuff like that. But a lot of people, a lot of participants in the, you know, 3.0 incarnation of the creator economy haven't got there yet. So, you know, if we're reaching that audience, my advice is like, you know, don't be discouraged. The rough edges are gonna get smoothed out. And then all the benefits that we talked about on the panel today are gonna, you know, become a lot more apparent to a lot more people. So this thing is gonna grow quickly.

• 1:00:27Speaker 04

  And the opportunity today is to just like get in on the ground floor.

• 1:00:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cooper, how about you?

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  My advice would be join a community, don't start one. I think there's a lot of excitement and doubt right now to spin up the Dow at a left field. I think it's gonna be the next big thing. There are now enough high profile DAOs being formed that your most valuable contribution can be joining that group and working for it. You know, all these DAOs are still in such an early stage that the upside to be gained from working from them is exponential. So if you're looking to get involved, I think it's less about what token do I buy to get exposure to on a secondary market. It's more about going into that Discord server, finding a way to slot in and earning some ownership, because I think that you'll find the social capital gained from that work is far more valuable than anything else you're gonna earn from the financial side or buying it on an exchange.

• 1:01:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so two good bits of advice there. Don't be scared away by the cruff. Learn to DAO first before you start your own DAO. Lee, finish this off. What's your parting advice here?

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  I would encourage people to learn by doing, which is how I've always approached the creator economy. I learned most about creators just by being a creator myself and talking to other creators. And so if people are interested in investing, studying, analyzing, creating, like, just do it and and try your hand at being a creator. So if you want to learn about NFTs, just enter an NFT, sell it. If you want to learn more about social tokens, like buy some social tokens. I think just participating and in being a part of the ecosystem is a great way to learn.

• 1:02:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Fantastic advice to end on something we often say you learn by doing on the bankless journey. It's no different in the creator economy. Panelists, thank you so much for teaching us about this important subject. We'd love to have you back sometime.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  Thank you, guys. This is fantastic.

• 1:02:24Speaker 03

  Thanks so much. Thanks for having us.

• 1:02:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  David does not want me to forget to remind you, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you like and subscribe this. So we propagate this to more people. Risks and disclaimers, none of this, of course, was financial advice. You'll never find financial advice on Bankless, never, ever. Ethereum is risky, crypto is risky, DeFi is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but thanks for joining us on the Bankless journey.

• 1:02:54David Hoffman?

  Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast, and community as a Bankless premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks, and exclusive content, and even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles, and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders, Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where

• 1:03:37David Hoffman?

  we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks, everyone, for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless nation.