We just shipped the first version of coins on Paragraph — a new way for readers to support the posts they love and help great writing get the visibility it deserves.
Great writing has the power to change minds & bring people together, entertain & create new worlds, and shape the future. Despite their cultural impact, writers rarely receive the appreciation — or income — their work merits.
Today’s monetization options come with hard trade-offs: subscriptions require full-time writing and can feel impersonal; ads require a lot of effort & erode the reader experience; and tips & one-off payments rarely scale. We believe there’s room for something new.
Coins are part of our ongoing attempt to expand the idea economy. We hope coins will allow readers to:
Turn up the volume on an idea that resonates with them.
Signal something about themselves through the writing they back.
Find others who share their interests or values.
Support writing they enjoy and encourage more of it to exist in the world.
All while giving writers new ways to earn and feel like their work matters.
We felt like there was an opportunity to try a version of coins that wasn’t rooted in speculation, bending more toward durable, market-expanding motivations. We’ve tried to bring this to life through early versions of the product experience.
For example, in the first iteration of the post page with the side rail to buy coins, here are some of the things we did to keep the lightweight, simple, and focused on supporting the writer:
Using less financialized terms: "support" instead of "buy", "trade" instead of "sell".
Trying to reduce the mental overhead with buying coins, providing 3 tiers to choose from, avoiding the need to choose how many coins to buy, consider the price of the coin, and so on.
Providing a popularity indicator instead of showing the market cap of the post.
We don’t expect to nail this out of the gate, but hope that this is a firm step in a new direction from which we can learn and iterate.
Coins also power discovery — we've shipped a new Explore page, where the most-supported posts rise to the top, sending great ideas into wider circulation and inviting more engagement.
As readers back a piece with coins, that support instantly boosts its visibility, creating a virtuous loop in which quality writing climbs the charts while authors earn more for their work. The result is a community-driven feed that surfaces the internet’s best thinking—not because an algorithm said so, but because real people decided it deserves the spotlight.
We’ve already received a ton of valuable feedback related to the challenges of coins in helping writers monetize their work. To that end, here are a few areas where we’re excited to experiment:
Finding the right relationship between coins at a post-, writer-/creator-, and/or project-level.
Experimenting with economics and incentives (e.g., increasing transaction rev share).
Designing incentives for long-term holding.
Post-level remixing, rewards, and new kinds of collaboration.
Access to read, comment, attend events, etc. tied to coin ownership.
Combining coins with limited-edition NFTs (or other monetization features).
Coins are live on Paragraph right now. To get started, simply connect your wallet & publish a new post.
To learn more, read our documentation on coins, or share your thoughts with us on X or Farcaster.
We're excited to continue experimenting with new economic models to expand the idea economy.
Share Dialog
Colin Armstrong
Support dialog
Incentives collaboration sharing ✊️ 💪 🚀
When writor's coin?
amazing
Sounds amazing!
OMG dinner
OH SNAP 💜
coin your first billion dollar idea :P
This is huge.
For this to make a big impact, the base or worker need to announce it on the x account. and dexscreener link must be paid
Lfg
love this greatly! lfg!
I LOVE THIS COIN META 🥹
❤️
I made $449 from a quick Paragraph post yesterday. If you're a writer, I recommend giving writing coins a try. It's a good way to earn from transactions, but an even better way to drive attention to your content. For these to work, you have to think of your post as a single idea or meme, and that idea getting discovered across everywhere you see tokens.
Why do you think that is? Don't take this wrong...but that's a lot for one short piece... -people ready to support the whole of your work and you -people excited about just using new Paragraph coins -something else?
It certainly is. The post is currently sitting at $1.50 per view. It's a combination of speculation and patronage. Most people like the idea of supporting creators. Every person loves making money. Combining the two is a powerful mechanic.
true. I left out the coin speculation part.
🔥
Fiction or non fiction?
good value flow
yo that is crazy thanks for this post. I wasn't thinking about monetizing what I write but that is a great idea. I love to write so this maybe a good place for it!
How does this work. I am a writer. How do I register?
1. Write a post 2. Publish w/ coin setting on 3. Earn when people support and trade https://paragraph.com/@blog/coins
Coins are now live for everyone on Paragraph. A new way to back ideas & get rewarded alongside the writers who spark them. Writers → Earn from your ideas. No subs or paywalling needed. Readers → Support posts you love, amplify great writing, and share in the upside. Read the announcement: https://paragraph.com/@blog/coins
love the experimentation around how to better monetize the idea economy
would be interesting to see if $NOICE passive tipping can be integrated here - tip when opening a post, liking a post, reading a post, tip when you share, etc.
I think that's an awesome idea
Smooth UX. Always a fan.
interesting update! I actually wanted to stay away from paragraph because it involved you mentioning "coins" but by reading into it, I found out that the UX is pretty good. (don't have good exp. w coining content like Zora had) with your new update the end user doesn’t need to think about "trading" as such which is good! feels like you've took a turn of being anti subscription based model, good to experiment !
Thanks! That’s exactly what we wanted to accomplish - remove hyper financialization, eliminate the need for folks to think about trading, etc. Glad you like the UX
respect you more than ever on taking this approach🫡
excited to get back to writing on paragraph soon!
Can creators choose the ticker? The current isn’t very friendly outside of Paragraph.
We’re shipping that today
0xe9bb3166ff5F96381E257d509a801303b68E5D34 is this yours?
one question colin you created this token? 0xe9bb3166ff5f96381e257d509a801303b68e5d34
Thanks Colin. Guessing this is not available for posts published previously?
Yes! You can go back and coin old posts. Just go to the publish settings and enable the coin toggle
Thank you!
Hi Colin, where does it show on the post page once enabled? I just toggled it on for IndyPen's most recent post and I can still only see the 'collect' option.
Congrats 🫡 a new way for writers to earn and potentially go viral onchain ✍️