I met Joec in Tokyo a few weeks ago while attending Edcon. Leading up to Edcon I was asked to present my art at Knox Gallery Tokyo alongside the artists from Kismet Casa. Despite, putting Noggles on Vitalik, showing at Knox Gallery was the personal highlight of my trip. Every artist wants to be in a gallery, even memetic Internet artists, no matter how many times you've been shown in a gallery. When I arrived in Tokyo after a 13 hour flight from Los Angeles I thought I might just rest and get ready for a long week. Then the groupchat lit up and the artists were headed to the Gallery to hang and setup a few days before the opening. I quickly jumped in the shower and headed out to meet my people. I met Luciano and Lea for the first time after a year of collaborating on the Internet and helping to fund 2 previous Kismet Creator Houses through Energy. Then I met Zak Krevitt, Head of Partnership at Zora, who slapped my Noun sticker on his laptop. Finally, I started meeting the other artists, handing out noggles and stickers to everyone interested , including Joe. Joe had recently discovered Nouns in a life-changing way. We hit it off and he took me out for Ramen before we met back up with the squad for a private event arranged by Ren where Zak and Aura DJ'd for us. I approached Aura, who is an incredible artist and 🔥🔥🔥DJ, while she was in the DJ booth and she pulled out her phone and showed me a Zorb that I had shared a few weeks earlier and as a result helped refer a lot of mints and generate Zora protocol rewards for her.

About that Ramen dinner...

Joe is a designer from Argentina, who had started teaching himself animation. When Nouns ran a Rounds in /nouns-animator he posted an artwork and was rewarded with ETH. Nouns gets proliferation and Joe gets ETH. He posted another one in the next round and then the next round and then the next thing he knows is he's making more money via /nouns-animators then he makes at his day job AND he finds a community who enjoys his delightful animations. His Zora is growing too and he's making even more revenue via Protocol Rewards. He wants to be an artists, not a graphic designer at an agency and now he has a path to artistic freedom and independence.

Naomi Metzger is a professional athlete (11x British triple jump champ) sharing daily workout vids & documenting her story onchain. She recently casted,

i've been able to generate more income onchain in the past week than on instagram and X in my lifetime... the onchain creator economy built is different there's currently 7.3k mints on my video & it's still trending on mint . fun after 2 days! this is a game-changer for my upcoming season

Many such cases.

Neither of those examples include experimental tokens like Degen and Moxie, nor are they from people with large audiences. They are 2 examples of people discovering crypto with a talent for content and being rewarded by communities who enjoy their posts.

I have made $43 in Moxie for a Cast today about my morning getting derailed by a message in Telegram. That is more then I've made from social media than every other platform I've used combined by $43. That was just one cast today. I do have a large audience on Warpcast, I'm onchain native and I know people have strong feels about these tokens but I share to illustrate where we are headed.

Maybe its not Degen or Moxie or NFTs or Rounds but we are headed towards users owned and operated networks where value accrues to the creator and not just the platform. After seeing even a few examples its hard to imagine giving my content away for free to Zuck, Elon, Reid or anyone else who is going to retain 100% control, ownership and monetization of it.

Creators and Artists preserving ownership and the value of the work they created is how the Internet should have always been.