FIP Crypto
Zora has become the hottest onchain creator platform right now.
Most would ignore it because of the drama-filled airdrop.
But as a creator, this could unlock another monetisation source for creators.
I gave it another shot, and here’s my full experience after 5 days (as well as my concerns about creator coins):
Each creator has 2 types of coins:
Creator coin (only 1)
Post-level coins
The post coins are similar to the custom ERC20 tokens we created previously, but these are now all done without paying gas fees.
But now, all of these post coins are tied to the value of our Creator coin.
Which in turn increases the value of ZORA.
This creates the flywheel:
Traders buy a creator’s post coin
Value of post coin goes up, increasing the creator coin’s market cap
ZORA increases in value too
It’s possible to buy the creator’s coin too, instead of owning an individual post.
This unlocks new revenue streams for creators:
Here are the tokenomics of each coin:
Creator coins
1 billion supply
50% available on the open market
50% available to the creator (but gets streamed to the creator linearly over 5 years)
Post-level coins
1 billion supply
1% available to creators
And here’s how we earn:
Traders buy Creator or Post-level coins, so your supply increases in value
Fees generated from trading, earned in ZORA (1% out of the 3% trading fee per swap)
There were concerns about how we need to dump our Creator/Post-level coins to earn revenue from our posts, but the primary way we can do it is through Creator fees.
The Base team doesn’t advise us to dump our coins too, as it’s more like cashing out on those who supported us:
But why would anyone even want to buy our coin in the first place?
It’s ultimately a transfer of value:
Traders or supporters would purchase your coins because you gave value to them first.
They will support us in 2 ways:
Buying Post-level coins: Supporting the creator or storing as a collectible
Buying Creator coins: Betting that the value of the creator will increase
So here’s what I’m doing to create posts on Zora:
It’s likely a disadvantage for me to post on Zora since most of my posts are text-based.
While Zora is more of the Instagram/TikTok of Web3.
There used to be a Notes feature on Zora but it’s no longer available, so I’m doing this instead:
Repurposing my single text-based tweets into an image.
I had this inspiration from @AvgJoesCrypto after he posted a screenshot of his tweet as a Post-level coin:
So after 5 days of posting on Zora, here are my results:
Just after launching my Creator coin, it saw some addresses buying and eventually selling my coin.
This is similar to FriendTech or even memecoins where there’ll be some wash trades whenever a new account or coin is launched.
As of now, I have 3 other holders of my Creator coin.
Thanks @CdeBurner for being my top holder.
I’ve also experienced some wash trading when I published my posts too:
Some users would buy both my Post-level and Creator coins before eventually selling both.
They’re doing it at a loss either, so I’m not sure why they’re doing these wash trading either.
All in all, I’ve made:
$6.44 in ZORA (trading fees on my Creator and Post-level coins)
$0.08 in my own Creator coin (I have more that I did not claim yet)
$2.66 in my Post-level coins
We can see how much each individual post earns us in trading fees.
In comparison, I’m earning around $42-$174 every 2 weeks with Twitter (but that’s after hitting the 5 million impressions milestone).
So it’s a pretty decent amount, though most of it likely came from wash trading.
It’s nice to get an additional income stream as a creator, but at what cost?
Creator coins are a great flywheel for creators who benefit from being viral:
But here are some of my concerns:
But right now, the focus feels more like on dopamine hits rather than long-term value.
Especially when virality is being encouraged.
All over my feed, I see dollar signs and up/down arrows, with prices being thrown at me everywhere.
We have seen the extent which others would go to make their content viral (like with PumpFun):
So I believe that long-term value should be the key message instead of virality.
That’s why I prefer @paragraph_xyz’s stance of using less financialised terms like “support”.
There’s tons of hype over Zora right now, but will it truly be successful in the long run?
The 3% fee on every trade is pretty hefty, and traders who want to make a profit on their coins need to wait for a significant price increase.
At this point, there’s nothing extremely valuable about owning a coin except for it being just a collectible.
And others like Farcaster could be doing it better where only one version of the cast exists.
There have been tons of discussions over whether content is valuable or not:
Ultimately, I believe coins will evolve into either of these:
Support coins: Ways for fans to support creators they value (similar to Patreon)
Utility coins: Assets that share revenue generated from trading the creator’s Post-level and Creator coins
Coin holders are fully aligned with the creator, and they could benefit from the creator’s growth.
Who knows if airdrops could be rewarded to holders of certain creator coins?
There are many ways for value to be accrued to these holders even though it’s not explicitly stated by Zora.
Creator tokens are not something new, and we’ve seen multiple ones like XCAD’s fan tokens failing to gain traction.
They’ve now pivoted to launching AI influencers instead.
Coins are still in their early stages, and there’ll likely be more changes to the entire model.
Coin buyers take on a lot of risk since the creator has a supply of every coin:
The creator can dump at any time with their supply, and the buyers are trusting that they won’t do that.
Again, this all depends on whether the creator wants to:
Extract as much value as they can with whatever social capital they have and cash out immediately
Play the long-term game with their coins and continue adding value
A more sustainable approach could be to add penalties when the creator sells early:
Those who are fully aligned with their holders will receive the most value from their coin.
Zora actually has its own L2, which is powered by Conduit.
But it has completely shifted to Base with the @baseapp integration, leading to even more congestion on the L2.
I’m not sure what the use case of their L2 is anymore, since they’re likely going to be Base native as of now.
But despite all these concerns, I still think it's worth interacting for now:
I believe it’s still worth using Zora now even with its flaws.
The whole idea is still early and it’ll likely change along the way (just like Kaito).
As a creator, I see this as an opportunity to expand my brand further, so I no longer rely on just Twitter:
Zora will likely boost the visibility of your content more during this ‘awareness phase’ so that you’re incentivised to continue using the platform.
The monetisation is an added bonus, but my priority is to take advantage of this extra content discovery source.
So if you have the time, it doesn’t hurt to post your content on Zora and see what comes out of it.
Being early to new narratives has given me a decent return, so I plan to continue repurposing my posts and see what comes out of it.
Ultimately, I aim to provide value to my audience first before they would even consider to buy my coins.
I shared my full flywheel for building long-term wealth below:
Feel free to use my referral:
https://zora.co/invite/fipcrypto
and follow me on Zora:
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