Everyone wants creator coins to be the next revenue stream.

Almost everyone is optimizing for money before usage.

That instinct is backwards. Using the YouTube playbook as the use case example and reference, YouTube did not become dominant by monetizing early. It became dominant by making creation and consumption habitual, then letting monetization follow.

The problem is that coins import money into a phase where YouTube had none.

Collapsing Friction

YouTube won by collapsing friction. Uploading and sharing video felt trivial. No installs. No downloads. One link that worked everywhere. Trying YouTube had no downside. Watching a video did not ask users to decide anything.

Creator coins introduce a decision immediately. Buying or minting implies ownership. Ownership implies price. Price implies risk. Even before speculation, the presence of a coin changes user behavior from participation to evaluation. This is where the analogy first cracks.

Distribution

YouTube obsessed over distribution long before revenue. Views, embeds, and sharing mattered more than business models. Creators uploaded without asking how much they would make. Audiences watched without thinking about economics.

Creator coins rarely get this neutral phase. The moment a coin exists, it is framed, implicitly or explicitly, as something that can go up or down. Circulation competes with price from day one. Markets are impatient in ways platforms are not.

If coins cannot create a long, low-stakes period of usage without financial pressure, they diverge from the YouTube narrative entirely.

The Flywheel

YouTube’s flywheel worked because participation required no ownership. Creators created. Viewers watched. Engagement fed the loop.

Creator coins often collapse participation and ownership into the same action. Fans are asked to buy in order to belong. That changes the psychological contract. Viewers become investors. Investors behave differently.

To preserve the flywheel, coins must be earnable through engagement. Buying should be optional, not required. Participation must come before possession.

Discovery

Discovery turned YouTube from a library into a habit. Recommendations optimized for watch time, not clicks or virality. The algorithm surfaced what kept people watching, not what spiked attention.

Creator coins often invert this. Price becomes the most visible signal. Discovery follows market movement instead of usage patterns. Hype replaces habit.

If discovery is driven by price before it is driven by participation, creator coins drift further from the YouTube playbook.

Creator Economics

YouTube aligned creator economics only after norms were clear. The Partner Program worked because creators already understood the game. Upload. Engage. Grow. Monetization arrived as a layer, not a foundation.

Creator coins often entangle economics with experimentation. Constant changes, clever mechanics, shifting incentives. At scale, this creates confusion. Participants want predictable rewards for engagement, not financial engineering.

Stability matters more than novelty once habits exist.

Winning Culture

Culturally, YouTube never asked users to think about money. It was infrastructure. “It’s on YouTube” explained everything.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure is the final convergence point. YouTube won by making video hosting cheap, reliable, and invisible. Competitors could not keep up.

Creator coins will converge here too. Cheap transactions on L2s, gasless experiences, identity, indexing, and analytics matter more than token design. Networks that reduce financial salience while increasing social utility will dominate.

This is the opportunity for Base. If Base makes coins feel safe, and effortless, it recreates the conditions YouTube needed to win.

YouTube scaled attention before economics.

Creator coins surface economics before attention.

Until that inversion is fixed, the analogy will remain aspirational.

Usage first.

Culture second.

Money last.

Everyone wants creator coins to be the next revenue stream.

Almost everyone is optimizing for money before usage.

That instinct is backwards. Using the YouTube playbook as the use case example and reference, YouTube did not become dominant by monetizing early. It became dominant by making creation and consumption habitual, then letting monetization follow.

The problem is that coins import money into a phase where YouTube had none.

Collapsing Friction

YouTube won by collapsing friction. Uploading and sharing video felt trivial. No installs. No downloads. One link that worked everywhere. Trying YouTube had no downside. Watching a video did not ask users to decide anything.

Creator coins introduce a decision immediately. Buying or minting implies ownership. Ownership implies price. Price implies risk. Even before speculation, the presence of a coin changes user behavior from participation to evaluation. This is where the analogy first cracks.

Distribution

YouTube obsessed over distribution long before revenue. Views, embeds, and sharing mattered more than business models. Creators uploaded without asking how much they would make. Audiences watched without thinking about economics.

Creator coins rarely get this neutral phase. The moment a coin exists, it is framed, implicitly or explicitly, as something that can go up or down. Circulation competes with price from day one. Markets are impatient in ways platforms are not.

If coins cannot create a long, low-stakes period of usage without financial pressure, they diverge from the YouTube narrative entirely.

The Flywheel

YouTube’s flywheel worked because participation required no ownership. Creators created. Viewers watched. Engagement fed the loop.

Creator coins often collapse participation and ownership into the same action. Fans are asked to buy in order to belong. That changes the psychological contract. Viewers become investors. Investors behave differently.

To preserve the flywheel, coins must be earnable through engagement. Buying should be optional, not required. Participation must come before possession.

Discovery

Discovery turned YouTube from a library into a habit. Recommendations optimized for watch time, not clicks or virality. The algorithm surfaced what kept people watching, not what spiked attention.

Creator coins often invert this. Price becomes the most visible signal. Discovery follows market movement instead of usage patterns. Hype replaces habit.

If discovery is driven by price before it is driven by participation, creator coins drift further from the YouTube playbook.

Creator Economics

YouTube aligned creator economics only after norms were clear. The Partner Program worked because creators already understood the game. Upload. Engage. Grow. Monetization arrived as a layer, not a foundation.

Creator coins often entangle economics with experimentation. Constant changes, clever mechanics, shifting incentives. At scale, this creates confusion. Participants want predictable rewards for engagement, not financial engineering.

Stability matters more than novelty once habits exist.

Winning Culture

Culturally, YouTube never asked users to think about money. It was infrastructure. “It’s on YouTube” explained everything.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure is the final convergence point. YouTube won by making video hosting cheap, reliable, and invisible. Competitors could not keep up.

Creator coins will converge here too. Cheap transactions on L2s, gasless experiences, identity, indexing, and analytics matter more than token design. Networks that reduce financial salience while increasing social utility will dominate.

This is the opportunity for Base. If Base makes coins feel safe, and effortless, it recreates the conditions YouTube needed to win.

YouTube scaled attention before economics.

Creator coins surface economics before attention.

Until that inversion is fixed, the analogy will remain aspirational.

Usage first.

Culture second.

Money last.