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BETRMINT uses speculation, the lifeblood of consumer crypto, to fuel the onchain creator economy. "If speculation is the only thing in crypto with product-market fit, then how can you weaponize that speculation to at least do some good? And not have it just become a degenerate casino where everybody is trying to make a buck off each other's back?"

This is the question that Toady Hawk set out to answer, alongside cofounder @netnose.

At first glance, BETRMINT is a portal to Las Vegas within a Farcaster mini app. Spin the neon wheel to win, whee! Instead of feeding dollars into a slot machine, you earn spins by minting the featured NFT of the day. Mint proceeds are split between the creator and the BETRMINT team.

The wheel dispenses token jackpots, either funded from the $BETR project treasury, or contributed by partners seeking to expand their own communities through token distribution. Total aggregate volume during BETRMINT's three months of existence amounts to $85,000.

In keeping with the Vegas flair, BETRMINT has a VIP lounge: holders of at least 50M $BETR join the "BETR Believers" groupchat and get early access to the thrice-weekly games. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 3pm ET — put it on your calendar, Toady urges, because you won't be able to participate if you don't show up on time.

The mini app sends notifications when a new game opens, but user demand outstrips the supply of token jackpots (currently $1,500 in prizes per round). Often, BETRMINT "sells out" seconds after admitting the general public.

In fact, mints by BETR Believers had to be capped so they wouldn't take all the inventory before anyone else got a chance. This is a good problem to have, but still a problem; the team is tinkering with solutions to control the pace of the game.

The team launched $BETR through Clanker, and strategically allocated 50% of total supply to a community treasury. In effect, the higher the price of $BETR, the longer the game's runway extends. Clanker creator rewards provide additional operational capital.

Here is BETRMINT's core economic loop, in which the token supports the game:

"More prizes" is where the flywheels interlock. The juicier the prizes, the more demand to join the BETR Believers group. Which leads to the price of $BETR rising, which provides funds to continue running the game — or potentially, to increase the prize pools.

Let's talk about that. Since BETRMINT is currently bottlenecked by prize inventory for its players, why not raise the budget for each round, in order to serve more players and thus attract more sponsors, etc.? Two reasons:

1. Fiscal responsibility, AKA preserving runway.

2. Solid functionality and user experience: "There's still a lot about the process that is very manual at this juncture," Toady explained. "We are working on automation in order to scale."

Prizes also attract more players to the public access portion of the round, which we can conceptualize as a free tier. The more players, the more attractive it is for other projects to participate in BETRMINT, by allocating tokens from their own treasuries to sponsor a round of the game.

However, the flywheel graphic doesn't completely capture BETRMINT's dynamics. Speculation extends beyond the confines of the game itself. If you think BETRMINT is a promising product, it makes sense to buy $BETR, both because it's a direct input to the game and due to the attention economics that govern memecoin investing.

The more popular the game, the more valuable $BETR is likely to become. And speculation doesn't just increase the price, but also earns Clanker rewards from trading. This effect becomes a sort of "distributed venture capital," so to speak, that helps BETRMINT start bootstrapping into eventual sustainability.

Of course, none of this works if the game doesn't appeal to players. Why does it?

BETRMINT's interaction design was inspired by Warpslot, Yapster (RIP), and Toady's experience in the Blueprint creator accelerator — but especially by Nouns, where Toady focused his energies for a long time before striking out with ZEROPOD and Zero Rights Media.

"One thing that Nouns really nailed was this daily touchpoint for people. That was such a weird thing to do in 2021, when it was all about 'how can we mint 10,000 of these at once and max extract and make as much as possible,' and then sail off into the sunset or soft-rug over the course of the next six months." Toady was drawn to Nouns because it had the opposite energy, with an earnest long-term outlook.

"Even though Nouns has been through many seasons," Toady reflected, "the one piece of the mechanism that really seems to persist, aside from the memetic noggles themselves, is this daily cadence auction thing. Which we see even with $QR right now."

The lesson from Nouns: give people a reason to show up on a regular basis. Rhythm creates anticipation; anticipation creates habits. Habits create communities, and communities create value beyond any individual transaction.

BETRMINT came about because Toady needed to convince more people to mint his podcast. The Blueprint accelerator was a crash course in advertising via onchain incentives, but Toady wasn't satisfied with the existing platforms for running campaigns. And he was thoroughly intrigued by Farcaster mini apps.

In particular, the "memecoin dispenser" Warpslot caught his attention with its gleeful frivolity, consistent daily cadence, and the clever model of helping token projects grow their holder bases in exchange for prize pool donations. "What if we could take that energy and actually turn it into a tool that creators could use to make money for their content?"

The name BETRMINT "is meant to be a three-way pun, like you're betting but you're minting, and it's for the betterment of creators. We figured we'd spin this up and hopefully create a self-sustaining flywheel within a flywheel, with the token and the app, and help creators get eyeballs on their content by featuring it when we run the rounds."

Best of all, creators are directly compensated when people mint their work to play the game. "Most of our creators are making $300, $400, $500 every time they're featured in the app. For an onchain creator, that's actually very meaningful."

"People will spend three hours editing a podcast and put it out there into the void, then nobody mints it so they feel discouraged, and they're not sure what to do. Oftentimes they end up going back to old broken models of advertising and promotion," Toady said ruefully. "And you know, I think we can do better." Ahem… $BETR.

Onchain creators face the problem faced by every artist, since long before the internet: how do you get people to pay you? NFTs make it possible to turn digital work into durable artifacts, but that's only half the equation. The other half — actually more like 80% — is drumming up demand.

The tricky thing, when it comes to art and entertainment, is that people want to acquire things that other people already want. How do you initiate that loop, as an independent creator? How do you get the distribution necessary to establish social proof and stoke desire? Most crucially, how do you make it feel delightful and irresistible to spend $2 on content, instead of just scrolling onward?

Spinning the wheel "gives people a reason to open the app for that little dopamine hit." But the creator ingredient of BETRMINT doesn't only matter to the creators. "People like playing because it's not just a degen dopamine thing. You at least know that you're helping a creator." That wouldn't be enough on its own, but the combination is effective.

"It's not going to break the bank. It's literally a couple dollars." A couple dollars in exchange for the thrill of anticipation, and maybe a payoff — plus supporting a creator who is putting time into bolstering this ecosystem. "You want to come back. That was the whole idea: let's make a moment that people put in their calendar because they want to be there."

Gamification of creator support is not unique to BETRMINT, but the directness and honesty of that gamification is refreshing. Beneath the dopamine mechanics, BETRMINT is testing a new model that we could call "micro-patronage."

Traditional patronage requires ongoing commitment: monthly subscriptions, repeated donations, sustained engagement. BETRMINT offers a series of small, low-commitment transactions that can nonetheless aggregate into meaningful creator income. Players don't need to pledge ongoing support or even remember individual creators. They just need to show up when the ritual happens and participate in the moment.

This lowers the friction for creator support dramatically. Instead of asking users to make cognitively demanding decisions about subscribing indefinitely, BETRMINT simply asks whether they want to play right now. The answer is yes.

To keep up with the project, follow Toady Hawk and BETRMINT on Farcaster. While you're at it, follow Splits too, and visit our channel /splits.