On a more serious note, this survey foreshadows a future in which more people make their living doing passion-based jobs. Jobs like writers, artists, musicians, craftsmen, yoga teachers, or surfboard shapers. It’s not just the kids that are bringing about this change. The rising tide of automation will soon take over the spreadsheet-crunching and data analyzing, opening the horizons for many of us to pursue jobs that leverage creativity.

The flight towards these so-called passion jobs is already in motion. Platforms like Substack, Instagram, and Youtube already support a growing population of creators that make a living through creative content. However, creators today are massively disadvantaged by allowing platforms to control the content and connections they produce resulting in little to no payout on the value they produce.

Passion economy advocate Li Jin says, “The dominant centralized creator platforms own the data, social graphs, and end user relationships—all of which creators need in order to access audiences and income… In this way, creator labor is controlled and commoditized by platforms.”

Data ownership by platforms is by design. Platforms savor holding the cards, since it makes it harder for their creators to leave and bring their audience onto another platform. Ownership is a huge bargaining chip for creators, and if platforms continue to control the “creator’s labor” they can continue to pay them pennies to the dollar on the content they create.

As tokens and other decentralized technology grow in mainstream adoption, it is finally feasible to offer creators ownership of their content and data. Giving creators ownership of their “data, social graphs, and end user relationships” empower them to treat the platforms as the commodity.

As a result, the ecosystem of platforms and tools for creators will grow in both depth and breadth, as creators have newfound capital to support their pursuits as well as invest in tools that best suit their needs.

How does ownership change the way creator-platforms dynamic?

1. Creators can port their audiences easier – causing beneficial competition among platforms.

Creators that own their social network and content can take their audience where they please. This newfound social liquidity induces competition between different creator platforms and brings more benefits to the creators. Compare decentralized NFT marketplace OpenSea’s 2.5% take rate versus Youtube’s 45% take rate. OpenSea must maintain a competitive take rate since creators can just as easily sell their NFTs on another decentralized marketplace like SuperRare, but Youtubers are unable to transfer their subscribers to another video platform.

2. Niche interests thrive.

Today’s platforms are attention-based. Platforms like Instagram or YouTube operate mostly on advertising revenue and thus maximize for specific interests and demographics. As a result, niche communities that don’t drive ad revenue are underserviced on today’s creator platforms.

Giving creators the authority and capital to choose the platforms they bring their audience to will spawn a wide range of platforms to support these niche communities. These platforms are financially incentivized to develop for niche communities that have unique digital needs. Since these platforms are built upon decentralized technology that is standardized and composable, community data can be aggregated into higher-level communities that serve broader interests. Over time, these communities will proliferate over traditional one-size-fits-all platforms by offering superior features, higher degrees of trust, and creativity-boosting cross pollination within the community.

3. A creator’s digital toolbox is modular and focused.

As creators are free to port around their data, they no longer need to rely on one platform to meet all their needs. Creators will support a diverse ecosystem of products with a wide range of functionality. The data-segregated, monolithic platforms of today will be replaced with a suite of independent creator-specific tools that seamlessly function to help a creator analyze their earnings, publicize a new work, or communicate with preexisting customers. Many of these tools may be kickstarted by decentralized funding tools similar to Gitcoin, offering a development iteration cycle that rapidly outpaces that of monolithic platforms.

Balancing Out the Creator Economy

The creator economy today is a story of ecological imbalance. Platforms like Youtube or Instagram receive the lion’s share of the value their creators produce. Payout disparity between creators is drastic.

Giving creators ownership of their data and goods can help balance the scales.

Creators that own their content and data receive better payouts by introducing competition between platforms. Creative pursuits that were financially unfeasible in the ad-driven paradigms of the past can flourish under this increased revenue. In addition, creators have the technical and financial capacity to utilize an arsenal of tools that provide piecewise solutions to a creator’s unique needs. This creator spend supports growth of independent tools and platforms, further diversifying our creator economy.

Ownership is the catalyst for creating a healthier and more diverse ecosystem for the future’s creators.

Let’s take a look at the main players in the creator market today. Youtube is estimated to provide $30 billion in revenue to creators in 2022 – a significant fraction of the $104 billion total valuation of the market. 

This sounds like a lot of money until you realize that the top 1% of Youtube is likely receiving a lion share of that payout. To start receiving money through the Youtube Partner Program, a channel must have at least 1,000 subscribers, and receive 4,000 valid watch hours in the past 12 months. These are pretty high hoops for the amateur creator but more importantly a significant investment in time and effort before any payout hits your wallet. 

Yoga with Adrian

Our friend Adrian has lost interest working his desk job and wants to make a career teaching online yoga classes. If Adrian is part of the 64% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, he can’t quit his job to dedicate all of his energy into becoming a yoga creator. Adrian is in A Creator’s Valley of Death, the greatest obstacle standing in the way of becoming a creator. To get out of the valley, Adrian must make enough money from his yoga classes to support his living expenses. 

Adrian on Youtube

What if Adrian were to create on a platform like Youtube? Youtube doesn’t pay out creators until they reach the threshold to become a Youtube Partner. In the time it takes for Adrian to grow to 1,000 subscribers and receive 4,000 watch hours, he can count on exactly zero dollars being paid out for his hard work. During this time, it is very likely that Adrian loses motivation or burns out as a creator. A Creator’s Valley of Death consumes many budding creators on traditional platforms. 

Adrian on Web3

Let’s compare Adrian’s journey as a creator if he were to provide yoga classes on a web3 platform. From the start, Adrian raises some cash by minting an initial run of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to friends and family. These NFTs provide holders with perks like lifetime membership to his yoga classes. The value of such NFTs would appreciate with Adrian’s growth as a creator, giving early adopters a financial upside with their investment. The money from the NFT mint gives Adrian the capital to purchase anything he needs to get started, but more importantly provides Adrian external validation to pursue his creator career. 

Adrian uses Ethereum and Bitcoin to accept class fees from participants. From Adrian’s first class of twelve participants, he brings home $340 dollars! From here, the word spreads about Adrian’s yoga classes and within two months, he’s earning enough to confidently quit his desk job. Adrian has made it out of the Valley of Death!

Why Web3?

Adrian’s story is optimistic. Most budding creators that set out on the same journey will not see the same success. However, the importance lies in understanding how drastically cryptocurrency primitives tip the scales in improving a creator’s chance of success. 

The $290 Difference

Adrian’s first yoga classes netted him $340. Let’s imagine if Adrian had instead launched his class on a platform like Skillshare. Skillshare pays teachers between $0.05 to $0.10 for each minute-watched. For the twelve participants attending an hour long class, Adrian would have earned $50. 

Traditional creator platforms take home much of the monetary value that creators produce. Youtube has a take rate of approximately 45%, while Twitter, Instagram and Facebook have a take rate of ~100%. Contrast these rates with NFT Marketplace OpenSea, which has a take rate of 2.5%. 

Ritchie Torres, a US Congressmen representing the South Bronx, says it best when he says, “You know something is profoundly wrong with our economy when Big Tech has a higher take rate than the mafia.” 

The growth of web3 creator platforms gives creators the power to put more money into their own pockets. The $290 difference for Adrian over 3 yoga classes means paying the rent on his apartment instead of just the week’s groceries.

Building Bridges to More Creative Jobs

Automation is rapidly taking over jobs -- a 2020 World Economic Forum study estimates over 85 million before 2025. Now, it is ever more important to start building the bridges that can help people transition out of their repetitive, menial jobs into creative work. Web3 primitives are the key to making the digital marketplace friendlier for the striving creator.

Reputation should be a simple equation: be a good person, create good things, and be entitled to a good reputation. However, today’s reputation game is twisted by technocratic greed and tainted by unethical techniques like review farming.

Growing adoption of decentralized networks coupled with a quickly rising population of independent creators means that now may be the best time to rethink our systems of digital reputation. Decentralizing reputation promote transparency and trust within our digital communities and allow creators to rightfully own their reputation.

Support Your Local Surfboard Shaper

Let’s talk about surfboard shapers.

Many new surfers today choose to buy surfboards off the rack — going to a surf shop and purchasing a model from a big brand. Think going to the bike shop and grabbing a Trek mountain bike.

It wasn’t always like this. Not too long ago, a surfer could only get a surfboard made by a local shaper. The intimate relationship between surfer and shaper is symbiotic, two souls driven to create the perfect surfcraft. In those days, word of mouth was your only way of finding the right person to make you a board.

Nowadays, the rise of e-commerce and invention of the surfboard shipping box has shifted attention away from local shapers. Global brands with the cash to spend on sponsorships and oversea factories now control the lion’s share of the market.

Strangely enough, a custom surfboard from a local shaper is often cheaper than something off the rack.

Why doesn’t everyone just order a custom board and support their local shaper? The quick answer is the time delay. A custom board might take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple months.

But there’s a larger force at play. In the age of Yelp, potential buyers may be put off by local shapers’ lack of digital reputation. The modern-day consumer is used to vetting online reviews to fuel their decision. It may be hard to blindly commit to order from a local shaper with no one to vouch for them.

Decentralized Reviews

Cryptocurrencies can help level the playing field for small scale creators like our local surfboard shaper. I paid for my custom surfboard on Venmo. Payment services like Venmo, Paypal, or Zelle work well for transferring money, but provide little information for other potential customers.

In contrast, a cryptocurrency transaction is public, and can be instrumented to include useful information: a shaper’s turnaround time or how easy it was to work with them. Many creators don’t have the bandwidth to market their happy customers on top of delivering orders. By baking the testimony directly into the transaction, we can help these creators maintain a trusted and independent digital reputation.

Decentralized Reviews are More Resilient to Fraud

Fake reviews can still exist in this system, but they’ll have less room to hide. Decentralized reviews could support an ecosystem of open source fraud detection solutions. Any enterprising developer could combine publicly accessible information on the blockchain with techniques like social graphs or natural language processing to inform users of suspicious activity.

A Creator’s Greatest Asset is Reputation

A creator’s greatest asset is a customer’s good words. In the past, niche craftsmen thrived solely off word of mouth.

The losing battle of small time surfboard shapers to globalization and e-commerce is a story with many parallels. Mom and pop restaurants are in an uphill battle against the “Yelp Mafia”, Etsy makers face threats of review extortion, and honest Amazon sellers lose sales to review farming merchants.

Today’s version of digital reputation is a rigged game against creators. Reviews are under lock and key of the platform, leaving creators vulnerable to a platform’s whims or wants. Reviews are siloed, incentivizing creators to practice a monoculture approach to maximize their review count.

We are in need of digital marketplace tools that facilitate closer relationships with the people we transact with. We need tools to empathize and connect customers and creators.

We also need to provide creators a stable foundation to build their reputation. Creators already have a lot on their plates — they shouldn’t need to worry about losing access to their reputation or jumping through hoops to maintain it.

Decentralization Provides Transparency and Security

Decentralization provides the tools to level the playing field for our underdog creators. Reviews stored on the blockchain inherit the best traits of decentralization: transparency and security.

Transparency paints a more complete picture of a person’s digital footprint. Reputation is no longer divided across different platforms. A surfboard shaper with an established reputation can leverage their trail of positive customer testimonies to pursue an adjacent career in surfing instruction. Individuals are independent to pursue different creative avenues while still maintaining a cohesive brand.

Security is at the heart of decentralized networks that have now supported almost a trillion dollars of value creation. The same tech that makes it trivial to own and transact with a crypto wallet today can also make it easy for a creator to secure and manage their reputation. Creators no longer need to concede to Big Tech to secure their reputation.

Democratizing Reputation

Decentralizing is a promise of ownership. Digital money in the past was only possible with a third party managing transactions. Satoshi Nakamoto’s creation of Bitcoin’s decentralized network removed the need for a middleman’s meddling hands and opened the door to new forms of democratized financial systems.

A growing marketplace of middle-class creators serving niche communities, like our local surfboard shaper, need a reputation system owned by the people. Decentralized reputation is what the internet has always needed, and now is the best time to build it.

the hook

ocean beach

the lane

linda mar

trestles

However, deep into the wilderness and far from any road, it seemed as if every hiker you greeted in the very least responded with a warm smile and many would even begin an extensive exchange of random backpacker minutiae: how the weather last night was, how the seasonal stream ahead was all dried up, or if I’d heard about the bear wandering around the campsites digging up poop holes. 

In the weeks after, I began to think of this as the smiles to miles ratio. The further away from the hustle and bustle of daily life, the more neighborly people were likely to get. Sure, there are definitely other factors that play into the kindness of people deep into the woods, but I’d like to believe that this physical distance is the root cause of how people treat others. 

Physical distance adds the value of scarcity into the human kindness equation. By definition, the deeper into the wilderness you go the less people you will find. Humans are social animals at heart, and an increase in the scarcity of the people around you would result in you placing a higher weight of humanity on those that are within your reach. With less people, you feel a larger commitment to the members in this small community. On crowded trails, an overabundance of faces results in a situation where people begin to feel faceless. As a result, you may feel retracted, and an insignificant portion of the population. 

In addition, a smaller community afforded by the confines of wilderness also gives a higher weight to your contribution as a member. In the bustling metropolis of the Mist trail, littering a trailbar wrapper would likely result in little punishment from the community at whole. However, if I were to commit the same crime in the small-town camaraderie of the wilderness, I would likely receive a strict reprimanding and, with repeat offenses, a reputation as a litter bug. I would like to think that the smiles to miles ratio is also a large factor in the kindness of small town America. 

How can we use the smiles to miles ratio to plan the digital communities of our future? Let’s first start by looking at our current online communities. 

It may seem as if the growth of internet communities has deviated from the development path of human communities throughout history. The internet has allowed for the supersizing of communities, but also a massive overabundance of communities. However, this trend is not too far fallen from the ways religion and societies have tied us together throughout history. In a way, the internet may just be the logical next step in our desire to build communities of a shared belief. Elaborate more on the history of religion/communities vs the internet

It is said that the internet communities are not without flaws. 

Talk about the problems that the internet faces

Talk about the problems that web3 can help solve