Creators have incentives for going onchain, but collectors have little to none.
This is the truth of the matter for many creators who find themselves having to solve for this to generate interest in their work, monetize content, and build community.
The root cause of the issue seems to be incentives that are misaligned between creators and their collectors. Creators are incentivized to mint their content onchain for provenance, monetization, to build a social graph, and much more. Collectors, on the other hand, mint content either to speculate (see: token go up) or because they want to support a creator they like.
If your collectors are in the latter group, you’re off to a great start. However, that is rarely the case.
To solve this issue we must transcend transactional relationships between creators and collectors by creating incentives that reward collectors beyond the point of sale.
Doing so can create a positive flywheel where both parties are drawn closer to one another and an individual's success is intertwined with the whole. This enables us to also build stronger communities that are invested in each other’s success. Or as some would call it, creating win-win relationships.
Memecoins are the loyalty mechanism for web3 brands
I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone reading this when I say meme coins have quickly become the go to mechanism for engaging and rewarding communities. It’s also unsurprising that they are thriving on social platforms like Farcaster. Projects quickly go from launching a meme coin to growing communities through channels.
This can also be true for creator communities.
Many meme coins today start by focusing on a specific group of people who are active in a given space. Take $degen as an example. Jacek, the founder of the project, wanted to engage a small but fast growing community on Farcaster. At that time, the Degen channel had recently launched and had a unique energy compared to most other channels on the platform. The Degen team took a snapshot of those who had joined the channel and were active. Then made $degen claimable to eligible wallets. Soon after they added a points system which enabled additional claims for $degen.
What can we learn from this and how can we do the same for creators and their fans?
Introducing onchain media games
OMG/S0 (Onchain Media Game / Season 0) is the alpha of an onchain experiment we will run to test our thesis:
Creators have incentives for going onchain, but collectors have little to none. By introducing loyalty mechanisms that go beyond the point of sale (aka meme coins) we can foster deeper, more meaningful relationships and build stronger communities.
The game comprises, as the name suggests, onchain media. Players will find and collect content produced by Crypto Sapiens that has been minted onchain. Points values have been calculated for various onchain assets including podcasts minted on Pods, Zora, and Lens, collectible merch using iyk tags, POAPs and more. As the game progresses we will be adding new content so onchain collectors can keep accumulating points. At the end of the game, collectors will be retroactively rewarded with meme coins. Distribution will be calculated based on where they are on the leaderboard at the time of the snapshot.
You can see how this works now by visiting the Crypto Sapiens website and browsing the leaderboard.
Many of the top meme coins on Base have excitedly agreed to participate in this game and make contributions into a pool of tokens that will be used to reward players of OMG/S0.
Launching out of alpha
Season 0 is the alpha of a product that we believe can have a wide impact across the creator economy.
Following the close of S0, we will launch out of alpha in Season 1 with over 100 creators already engaged to participate in the game. Their content will be available to collect and earn points from it. Similarly to S0, collectors will be rewarded in meme coins based on the points they accrue.
Many of the meme coins that joined us for S0 will be back for S1 with new ones yet to be announced.
More details will be provided for Season 0 before our scheduled launch. Make sure not to miss any updates and announcements.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Follow us on Farcaster and join our channel. Become a member by subscribing to our Hypersub. You can also find us on X, YouTube, and Spotify.
