"The Future of Content is Onchain" with Zora Cofounder Jacob Horne | ZEROPOD Episode 24

June 20, 2024

Check the full episode on Youtube:

SUMMARY

Zora is revolutionizing content distribution by empowering creators to bring various forms of content on chain, creating a unique marketplace for content consumption and providing new opportunities for artists to reach a global audience and be rewarded for their contributions.

• 00:00 🚀 Zora co-founder Jacob Horne discusses the challenges and successes of content creation and distribution on the Zora platform, emphasizing the importance of passion and skill in the crypto space.

  • Faster has innovated on the blockchain stack with fasta hubs, allowing for high throughput and novel token distributions, while Zora is pushing the limits of NFT minting and asset ownership.

  • Jacob Horne, founder of Zora, discusses the challenges and successes of content creation and distribution on the Zora platform.

  • The speaker discusses their journey into cryptocurrency, starting with learning about Bitcoin in college and being inspired by the idea of creating a currency for anything, leading them to explore protocols like counterparty and eventually focusing on ethereum for its ease of use in creating projects.

  • Jacob Horne discusses his journey from being an intern at Coinbase to leading the USDC project, and how he was inspired to create Zora as a platform for creative projects using crypto.

  • Zora co-founder Jacob Horne discusses the success of Coinbase and the importance of finding passionate and skilled individuals in the crypto space.

  • Focus on shipping and working on things is the only thing you can control, so it's best to spend your focus and energy on that.

• 12:22 🚀 Zora is shifting focus to on-chain content creation and consumption, with a user-friendly interface and a primary marketplace, attracting millions of users and creators.

  • Zora was created to capture the value of creativity and ideas by creating universally accessible tokens and coordinating around them, starting with experiments in physicals and eventually focusing on NFTs and content onchain.

  • Zora has shifted focus from collectibles to content, with a user-friendly interface for creating and consuming on-chain content, making it different from platforms like Spotify and Openc.

  • Over 1.5 million users are minting and over 100,000 creators are creating on chain, with 64% of new NFT contracts being deployed on the Zora network, showing how easy it is for people to create and upload content frequently.

  • Zora has improved and positioned itself as a primary marketplace, while competitors like Foundation and OpenSea are more focused on the secondary market.

  • Content is increasingly being brought on chain, including videos and songs, and the launch of an L2 on the op stack for Zora was a pragmatic decision.

  • Real traction was found with tens of thousands of transactions, but the Pepe meme coin on E killed all other on-chain activity, resulting in no sales for a special edition project.

• 20:41 🚀 Zora co-founder Jacob Horne discusses the migration to L2, the importance of brand and distribution, and the potential for new features and business models with onchain native distribution, as well as the support for multiple networks and the ease of minting and bridging on Zora and other networks.

  • The speaker discusses the decision to migrate to an L2, the importance of brand and distribution in a commodity marketplace, and the potential for new features and business models with an onchain native distribution.

  • Zora has supported multiple networks, such as OP mainnet, Bass, and Arbitrum, which has led to substantial growth in the Zora platform and protocol.

  • The easier and more seamless the process of using L2s and NFTs, the more people will be able to use and adopt them.

  • Zora co-founder Jacob Horne discusses the ease of minting and bridging on Zora and other networks without the need for users to think about liquidity.

  • Ethereum's new technologies are making a big difference in helping people mint and are improving the method of payment.

  • Zora has pushed the space forward with Creator rewards, providing a different way for artists to potentially have a perpetual income source.

• 27:30 🚀 Onchain content distribution is growing, with Zora shifting to flat fees and incentivizing creators, leading to increased engagement and competition with mainstream platforms.

  • Zora changed their business model from percentage-based fees to a flat fee, and then decided to give the majority of the fee to creators to incentivize them to charge higher prices for their NFTs.

  • Creators and platforms outside of Zora are contributing to the ecosystem, with a significant amount of Creator Awards being paid out and a large percentage of mints coming from platforms other than Zora.com, leading to a focus on improving distribution and Discovery to compete with mainstream online media platforms.

  • Crypto allows for multiple platforms to access the same content, unlike traditional media, which benefits content creators.

  • Content creation is shifting to onchain platforms like Zora, leading to widespread distribution and the challenge of improving content discovery on the platform.

  • The distribution of mints on the platform has increased, leading to more people discovering and engaging with content over a longer period of time.

  • The speaker discusses the potential of onchain content distribution and the impact of platforms like Farcaster on the industry.

• 35:24 🚀 Zora innovated with fasta hubs, allowing real-time signed messages on chain, leading to migration of crypto Twitter and increased distribution and engagement for creators.

  • Zora started as a Twitter clone but innovated by creating a new layer of the blockchain stack with fasta hubs, allowing for real-time signed messages without the cost of submitting them on chain.

  • Users having unique addresses and open access APIs for developers allows for new token distributions and novel gating, leading to the migration of crypto Twitter to a crypto-based platform.

  • Zora is experimenting with minting and frames, and they collaborated with Dan to create a prototype for minting with warps.

  • Users are minting on Zora and using the fast to stack to improve the user experience, with Zora and Fasta being complimentary in different ways.

  • Creators are realizing the power of onchain content distribution and the ability to pay to give content to people, leading to increased distribution and engagement.

  • Content distributed onchain creates a perpetual connection between creator and viewer, increasing the value and ownership of the content.

• 41:04 🚀 The future of content is onchain, enabling seamless buying, trading, and voting directly from social media platforms, with potential new wallet standards and easier UX for trading NFTs.

  • The future of frames will involve onchain transactions, leading to new infrastructure and tooling, potential new wallet standards, and the ability to choose from different wallets or accounts for transactions.

  • The future of content is onchain, allowing for seamless buying, swapping, trading, and bidding on items directly from social media platforms.

  • Builders can focus on building frames for common on-chain transactions and also explore new transactions that could become more common with easier UX, such as trading NFTs, which could be easier to do in frames than on the OPC platform.

  • Experimenting with novel token distributions and social context for content creation, such as trading Pokemon cards, will likely be the future breakout in onchain content.

  • Faras CL wants to see a particular channel break out into its own client, with a token button and a swap button, and is excited to see experiments happen with it.

  • Nouns ecosystem experimented with onchain voting and token distribution, allowing users to nominate and vote for rewards directly from their wallets.

• 47:50 🚀 Onchain content has potential for economic connections and funding diverse projects, but sustainability and distribution challenges remain, while new platforms like Instagram Reels are undervalued and require perseverance.

  • Zora co-founder discusses the potential of onchain content and the relationship between Zora and nouns.

  • The speaker discusses the excitement and potential of onchain content, the importance of finding product meme fit, and the challenges of sustainability and distribution for the future of content.

  • The future of media funding and production should be onchain, with economic connections tied back to the original DAO to fund and earn from media, creating a breakthrough model disrupting the traditional movie studio model.

  • Creating real world touch points and funding diverse projects is a key strategy for the future of content onchain.

  • New content platforms like Instagram Reels are often misunderstood and undervalued due to their newness, but with perseverance and iteration, they can eventually figure out what works.

  • Smaller treasuries may force people to be more careful about what they fund, but it's a difficult balance that requires constant adjustment.

• 54:22 🚀 Onchain distribution will surpass offchain, allowing for fair content distribution and empowering creators, with a focus on funding and minting media.

  • The speaker suggests doing less collaborations on merch and sponsorships, and instead focusing on funding and minting media, while expressing regret for the lack of support for a project related to AI.

  • In the future, onchain distribution will surpass offchain distribution, allowing for more sophisticated management of content and economic sharing, as well as expanding the number of contributors and turning channels into larger institutions.

  • Zora co-founder discusses leveraging smart contracts for transparent and fair distribution of content, highlighting the need for improved discoverability and distribution of creators' work.

  • Creating valuable content and empowering content creators to distribute their work through onchain technology can provide new opportunities for artists and creators to be rewarded for their work.

  • Have fun and be fast when creating content on the blockchain, iterate quickly to get feedback and stay grounded in what people want.

  • Focus on achieving small wins, have fun with it, and look forward to the upcoming Zora mobile app for minting and creating content.

INSIGHTS

Key insights

• 🌐 Zora's journey started with experimenting with different market models and gradually evolving from onchain maximalism to making it easier for people to bring various forms of content on chain without needing to know anything about crypto.

• 📈 Zora is focusing on content over collectibles, creating a unique marketplace for content consumption.

• 📈 Over 1.5 million users have minted and over 100,000 creators are creating on chain, with a quarter million people minting every month.

• 🌐 One of the superpowers of crypto is the ability to have many platforms looking at the same content, creating a new paradigm for content distribution and consumption.

• 🛍️ Owning digital content through NFTs creates a stronger sense of ownership and connection compared to simply viewing or commenting on traditional platforms like YouTube.

• 🔗 The integration of onchain content will allow for seamless bidding and auctioning directly from social media platforms like Twitter.

• 💰 Smart contracts are a leverage bet on the power of crypto, especially in industries like the music industry where distribution and discoverability are key pain points for creators.

• 💡 Empowering content creators to distribute their work through onchain technology can provide new opportunities for artists to reach a global audience and be rewarded for their contributions.