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Podcast Transcript

Exploring the Future of Media in Web3 with Zack Guzman of Coinage

Background

Mint Season 7 episode 1 welcomes Zack Guzman, Co-founder of Coinage Media, the first community-owned show answering crypto’s biggest questions. In this discussion, we take a deep dive into the world of Web3 media and explore the potential of decentralized technologies to revolutionize the industry.

From the co-ownership model of the Coinage Network to the use of smart contracts in handling IP and ownership, we cover a range of topics and offer insights into how traditional media companies are adapting to the Web3 landscape.

We also discuss the role of gatekeepers and intermediaries, the importance of involving audiences and collectors in your community, and the potential for composability and content interoperability in the Web3 world. Tune in to learn more about the exciting future of media in the decentralized world.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Time Stamps

  • 00:19 – Intro
  • 02:11 – Web3 Consumer vs. Web2 Consumer
  • 07:10 – Coinage Network’s Co-Ownership Model
  • 10:58 – Balance Between Creating Incredible Content and Not Getting Lost in NFT Hype
  • 13:26 – Will Traditional Media Companies Adapt to the Web3 Landscape?
  • 16:39 – Is the New Model for Web3 Media Predicated On Virality and Distribution Still?
  • 20:27 – How Will Smart Contracts Impact IP and Ownership in Web3?
  • 24:09 – Involving Audiences and Collectors in Your Community
  • 28:26 – How Will Web3 Affect Traditional Media Gatekeepers and Intermediaries
  • 36:00 – SBF and FTX Scandal
  • 39:41 – Tackling the Consolidation of Media Ownership
  • 50:09 – Content Composability Interoperability in Web3
  • 53:30 – Future of Coinage Network
  • 55:45 – Outro

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Mr. Zack Guzman, welcome to the podcast. What’s up, man? Thank you for being on.

Zack Guzman: Yo, Adam stoked to be here. Thank you for having me on. It’s good to chat. 

You are one upping me. And I love it. You have such a legit background behind you, the coinage logos just popping out to the left. It looks so slick and subtle clean. 

Zack Guzman: It’s a little.

Intro

Very, very subtle. Yes, yes. I’m really excited to have you on a part of season seven, talking all things web three media and crypto native content creators. You are a crypto native content creator; coinage is a web three native media company. So, there’s a lot for us to go over. Zack, I think a good place to start, for those who don’t know you and those who don’t know, coinage, give us a quick introduction of who you are. And more specifically, how you got your start into crypto.

Zack Guzman: Yeah. So first off, thanks for having me on, super stoked to talk about what we’re trying to pioneer, as you said, web three native crypto company and web three native show. Basically, the reason why I quit mainstream media to do all this, is because I saw a lot of problems in the web to mainstream media model, essentially. And I saw it firsthand as an anchor at Yahoo Finance, as a reporter at CNBC covering these things. And I’ve been covering for crypto or covering crypto for a while and saw the space in the way that it evolved and saw NFTs come around. And suddenly it switched from just covering crypto to getting extremely jealous of all the builders in web three and seeing how creators were utilizing that technology to tap into the communities, the audiences that they were attracting, and realize specifically with coinage, that there is a better way to cover crypto. By leveraging you know, audiences and people who are interested in the space, monitoring the space, researching the space, there’s a lot of ways for me as a journalist, as a creator kind of, you know, behind the camera, to create relationships with the people who are also consuming the content we were putting out to make a better show. And so that is essentially what we’re trying to do at coinage is, you know, live up to web three ideals. And answer kind of the question, it’s very much an experiment, right, as is everything and web three. But to answer the question, what can happen when you tear down that wall between a creator and their audience?

Web3 Consumer vs. Web2 Consumer

So, walk me through that more. How do you think about a web three consumer/audience member? And how does that compare to a web two consumer slash audience member, listener, watcher, etc?

Zack Guzman: Yeah, so, for us, the idea is kind of, you know, we all watch shows, we all love certain shows, you know, I’m a Game of Thrones guy. And, you know, in the pandemic, I was a squid game guy. And I feel like you know, as media consumers, we can see shows that are good and are going to take off, right? We recommend them to our friends, you might be the first in your friend group to see something, you’re the trendsetter. You’re like, yeah, you gotta check this stuff out on Netflix, this one’s good, you gonna want to follow this and you’re not really rewarded for that, right? Like you could be the trendsetter and the one that’s moving good content into more eyeballs. But there is no incentive really, outside of maybe impressing your friends and being the one who recommended a good show. But with web three, and kind of what happens once you create that incentive structure, it’s kind of what we’re trying to explore with coinage and what happens when the audience can actually make the show better. And so, the idea is, you know, betting on a show that you think could be made better by coming together to create, you know, better guest interviews, better stories, what happens when we all work together around that. And we can talk more about kind of the cooperative model we landed on. But to me, that’s kind of like what web three is all about, right? There is not just as we’ve discussed before, as everyone in crypto has kind of realized, this read write permission system from like social media, but now read write own with NFTs, and how you kind of leverage the network effects of a show. It’s not just a one-way relationship anymore, that kind of, you know, web two media has always depended on, that you grow an audience, you sell ads against them. That’s how you make money. But actually, you have people weigh in on the narrative, figured out how you can work together with your audience to create a better show. And it’s kind of a new win, win, win model that we’re trying to figure out.

One of the most, I guess, iconic things that came on my radar through coinage was the dough Quan interview. And it was so timely, Zack, it was so timely, it was his redemption interview to an extent. After the whole collapse of Luna, then coinage came in, it was like, alright, we’re gonna put him on the map. And you gave him a very difficult sort of interview. And your entire concept, or at least coinage is concept of integrating and involving the audience member into that process. I’m curious if you can give us a tangible example of what that really looks like. And maybe you could even reference that Dough Quan interview that you guys put out there.

Zack Guzman: Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that, you know, the model is kind of all built around is identifying who your audience is, right? As creators, I think that’s kind of what social media was all about, right? Anyone can kind of set up a profile, put something out there and start to see, you know, where their following is coming from, who’s interested in this type of content. And for us, I mean, Dough Quan was one of those things that was kind of you know, there have been a lot of big stories in 2022 for crypto, but that was kind of the dominant that started all the other dominants to fall in the rest of the year. And there were a lot of questions, right? And there were a lot of, you know, emotions going through all that, a lot of people lost a lot of money, I lost a lot of money in tariffs downfall. And part of it was because, you know, I had seen some of the problems with that project, I had interviewed Dough Quan and I was at Yahoo a few times and we had discussed kind of where that project could go. And that’s very much kind of at the core of this, right, it was, it was a project I was interested in, as a project I had explored. And I also knew the problems that might be there. It was just kind of why we had lined up the interview first, right, a lot of people were trying to get that interview. And it was a relationship that I had built kind of with him around it, to leverage when everyone wanted to secure that interview. And that’s kind of where the network effects of, again, web three with coinage, if we have a bunch of people in the audience who own the show, they have an invent, an incentive, to help us book better guests. And to get interviews like that, if they have their own networks. And we have a lot of web three founders as coinage, as NFT holders. And so that’s kind of like the concept, right? Is that sure, a journalist can have their relationships or whatever. But if you have, you know, a network of CO owners, suddenly you have the show itself literally has a network effect that can lead to better interviews. And so yeah, no, thank you for saying that because it did put us on the map. I think, you know, a lot of people hadn’t heard of coinage because we hadn’t put anything out yet. We were really just kind of exploring this. And that was the first interview, we dropped, and it got covered by Bloomberg, got picked up by the Wall Street Journal, a lot of people covered it, and it put coinage on the map. But it was really just, you know, opening the door to what the show can do and showed people what we could do, you know with the studio, we have here, the platform we have, and we’re trying to build, if you build it with us, you know, this is just one story we can tell but think about everything else. And so, the rest of the season we’ve built on that foundation. You know, we’ve had similar hard questions, you know, from the community, people in our Discord, saying like, you should ask the founder of Solana about this, you know, or you should talk to you, if you’re a builder about that. And we basically create these questions with the input from our community to make these interviews better, to find better stories. And so, you know, the Dough Quan, one was first one, and we’ve been doing it all season long, pretty much sense.

Coinage Network’s Co-Ownership Model

Makes a lot of sense. One thing that’s unique to coinage as model is your co ownership model, you have this Co-op, as you like to call it, that allows for, I guess, the legal framework for involving one who loves coinage, who wants to be a part of this community in the future of what you guys think media looks like, to essentially have a part in it, have a say in it. Can you explain what this Co-op is, let alone this Co ownership model of the coinage network and the role of the Dao in governing the coinage ecosystem? What does that look like?

Zack Guzman: Yeah, I mean, when I was exploring this, right, when everything started to click for me when I was still at Yahoo, and I was, you know, trying to figure out how you would build some of the stuff. You know, there are a lot of web three experiments that I give a lot of credit to, right? You know, mad realities is one that I saw, when they were like okay, what can we build with NFT holders, if we have kind of a community weighing in. For them, it was a dating show, you know, I wanted to stay a little bit closer to my role as a crypto journalist. So, we’re starting with the crypto kind of Last Week Tonight Show. But the input there is basically letting the audience weigh in on what’s important to explain for a mainstream audience, or what’s important to explore. And I can have my opinions, you know, and anyone else can have their opinions. But the idea of creating a cooperative around that, is that you basically get a chance to have these conflicting opinions be voted on. So, like the cooperative model is one that is legally recognized by the US. And I think, you know, there are a lot of NFT projects, obviously, there’s a very early space, regulators still haven’t wrapped their heads around it. It’s unclear exactly how you fit some of these like Dao communities into a legal framework that is recognized in the US. And I think any creator, and I’ve listened to a lot on your podcast, kind of discuss what the right ways to go are, and everyone can have their own opinions. My co-founder, and I kind of just landed on this working, just because cooperatives and were registered in Colorado are recognized. There are a lot of Daos who have registered in Colorado, some others in Wyoming, who are trying to, you know, make this happen in a legal way. And the cooperative model is pretty interesting, because you know, it’s already existed. Rei is a good example, you go there, you shop at REI, you buy a tent, you get a patronage dividend, because you’ve, you know, made that business better, you’ve done something as a member of that cooperative. And so, you can get a dividend and that’s legal, and it’s totally fair. And so, you know, that framework works pretty well for Daos, right? And, you know, we talked to lawyers, we spent a lot of time and money trying to make sure that everything was, you know, as legal as possible, in terms of fitting a new technology into an old framework, and it just seems like a natural fit. And so, to answer your question around how it all works, is essentially the tickets the NFTs that we sell, which right now, you and anyone else who’s minted a subscribe to NFT to watch our contents already whitelisted. So, when we have that drop, later this week, if you get acquainted drop media, you can mint first. Because we want this, again to be built and Co-owned by the people who enjoy the content. But the idea there is that everyone can weigh in on what they think is important enough to highlight, important enough for us to you know, dedicate our resources towards investigating and telling the story is about. And then at the end of the year, or whenever the cycle is for active and, you know, community members in the cooperative, there is that pathway towards patronage dividends, again, kind of redistributing, whenever the company or cooperative, I should say, whatever the cooperative is able to do to share that with the community. Which I think is again, the missing piece in a lot of these NFT communities is alright, yeah, I found something I want to buy into, I found something I want to support, but what is in it for me outside of just flipping a profile picture or something. Like what is the pathway to unlock some of that value? And I think that this is one that’s already been established and as legal.

Balance Between Creating Incredible Content and Not Getting Lost in NFT Hype

I think it’s super important to as a journalist, as a creator, as a musician, to always focus on the content itself. And let the NFT be the tool that allows you to maybe proliferate, and I guess, expand the contents possibilities. How do you find the balance between creating incredible content and not getting too lost in the NFT sauce? Like what is that balance for you guys that coinage?

Zack Guzman: I think that’s a really good question. I think that that’s like the hardest part really, honestly, right? Because you can see some flashy things being done in the NFT space. And there are super creative people in this space. Another reason why I wanted to quit and focus more of my time on web three stuff, because it’s attracted some of the most creative builders in the space. But I think that you know, it’s all about what you want to get out of it, right? And so, for us, it’s like we want to have the ability for people who want to come into this community, right, not just be super rich people who are accredited investors, right? There’s a pathway for that, if you want to do like a reg CF filing and crowdfund from investors and register with the SCC, there’s a way to do that and there’s a way to kind of, you know, pursue that path. But there are a lot of restrictions. And you know, for a lot of people in crypto, that’s not exactly the best way to go, right? And so, that’s what’s cool about NFTs is that you can put something out there, and you can find that audience and you can find people who want to support it. And as a creator, that’s half the battle, right, you know, finding the way to chase an idea that you love. And honestly, a Crypto Show, like we’re doing here at coinage is something that I’ve been trying to do at mainstream outlets for years and I always got laughed out of the room. And so, you know, this idea of saying, I believe in this idea, as a creator, I think this should exist, I’m going to put this idea out there and the ability to co-own it using NFTs, you find that network, and then again, on the back ends, you need to navigate a legally compliant way to actually bring them in into this cooperative. And so that’s kind of what we’ve landed on is, again, kind of having that fungibility, if people don’t want to join the cooperative, they don’t have to, if they want to buy the NFT, and kind of weigh in, on what the show covers, they can. And so, it really kind of leaves it up to the audience, which I think is the important part. But it’s all these elements that have existed, you know, right in the web three space, Kickstarter, the idea of Patreon, like token gating content, exclusive content. And then the last piece, just legitimate coownership via cooperative, I think is what separates coinage and kind of gets to that last level in aligning incentives.

Will Traditional Media Companies Adapt to the Web3 Landscape?

You know, you shared a very common sentiment that somebody, a user, a creator, a founder went through goes through. I tried doing it in my traditional context, they laughed at me, they denied me. So, I went and spun off and did it myself the way I sort of envisioned it. As a web three creator, there’s a lot of entrepreneurships that gets tied into the entire experience of trying to do something different, intertwine NFTs as a tool throughout that process. And from your experience working at traditional media, they laughed at you, they rejected you, despite how rich of an opportunity you saw, right.? My question to you is, do you think traditional media companies at some point will adapt the web three landscape? Or is there an opportunity for decentralized organizations to sort of dominate this new space?

Zack Guzman: I think it’s really tough. I mean, I think, you know, entrenched media organizations, you know, it’s tough to change that model once you’re in it, which is why I actually wanted to quit and kind of start this, is because I see it as something that’s extremely needed in today’s age of media, right? When we talk about trust in media and the old model, right and as a journalist in that model, those are the rules of the game and a lot of people kind of attack mainstream media for right or wrong, like the model is set up to sensationalize things, right, you get paid versus clicks. And so, like more clicks equals more money is the general model, their subscription models that came up after that to try and alleviate some of that incentive structure. But really, at the end of the day, you’re still kind of defending what is true and what is not true. Which again, I think is one of the benefits of structuring things like this. Where you have a bunch of different opinions and a community voting on, A, what you should cover, but then, B, like how you tell that narrative, right? What is true. And specifically in crypto, it’s an area where there’s a lot of biases and a lot of shields and a lot of people trying to pump their own projects or bags. And the way that we thought about counteracting that is just, bringing in a bunch of different opinions. So, there’s people in our community who love Solana, there’s people in the community who love Ethereum, there’s all kinds of different opinions and it’s like, alright, try and figure that out. But to answer your question, I think that comes from the old model, like the reason why none of my ideas, most of them didn’t get greenlit at traditional media companies is because, unless it fits that narrative of will this generate revenue for us, in the model of more clicks equals more money. It’s tough to kind of, I guess, challenge the status growing in terms of any content that would be created. And there’s a lot of, you know, agendas, and a lot of media outlets as well. So, I mean, challenging those becomes problematic. But I think wider, like bigger picture, Adam, which is why I think you know, your podcasts I’ve enjoyed listening to some of the creators Come on and is one that kind of was interesting, too, is that I think the future of media is all creator led and all focused on the creators themselves. And so, the idea of some of these traditional media outlets maintaining some of their power in web three and beyond, I think wanes anyways, because it’s more focused on what a creator is doing. And when you can leverage the network effect of a creator, plus their audience all building and working together on something, I think that unleashes a power that a lot of mainstream media outlets just won’t be able to compete with, to be honest.

Is the New Model for Web3 Media Predicated On Virality and Distribution Still?

Do you think the new model for web three media is predicated on virality and distribution still? Or are we shifting our focus to doubling down on a select few that derive a lot of the value that keep the lights on at the media company? Like are we selling, like when you go to the New York Times, and you have like let’s say, like a gated page, you have to subscribe for $5, right to get into that. And web three, that may look like buying the network NFT And then you just connect your wallet, and you can have unlimited access to however many pages, right? Like the entire model is shifting in terms of access, monetization. Is it our job to build a new model towards the distribution virality, PPC, all these like web two primitives that have kind of given media it’s foundation? Or are we trying to reinvent the model for what distribution, monetization and access sort of look like? You know what I mean? Like, are we are we building for as many eyeballs or are we building for a select few that enjoy content and are willing to pay for it? How do you think about that?

Zack Guzman: I think both avenues can exist, you can definitely do both. I think you can make money both ways too, right? I just, I do think it is fascinating, especially me coming from you know, CNBC is targeted towards a bit of an older audience, a lot of people have cut the cord, I’ve never paid for cable. We’ve seen that media revolution playing out for the last you know, how many years. Younger generations just don’t consume media in the same way. To your question on like distribution and that’s a big question that we’re still kind of trying to figure out, right? Like, we can create the IP and the content and do a really good job producing content that connects with a certain audience. And we can carry that audience, the built-in audience wherever we go with our NFTs. And so, you know, we could find a distribution partner that picks up the show, and that’d be great for everyone included. All of our NFT holders would benefit from that, which would be great. But I do think yeah, I mean, like, you can even look at Mr. Beast, right? Like the most popular YouTuber out there. It’s like, what is he doing? Well, he’s creating a consumer business and it might IPO it could pursue a public listing, it’s kind of interesting to think about that, if that’s better, or when he will want it to create something where he could co-own with his audience and his subscribers, like that is kind of a different path you could go to monetize. And I think it’s an interesting question, because you know, that’s what we’ve done, is we have the free subscriber NFT that lets you watch our content, which is no different than a New York Times subscription. I don’t think any older media company, no web two media company, whatever cap the amount of logins they would give out to people. But in a web three system, you totally could do that. And then let those NFT is freely trade on the market and find out exactly how much and a New York Times subscription is worth, based on what the market thinks, right? There are some drawbacks to that, in the case of you know, you’d be limiting access to information and quality journalism to the highest payers. And you know, you would probably be creating some, maybe some other tricky questions around access to information, which is why ours are free for the first season. But I mean, like there are different models like that that could be pursued. I just find it fascinating that you know, if cables dying, and the younger generation is consuming media on different platforms, it is hard when you have a bunch of viewers sitting on one centralized viewing platform like a YouTube, what the future looks like in terms of distribution, right? For quality products, you know, like, I think movies. You know, a lot of people were always concerned or confused by what would happen to movies as streaming took off, but like there are certain avenues, certain mediums that content works better on and what it looks like in the future. I think it’s gonna be super fascinating to watch decentralized platform or however that looks might take on a YouTube, is going to be like the next wave. And I don’t think you know; we’ve seen enough traction on anything yet. But I think that that could be kind of the next wave to really make things decentralized, not just on the content formation side, but also in the distribution and watch side. But I don’t know what that looks like. I mean, I don’t know where it goes.

How Will Smart Contracts Impact IP and Ownership in Web3?

I guess we’re all figuring out in real time. And I gotta tell you, nothing beats movie popcorn and a big screen. Occasionally, I’ll still take that every now and then over just chilling in bed and watching Netflix. And I’m even in the mood to go see a movie this week and I can’t get that same experience. So, I think there’s a market for it all. I think there’s interesting trends happening that people are experimenting with other frontier, that are changing the way we do things, obviously. And you touched upon one of them is IP, intellectual property. I’d love for you to double down on that more. How do you see the use of smart contracts or just decentralized technologies in general, changing the way we handle IP and ownership in web three? What does that look like?

Zack Guzman: I think everyone’s been trying to figure that out. I mean, it was pretty fascinating to watch kind of the evolution, right? With UGA and all the other projects that kind of came under that umbrella, right? In terms of what do people own when they buy the NFT, what exactly do they own. And the way that we’ve structured it, obviously, it’s a ticket into a cooperative. So, you know, what you would own is the ability to join a cooperative and there’s value certainly in that. But as far as like IP is concerned, all of that would live within the cooperative. So, it’s coinage as a thing, as a show, is basically in that umbrella. And so that essentially becomes what an NFT, purchaser NFT holder would unlock, is the ability to join a cooperative that owns all of what we’ve done. So, you mentioned the Dough Quan interview, that’s, you know coinage IP, that’s something that we put out. And, you know, there’s a lot of value that could stem from that, in terms of a story taking off, in terms of, you know anything that we produce, really. And so that’s, you know, I guess different than just a profile picture in terms of what exactly you own, and even that, you know, is still being defined by the creators themselves in what they’re selling, via their NFTs. I think the pressure to though is inevitable in terms of moving it farther and farther along, right? At the very beginning, no one had to promise anything around IP, because it was a buying spree, and anyone would buy anything. And it’s like, yeah, I’ll pay for whatever, because I can flip it and sell it to someone else. I mean, like, as the space has come down, right, I think people are starting to identify real value in what an NFT could be. And you know whether that’s a song and future royalties on revenue there, whether it’s IP around a TV show and what could happen, if Netflix comes and says, hey, we really liked what you’re doing, we want to put you on our streaming platform, here’s some money, that is a different thing as well. And so, there’s real value to be discussed in kind of what you’re promising with all these things. And again, I think that’s kind of where we landed is look, we appreciate kind of how much better this show could be made, if we had an audience that was converted into co-owners, and this is kind of our pathway to it, I think the same thing kind of exists. You know, I mentioned the Annika rose thing, it’s because it happened in music first, which is really interesting and aligning incentives of people with their favorite musicians to kind of co-own their tracks, once they’re put out and earn a royalty each time it’s played, which I think is fascinating. I think the reason why it existed in music first is because it’s a lot safer around legality of a completed and finished work. And it took us a while to really figure out how this would work for TV. But I think what we’ve landed on is scalable and can be replicated. And so, our idea here is to have coinage be the first proof of concept, but work with creators to kind of help scale, whether it’s TV or movie, things in video that can be done kind of the same way, that we’ve seen with a lot of artists in music, a lot of musicians. So that’s kind of the pathway forward. But I think you know, it’s so early man, like it’s wild. I mean, you do these podcasts all the time. It’s like things change week to week in terms of models and things like that. So, it’s like build it and then figure it out as you go situation.

Involving Audiences and Collectors in Your Community

One  the models that I’ve seen carry on, I think like year over year, is the concept of involving your holders or your audience now into the day to day or into the month to month of your operation, giving them a voice cosmetic level governance to what that sort of looks like as the network, the Dao, the community as a whole grows, but I still struggle with integrating collectors and I think there’s a layer to it. And I’m curious to get your perspective, Zack, because as someone who runs, I guess like a small media company, what feels like a side hustle many times. There’s a level of me always thinking like to what extent should I involve my pin collectors and my podcast NFT collectors, and how do I do that by retaining control and I guess curation over my methods? Because there’s a reason why people tune into my stuff. They enjoy my content; they enjoy the guests that I curate. If I start opening that up to other people to make decisions based off that, that maybe will take away from the fun as me, as a creator kind of like hosting the entire operation, right? And creating the content and it might dilute the sort of the speed in which I can execute, right? How do you think about that? Do you struggle with that pain or is that just me? What are your thoughts around that?

Zack Guzman: No, I think that’s definitely real. And it’s definitely a risk anytime you are kind of taking a little bit of creative control out of the hands of the creator by themselves. But I was just chatting with someone who kind of runs a newsletter, right? Built around news and it’s, he had kind of the same experience where and I’m sure you have, where it’s like people will watch your stuff or listen, and maybe you get hit up with questions or comments. And you’re like, oh, I had no idea that that person, you know, someone who could have like a really deep understanding of one niche. In his case, it was like rural farmers in North Dakota, like read his newsletter, and was like, oh, this is very interesting. For this reason, you should ask about this, this, but he’d already done the interview. And so, it’s like, how could that have made that interview better is like a thing, not necessarily take away from any, like creative control and how you present maybe what you get in an interview or something like that. But just additional information, additional context that makes something better. So yeah, I would agree, I mean, like it’s a danger anytime you give that up. Specifically, for us at coinage, you know, I am the host of the show, we ask our community a lot of questions in terms of, hey, we have this person coming on, what do we think about questions that might be good to ask. And season one was obviously kind of built around, what I thought were big questions to answer in 2022. Season two is going to be all kinds of different stuff, in terms of what does our community really want us to pursue here. What projects do we want to dig into? What do they think? And if you think about the ability there, right, I guess it’s pretty show specific. And it would come down to like what the creator really wants to do and certainly this model doesn’t fit everything. I don’t know if it would fit breaking news very well. But I do think that like a Last Week Tonight meets crypto, like, again, we have an audience and most of our NFT holders are like web three founders, the co-founder of Netflix is actually one of our NFT holders. So, like he’s surprisingly deep in web three as well and intrigued by what we’re trying to do. But it’s like, okay, if we have a community of people who understand crypto, and again, I’m not an expert, I’m brave enough to admit I’m not. But I know some things about certain niches in crypto. And if we can piece together a network of co-owners who are all experts in their own kind of many fields, then we can produce a show that gets things right, we can produce a show that maybe flags things ahead of other outlets, right, we can produce a show that’s better on the whole that way, while still maintaining I think our voice right, and still maintaining kind of my fingerprints on the thing. And I don’t think that that ever goes away, especially if you’ve attracted an audience that enjoyed what you did when it was just you. Kind of what we did in season one, right? And most of this is coming from people who saw our content and wanted to get involved and now, as been put out to the public, mint, a lot of people who have come to us because they saw our content online. So, it’s kind of stepwise. You know, I think a lot of these decisions we made along the way, to make sure that we maintained some of that brand vision and image of the show. And I think that’ll carry over now as we grow our stable of co-owners.

How Will Web3 Affect Traditional Media Gatekeepers and Intermediaries

I love it. I’m curious to hear your perspective on how you think web three tech will affect the role of gatekeepers and intermediaries in the traditional media industry.

Zack Guzman: Hmm, that’s a good question too. I think gate, so I think about it less as gatekeepers as more so as like the power that comes from, maybe people in traditional media, right? And I think that there are a lot of gatekeepers, part of the reason why I think, you know, I see web three revolutionizing all kinds of sectors. For me, as someone who’s in media, it was the first thing that like clicked for me in terms of, if crypto is all about decentralizing power, like media is business, a sector, all built on relationships, right? And there are a lot of gatekeepers in media. And that’s generally you know, if you believe in the ethos of crypto saying decentralizing that power is net better, and not doing so, can lead to some negative outcomes. A few examples might come to mind in the media space, right, examples of, you know, Harvey Weinstein of anytime that people have a bunch of power, and they hold it over people in the space, that are dependent on that power, bad things can happen. You know, there are other examples to point to as well, in news media, certainly, as well. And I don’t know, I see that, and I don’t want to make you know, judgments writ large here. But I do think that, you know, even in the stories that we’ve covered, even crypto projects themselves, if a creator, if a founder, someone running these organizations has unchecked power, hubris can lead to some bad outcomes, and we’ve seen that. Both with Dogecoin as you mentioned and all so now, with SBF, and a bunch of other projects that aren’t even in crypto. And so, for us, you know, we have that in terms of me as a creator of checks, balances, if you want to call it that, like I could be voted off as host of the show. 

That’s interesting, Our community owners.

Jack Guzman: Do they think I’ve done something to violate the brand, they can call a vote, right? Cooperatives exist for this reason, like a vote of no confidence saying, look, this guy has violated our trust. You know, and I think that’s interesting, if you think about that, and power and gatekeeping in the old media model versus, you know, this model, it would be look, you know, sometimes a media organization has a lot of incentive to sweep things under the rug, right? That’s all I’ll say, we’ve seen it before.

We have.

Jack Guzman: But like, if you distribute that power out of the hands of gatekeepers, out of people trying to protect that brand image, to a community that cones are with you, there’s a lot of checks on power there, then I think generally, as a believer of crypto some of those ethos, I generally think and I authentically think that that is good. So again, I don’t think I’m gonna mess up, but at least that that check on power, so to speak, is there. And so, I think that that’s like, specifically one of the things that intrigued me about the way that we set this up, in the in the backdrop of media today. But you know, that’s just one piece of it, I guess.

You know, it’s interesting. Last week, we saw a news story surface, and I’m bringing it up in the sort of in the context of just commentary, right, just for us to have a discussion over it. The block, I guess, there was new surface of them taking money from SBF and then the CEO, after he acquired the company from, I guess other the other parties that had started it. Took a bunch of money from SBF, a bunch of loans that were then spent on all these sorts of things. And there was a lot of, I guess, from what the community says biased media and biased coverage around what was happening. And when you talk about examples of sweeping things underneath the rug, and then getting sort of pilled by bad actors to incentivize you to do that. I wonder what role, if the organization was set up as a co-op, or as a Dao, how that could have changed. And if they did things from a community first perspective, from an operation model, from a monetization model, having more of a say, and more transparency into how the media was covered, and distributed and published and edited, and all these sorts of steps that come into producing a piece, what that would look like, do you have any thoughts around that?

Zack Guzman: Yeah, I think, you know, transparency is probably number one, right. And we’ve gone through some of these decisions at coinage and you know, the production company, trust us media, as well. And we’ve learned transparency is generally the best way to lean into that. And so, you know, I don’t want to throw stones at the block so much as you know, I would observe but sometimes, you know, a lot of the issues stem from transparency and decisions people make to not be as transparent as they could be. But specifically, to kind of, I guess, you know, the question of bias, and influence that some, like very powerful people could have on media, right, and Jeff Bezos buying the Washington post examples there, like rich people can do those things. But specifically for our model, like, the reason why we wanted to create a co-op community on show is that, you know, essentially, anyone who buys their ticket in, would have kind of the same control or power as the next guy. Which is different than like, a model that’s set up where the company, you know, is owned by Jeff Bezos. So, it’s kind of like, yeah, I would answer the question that the transparency bit of it all, is important first. And, you know, we’ve been transparent about kind of our stories and what we’ve had to do. But I think that the model exists specifically for that issue, is that you don’t want to have someone with more outsized influence or power funding these things in a way that is different. But yeah, I think that that’s very much at the core of exactly why distribution and co-ownership in the cooperative model, you know, where NFT holders can weigh in on this stuff matters. But it is an interesting question, as far as how that looks. Because, you know, that was a lot of money that was funded over there. And, you know, we’re a much smaller organization. And so, it’s easy for me to say, this model is way better now, right. But, you know, funding is an interesting thing as far as keeping these things alive. And so those are decisions that each founder has to make, when it comes to those things. But I just think, again, the model of transparency, your model built on transparency and co-ownership, kind of enable some of that stuff. There are problems too, there are downsides, right, like in terms of weighing in on some of the stuff in the discord that like, I don’t know, we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of token gating and make sure that like maybe some of the stuff that we covered doesn’t go come out in a way, that’s like not ready. But again, I think all these things are things that like a traditional media model would never get to do, right? We built like, a fake, my fake shitty New York City apartments in the metaverse and now the cooperative kind of co-owned those things, and those are things that like I wouldn’t be able to do at a traditional media company. 

So, we co-own your apartments. So, does that mean we can stay in it as well or how does that work?

Zack Guzman: Yeah, we have like a whole mockup of the studio sitting on our decentraland plot, next to my shitty amalgamation of New York City apartments and it’s owned by coinage. And so like, if that flips, you know, if the community wants to flip that thing, that’s a choice we all make together. And we part ways with my shitty New York City, Metaverse apartments in decentraland. But like, you know, it’s a fun experiment is mostly what I’m trying to get at is that, you know, there are certain things that are wild and crazy that like, I think only a show like this, or a community like this would be able to tackle or at least experiment with, and we’ll see what happens. But it’s just a very different model, you know.

SBF and FTX Scandal

It is. Zack, how about that entire phase, that entire week where the entire SBF was getting just the whole sabbatical is just like getting unfolded. And all these really, really premier legit, quote, unquote, media companies are fluffing up the entire situation, and not really covering it to the full extent. And Elon Musk continuously weighed in and the community, the crypto community at least, they were, everyone was shitting on all these media outlets, from Forbes to all these big headlines that they were writing about SBF, and just like the lack of truth, the lack of clarity as to what really happened and listening to the community, and completely having their own agenda as to what they were trying to portray about SBF and what he had done. What do you think about that?

Zack Guzman: Yeah, I mean, we learned we learned some of these lessons when we put out our Dough Quan episode, right, that like in these collapses, when a lot of people have lost a lot of money, there’s a lot of anger in the air. And almost no matter how you cover a story like that, no one will appreciate kind of what you’re trying to do there, right? Because honestly, sometimes it’s like they, you can ask the perfect question, but unless you kind of hold their feet to the fire, you’re not going to get the perfect answer. And even then, you might not get the perfect answer. You know, that’s kind of how journalism works is you know, you try and report on these things as best you can. And I think the backdrop of all the anger there, almost made it a lose situation for a lot of people conducting some of these things, of course, piece to piece, sometimes they look a little bit softer than others. But we learned that and kind of you know, when we put the Dough Quan episode out and like made the transparent disclosure that trusts media, that the production company that coinage has a relationship with and kind of that we disclose transparently. People connected the dots and said, oh, well, Dough Quan must have been inputting kind of all kinds of questions and making your interview a softball fan. It’s like no, if you go back and watch it, certainly not, that wasn’t the case at all. And also, you know, Dough Quan has no position between Trust us media and coinage, like he’s not in the community. So again, as a community on show, it’s very different that way. And people will run into those things all the time. Again, it’s not new, right? Jeff Bezos owning Washington post they report on him, you kind of assume that there are those relationships between ownership of a media network and the reporting that goes on if there’s a firewall between them, right, and that none of that leaks over. And you can assume that, and you can believe it, or I suppose you can have verifiable on chain co-ownership, where you’ve got something different, where the model is not completely owned by somebody, but instead by the community, where we field questions and ask them when we covered SPS collapse as well and what that looked like in FTX. I think our reporting was pretty fair in that episode, and the way that we presented the facts. In the bigger, you know, scope of things around what does it mean for crypto, rather than just kind of getting into specifically the fraud there. But I mean, I’ve seen that backlash firsthand, right? And, again, it’s impossible to please everybody. I think that that’s one of the hardest things in journalism and in media in general, it’s impossible to please everybody. So, who are you really trying to please and as us, you know, I think, again, as the model is concerned, we’re a community on show trying to answer the questions that everyone in the community has. I, as someone who lost a shit ton of money in Lunar, wanted to ask Dough Quan these questions because I lost money. These are the questions that the community has, so answered them. And I think as long as you’re following that model, and who are you trying to impress, who do you have to like to live up to at the end of the day, as a community and show we’re going to find all these questions that people in our community have, we’re going to ask them, and we’re going to go straight to the source to figure them out. And I think that that model, I think, is defendable in a way that you know, again, the other traditional media models, you assume that that bias doesn’t seep into things, but you know, yeah, see which one I think works better as the experiment goes on.

Tackling the Consolidation of Media Ownership

I think on this concept and on this topic of just like, outlining the issues of traditional media, and the reporting around SBF collapse and FTX’s collapse, is a good example of bias. And a good example of who knows what’s really happening underneath the hood between these relationships. I’m curious to get your perspective on how web three could solve the other prevailing challenges that media faces today. So, the rise of fake news and misinformation, how social media and just like these large media platforms, and now even soon to be web three social, disrupt traditional media business models, from viewers’ attention, clicks, etc. The consolidation of media ownership, reducing diversity of voices and perspectives in the media landscape, ad blocking technology, which affects revenue and advertising. There’s a bunch, there’s a bunch. And I think each of them could be their own long form discussion. But of all those challenges, are there any that you really align with? And I have like, I have a laundry list of things written down, so I can run through them. But I’m curious, I think you get the point as to where I’m going with this question like, number one, which do you align with, in which is coinage trying to tackle? And two, how are you guys tackling them using crypto, using technology like web three blockchains, etc.?

Zack Guzman: Yeah, I mean, I think there are a laundry list of issues facing media. And I’d be curious to know which one you think is the worst on that list. Because, you know, for me, as someone who’s kind of had to deal with the old system around sensationalizing things, you know, clickbait is a thing that has existed in digital media for years. And, you know, I guess, the model creates, you know, sensationalized pieces to cater to one audience and the other audience. And I think we’ve seen that play out specifically in politics, right? And what you’re left with is an extremely divided society. And you’re left with, as you said, distrust in media in a way that you can’t tell what’s real. And you have two separate kinds of ideologies, and the country falls apart as we saw, that’s not good. But that’s kind of the incentive structure built by the old model is create sensationalized news. It goes big on social media; it blows up and you land on a place of just trusting media and not knowing what fact or fiction is. I’m not saying that crypto news is as important as some of those things. But at the end of the day, truth is worth defending, whether it’s about crypto or whether it’s about politics, whatever it is, right? Truth matters and I think that this kind of model sets that up in a way where, you know, again, it’s early, so I’m not going to act and sit here like I’ve figured everything out. But I will say that at least at the core of it all, if you read our white paper, if you go to coinage on media, we wrote a white paper specifically around the idea of community owned news, and community owned media outlets like this. And what happens when you kind of check those biases against each other. And the incentive model there is less around sensationalizing everything, because you’ve got a community who’s now bought in and supported kind of the creation of the content. And then they have a vested interest in sharing that content that is put out. So, it’s not just sensationalized stuff that’s getting shared. If the model works, right, our community members would be sharing the content that we think is good. And it would go just as far as maybe some of that sensationalized hate content, that is meant to go viral on social media, because they have a vested interest in it doing well, because they’re co-owners, and they will be rewarded. If it spreads far, then then maybe some of that stuff. So again, it’s kind of like building it around that. I think advertising in general is kind of a terrible model for media as well, I think we’ve seen that, like, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have cable, because I don’t watch commercials, I don’t want to just put something on and just go through that, it’s kind of a bad model. So, like, what are the ways to monetize good content? And that’s something that like I was excited by, because there’s a lot of crypto influencers, actually, who would basically run a validator themselves, and have people stick with them. And they would have a revenue split with kind of, you know, some of that would go to the creator and some of it would go to the people running the validator. And I think, you know, for coinage itself, that’s certainly something we could do. We could white label our audiences, hey, stick with us and we could run that. And there can be valid or validated revenues as well. So, there’s a lot of different like ways to monetize audiences, right. And I think the web two model is certainly again, grow up very big, sell ads against it. But that’s not entirely a great experience for anyone consuming that content. I think in web three, it creates a different, you know, not only a different model and incentive structure, but also other ways to monetize that really haven’t been tapped into yet. And that’s what I’m excited about because I’ve been seeing that just start in crypto. And in web three, with kind of these early iterations, you see that like, you know, some of the things maybe in a less regulatory friendly way, but it’s happening non the less and I think that that’s only going to continue the farther and farther we go along in this crypto three experiment, for creators to find out ways to monetize their stuff.

How do you feel about collecting content?

Zack Guzman: As far as, yeah, you and I discussed this before, right? You mean like NFT is built around like content collectibles? 

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like tokenizing an episode and collecting that episode, whether it be a one of one in addition count, but giving the end user if they enjoy it, they enjoy consuming it the ability to collect it.

Zack Guzman: Yeah, I mean, when you and I chatted about that it was pretty eye opening, because I hadn’t considered that before, as far as like, you know, I guess I don’t know exactly what the old world equivalent would be like, you know, movie poster prints or something like that around the thing. But there’s clearly value in that stuff, right. And if someone’s willing to pay for it, extracting that value seems like a normal and good thing to do if you’re trying to monetize, right? I think, you know, we have leaned maybe a little bit outside of that, in terms of using NFTs as a ticket into a cooperative, doesn’t mean that we can’t also do what some other podcasts and crypto shows are doing around putting out digital collectibles around that content. I think that’s kind of similar to kind of what we’re trying to do with the metaverse episode in terms of building something that is co-owned, right, you can experiment with it, you can digitally interact with it when you’re in decentraland. So that’s kind of a cool experience but you also co-own thing with us. So that’s certainly one way I guess, in terms of content that is talked about in that episode about the metaverse. That’s kind of cool. And breaking that wall down. But yeah, I think there’s a lot to be considered around digital collectibles and the content itself. I guess it’s no different than songs at that point, if you really wanted to create like kind of a royalty built around that. The thing that I struggle with though, is what the upside is around, maybe trading some of those things, selling some of those things. And I guess, you know, the digital scarcity is there. But I think when we chatted, it sounded like you were very excited by that. And it’s early for me to kind of explore what we might do with it.

I’m excited about it, because it’s just another experiment that’s worth experimenting with and trying and testing and seeing what would happen. I do believe there’s value in the stuff that we create, in the content that we create. And I think over time, as audiences scale, you find your true believers and your consistent viewers and watchers that enjoy that content. And they get paired up with a bunch of others across other media networks that may also enjoy that content at a similar level. And the ability to collect it and prove your ownership and prove your participation in that creator’s career, in the networks and networks growth, whatever it may be, whatever it means to the end user, right? Having the ability to create markets, digital markets around content that you otherwise would just double click and heart and save to your favorites folder, right? It’s very analogous to doing that, right? Like when you’re scrolling through Tik Tok, and you click like, and you favorite something, and then you could go to your favorites folder and view all the content that you liked. It’s very analogous to collecting something and it landing in your wallet, right? Like it’s a very similar process, except one, could have more value and unlock more value than the other. The Tik Tok models gated by Tik Tok, that value we get extracted, that entire value gets extracted from us, we become products of the platform and the marketplace is the ad network, that Tik Tok gets to monetize on top of our attention, right. Whereas if we, for example, were to tokenize more of our content. And by the way, it’s not perfect yet, I need to practice more about what I preach. But having this discussion is opening up my eyes more to this concept. But having the ability to collect something, even if it’s for free, right, forget the model, let the audience, let the network, let the community decide what it’s worth. If it’s worth nothing, it’s worth nothing. But I think there’s a level also of data that you can unlock by understanding the granularity of who collected what, what other things are collecting, and how you could create experiences around that. You can’t do that in web two.

Zack Guzman: Yeah, after we chatted, I crunched the numbers and was looking at what we might be able to do if we dropped some of those things around our season one content as well. So, I’m not ruling that one out at all, especially, you know, when we looked at the data that, you were actually able to pull from bello and looked at some of that stuff around like, okay, who are in our collective set, when we think about who owns what in our free NFT there. What are we learned from that? And so yeah, I think there is a lot of value to extract once you do things like that. It just creates, I guess, again, this goes back to like something that would never be greenlit and like a traditional media company, because they’d be like, well, what’s the ROI for us? And it wouldn’t make any sense to them, in the old model it wouldn’t make any sense. Which is why like having like the greenlight to experiment in this space, I think, will be extremely interesting for anyone who wants to weigh in on what coinage does, because, you know, that’s, it clicked for me. I don’t know if you were in constitution Dao at all, but like, I just saw what’s possible when like a group of people all around the world, throw their like support and energy behind something. And in that case is very simple. It’s just by the constitution and this like, let’s create a Dao with a megaphone to cover crypto news in a different way. Like, will then appeal to everybody, no, will appeal to some people who have enjoyed our content thus far, like yeah, and so like let’s see what we could do, as a Dao with a megaphone to kind of change the game. And I do think it is extremely exciting to kind of again, as a creator, build something, see who it attracts, and then build on that creative energy to do something together. And that, to me is like the whole story of web three.

Content Composability Interoperability in Web3

Yeah. Another thing that web two media did really well, platforms like Tik Tok, for example, is the composability of content, the ability to remix content and make your own take from it. The best example of this is seeing like a song or a video take off and start trending and everybody kind of like, what’s the word that Tik Tok, I forgot what their term is, but essentially, creating your version of that and layering your response on top of that content. And I think NFTs have the potential to do something very similar, if not greater. I’m curious, from your perspective, what do you see the world of composability, in content interoperability looking and feeling like in web three?

Zack Guzman: Yeah, I mean, I think that that’s also there have been some pretty exciting NFT projects that I’ve done, that I think as well, I’m thinking about splats, or whatever that one was, or it’s like, okay, we will create, yeah, the ability to interact with your existing NFT via RS, which is pretty creative. Good work from Andrew on that one. But I think, you know, in the way that we look at it, it’s like, coinage is a living, breathing, like Dao community on show. So, it’s like you can weigh in and influence the way the show chooses what to put it’s energy into. What stories we should cover and influencing things that way, becomes a collaborative experience. In terms of, you know, getting to impact the show, I think we all know, Game of Thrones ending was pretty trash. I don’t know if I’d be able to write a better one. But I think that I would want to at least have my input there, right? It might make me feel better about hey, at least I tried. And so like to kind of answer your question on that is like, we want to open the door for people to be able to bet on their creators or to say, I can influence this and make it better, right. And I think that that, to me, is one of the exciting things that we’re trying to open here at coinage is, look, I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know everything about everything, but we want to like put this out there. And if you think we can do something better, or let’s say you watched Dough Quan you didn’t like what we did, then you can change it in season two, you can call on this with us and have your creative voice kind of heard as well. And so again, I think it’s like opening all kinds of doors in terms of where the value is, in being early on something, and actually growing with that project, collaborating with that project, but then also influencing it, right? And owning the upside around that, is an extremely powerful thing that hasn’t really been unlocked. Yes, there’s Kickstarter, yes, there’s Patreon. But what about actually co-owning it in terms of, you know, that stage beyond just greenlighting it or putting in resources to make it happen. What about scaling with it, growing with it, as you recommend it to everybody else. And I think that that is an exciting piece of this little experiment here. And it’s a little bit different when it comes to creating a TV show that way, so I don’t know, I’m excited to see it. And I’m excited to have people like you, hopefully, who have watched anything, know that they’re already whitelisted to co-own it with us, when we have our drop at the lowest prices ever going to be just point 1 Eth. And then after that, we’ll see what happens. But you know, I think it’s been exciting to just kind of again, as someone who’s been on the outside, watching everyone have the fun, mint these things and kind of create web three native projects, like finally to be in this space and learning from a lot more creative people than me. You know, like when we chat and then seeing kind of like, oh, you could do all of this, on top of everything else, to put it out there. And she you know, to your point, see what the value is. It’s just an extremely experimental space. And I think it’s exciting to kind of get to play a small, small part in it.

Future of Coinage Network

On that drop, on the note of the drop. Okay. I’m curious how funds that are raised from the sale, the network NFTs be used. And what do you imagine the long-term sustainability of the coinage series, let alone the coinage network looking and feeling like?

Zack Guzman: Yeah, so I mean, the way that it always works as far as cooperatives are concerned is, you know, you pay to be a part of them, you pay to enter. And so, you know, for our NFTs, they’re basically tickets into that cooperative. So, all the money and all the funds from the flow, from the mint goes into the cooperative. What the community wants to do with those funds, as far as you know, producing the show, we’ll figure out as we go along. But that’s kind of the way that it’s set up, right? Is that, again, it’s kind of back to the Kickstarter model of like, alright, what happens if you’re able to piece together people who want to support the content and see it there? As we’ve been doing, as you know, like, the episodes have been coming out, first two people who minted our subscriber NFTs, which are free, so they get first access and minting those lets you kind of chat in our Discord. And then from there, now we’re doing these caucus and network tier NFTs that allow you to co-own with us. And so that will be your ticket into the coop, not just waiting on stuff, but actually again, grow with it as it scales. And again, that opens the door for us to any distribution deal or anything that comes through, like that opens the door for us to, again, reward active members in the cooperative via patronage dividends. That model has existed in cooperatives since they’ve been around legally compliant. So that’s kind of the key piece that I feel like has been missing from like a lot of these NFT projects, a lot of Dao is unlocking that kind of legal flow of participation. And that has existed in the cooperative model. So that’s kind of the structure of it all. And for anyone who hasn’t watched our content, if they haven’t yet, no big deal, like they can still join in the public mints, which will be coming January 2, coinage.media. So, I mean, like, we’re trying to, again, give a little bit of priority to people who have interacted with their content thus far in season one, who have watched our stuff, who have liked our stuff, people who are active in building what we’re trying to build. And then after that, the public sale, you know, per usual with a lot of NFT projects, just seeing who’s out there, maybe late to the game, who wants to also play a role, you know.

Outro

Sack amazing. I’m really excited for the future of coinage media. I’m excited for you and your journey as a creator in web three. Before I let you go, where can we learn more about the job details? Where can we learn more about you, coinage media and all the cool things that you guys are up to?

Zack Guzman: Well, thank you very much. First of all, for having me on. This has been a chat that I was looking forward to for a long time, because I’ve learned from you, a lot actually. And I appreciate your support, in terms of just you know, not only watching our content with our NFT, but also just the research that you’ve been able to help us with, in terms of figuring out how we can work with other projects and kind of what’s going on in web three, as I learned. So, first of all, thank you. But second of all, you know, you can follow our project @ coinage_media on Twitter. But also, coinage.media, which is where we’re gonna be dropping these things. Again, there’s still time for anyone who’s watching this interview, to join the premium list and mint at that low price. But then the public drop still January 2, kicking off a new year, man, season two. So, everyone who wants to join can weigh in on what we do in season two, where this experiment heads. And we’ll be you know, super, super happy and just thankful for everyone who’s already supported again, co-founder of Netflix, I don’t think he supports a lot of web three projects, but cool to have him in the camp, and all the other people who have minted thus far, but big shout out to them for making this possible. And thanks again to you for having me on. I appreciate it and hope I can come back with more of season two as we roll it out.

think as the future of web three media and projects like yours and others kind of like define the space of what’s possible and set the standard for media companies using crypto primitives. We’re going to have to do a catch up very soon and see what’s new. So, until then, Zack, thank you so much. And we’ll talk soon.

Categories
Press Release

Introducing Mint Season 7: Create Content Worth Collecting

Los Angeles, CA — January 5, 2023 — Mint, the popular podcast series hosted by creator and entrepreneur Adam Levy, is excited to announce the release of Season 7. This season’s core theme is “Creating Content Worth Collecting,” and features 20 conversations with innovators at the forefront of web3. Over the next three months, listeners will hear from a variety of creators, collectors, and founders as they discuss their strategies for producing collectible content.

Levy said, “As a creator, I’ve always been fascinated by the question of what makes certain content truly valuable and shareable. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what motivates people to collect and how to create content that speaks to them on a deeper level. That’s why I decided to dedicate 20 episodes of my podcast to the theme of creating content worth collecting.”

He continued, “This topic is timely and relevant to Mint’s audience, and I’m excited to bring in a diverse group of guests to share their insights and experiences. I hope that by exploring this topic in-depth, we can help our listeners understand more about what makes content valuable and how to create content that resonates with their audience to the extent where they want to collect it.”

The Season will explore various forms of tokenized media like music NFTs, podcast NFTs, writing NFTs, film NFTs, video NFTs, and crypto art, and answer questions like: 

  1. What does it take to create content worth collecting?
  2. What are the links between viral distribution and onchain monetization via collection?
  3. How can content creators use tokenized media and NFTs to increase value and strengthen relationships with their audience?
  4. How will DeFi and tokenized media intersect and develop in the future?
  5. What are the main challenges for crypto-native content creators and tokenized media projects and how will they be addressed?
  6. How will decentralization change content creation and consumption in the web3 world?
  7. Will traditional media adapt to or be replaced by decentralized organizations in the web3 landscape?
  8. What challenges and opportunities will the web3 media industry face as it grows and how can they be addressed?
  9. How will the user experience of web3 media differ from traditional web media and how will this affect content consumption?

Season 7 Lineup

  • Farokh | Founder of Rug Radio.
  • Robin Schmidt | Founder of BasedAF.
  • Zack Guzman | Host of Coinage Media.
  • Alice Ma | Co-Founder of Mad Realties.
  • Jacob Horne | Co-Founder of Zora Protocol.
  • Chase Chapman | Host of the OthersidePod.
  • Diana Chen | Host of Rehash Podcast.
  • Aidan Musnitzky | Founder of Spinamp.
  • Christina Beltramini | Head of Growth at The AaveCompanies (Lens Protocol).
  • 0xLucas | Head of Web3 at Bankless.
  • Gami | Founder of Gnars DAO.
  • Peter Saputo | Music NFT Artist.
  • Roberto Nickson | Founder of Metav3rse.
  • Pplpleasr | Legendary, crypto-native digital artist.
  • TK the Legend | Music NFT Artist.
  • BlockchainBrett | Partner at Palm Tree Crew.
  • John Crain | Founder of SuperRare.
  • Sam Sends | Co-Founder of Glass Protocol.
  • RŌHKI | Web3-native music collective.
  • Colin Armstrong | Founder of Paragraph.

Season 7 wouldn’t be here without its two sponsors Lens Protocol and Bello, which collected the podcast’s soulbound NFTs, unlocking promotional perks throughout the season.

Mint Podcast, which has a monthly audience of over 50,000 web3 creators and collectors, is available on all video and audio streaming platforms, as well as new social apps built on Lens Protocol, such as Lenstube and Lenster.

To receive all 20 episodes of Season 7 for free, RSVP by visiting https://adamlevy.io/mint-season-7

About Mint

Reaching over 50,000 web3 creators and collectors per month, Mint Podcast, hosted by Adam Levy, is a leading audio and video series exploring the web3 creator economy.

Learn more by visiting https://adamlevy.io/mint-season-7.

About Lens Protocol

Lens Protocol is an open-source tech stack for building decentralized social networking services. The protocol was developed by the Aave Companies and launched on Polygon in May of 2022. Through Lens, web3 developers can build decentralized social media applications and marketplaces that leverage NFT technology to form a fully composable, user-owned social graph where the connections and interactions between people are owned by individual users and creators rather than established networks. 

Stay up to date with Lens Protocol by following @LensProtocol on Lens 🌿

About Bello

Bello is the no-code blockchain analytics tool that empowers creators with actionable insights about their collectors in one simple search. Unlike other analytics platforms that benefit SQL-experienced users or professional NFT traders, Bello is a haven for non-technical users in a world where blockchain data is hard to fetch and understand. With no-code insights at the foundation of Bello’s pursuit, we help creators learn more about their collectors in a friendly and intuitive manner.
Learn more about your collectors today by visiting https://www.bello.lol/join.