January 17, 2023 - Adam Levy

Background

Mint Season 7 episode 3 welcomes Lucas Campbell, head of web3 at Bankless.

In this episode, we dive into the exciting world of tokenized media and NFTs for content creators. We discuss the potential for monetization and engagement through these mechanisms, the challenges that creators face, and how Web3 can help solve them. We also explore the overlap between personal and professional experience as a Web3 user working at Bankless, and how the Bankless media strategy aligns with Defi community values. Finally, we offer tips for creators using NFTs to turn viewers into collectors and consider what to expect for the evolution of podcast NFTs in the coming years.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Time Stamps

00:36 – Intro
05:32 – Biggest W in Content Creation and Token Scouting
06:51 – Fire Eyes
10:17 – Biggest Takeaways and Learning Lessons from Previous Project
12:06 – Systems in Place That Could Have Been Done Differently in Previous Project
13:39 – Bankless Media Strategy and Alignment with Defi Community Values
15:09 – Overlap Between Personal and Professional Experience as a Web3 User and Working at Bankless
16:17 – Explanation of Podcast NFTs
17:46 – Inspiration for Launching Podcast NFTs and How They Fit into Media Strategy
20:58 – Creating Content Worth Collecting
22:30 – Splits for Tokenized Content
24:21 – Percentage Considerations When Selling a Podcast NFT
29:06 – Other Content Mechanisms to Explore
30:14 – Evolution of Podcast NFTs in the Next Few Years
31:26 – Impact of Tokenized Media and NFTs on Content Creation and Monetization
32:52 – Tips for Creators Using NFTs to Turn Viewers into Collectors
39:08 – Challenges Faced by Creators and How Web3 Can Help Solve Them
41:50 – Potential for Content Remixing and Interoperable Audiences in the Web3 Creator Economy
49:09 – Outro

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Lucas Campbell, welcome to mint, thank you for being on, how you doing, man?

Lucas Campbell: Doing great. Thank you for having me today.

Intro

I’m stoked to have you on, you are part of the brains behind the behemoth bankless. And you are creator, yourself and an excellent writer. So, what better way than to feature on the podcast, especially for season seven, all that web three media and crypto native content creators, which is very much up your alley. So, Lucas, I think a good place to start is, who the hell are you man? What does the world need to know about you? More specifically, I’d love to learn more of like your path into crypto and how that happened?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, absolutely. So, a little bit of background, went to school at the University of Colorado Boulder, was studying economics, was always interested in money and finance, doing like some investing on the side, stocks, you know, options, all that kind of stuff. Was in and out of crypto since like high school, but it really fell down that rabbit hole towards the end of my junior year. So, like spring of 2017. And really just like was consumed by it and was heading into my senior year and was like, you know what, I can either go work at the fidelity or some BS like that, and like go do normal finance. Or I can just risk it for the biscuit and go into crypto and do this thing that I’m passionate about. So, I went and did that, first step there was joining the CU blockchain club. So, I was a senior there. And that’s actually where I met my good friend Cooper Turley, who is definitely a recurring guest on this podcast. And we ended up starting to work together during like ICO consulting, helping some token projects back in the day, and 2017, 2018. And then really found our niche when defi came around in 2019. I started doing a lot of writing, started a blog called defi rate with Kendall Seville, who actually just recently acquired the milk Road, which is really interesting to see like last week, yeah, so the combined forces there. And then we’re just doing a bunch of writing Vancouver, we’re doing defi rate. We were also running a weekly newsletter called token Tuesdays, where we were like, analyzing tokens every week. And little did I know like, during that time, Ryan, Sean Adams, who’s the founder of bankless, was actually reading a lot of our work and was super interested and kind of came to me in Twitter DMS, like yo, do you want to write an article for me, that hit and ended up writing a few more articles. And then in May or June of 2020, he offered me a full time job at bankless as employee number one, and have been working with Ryan and David to scale up that media company, over the past two and a half years now and was responsible mainly for the newsletter, and scaling that up and doing a lot of writing, all the editorial stuff over the past two and a half years and now more recently, have transitioned my role away from the newsletter and into web three media, which we’ll talk about.

Beast, what a journey, like you I got started as a student too in crypto. I helped start like the crypto club on campus. And I attribute a lot of my interest and excitement being where I am today because of what happened in university. How would you say your time at your uni sort of influenced your writing your interest, the projects that you’re working on, defi all that good stuff?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think like, I was always interested in like economics and whatnot. So, I think like that aspect of crypto and like the internet and like tech side, those were definitely like my two kind of like core competencies or what I was interested in. But yeah, I think like in terms of being a student, the biggest thing that I got from there was the connections and relationships that I made. Obviously, Cooper was a big influence for me, being able to work alongside him over a few years, along with the other people that I met at the CU blockchain club. Were all great people, a lot of people still work in the space, a couple of people like consensus, gitcoin, all this, all those sorts of companies. And yeah, I think like just the relationships were super helpful to just find at a massive scale of 25,000 people, finding the core 50 people that had the same interest, in the same kind of like ambitions as you, was super helpful and powerful for me.

As a writer, I feel like you also play the role as a curator and as an analyst. And when you’re writing a defi blog, and you’re reviewing tokens, are there certain checks and balances that you mark as you’re sort of sifting through all the noise that you’ve held yourself accountable for like a certain process or system when you draft? Let’s say, like, the defi newsletter surfacing these really cool insights around tokens.

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think the first thing is that like, we would never write about anything that we wouldn’t be using ourselves, right, like anything that I write about, like I’m passionate about, I use on a daily basis, recently, like did a music NFT article with Cooper and like that’s been like definitely my niche these days, is like collecting music with Cooper and all these other niche collectors, that are like trying to pioneer this new web three music era. And yeah, I think like using it and being passionate about that product, or that token, or like, really deeply allows you to just like really deeply understand what that thing is and makes it more comfortable for you to write about and share with an audience. If you’re using it, and you’re confident about using it. And like putting your, I guess, money where your mouth is, in a way.

Biggest W in Content Creation and Token Scouting

What would you say your biggest W was, throughout the content creation and token scouting process?

Lucas Campbell: Like in terms of like, best token that we found or like in what sense?

The best token that you found that you ended up Kind of like seeing and reaping the most from, for example. Success story, yeah.

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I mean, we’re super early to like all the defi stuff. So, like, we were recovering synthetics back in like 2019. It was like a dollar, not even cross a $1 yet. I think it was still like 30 cents or something. And me and Cooper did like a DCA, like dollar cost average analysis on this and like had all these models. Actually, like Cain Warwick reached out and was like, yo, this is like the best analysis that we’ve seen on SNS ever. And like that, to me, maybe it wasn’t like the biggest dub on investments. But I think it was the biggest stuff on social capital, and like, knowing that I was on the right path. But yeah, I think just being able to cover all that defi stuff is super early. And seeing all that kind of unfold in real time was just super helpful. And being responsible for writing and educating people as this stuff was coming out, was just super easy or valuable for us to capitalize on those things that we saw. So yeah, I think just being plugged in, head to the ground, or boots on the ground, was super valuable and just like eyeing the next up and coming project.

Fire Eyes

A lot of people question, how can I get my foot in the door for crypto, and they always sort of don’t know where to begin. And it sounds very much as if, because of your time at the university, you found your love for writing and sort of being like this amateur analyst. And through that, you found your way to different pockets, into crypto and across the crypto Twitter, let alone. So, after you got your foot in the door, did a really comprehensive analysis on tokens like SNX, for example. Where did it go from there? Where does fire eyes comes to the picture. I feel like they’re very much they work in tandem.

Lucas Campbell: Yeah. So, this is a, obviously, there’s a background here of like being really interested in tokens. And we’re Fire eyes kind of came in is that mean Cooper we’re doing, like a lot of token work, a lot of token writing, all that kind of stuff on our end in the US. And then we met up with James and Callum who are New Zealand correspondents, who were also doing very similar stuff. They were actually like working with synthetics. And they were working with Eth lend, and all of these early defi projects to help them kind of scope out what their token economics look like, what their governance system looks like. And we realized that we’re kind of like doing very similar stuff, and that we could combine forces. And this is just right in the middle of COVID. So, we were just sitting on Zoom calls every day for four hours. And just like ideating, and like talking about this stuff. And yeah, we ended up leveraging one of their connections at Ave. And we’re able to help them with autonomics, which is like their Eastland to Ave transition. And that was kind of like what kick-started Fire eyes. And from there, we ended up working with a ton of other projects, balancer, rocket pool, d launch the ENS token, helped launch optimism, helped launch gitcoin super rare, a whole bunch of other projects. And yeah, it really just started snowballing after that, that first Ave engagement.

You guys are responsible for billions in wealth generation for hundreds of 1000s of users. What? Do you ever think about that?

Lucas Campbell: No, it’s definitely fun though. Because like Fire eyes is very much like a low-key organization. We don’t have Twitter, like we don’t have, like our website is literally, if you just go to Fireeyes.XYZ, it’s literally just a fire eyes logo and that’s it. There’s nothing else. And yeah, it’s been a really fun, just kind of like low key. But yet, I think impactful organization, as you said, we’ve helped design like a lot of large airdrops, governance systems been, you know, Dao stewards for a lot of these projects. And, yeah, I think it is really amazing to see the impact. And whenever we do launch these projects, and then new Airdrop comes out and seeing like the response from the community of like, holy shit, like my mom just got like $10,000 because she had an ENS name, like that stuff like is probably the best thing ever. You know, that’s the important part of web three, is like empowering these community members, empowering these people and rewarding them for using these applications super early with ownership in it and giving them that option if they want to be stewards and governance participants is always phenomenal.

I remember exactly where I was when I got my ENS Airdrop. I was in Lisbon.

Lucas Campbell: Literally at Lisbon. You were at Lisbon Solana breakpoint. There was a Solana like club party and me and Callum and Cooper were all outside of the party on our laptops like, like doing like whatever we had to do, I forgot what we were just like making sure that all the airdrop functionalities were going smoothly. But we were literally just outside of club on our laptops and people were like, what are you guys doing? It’s like, oh, we’re helping wonkiness token right now. And it’s like, yeah, those kinds of stories are so crazy. And that’s like definitely one of the fun parts about working crypto.

Biggest Takeaways and Learning Lessons from Previous Project

Walk me through your first sort of take on tokenomics and working with a big organization and watching their token to kind of like the last project that you guys worked on. What were some of the biggest takeaways and learning lessons that you encountered, the first project that are now a no brainer in this latest project?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I mean, I think we definitely locked in on like some key, like governance system designs on like you need a grants committee, and you need different working groups. And like you kind of see this thread within like gitcoin, and ENs, where they have like these working groups that are focused on a core working team. And those sorts of like, designs were definitely applicable to any Dao, right. And those are kind of the things that we learned when we were launching gitcoin, which was like the first product that we launched, and obviously translated to like ENs, and all that stuff. Outside of that, I think, one thing that we’ve worked on, we definitely spend a lot of time on Airdrops, and figuring out what the proper clean flow is, and like making sure that that is dialed and that is like, you’re designing for the outcome that you want the user to be doing. So ENs had the Constitution and when you clean that Airdrop, you had to sign that constitution and be like this is what the Dao is going to be doing. You were signing off on the mission, like how funds were being allocated all sorts of stuff. And yeah, that sort of stuff translated. And we see like constitution like claims float with Airdrops all the time now. Same thing with optimism, like we had like a claim slow, and you had to fill out a quiz, in order to just like, just to check basic litmus test of like you understand what optimism is, and you understand what this is doing. And yeah, I think those two things of like governance systems and Airdrop claim slow are definitely some of the things that we learned early on and tried to apply to future projects.

Systems in Place That Could Have Been Done Differently in Previous Project

Are there any systems in place today that you wish we did differently? Like from the last project that you worked on? If it was at the Opie Airdrop?

Lucas Campbell: That was the last project publicly.

Okay, publicly. Okay, cool. So, going through the Opie drop, I actually specifically remember the quiz and the litmus test that you just kind of spoke about, got my few points of Opie token, on optimism, and really cool, fun educational experience. But did you still feel like it wasn’t where it needed to be or were you happy with that end result? And what do you sort of taking to the next project you guys work on?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think one thing that we realize is that like, Airdrops are definitely, have become like this game of thought or not like gamified game a bowl like mechanism that people are just like farming, right? Like Airdrop farmers are a thing. And I think one thing that we learned is like we need to be better designers have like civil resistant and gameable airdrops in the sense that like, these tokens are going to the people that has specific outcomes that you want, whether they want to be governance stewards or protocol participants or like providing liquidity, you want to make sure that each user that you’re allocating tokens to has like, an end outcome that you want them to be doing, whether it’s just like voting on stuff or like participating in protocol, governance, any sort of stuff like that. Yeah, I think that’s something that we’re definitely taking into account moving forward and making sure that every allocation that people are getting there is like a key outcome or key action that we want them to be doing within the protocol.

Bankless Media Strategy and Alignment with Defi Community Values

So, this brings me to your time at bankless, because I feel like a lot of your Dejan yet professional lessons sort of taken away from doing big, big billion dollar-based Airdrops to now trying to lead bankless media arm and what that really means in web three, I feel like there’s gonna be a lot of overlap between what you learned from one part, to what you’re applying in the next part, right. And I feel like there’s there might even be that on a consistent basis. I want to dive into the bankless side of things and kind of like unveil more bankless’s media strategy, and how it aligns with the values and principles of the defi community. What would you say those may be?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think, one thing, obviously, I think that through line here is the tokenization of everything, right? Like, we want to tokenize and use web three to create new mechanisms for our audience to engage with people. And we kind of saw that with like Airdrops and rewarding them with ownership and all that. But in the lens of like web three, there’s definitely a different mechanism of like, you want to create new ways for your audience to engage, right? Like people right now are just like listening to this podcast. But you can also get them to collect this podcast. So, what is the other action items that you can get these your audience to be doing? And how can we use web three to create new ways for them to do it? So right now, views maybe you like it, maybe you comment it, for now you can collect it and now you can own it and now you can create it. And those are the type of mechanisms that we want to be exploring and bankless. And that is definitely the direction that we’re moving towards.

Overlap Between Personal and Professional Experience as a Web3 User and Working at Bankless

So just reminiscing back on the Fire eyes experience, how would you say your personal and professional experience there as a web three user, as a Dejan, sort of relate to your work at bankless? Like what are the overlaps?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think it was just, the big thing is obviously just like launching products and launching tokens and launching these on chain assets, I guess is like, there’s definitely a very similar flow that happens no matter whether it’s an NFT or an ERC. 20. That’s for billions of people or that NFT that’s for 100 people, right? There’s, these key things about launching an on-chain asset, that is really interesting and translates, I think, obviously. And another thing that I’ve learned over the past few years is like there’s always some hiccups along the way, when you’re doing these new product launches. The first one is never going to be perfect. But yeah, you learn those lessons, and you kind of learn how to iterate. So, yeah, when we were launching, like gitcoin, or superare, you know, we learned some lessons, we learned a thing or two that we applied to, you know, future airdrops and all that stuff. So yeah, I think just launching on chain assets, there’s a handful of threads that kind of go through all of them, that end up just being applicable to whatever you’re doing.

Explanation of Podcast NFTs

So, I feel like one of those overlapping threads is the introduction of podcasts NFTs, which is why another big part of why I wanted to have you and us to sort of like shoot the shit on this episode. Because I want to talk about podcasts NFTs, you guys have been doing a series of them, highlighting some of your previous and most liked slash enjoyed episodes. For those who don’t know, what podcasts NFTs are Lucas, can you please take the liberty of explaining how you define them?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, it’s collectible content is the through line. So, you can collect something on train. Specifically, we use an NFT. More specifically, we use an NFT built on sound protocol. So, when we were going through this is that we found a lot of parallels with music and podcasts where you just have a cover image, you have some art and you have some audio, the difference is, one is three to five minutes, the other one is an hour to two hours long. And that was really the only key difference. And we saw are obviously like we were talking about this earlier, but big into the music scene or music NFT scene and big into collecting. And we just saw like this bull market kind of emerging within the music collecting area. And we wanted to see if we could apply it to podcast as well and see if we could capitalize on this. And creating content that is collectible. And creating this new way for our audience doing engage in the stuff that we create, is super important. And yeah, we can talk a little bit more about that later. But have to stop there for now.

Inspiration for Launching Podcast NFTs and How They Fit into Media Strategy

Yeah, that’s a great way to sort of sum it up. I’d love to, for you to talk more about like what initially inspired the bankless or bankless to launch podcast NFTs number one, and how do they fit into the overall media strategy of the company?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, so the original inspiration, funny enough, was actually when we were in Lisbon for Solana, three points during that Ens launch. We were in house; it was the Fire eyes guys, so, me, Cooper, Callum, and James. And we also had a Brett, who I believe has been a guest on this podcast as well. And we were kind of like going through, like we were all getting music NFT, like Cooper and Brett were definitely farther down the rabbit hole. But this kind of like segwayed into music can be collectible, but so could content. Why would content be any different. And this kind of sparked this idea of like content should be collectible, and you should be able to engage in the content in that way. And I originally pitched this to Ryan and David literally, probably a year ago now. And they were like you’re a nut job. Like no one’s ever going to want to collect this. And it took me so long to just like continuously pitch them to that and be like, yo, no, we can do this, like this is happening. And the finally we’re just like, alright, Lucas, you can do it. We can watch some collectible content. We’ll see what happens. And yeah, it’s been really interesting just to see the level of support and engagement from the community because people love it. And yeah, there’s definitely some things that web three unlocks here, that are super important on top of engaging with your audience in new ways. But it’s also like giving upside to the audience as well, right? Like if I collect an NFT, I kind of have upside in that content, right? Where that NFT or that podcast really pops off and becomes really valuable in the future. That upside is kind of like translated into the NFT, right. So that is a new way for the community to engage in this content and something super powerful. That is definitely unique to web three.

So, you’re basically implying, this is something that I’ve tweeted before, but create content worth collecting. Like that’s like the new foundation of the song, a like is now a collect, right?

Lucas Campbell: That is such a good point. Like one thing that has been interesting about like Talking to Ryan and David about this is like, okay, right now in wet two media, we optimized for eyeballs, we want to create clickbait, right. And web three, you want to create collect bait, right? Like you want to create content that is collectible, not just viewable. So, it’s definitely a slight nuanced approach on how you’re doing content. But instead of a YouTube thumbnail, that’s going to be like we just gave a million dollars to XYZ, it’s like, yeah, like some other aspect that is just a different nuance and how you approach creating that content, which I think is super valuable, because like, if anyone is living in the web two world, like you just know, this, like, everyone’s just optimizing for eyeballs and views and ads and all this, like bullshit. I don’t know if I’m allowed to swear. Sorry, but what three just kind of enables you to kind of come in with a fresh slate and create content that your community wants to collect, and not just like the advertisers want to pay for. And I think that’s a really different and important nuance, in what three media.

Creating Content Worth Collecting

So how do you actually go by creating content that’s worth collecting?

Lucas Campbell: That is a golden question. And that’s where I leave it to Ryan and David. No, I think it’s definitely, one is creating content that people resonate with is probably the biggest thing. Like, I think one of our most collectible podcasts that we came up with, was the crypto renaissance. And this is back in May 2021. I think so about two years ago. And this is the crypto renaissance. And this was just a podcast, it wasn’t some crazy guests with, you know, millions of followers. It was some historian that just came to us as like, hey, I have a really cool idea. And this ended up being one of our favorite podcasts ever. And something that the community really resonated with, because it was an idea and a concept. Where these two technologies blockchain, the internet kind of fueled a new modern digital renaissance. And that in itself was really collectible, right? The crypto renaissance and creating this podcast that sparked this idea of what it means to live in the digital age is collectible. But a podcast that might just have like, I don’t know, like Mark Cuban talking about shilling his bags, you know, like that’s not really collectible content. So, there’s definitely some nuance. But guess what? The Mark Cuban video gets tons of views, right? Mark Cuban gets tons of views as to what to approach, whereas the crypto renaissance is definitely a web three approach and obviously unintentional, but it’s definitely the difference of content that is collectible and content that is viewable.

Splits for Tokenized Content

How do you think about splits for tokenized content? Where does that come into play? So, for example, if you were to tokenize, the episode with Mark Cuban, the dude’s a billionaire, like does he need your few peasants worth of Eth? You know, but someone that’s maybe less financially stable, that might not pay attention to that, they might be more, you know, like, more of a stickler to receive their splits and their cut of the content, let alone the production team, the graphics team, and everything around the content that gets published itself. How do you think about splits?

Lucas Campbell: I think that’s a great question. And that was definitely a big discussion for us, as we were kind of launching this, obviously bankless has like some really high-profile guests. And most of the content that we want to be tokenizing does feature those guests. And these people are millionaires, billionaires, they’re the 1%. But it does feel weird, if we just didn’t include them, right? If we just like, we’re just like, no, we’re going to take all the money. So, this is an interesting perspective of that. We give every single guest the option to receive, or they can donate their proceeds. So, I think we earmark about 10 to 20% of all proceeds from the collectible to an organization or to the guests if they want. So, the guest really has the option to take those proceeds. And fortunately, enough, every single guest that we’ve had, so far as on a collectible has donated those proceeds. So, we’re actually doing some like on chain effect of altruism, which is nice with the SPF stuff, that has been super nice for the community, just to know that like a portion of those proceeds are going to good causes chosen by the guests. It’s not just us like being like, oh, we’re just going to send it to this, the guests actually have a choice on where those proceeds are going. And if they want to take it, they can take it if they want to donate it, they can donate it. And yeah, that’s kind of where we landed with that.

Percentage Considerations When Selling a Podcast NFT

On the note of podcasts NFTs, let’s continue down this route for a minute. Okay, because when you tokenize content and you implement a splits contract, and you do splits between all the parties involved, what do you think the percentages should be? Because the podcaster creates the content, keeps the overhead of producing the content, all the managing, the publishing everything, and the speaker kind of just shows up and depending on the speaker’s cloud, either the podcast amplifies the speaker, or the speaker amplifies the podcast, right? So how do you think about like percentages, for example?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think this is a great question, and it’s definitely tough. I have to get the right answer. Because like one thing that we were discussing when we have had this discussion internally was like, we don’t pay anyone to come on the podcast in the first place. So, like, do they really need money to come on the podcast? Like, really, the benefit for them is one, you get a platform to talk about whatever they want to talk about, and two, you know, you get a glow up on our socials, you know, we’re tagging them, we’re doing all this stuff, you know, we’re glowing them up real hard. And that’s really the main benefit of coming on the bankless podcast, is you have this platform with a large audience, and you kind of get a glow up on yourself. Now getting some money might be like an extra tip there. But it’s definitely not the reason why people are coming on the bankless podcast. So that wasn’t like a necessarily a big stress point for us. But in terms of like, the percentage split that each person should get, I think, obviously, the creator, the people that are producing the podcast should get the majority. Maybe that’s 70, 80 90%, that’s definitely up in the air for each individual creator, and how much is happening on the back end on the production side. But I think working in the guest because like you said, sometimes the guest is amplifying the podcast and that’s really valuable. And making sure that they are taken care of and set and feel like that they have some ownership in, it is really important. And even more importantly, like beyond like, like giving them some money. The first thing that we do is we Airdrop him edition number one, so that we take the guests public address, and we give them the first edition of the podcast, so the least have that ownership in the podcast. And we have like, that sort of thing. But yeah, it’s really interesting, because most of the guests that we have on the bankless podcasts aren’t financially motivated, is there’s not a financial reason why they’re there. And it’s more of like a social reason. So yeah, I think like factoring in what the guests should be getting is interesting, but I don’t think it’s a non-starter for each guest.

There’s another interesting opportunity that web three music companies have introduced, one comes to mind called our Peggy Labs, they were a guest on season four, I think of mint where, their whole product is they’re like an on chain Ableton. So, you can create different beats, loops and stems. And then instead of exporting them to an mp3 file, you mint them directly on chain., right? And the music from what I understand is not stored across IPFS or our weave, it’s like actually minted on chain. And with that introduces a new paradigm of like re mixing and splits and all these cool things that that crypto enables. Do you think something like that is required for like media? Like what like web three podcasts for example? Is there an opportunity for something like that? Any thoughts around that?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I guess like, it has been really interesting. Like one thing in the web three media, or music space was like, I released a song and hear the stems and all the assets for it and like go ahead and remix it. And we’ll like to write that. And like, obviously, that’s been super fun to see. I think that definitely applies less probably to podcasts and media NFTs because it’s really just the author or the creator launching their content. But honestly, to be fair, I just haven’t really thought about it. So, I don’t have like a super strong answer there. But that is interesting to think about.

Another thing that’s constantly on my mind when it comes to podcasts NFTs is price to quantity. And how frequently do you publish? Do we need to stick around drop culture? And do these big PR moments around trying to get a sell out or trying to donate a lot a lump sum to an organization? Or can we just like tokenize consistently, regardless of what quantity or price may be?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think that’s up to the creator. But I think we’re definitely big proponents of just tokenize it and if it’s good, it will sell out. And if it doesn’t, no big deal. You know, this is just a new net new mechanism for us to kind of explore how we’re producing content. And I think we’re all kind of exploring what the optimal route is. I think Cooper would be the proponent here. It’s like, it doesn’t matter what happens as long as it sells out. And like you’re giving some upside to collectors, is like a big thing for Cooper and like what he’s pushing for. And I agree with that. But at the end of the day, create the content that you like, create the content that your community likes, tokenize it, if it sells out, it sells out, if it doesn’t, no big deal.

Evolution of Podcast NFTs in the Next Few Years

Yeah. And I guess, more at large question, where do you see podcasts NFTs. Sorry, let me re ask that. Alright, let’s go back into it. So, I guess a bigger question at large is, where do you see podcasts NFTs evolving over the next few years? Like do you imagine that more podcasters are going to get into it. Are we miming this thing, just like we meme music NFTs on everybody’s timeline? Like what’s going to happen here? What do you think?

Lucas Campbell: I think it’s definitely, it’s a really early trend. I mean, I feel like bankless was maybe like one of the first people to do it at scale. I think you guys at mint and like rehash and a few a handfuls of other ones were like doing this on a smaller scale and just experimenting with it. And I think this trend will continue as people get more comfortable with web three, I think like, there is a progression of like, okay, people think like music isn’t collectible in the first place. So, like getting to like podcasts or collectible might be a bigger jump. But I think overall, like the trend is, this is a net new monetization model for creators and a net new engagement model for audiences. And I think those two things hand in hand will kind of propel this trend into the future.

Impact of Tokenized Media and NFTs on Content Creation and Monetization

I want to jump into more of web three and media at large, we sort of doubled down and hung it on podcast NFT specifically. But let’s zoom out for a second. Okay. I want to ask your perspective. So how do you kind of see, how do you see tokenized media and NFTs in general sort of changing the way content is either created or distributed and monetized in the future? I think monetization is actually pretty clear. For the most part, like you collect, and you receive your dough, but what about through the creation process or the distribution process? Any thoughts around that?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think in the creation process, like one thing that we work on bankless in this like web two model is like guest maximalism, in the sense that you are maximizing views in order to drive value to sponsors, in order to make money, right? That is a very different model than creating content that your audience is really going to like it so much, that they’re going to collect it and pay you for that content. They’re a different model in the sense of like, I don’t care what the individual thinks about this content, as long as the numbers going up on the view count. Versus I actually do care about what these individuals collect, like about this content, because it only takes 100 people to create that like monetization model, that sustainability model for me. And I think that approach is very nuanced, we talked about it a little bit earlier. But it’s definitely small, nuanced, but I think it does drive very different outcomes on how content is being created.

Tips for Creators Using NFTs to Turn Viewers into Collectors

So, actually, the way it works today then, the model is creating content for a select few that actually value your content and are willing to give a level of patronage for it. But what we’re actually doing is creating content that’s worth collecting for people who already web three native, right? So, the problem is, I guess the opportunity isn’t in this, I guess from this point is like, every collector is a viewer, but not every viewer is a collector, right? So how do you convert more viewers into collectors. And maybe you guys are unique because your channel is all about education, opening up your Metamask wallet and getting people on board through this new revolution. But for the wider greater creator economy at large, that want to use NFTs, how can they turn more of their viewers into collectors?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I mean, I think like us and you guys, obviously, like we’re in a nice little like niche, where we educate people on web three and our audiences are all primarily web three native, I think how these scales out is obviously just through education. And getting people are more comfortable with different aspects of web three, whether it is taking out a loan on Ave or collecting your first piece of art, or collecting your first piece of music, or maybe it’s a podcast. But at the end of the day, it does come down to education and making the world kind of realize the value of this technology and like the importance of it, and how engaging it can be for new people. And it really just comes down to broad scale education. And that’s definitely the hard thing that I think not only podcast NFTs need, but music and art and defi and every other thing about web three needs to be handled. And that’s all through education.

I think another interesting conversation worth having is the whole argument around patronage-based music NFTs and ownership-based music NFTs, were ownership based music NFTs are tied to the web to value, that’s created through music. So, you distribute royalties based off the traditional model through Spotify, Apple Music and attribute that to the NFT that can then be flipped and traded on secondaries. And then there’s the sound.XYZ model of just like collecting to collect and then all the royalties and upside is derived strictly on chain, right? And I try to think about like, how is that comparable to tokenize media and let alone podcasts NFTs, other types of content that will be collectible down the line? Is it worth integrating the entire value chain that YouTube generates, that Instagram, Tik Tok generates and attributing that to the collectible on chain? Or are we just ditching that whole system revolting and we’re just going to be collecting content and relying on the secondaries that come through flipping? What do you think?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think it’s definitely going to be, people are just gonna be collecting content. I think the other side of it is like, when you start throwing in cash flow rates is like you’re getting into securitization, right? Like, I don’t think podcast creators want to be in the area of creating securities. And that is definitely a very different market approach. Maybe there’s a platform like royal that kind of supports that and makes it a lot easier. But I think like to start creating these things that are just strictly collectibles and things that only a handful of your audience, only a handful of individuals within your audience want to collect. I think that is totally fine. And like that is kind of the direction that we want to be going. And maybe at some point in the future, the securitization and the financialization of these assets, where you’re maybe getting a portion of sponsorship revenue or whatever is possible, but I don’t think it’s something that will be directly applicable to podcast NFTs. In the short term.

Let’s do a hypothetical, assuming securities laws weren’t in place. And we could easily tag along the value chain from web two attributed to web three collectibles. What do you think will have more value down the line as a whole, considering the crater economy as a whole? Do you think those who just strictly rely on web three primitives, tokenizer content, find their collector base and royalties are made up and reap through the secondary market? Or is it attributing the royalties from YouTube, Spotify, etc., onto the collectibles and also bracing the secondaries market?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think if securities laws didn’t exist, I think that financialization and securitization would have more value because like, already at base that podcast NFT, that represents some sort of value rights is already collectible, right? And then the value rights are just like a cherry on top. So, I think like hypothetically, the podcast NFT that has financial rights would probably accrue more value. But that is up in the air, I think that’s definitely interesting to think about. But that’s just my first gut take on that.

Devil’s advocate for a minute, let me pose another perspective. Okay, as someone who doesn’t have the growth that bankless has on YouTube, right? I have like a couple 1000 subscribers; I’ve made jack shit on my subscribers on YouTube. I’ve made more through podcasts NFTs. And by the way, we don’t even get paid through Spotify, just like musicians do. So, we’re actually very dependent on sponsorships, and all these alternative forms of revenue, to make a living as a content creator, or a content media company, right? So, I would argue, I’d push more, it’s so much harder to get started on YouTube than it is to find your first few collectors through DMing a few people, creating niche-based content that targets deep pocketed people, for example. So, I’ll hit you with the devil’s advocate perspective. Any thoughts on that?

Lucas Campbell: think that that is definitely. I mean, that makes sense when the numbers don’t line up, right? Like if you’re not making hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions of dollars off YouTube ads, or whatever. And that doesn’t translate and like, of course, the content that you know, will represent $1 in financial rights, is probably not going to be that much more valuable than the content that is going to be collectible, or just strictly a collectible. I agree with you in that sense that like, if the numbers don’t line up in that sense, it’s probably just gonna be easier and worth it for you just to do like launch collectibles. But I think, overall, I’m definitely a proponent of just like, let’s just make it collectible. Let’s not like add financial rights to this. Let’s just make it straightforward. And like that market does exist, those collectors do exist, let’s capitalize on it and not trying to over engineer this stuff and over financialized these assets. And just make it good content that people want to collect and own and have the upside.

Challenges Faced by Creators and How Web3 Can Help Solve Them

Fair point. And I think this also sort of ties into my next question, which we’ve sort of, I guess, skim the surface across different answers. But I want to dive into challenges that existing creators face, that web three could potentially solve. Web three is actually a big proponent around the narrative that we’re going to do things differently and better and more transparently. And like literally f the legacy system, essentially, like you guys have content and merch and basically shows Bank of America on fire, you know, like, I imagine the same scenario for the creator economy, where you see the YouTube headquarters and Instagram headquartered on fire and people finding alternative ways to grow an audience and monetize that using crypto primitives. So, from your perspective, what do you think are some of the biggest challenges that today’s creators face? And how can web three be a proponent in solving that?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think the biggest challenge right now, we talked about earlier is education and then turning those viewers into collectors, into active collectors, right? That is the biggest and hardest part. Because there’s no reason for me, unless you create really good content that I really love, for me to go to your website and pay you point 02, point 05, whatever Eth it is, that is going to be the hardest part, is turning those viewers into collectors, I think that is the biggest challenge. Fortunately, we’re in a good position, we’re in a good position where we have like these large crypto native audiences, that already have Metamask, that already have collected NFTs before. So that leap for them is not nearly as large. But for the Mr. Beast where they have, you know, millions of people that are like, in their teens and have never used Metamask and don’t really care, that’s going to be the hard part, is turning those creators or those audience members into active collectors, getting them Metamask, all that sort of stuff. That is gonna be the hardest part.

Yeah. Another thing I think you’d be like really well suited in answering is the intersection of defi and tokenize media. I’m curious if you have any thoughts on where those two worlds collide?

Lucas Campbell: That is really interesting. I think you can probably attribute that to the same as like the intersection of NFTs and defi, right? where you might have an NFT protocol that allows you to borrow and lend certain NFTs. And I think like in certain instances, you know, the crypto punks of media NFTs might have that market and might have been able to capitalize on those primitives. But outside of that, I think it is interesting, like yeah, you can also do like Tesira or like fractionalized where you can like, you know, fractionalize, these NFTs. But outside of that, I think like design space is open. And I think first we need to establish media NFTs as a primitive and a popular crypto primitive, before we start intersecting it with defi.

Potential for Content Remixing and Interoperable Audiences in the Web3 Creator Economy

One of the things that like keep me awake during the day. And I say that as like a metaphor for something that interests me, okay, I think about a lot is content remixing. A lot of the content that gets published on Tik Tok ends up being transferred over to Instagram. And a lot of the content that gets originate on Instagram, and vice versa gets transferred to Tik Tok, there lacks the ability to kind of like give original attribution, to a piece, to an author, to a creator with this this entire platform war that’s arising. And that’s very, very prevailing. I think something that web three can solve is the interoperability of content, interoperability of collectors, which we’re already seeing, like if you collect on your bonfire site, then you can also drop on Zora and take that audiences or get those collectors to do the same thing, right. My question to you is like, where do you see the potential in the future of content re-mixing and interoperable audiences sort of taking a toll, as the web three creator economy evolves and gets more experimentative? Any thoughts on that?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think content re mixing is something that’s really interesting. I think. We already see it like sometimes on like Twitter and stuff, where people, especially like for podcasts and articles, it’s like really tough to envision what that remixing looks like, for music, obviously, you can add new sounds and all that stuff. But some, like remixes that are like, the reading ape, I think is what it’s called, we’ll take a podcast that we record and remix it, quote, unquote, into a Twitter thread. And I think that sort of stuff is really interesting. And how NFTs can play into that is really interesting, do I have a key outcome or like a key vision on how that ends up looking in the end game? I’m not really sure, but that there is definitely some room there. And I’m interested to actually hear your perspective on where you see content remixing happening in web three.

I had this conversation with a previous guest on the season, on the debate of whether or not content by default should be all CCO or just open and accessible, because the default human behavior in nature is to do something with that content if they like it, right. So instead of going after them, encourage the usage of your content, because it’s just going to bring more eyes and more discoverability to it. And if you take that a step further and start tokenizing content, and you can actually originate the source of the owner of that content, who ends up collecting a one of one, a certain edition count, then it may be even more powerful for the person who ends up collecting, because as content gets proliferated more and more and more, then more value may end up getting attributed back to that original few one or few owners, right? So. if the human, like the nature, the default nature is to get creative with other people’s content, we see this all the time on Tik Tok, on Instagram, of people like doing side by sides of react videos and whatnot, right? I don’t know, that’s like the first thing that comes to mind. Like how do we further encourage it? Like can we put a system in place where you can only release my content if you collect it, right? And what does that look like and once you collect it, and whether it’s even a free collect, like you don’t have to pay for it, just like show your ownership and show your patronage on chain, right? And then you’re granted the authority to do whatever you want with it, right? And proliferate the meme of bankless or mint or whatever the creator in question. These are very open thoughts. It’s not a defined sort of answer. But yeah, any opinion on that?

Lucas Campbell: No, I do think it’s really interesting on how because at the end of the day, like one of the things that I’ve been telling Ryan and David is like, let’s use web three to create new models for our community, to engage with the content that we create. And I think re mixing that content in some mechanism by owning that NFT is definitely on par with what we’re thinking how that’s actually going to come into fruition, is definitely something that maybe we’ll jam on offline. But I’m definitely interested in like, where we can take that because, yeah, I think this is all about creating new ways for the community to engage in the content that a creator creates. And if we can find new novel ways to do that, that make that person want to come back and listen to that podcast more and all that stuff. That is the value, right? That is the power of this technology, right?

If you look at again, just like looking as to how users use, like content machines, like Tik Tok today, they probably like something and then they like mirror it right and they remix it. And it’s very analogous to collecting a podcast NFT that just ends up going into your wallet, similar to how you like something on Tik Tok, and it ends up going into your saved folder, right? So if there were more systems in place to, I don’t know, empower content remixing that also enables attribution, because if you remix a piece of content and somebody else in your community does something with it, then they want to get attribution for that original piece of content that they remixed, you know, and then there becomes this entire flywheel everybody wants to sign on chain attribution. Anyways, I’m losing my mind here. Lucas. Point is like there’s a future here; tokenized content is exciting. Collecting content is exciting, collect content worth creating. Before I let you go, and we wrap this up, Lucas, any last final words?

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, I think one thing is that collecting is only one verb, right? I think that there’s more verbs that web three unlocks, more action items, whether it is collected as one, curate is another, earn, right? I think one of the big things in what three media that hasn’t been explored yet is the curation of that content, what has been the less content that you’ve created over the past few years. And one issue that we’ve seen is that like, there’s a recency bias in the sense that, our most recent metallic podcast is always going to be the most viewed podcast. But that doesn’t mean that was the best podcast, right? Because our audience is always growing, and vitalik a big name. So, everyone that sees vitalik on the podcast is always going to click it. And since our audience is growing, that’s just going to naturally be the most viewed podcast, that is not necessarily the best podcasts that we’ve created. And we only can do that from an editorial closed source perspective. But creating mechanisms for the community to engage in that content and be like, this is the best piece of content that you guys have ever created. I don’t care if it got one view, this is the best piece of content that is ever created. And I will put some sort of weight behind it, signaling that I think is really valuable and something that is completely unexplored. So hot TCR summer, I think is coming, and how that plays into web three social is going to be really interesting over the next year or two.

Wait, what’s TCR? What does that stand for?

Lucas Campbell: Token curated registry? This is a 2017, 2016 primitives, yeah, we’re bringing the TCRs back. Okay. This has been something that has been just like floating around the crypto ecosystem for years and years. And it’s so funny because like, this stuff has happened so many times, like when Vitalik published the white papers, like there was like defi stable coins NFT like all this stuff was like already circulating TCRs, it just takes time for these primitives to come into fruition and realize like, oh, this is actually, this is important now, defi is important now, because why? Because we have a billion, $10 billion of stable coins that are dollar equivalents that we can use for lending activities, right? And like having all these primitives in place, where now that, all right, we have like, web three social primitives that are coming into place? How are we going to curate those primitives and it’s not going to just be through a Reddit like a vote. It’s going to be like I have a token of some sort. I have a content collectible that gives me voting rights at curation rights, or I have some sort of ERC 20 token, that gives me curation rights. And I can now signal to it. There’s a whole design space there that I think is completely untapped that I’m really excited to explore.

Outro

Let’s go That’s some good end of episode Alpha. Lucas, appreciate you being on a part of season seven. Before I let you go, where can we find you? Where can we find your work? Show it away and we’ll wrap it up.

Lucas Campbell: Yeah, absolutely. You can find me on Twitter 0x underscore Lucas, fairly active on Twitter and yeah, if you want to reach out, feel free around.

Let’s go. Thank you so much. We’ll have to do this again soon. But till then, appreciate you for being on.

Lucas Campbell: Awesome. Adam, thank you so much.

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