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Podcast Transcript

The Future of Where Podcasters Meet Crypto

Background

Mint Season 7 Episode 10 welcomes Diana Chen, the Host of Rehash Podcast. Diana shares her approach to the bear market from a content perspective and talks about her experimentation and future plans for her show. She also discusses the importance of collecting long-form audio files (aka Podcast NFTs) and shares her thoughts on the rise of Web3 social. Tune in for valuable insights on optimizing content growth and important considerations for creators in the Web3 landscape.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Time Stamps

  • 00:00 – Intro
  • 06:34 – Approaching the Bear Market From a Content Perspective
  • 08:35 – Experimentation and Future Plans
  • 09:37 – Importance of Collecting Long-Form Audio Files
  • 16:40 – Spirit Animal Representing the Idea of Rehashed
  • 18:18 – Understanding the Shift in the Landscape of Rehash
  • 19:29 – Understanding of Podcast NFTs and Why They Should Be Collected
  • 21:54 – Optimizing Content Growth vs Viewership and Virality
  • 23:06 – Thoughts on the Rise of Web3 Social
  • 37:30 – Considerations for Creators in the Web3 Landscape
  • 39:10 – Lessons Learned From Previous Seasons
  • 42:00 – Adoption of Web2 Features in Web3
  • 43:37 – What to Expect in the New Season of Rehash
  • 46:40 – Outro

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Diana Chen on the mint podcast migrated over from rehash. What’s up? Welcome.

Diana Chen: Hey, Adam. I am so happy to be here and very honored to be on the mint podcast. Being a longtime listener and fan of yours and so I feel great. I mean, slightly nervous because you know, I’ve been listening so long, but I feel great. I’m excited.

Intro

Don’t be nervous. This is a safe space. I’m excited to have you here part of season seven, all about creating content that’s worth collecting. That’s the infamous tagline. And you’re no stranger to that. One of the OGS, if not the OG for podcasts NFT. One of the OGs that helped bring it back to life. I know Kevin Rose randomly just like tokenize one of his episodes and did nothing with it. But I remember when you came into the picture and had this idea for rehash, you had this idea for like a content Dao, podcast Dao. And we’ll get into it a bit more. But I think your background is really interesting because when we connected, you were working at unstoppable domains, and then you left that joy to start the rehash podcast, right? The rehash Dao vision that you had. Am I getting that correct? 

Diana Chen: Was it that long ago? Wow. 

It was.

Diana Chen: Well, yeah. So, you’re totally right. Yeah, I was podcasting and leading content initiatives at unstoppable domains for almost a year, which you know, is in crypto time is equivalent to at least five years. And then I went over to rabbit hole for a brief time to kind of work on similar things there, but also to help them think through how they centralize their content function into a Dao. And then back in April of 2022 is when I started rehash. And I mean, you pretty much nailed it. Like I was thinking about starting some sort of a content Dao. I think there’s not too many content and media folks in this space still, and so I wanted a way to pull all of them together and do cool stuff with them. I didn’t really know what that meant at the time. But I combined that with my you know, passion for podcasting and my experience in podcasting, and thought I would start a podcast Dao. First ever podcast Dao and it has been a ton of fun.

You know, when I tell people I left a fund to start a podcast, they look at me like I’m crazy. But there’s purpose and reason behind our content abilities. What would you say yours is?

Diana Chen: I mean, podcasting, I think is first of all, like one of the biggest ways that people consume knowledge nowadays. And I think, you know, especially on a topic like web three, or crypto, that a lot of people still don’t understand much about. I think the more we can talk about it in a mainstream format like podcasting, the more we can spread the word and help onboard the masses to web three, which is I think the goal that we’re all striving towards here.

I hope so. I think that’s a little bit of my goal. My goal was starting mint initially, I’m only bringing up my example because I want to hear what your sort of like long term goal is, but I knew very little about the creator economy space. I was just intrigued by different keywords. Like social tokens Daos and web three, and I got started into crypto by basically reading the Bitcoin white paper and then teaching others about it. So similarly, when I came into the creator economy space, I was like, I’m just gonna say I have a podcast. That’s I feel like a good segue to get anybody on the podcast and like, just tell him you have a podcast or just you know, just so they can speak with you. And then document that process and then publish it in a very like nonchalant way. Maybe I like an intro just to make it a little bit more formal. But that was sort of like my gateway and playing music. I know that concept of like consistency and I know the concept of just like repetition, and just kind of like ingrain that into my process. I feel like it’s very similar to your story trying to onboard a lot of people into web through your content.

Diana Chen: Yeah, absolutely. I think I started my journey out a little differently from yours. I love your story and I tell people that all the time. If you want to learn about web three, create content in web three, because it’s one thing to listen to podcasts. It’s one thing to read articles, but it’s another thing to have to regurgitate that information and teach somebody else, that’s when you really test your knowledge of that. So, I love that that’s how you did it. And I encourage you know anybody out there listening to do the same. But for me, I got my job at unstoppable domains as a podcaster. When I knew almost nothing about crypto and web three, I was creating content in the web to tech world. And that’s how I got found by Matt the CEO at unstoppable and for whatever reason, he had all the faith in me to podcast on a crypto podcast, to host a crypto podcast. And that’s how I ended up there. So, for me in the very beginning days of my journey, podcasting for me it was more about learning. More so than trying to onboard other people. Because at that point, I was still trying to onboard myself. So, the first I would say six months or so of podcasting. That was really when I had the biggest opportunity to learn about concepts like decentralization, the creator economy, all of that stuff super quickly because I had no choice. I had to host this podcast, I had to learn about what these guys were doing. I had to learn how to speak the language. And then over time that eventually evolved into, you know, more of my goal now, which is onboarding the masses and I think is a similar goal to what you’re striving towards.

Approaching the Bear Market From a Content Perspective

Yeah, I think it’s like, onboarding the next million or billion people into web three, like that’s the tagline that I see reoccurring. And I think the bear market really shows that, that people who sort of like stick through the thick and thin, are the people that are hopefully going to stay through the next rise, right? I also I also believe that the best builders and the best entrepreneurs and the best projects come out of the bear market. I’m curious how you are approaching the bear market from a content perspective. Because you’re very much like an entrepreneur yourself, right? Leaving a gig, coming up with an idea, bootstrapping it, bringing it to life. You know, using these crypto primitives, like the mirror article that used to crowdfund the initial days of rehash, like what are you focusing your time in the bear market doing?

Diana Chen: Yeah, I think the bear market gives us a lot of opportunities as builders. And I think the biggest one that, maybe not enough people are taking advantage of is that I think bear markets are the perfect time to experiment. You know, there’s not a lot of money flowing around, can’t really get VC funding. So, you have very little at stake at risk. You have, you know, just all the time in the world to experiment. Try new things, really figure out what works for you and what doesn’t, so that when the next bull market comes around, and everything is go, go, go. And there’s so much pressure to deliver, then you know by then what works and what doesn’t and your best setup for success in the bull market. So, for me like bear market is time to really like get back to your foundations, your fundamentals, figure out what it is that works for you, that doesn’t work for you. And also, not be afraid to try new things because like I said, the stakes are low right now. So, now’s the time to experiment and try new things and you know, by the time the bull market comes around, you’ve got all these innovative, cool things that people are like, whoa, this works so well. How did you do it? And you’re like, a bear market.

Experimentation and Future Plans

The bear market. So, where’s your experimented of brain sitting at the moment? What do you want to experiment on?

Diana Chen: Oh, gosh, I mean, I’m still experimenting with podcasts NFTs. So that’s been an ongoing journey since we first launched back in April. We’ve done something a little bit different with our podcasts NFTs every season. The first season we did kind of like a batch drop at the end of the season, where we sold you know, limited editions of the audio version of the podcast. And then we had one of ones of video podcast, we tried all these different things. The following season we released the podcasts NFTs, in real time when the episodes were released. And then this season, we’re trying something different. So, I think continuing to experiment with that, seeing what works for people, think podcasts NFTs are still really new. You know, not many people have heard of it or are familiar with it. And so, figuring out the best ways to help people understand what they are, the value of them and get people to you know sign on.

Importance of Collecting Long-Form Audio Files

Why should people collect along form audio file?

Diana Chen: Yeah, there are a few reasons I think, for us, for our community. The biggest reason is to have a piece of ownership in rehash. And what that looks like for us is, you know, I think a lot of people when they think of crypto, they think of ownership in the form of financial returns. And it’s not, that’s one way that you know, you can have ownership in a community and as founders, you can reward your community. But I think another way is just to give your community as voice in what you’re doing. And so, for us, our NFT holders are the ones that help shape the podcast. They help decide which guests come on the podcast and they get to decide, you know, any other big podcast changes that we have. Like in the future if we decide to or you know, if I have an idea to introduce a new segment on the podcast, that’s something that would go to the Dao, go to our NFT holders. And I would say hey, you know, I’ve got this idea, this is what it is. This is the funding we would need to make this happen. What do you guys think? Yea or nay? Do you think this is valuable to people? And I think that that sort of structure not only gives you a more engaged listenership and audience and community, but it also helps to make your podcast or your piece of media, whatever you’re working with better. In the sense that you know, you’re crowdsourcing knowledge and insight from a ton of different people instead of just from yourself. Sometimes I think as the podcast host, we might not even be aware of, you know, the conversations we’re having that people are picking up on and that are landing with people the most. Sometimes the episodes, the conversations that I think, you know, are the most insightful for me, I end up not doing too hard. And then the episodes that get the most downloads are ones that are a little unexpected. 

That’s my biggest challenge too, I swear. 

Diana Chen: Not just me. 

No, it’s 100% me too. And I feel like I create content on subjects that interests me and those that interests me, I can perform the best on, right? But then it’s like people just want to hear like oh how you raise a million these. You know, and create like, or like the jaw dropping thumbnail content that you see on YouTube, that gets the most clicks and attention. And that’s why I’m so excited about season seven, because I want to, experiment in this new realm of like, what does it mean to create content that’s worth collecting? How do we create content for a collectible audience versus a viewer-based audience? You know, and maybe that puts less pressure on us to sort of perform on the standards of the algorithms and more so on our creative endeavors.

Diana Chen: Yeah, it absolutely does. I think it helps make us better as hosts because like you said, you know, I’m just glad it’s not just me that you experienced the same thing. But I would much rather are my listeners tell me which episodes they like and what kind of content they like, so that I can create more of that, than creating content for myself that I like, because I’m not the listener. So yeah, I think it’s really a two-way street. It helps your community feel more engaged. Like they’re not just passive fans of yours, but they’re active community members in your community. And then on the flip side, it makes you better at what you do too, because you’re getting constant feedback from your biggest fans.

Definitely, when I think of rehash I think of Diana Chen. And when I think of Diana Chen, I think of a campaign manager, why do I think of a campaign manager? Because when this new season comes around, and people are casting their votes for speakers, you’re literally out there, kissing babies in networking, trying to get people to vote, tagging everybody and just hustling on the streets of crypto Twitter, to get some action to bring this season to life. And when people think of content creators, I feel like many people look down on content creators. They’re like, oh, you’re just sitting at your desk. You’re just looking at the camera, speaking into a microphone. And I’m like, It’s not that, look at Diana Chen. She could literally be a presidential campaign manager, campaigning and tagging people and reaching out and knocking on doors, like that’s what I think when I looked at you on my Twitter feed.

Diana Chen: Wow, I’m so glad this is being recorded. I’m gonna ask you to send this clip to me and I’m just gonna play it over and over and over. Whenever I’m having a bad day, Adam Levy. I could be a presidential campaign manager, that feel so good.

There’s a level of hustle to run an operation like you’re trying to bring to life. Running a Dao and trying to create content through that Dao and ingraining your community’s voice within many layers, whether it be cosmetic level governance or really intricate level decision making. It requires a level of like, tension organization, like you need to be put on people’s radar to get them to participate in the assets that they collected, you know, or in the collectibles that they bought. I don’t want to call them assets, but you know what I mean? 

Diana Chen: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you’re spot on, you’re hitting something like really, really well on the head, which is that a lot of creators out there, artists, musicians, content creators even, they are professionals at their craft. They are really good at making music or they’re really good at designing things or they’re really good at X Y or Z. But when it comes to selling your work, you know monetizing your work, in order for you to stay a creator and keep doing the stuff that you love to do. You have to be able to monetize that somehow, right? And I think that’s where we see a huge gap in, this has like really nothing to do with web three, even like in the web, in the traditional space, creators are typically not the best business people or marketers. And I think that’s kind of like the seat that I sit in and have sat in for a really long time, is like I’m not the most maybe creative person out there. Like all of these shitpost videos that you see posted on the rehash site, that are stitched together creatively and like paired up with audio in the most perfect and intricate way. That’s our editors, you know, and that’s like the other, the rest of the team. That’s Tyler and Ellie primarily who are doing those things and I’m so grateful to have them on my team, because that is what they do. They just want to heads down, edit podcasts, create these funny videos, you know, make memes, do these things without having to go out there and hustle and be tagging people on Twitter all the time. And dming mean people and I think that’s, you know, that’s kind of why it’s worked for us because we make the perfect team, because, you know, I’ve got the campaign manager hat on all the time and they’ve got you know, like the really high quality creative stuff nailed down. And that’s really what it takes. I think to create good content is you want high quality content, and you want a way to get it out there to people.

Spirit Animal Representing the Idea of Rehashed

If there was a spirit animal that would represent your idea of rehashed out in its current state, what would that spirit animal be?

Diana Chen: I’m so disappointed in myself right now for not having an answer because I asked everybody this question on my podcast, and you would think that I would have thought of an answer for myself. Man honestly, I just like I think of a dog. Because we.

Wait, wait, wait. Which dog? Like a golden retriever or like one of those nasty devil Chihuahuas?

Diana Chen: No, no, no, it’s gotta be something like my dog. Who is a cattle dog husky mix. And he is a super, I mean, super loyal like all dogs are, really smart. Very easy to, very. Okay, maybe not my dog, but a dog. That’s like very adaptable. You know, like a fast learner. Yeah, what breed would that be?

You know what I’m imagining right now?

Diana Chen: What?

As you figure out the breed, I just imagined that imagine a discord of just puppies just running around everywhere. Like that’s literally what comes to mind visually. And I think of like, a back in the day used to drop my dog off at like, vacation, daycare, you know, and all the dogs would be in like the behind the plexiglass window and they’d be running around, like that’s what I imagined in the rehash community now.

Diana Chen: Exactly. That’s exactly what it is. That’s literally what it is. Yeah, we’re big dog people here.

Understanding the Shift in the Landscape of Rehash

I love it. Can we go back to the early days of rehash, you kicked off rehashed Dao by writing a mirror blog post in crowdfunding it’s initial few steps, right? The landscape has changed since then, you’re not seeing too many mirror crowd funds. You’re seeing maybe Juicebox crowd funds and other platforms sort of experimenting with what raising money looks like on an independent level. How do you understand the shift in that landscape, from when rehash came to life to where we are today?

Diana Chen: I would probably credit most of that to just the bare market that we’re in today. So, rehash, we looked out a little bit, we launched in April of 2022. We’re still like full on bull market mode. I think the market didn’t really crash until the summer, so we got a couple of good months in there. And then you know, everything tanked, but I think a lot of it is just attributed to the bear market. There’s not as much money flying around all over the place anymore. I think people have to be a little more strategic, a little more thoughtful with, you know, raising, when they’re trying to raise money. So, I think that is probably, I think that’s probably the main thing.

Understanding of Podcast NFTs and Why They Should Be Collected

That makes sense. And then on top of that, using podcasts NFTs as a vehicle for crowdfunding, additional revenue for the Dao. I think it’s a really cool concept. I want to talk more about podcast NFTs. We sort of touched upon it a little bit earlier, but I want to bring it back because part of this conversation I want to focus around content Daos. And like I said earlier, you understand the concept creating content worth collecting, but we’re still in that weird uncomfortable phase. People trying to understand what is a podcast NFT. is it just a bridge of like music NFT? Is it’s own category? Like what are they in the grand scheme of things, and why should people collect them?

Diana Chen: Sure, yeah. It’s podcasts NFT is just a podcast episode that is minted on chain as an NFT, a non-fungible token. And I think there are, you know, the reasons why somebody might want to collect a podcast NFT, similar to the reasons why somebody might want to collect a mirror post on chain or collect a music NFT on chain. It shows that you are, you know, a supporter of that piece of work, first of all, and that artist whoever or creator or whoever made that piece of work. It shows that, I think over time, it can show your level of fandom. So, whether you’ve collected you know, maybe one podcast NFT, one episode of rehash because you just liked one guest, versus somebody else who may be collected every single podcast NFT that rehash has ever released because they’re a fan of the podcast, I think that is a big distinction. And I think what that allows also the creator to do is to reward these people in various ways. You know, and so the way that we might reward somebody that’s collected one podcast NFT, versus somebody that’s collected all of our podcasts and NFTs might be a little bit different. And that comes in, you know, not just in physical rewards, like monetary rewards or maybe rewarding in merch, but also rewarding by way of giving you more governance rights. And the way that we’re set up, you know, we have different tiers of governance that our NFT holders are able to participate in. And I think that is something to that, that sort of distinguishes our super fans from our, you know, average fan, and makes everybody happy at the tier that they’re at.

Optimizing Content Growth vs Viewership and Virality

Do you think it makes more sense to optimize content growth, to increase your number of collectors or to strive for viewership and virality?

Diana Chen: I think those probably go hand in hand. Right? But I think in the ethos of web three, you know, with legions piece on 100 true fans, I think in web three, the mentality is more about focusing on those smaller subset of collectors, those true fans of yours versus focusing on the virality. But personally, you know, from my personal experience, and just observation of the space I think right now we still sit in very much web 2.5 world. And so even if what we’re striving for is these 100 true fans concept that Legion wrote about, I don’t think we’re there yet. And I think in the meantime, we still sort of are at the liberty of a lot of web two tools that are out there. And if we can leverage these web two tools to get a bigger reach and to bring more people into the space, then you know, who are we to say that these tools are bad or that we have to stay away from them.

Thoughts on the Rise of Web3 Social

What is your overall thesis on like web three social, because I understand web three social as this new world where our collector count is going to surpass our follower count. Like that’s my belief in how do you now optimize for building a large collector base. Maybe not all of them are gonna fall into that 1000 or 100 category. But the new sort of like proof that you were there is by collecting something, whether paid or free. Do you have a similar thesis on this whole new rise of web three social or what are you thinking about? 

Diana Chen: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. But again, you know, I just don’t think we’re fully there yet. So right now, we are leveraging web three social tools like lens, all of our videos are on lens tube, you can collect the videos on lens tube, they come with a difference. They don’t come with the governance rights that are NFTs do, but that exposes us to you know, sort of move towards this model and experiment with it as well and see how well web three social really works. On the other side of it, we are still on web two social, we’re still using Twitter and Instagram and Tik Tok. And we’re actually in this upcoming season, shifting our thesis a little bit towards broadening our, you know, target audience to more of a broad web two tech audience. I think when we started rehash, we intentionally started really small with a small web three community, who understood what we were doing and who supported our values. And now that we’re, you know, nine months into rehash, I think, you know, what we’re focusing on for the next season is growing, is finally branching out of this community, the solid foundation we’ve built and building on top of that. And so, we’re going to be focused more on, you know, sort of explaining how web two bridges into web three, how tech is going to evolve overall, instead of siloing these web three topics into their own conversations. We want to sort of paint the bigger picture for people and help people understand better how tech is evolving. And why web three or web three concepts will come into play and tag in the future.

I think just to reflect on that for a minute, something my team and I we’ve been realizing too is that even, like ever since the entrance of the bear market, attention and sort of reach of your content has decreased. And it actually makes a lot of sense to broaden up like your target audience as to who you’re documenting for. But I feel like the challenge is, it’s like you still need to focus on a type of user and create content for that type of user. And I’ve always struggled with creating content that excites the web three user and the web two user. And a good example, this is when I post web three content on Tik Tok and maybe my content sucks. Let’s go with that. Okay.

Diana Chen: No, it doesn’t. 

It doesn’t reach the right audience on Tik Tok, you know. And that’s, and I post a lot, like looking at my feed, like I’m going ham, my team and I every single day we’re pushed pushing out content. I feel like at this point, Diana, we’ve pushed, we’re pushing out like one on Twitter, at least one on Twitter, at least one on Instagram, two on Twitter. So, it’s three or at least one on Tik Tok. And then doing that like every day, you know, every day, Monday through Sunday, posting content on all these platforms. And maybe my form is just not adequate enough for the Tik Tok algorithms, you know, like, I don’t know. But if I start bridging and creating just web two related creator content, then may lose the web three audience, you know. And me personally, I’m more interested in the web three stuff and that’s how I know I’ll be the best at it because I’ve only done things that I’m, that I feel like I’m interested in, you know what I mean? That’s my like, push and pull sort of struggle. Are you feeling something similar? You guys you guys got through a same sort of feeling? 

Diana Chen: Yeah, so first, I think with regards to the different platforms, I think different types of content do perform better on different platforms. Like for example, our super ship posty meme videos do extremely well on Twitter, but kind of tank on YouTube for example. Whereas are more, you know, just kind of vanilla, like educational content. Those pieces do really well on YouTube, because I think there’s more of a mainstream audience there than they do on Twitter, because Twitter, our Twitter followers are primarily crypto people. So, I think, you know, maybe part of it is just strategically posting certain types of content to certain platforms. I think another piece of it too, and maybe this is just you know, the stuff that we talked about on rehash kind of, I kind of think of it as like a liberal arts crypto podcast. You know, like we talked about more of the more human side of crypto and web three, than the technical side or the financial side. And so, what I think when it comes to things like this, when it comes to things like talking about governance in Dao. Like governance is not a topic that is new in, since web three, governance has been a topic that has been around since the beginning of time. And so, we’re talking about a lot of things like governance, ops, you know, people management, organization, things like that. These are topics that are understandable to everybody who’s alive today. And so, I think that makes it a little bit easier to introduce crypto topics, like Daos and NFTs, but to talk about it in a way that.

Digital collective.

Diana Chen: Normies. Exactly. You can understand as well. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I guess another thing I’ve been thinking about too, is there’s also like the Mr. Beast approach of just dumping all your money and creating, whether it’s not, maybe not in a cadence, but creating really high-quality content, that people want. And not focusing on velocity, just focusing on quality, you know. And one thing that we have yet to see in the crater world in crypto is, people crowdfunding budgets for Mr. Beast like videos. Like crowdfunding 1000 Eth to create, like a 4 or 5, 10-minute video, you know, like we have yet to see something like that come into action. And that’s something I’m really excited about of like the concept of creating content that’s worth collecting. If that primitive sort of evolves, maybe we don’t have to perform for the algorithms, you know, because I personally, I feel tired, like I feel drained. And I’m not even at the same level that a lot of these full-time creators’ kind of like pursue content in web two. Like there’s people posting three, four times a day on Tik Tok, you know, and spending thousands of dollars on editors. And it’s very hard to scale that right on a like a small business level, you know, so, I don’t know I’m ranting a bit here as you can tell, any thoughts on that?

Diana Chen: I’m with you. I think I would love to see one day where we can, you know, better understand how to manage a shared community treasury. And I think you know, things like nouns Dao are really interesting to me and I think about ways in which, you know, we could, for example, make a, we could fork nouns, the nouns contract and create this creator Dao, where, you know, there’s an auto generated NFT, one per day. And all the proceeds of that go to a shared community Treasury, and the Treasury goes to fund projects, like the one you just described, like a Mr. Beast style, four-to-five-minute video, super high quality, and the community votes on these proposals. So, you know, Adam levy could submit a proposal for, to create the super high quality video on podcasts NFTs, like fully explaining what they are with full production value and everything, that’s going to cost X amount of money and the community of NFT holders votes on you know, if we put this money towards that or not. I can see something like that happening, like spinning up and the next bull run. I think right now might be a tough time but next bull run, like I could totally see something like that and you know, that’s, I think there are models that people are coming up with to make this happen.

I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s, I don’t know if it’s a bad time. Like last week we see, I forgot his name but really talented artists that’s been here since the nifty gateway era. Raise 2.2 mil from his open edition. You know, and then another artist by the name of Victor, I’m blanking on his last name. Also, like 250k easily in like a few hours, easily. They put a lot of work into it. I don’t want to discount that. But on the surface, it looks like wow, that was like in a few hours. You know, you raised 250k, you know x copy, Jack Butchers. You know, like the activity is still there. People are like, I feel like the bar for content that’s worth collecting has increased, right? Because the noise has decreased. So, people are still looking for higher quality signals. And it’s up to us as creators to match and be at that same level as what they’re expecting. That’s what I’m sort of like piecing together during this time.

Diana Chen: I think you’re right. I think you’re right. And I think part of that, too, is that most of the people left in this space during a bear market are people who’ve been here for a while, right? Are people who really understand what we’re doing who really believe in it, and these people are going to have a higher expectation of quality. I think then, you know, a mainstream audience that kind of just a listen to music NFT, because that’s the buzzword that’s out there right now. And just buys up any music NFTs just to say that they have a music NFT. So yeah, I think you’re right. I think the standard and the expectations are a bit higher during this time.

Now I can’t help but think is the market prepared for a Mr. Beast like character, who wants to raise the mill, a thousand Eth, you know to create a 10-minute video. And they create like really interesting, funny content and try to find people who lost their NFT, so like a fishy link, you know, and send them 10 Eth as like, as like a gif, you know what I mean? A documenting stuff like that.

Diana Chen: That’s the kind of thing that I think is going to have to wait for the next bull market.

Okay, all right. Interesting.

Diana Chen: You think it can happen now?

I don’t know. I’m being surprised left and right by all these creators. 

Diana Chen: Yeah, but all the people you just named like those are people who have established themselves in this space for years and years.

That’s what I’m saying. Why can’t it be, like we’ve been in the space for a minute you know, why can’t it be your eye or another podcaster or another content creator.

Diana Chen: We haven’t been here long enough. We haven’t been here long enough, I think.

We’ll think about it. Let me let me counter that. Okay, let’s have a friendly argument here because the fuck renders of the world, right? They came in around the NFT craze and then nifty gateway era, as I like to call it you know. When open editions and in dropping NFTs and all the Instagram and corporate artists migrated into the world of web three, to finally realize what their art is valued at and what it’s worth. And then they later transitioned into Christie’s and Sotheby’s and sold her pieces for millions of dollars, that happened in a very short period of time of them entering the space. So, I don’t think I’m there yet personally, and I won’t talk about myself like that. But I think maybe there is an opportunity for something like that and an opportunity worth exploring and experimenting with, maybe it’s a group of people, maybe it’s like the web three hype house, you know, and a bunch of digital content creators come together, you know, to crowdfund 1000 Eth. To create an X long beta video, you get some Treasury funding from nouns Dao, you get some Treasury funding from FWB and all these other kind of like groups contribute to it. I don’t know what could come out of it. I feel like I’m onto something here. I don’t know. But I’m speaking up my ideas. Out Loud.

Diana Chen: Okay, I’m gonna Yes, but you, so yes. But if you think about that, not just the amount of time that it took somebody like Fogg Render to make it to Christie’s but what time it was, you know, they came about at a time when, first of all people understood art. People still don’t understand podcasts as collectibles. You know, we’re still talking about what are podcasts as collectibles. What is the value, like we as podcast hosts, like people who are in the space and understand it more than anybody else are still trying to fully figure this out and nail it down. So, I don’t know that the market is ready for it yet. Also, at the time when you know fog grinder and people were making it to Christie’s, that was bull market times, like that was 2021 when NFTs were, that was like the you know, like NFTs were king and everybody, like everybody in the mainstream, at least like has heard of NFTs now and knows what an NFT is. You go and say, you know, podcasts NFTs to anybody. I mean, like I can’t even explain, like I tell my friends. I’m a podcaster. But beyond that, they’re like, oh, how do you make money, you get like ad sponsorships and stuff, right? Like, I can’t explain the rest of it to them, you know. And so, until we’re at a place where we can explain what you’re even doing to our Normie friends. I just don’t know that we’re ready.

All right, I’ll counter it. I think music NFTs fall in a very similar category. Everybody understood art, but many people didn’t understand the concept of collecting music and it took a village have a few thousand collectors to prove other people wrong. And now we’re seeing music NFTS as a collectible, quote unquote, asset class doing really, really well. And artists, even though it’s like 1.25 Eth but they’re doing that and raising that on a consistent basis. You have like you have artists like Daniel Allen and Reo Cragin, ranking in 110 Eth in a matter of like a few days, you know, for their criteria drop. And people starting to understand the value of collectible music, you know, and that took a village. It took a few companies; it took funds betting on entrepreneurs to create the platforms and the primitives to enable that energy. And then it took a bunch of ship posters to tweet music NFTs for it appear on everybody’s timeline, to make it seem like something is going on here that’s worth paying attention to. So, I don’t see why we can’t do that with content. Why we can’t do that with podcasts. 

Diana Chen: I think we can, but I think that it’s, that’s what it’s going to take you know, it’s going to take what you just said it’s going to take a village, it’s going to take a few funds coming in and investing in podcasters. It’s going to take all of those things and none of that has happened yet.

Shows you how early we are.

Diana Chen: It’s too early. 

Considerations for Creators in the Web3 Landscape

So, what other things are on top of your mind that you think about as a creator in the web three landscape?

Diana Chen: Oh, man. So much my mind is a jumble of thoughts. I think.

Recently look at the last week, what has caught your attention and your idea and your question? If any.

Diana Chen: I’ve been, honestly, I’ve been thinking a lot about distribution, you know, and you kind of talked about this already. And I think Raffa tweeted this out the other day, he was like content is 20% creation, 80% distribution. And I think that’s absolutely true. And that’s something that we’ve been thinking about a lot at rehash is, how do we take all the content that we’ve created and make the most out of it? Like we are definitely not putting our content to maximum mileage that we could be. And that’s something that we want to focus on and do a better job of in the upcoming season. And part of that is you know, expanding to, it feels like taking a step backwards. Like we just revamped our Instagram account and our Tik Tok and we’re posting videos there now. And you know, the thinking at the beginning was like, our listeners, our audience is mostly like a crypto native or a crypto curious audience. We don’t really have a big normy audience. So why would we be on Instagram or Tik Tok or any of those channels? But now that we’re sort of shifting our focus and shifting our thesis a little bit, we want to be aware, you know, those people are. So that’s just been kind of like thinking through what the strategy is there and making sure that all of it feels good, still with our values and what we’re about is something that has been top of mind for me.

Lessons Learned From Previous Seasons

Throughout this conversation, you’ve been vocal about a new idea, a new strategy that you want to pursue, branching out your audience reach right and creating new types of content within the tech sector. I’m curious what other things you learn from previous seasons that you can share?

Diana Chen: Really, I think that’s been a huge trend lately, is people kind of turning their backs on even the word web three. Like one of the questions, I asked each of my guests last season was if you could rebrand one thing in web three, what would it be? And the most common answer I got was web three, like the word web three. We don’t need that to be here, that should not exist. And usually when I asked, you know, okay, so if we don’t call web three, like what do we call it? Like, nobody has a better idea. And I feel like that’s why we still use the word web three, but I think what web, the maybe one reason why people are starting to turn their backs on this is, people are starting to realize that there are a lot of people out there who kind of see it as like web two versus web three and put these two things against each other. When web three really is just like the next iteration of the web. that we’re using today and that we’ve been using for the last decades. And so, what we should be thinking about instead of web two versus web three, and you know, is what we’re doing web three native versus like, too much so in the web two direction, is how do we best use the tools that are given to us by web three, to make our current version of the web and what we’re doing better? You know, how do we use the tools given to us by web three to make social media better, to make us you know, instead of the product, to make us actually the customer and the user? So, I think that really has been the biggest takeaway, and there’s so many applications of that too, like different spaces, I think of it most in the creator economy space and the social space, but you can think about that in you know, the financial space as well in the tech space, like how are we? What are we doing to protect our privacy, for example, when operating on a public blockchain? There’s a lot of things I think we need a square with, you know, bringing in some of the principles of web three, but also I think it would be to our benefit to also reflect on what are some of the good things that happened in web two, you know, that we don’t need to get rid of, because it’s not this like dichotomy, web two versus web three. It’s really how do we make our current version of the web better?

What’s your vision for that?

Diana Chen: You think I have an answer to that?

No, what do you enjoy about web two?

Diana Chen: I wouldn’t be the campaign manager of the President.

Adoption of Web2 Features in Web3

Well, no, let’s uncover that with what we have left over here. What would you like to see us adopt from web two? Concerning all the cool shit that’s happening in web three.

Diana Chen: I think one thing right now with creators is that we still need web two tools for reach and distribution. You know, we’re not, like we talked about earlier, we’re not at a point where we can rely on those 100 true fans thesis just yet. Or, you know, it’s maybe it’s possible, but it’s very difficult to do that. And so, in the meantime, for the majority of creators, I think, relying on web two social platforms, web two distribution, that’s just something that we still have to do until we figure out how that’s going to work in web three. I think, you know, one thing I’ve thought about a bunch is, how is search going to work and web three? You know, without Google sort of like, digging through all your data and understanding you best. Like how will search work? If I want to know something right now, you know, like, if I just want to know, okay, my back really hurts. I bent down and now my back feels like it’s broken. I can ask Google that and it can maybe tell me what’s wrong with me. How am I going to do that? And when there’s no like, you know, like, I’m sure there’s a solution to that, there’s an answer to that. And I think sorry, a zoo is working on something like that was startup being and other people are thinking about it, but there, I have questions like that, you know, like there are tools like search that kind of, I’m happy with how it works in web two, and I’m not sure how that’s gonna look in web three just yet.

What to Expect in the New Season of Rehash

Well, I think search in web three, you’ll be searching for something else. You’re not searching for content like you are on web two platforms. You may be searching for more crypto related insights, but I may even redact that statement down the line because if a lot more content ends up being tokenized, right, then we’ll actually end up having to search for content, you know, and for articles and blog posts and information, if the world ends up actually becoming fully web three. So yeah, a lot to think about. Yes. Okay. So new season of rehash. Okay, what are we to expect other than a branch in new content? What else is on the menu?

Diana Chen: I think, you know, one of my focuses this season is going to be bringing everything back together, is going to be zooming out into the big picture and talking about how these individual things fit in. So, you know, like we have a guest coming on that is, has been deeply researching different types of blockchains, layer twos, how they all work together. And my goal with a conversation like that would be to explain that in an understandable way to somebody who’s not in the space or somebody who is in the space like myself, like I couldn’t explain how all of that works to you. So really, like zooming out, talking about these concepts in the context of the bigger picture is, one of my personal goals. But yeah, like the guest lineup is set already. We just finished our guest nominations and voting. So, if you go on our Twitter page, you can see the full list of guests that are coming on this season.

We need to get the Airdrop and I voted NFT sticker, so that we can have that and show it off online. That’d be sick.

Diana Chen: I think I’ve got to make that now that you’ve you know, really just spun this campaign manager narrative. 

I’m telling you, it’s all in there for you, I swear.

Diana Chen: All right, that’s gonna be our next. We actually did just create our first batch of merch which if any of you will be at Eth Denver, you’ll be there, right?

Yes, likely, yes

Diana Chen: Okay, so come find me and I’ve got a eanie for you. But for any rehash, NFT holders, if you can find me at Eth Denver, you get a free beanie. We’ve got some stickers as well. And now I’ve got to go and make an “I voted” sticker in addition to that.

Let’ go. I want that. I want an “I voted” sticker with my ENs on it. I’d be so sick, and I’d wear it proudly. Think about it. I’d be so cool. Like you campaigned for someone to be on season, and you contributed to that. Like I want to show that off.

Diana Chen: Do you want to sticker, or do you want to pen?

Whatever, it doesn’t matter, I want something to show off. That’s what I want.

Diana Chen: Okay. I like that. You know what else I can do is, I just also issued our first set of disco credentials to all of our past guests, as like a you know, as a proof that they were a guest on the podcast. So, I could do that as well for people that voted on the podcast. Yeah.

Outro

Okay. Diana Chen, this was great. You’re an all-star. Thank you for being on Season Seven, excited to watch further seasons progress of rehash and all the little puppies running around in the discord. Before I let you go, where can we find you? Where can we learn more?

Diana Chen: Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun; this hour just flew by. If you want to find me, you can find me on Twitter at DDW Chen. And you can find rehash @rehash web three.

Amazing. We’ll have to do this again soon but till then, have a good one.

Diana Chen: We’ll have to do it the other way around. Yep. 

Yes, I’m gamed. See you next time. 

Diana Chen: See ya.