✨Trends #0062 — Social Tokens
Why It Matters
Social tokens give brands and fans deeper alignment.
Shared interests become shared outcomes.
Problem
Communities have shallow alignment.
Solution
Social tokens are digital assets backed by the reputation of individuals, brands, and communities.
Alignment is emotional and financial.
Players
Social Tokens:
Platforms:
- Rally: Helps creators, artists, and community leaders launch creator coins
- Fyooz: Helps creators launch "Star Tokens"
- Roll: Helps creators mint social tokens
Tools:
- Collab.Land: Tokenized community tools
- Bonfire: Tools for token drops and member rewards
- MintGate: Create token-gated content
- SourceCred: Measure and reward value creation
Predictions
- Activist investors will do things to realize long and short positions on social tokens. Elon added Bitcoin to Tesla's balance sheet and announced that they'll accept Bitcoin (before backpedaling). Hedge funds start rumors to realize short positions. We have crypto and TradFi (traditional finance) examples. This will bleed into social tokens.
- Creator coins will turn into community coins. Members will take it upon themselves to add value to networks. Social tokens will either cross this chasm or perish with creators.
- Social tokens will be a competitive advantage for communities. Tokens will lead to more aligned groups. Incentives are underestimated.
- "Social Token Manager" will become a common title. Cooper Turley runs a talent agency. Jess Sloss runs SeedClub, an incubator. New form factors lead to new roles, like DAO politicians.
Opportunities
Build use cases for your social token. Examples include:
- Exclusive access to goods and services ($TAPE)
- Access to advisory services ($BLAP)
- Token-powered jukeboxes ($BOO)
- Voting rights ($COBRA)
- DM responses ($DOC)
Build ways for others to earn tokens. Examples include:
- Quizzes
- Referral programs
- Retroactive airdrops
- Paying DAO employees in tokens
- Rewarding community engagement
Build tools and infrastructure:
Other ideas:
- Data as a Service firm that finds fast-growing creators and communities
- Social Token CRM to track users and experiences across tools
- Token-gated access to in-person events
- Build a service for social tokens. Can Cooper represent everyone? Can Jess incubate every social token? No. We'll need more domain experts as the space grows.
Key Lessons
- Social tokens are a cultural on-ramp to crypto, alongside NFTs. Financial and cultural doors lead to the same place. No-code is a gateway drug to code. Creator coins are a gateway drug to crypto.
- Art economics vs. product economics. Beeple sold a $69M NFT. Could he have sold $69M worth of books, games or clothes? Maybe. Yet he sold $69M of status. Art economics can turn 1K true fans (and a few whales) into tens of millions of dollars, instead of tens of thousands. With leaderboards, social tokens may inherit properties of both worlds.
Haters
"What happens when creators pass away?"
Social tokens can outlive creators if they cross the chasm from creator to community coins.
"Emotional and financial alignment comes from stocks too."
How early can you invest? Can you have a material impact on public companies? Do you feel connected to other shareholders?
"Social tokens over-financialize social exchanges. Some things should not be turned into market exchanges."
Whether you're right or wrong, this is our new normal. You can try to ignore it, learn to cope, or leverage it. Creative destruction leads to good, bad, and productivity gains.
"What about the mental health of creators when coin values drop?"
Communities can help shoulder the burden if they cross the chasm. Public CEOs deal with this now. Granted, we have thousands of public companies compared to (potentially) millions of tokens. The law of large numbers is bound to lead to horror stories.
"This is a fad."
We have many billion-dollar (and soon) trillion-dollar cryptocurrencies launched by solo founders and small teams. Each has its own culture, community, and roadmap. Sound familiar?
"This is just like ICOs."
Most social tokens have use cases. Roll and Rally also use vesting to discourage pump and dump schemes.
Links
- Who should I talk to about social tokens? The tweet behind this report.
- Social Tokens: Year in Review: A look at the past and future of social tokens.
- How He Made The World's Most Successful Social Token: A tokenized NFT collection turned into a community.
Access Trends Pro
To save 2,000+ hours of market research, access all Trends Pro Reports and join our Trends Pro Community.
