👋 Rollers,
The Merge is actually around the corner! Now that Ethereum has passed all its tests, the Merge is expected to come around September 15 👀
Why are we excited about this? The Merge will easily be one of the biggest events in crypto history. Moving from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, Ethereum will use 99.9% less energy and the annual emission of new ETH will drop from 4.3% to 0.4%. On the end user side, we will see much faster interactions and cheaper gas fees on Ethereum, making the barrier to entry a lot lower!
Lots to unfold in this issue, this is Social Token Times #31!
Web3 closer to the mainstream🔥
1️⃣ Latin Americas Amazon, MercadoLibre dropped a token MercadoCoin (ERC-20) to boost their loyalty program and drive more users to their crypto wallet, Mercado Pago. It will be used primarily for cashback rewards and purchases inside MercadoLibre’s platform.
Mercado Libre has already helped onboard 1m+ users into crypto. Sounds like a lot, but we’ve merely scratched the surface. There will be more and more brands venturing into the token space to start or boost their loyalty programs with a token strategy.
2️⃣ Coinbase just dropped cbETH. Coinbase announced a new token – cbETH, a liquid staking token. When you stake ETH with Coinbase, you’ll get cbETH back. You can sell it, transfer it, or use it anywhere else in DeFi. For example, you can stake cbETH to get even more rewards.
Coinbase is now on par with all of the other big players that allow users to get liquid ETH while you stake. A well known example is stETH with Lido. Similarly, cbETH gives users liquidity and lets them earn rewards while their ETH is staked and locked.
3️⃣ According to Blockdata, 40 of the top 100 public companies have invested ~$6b into web3 companies between September 2021 and June 2022. Google came in top in total funding (~$1.5b). Samsung made the most investments totaling ~$1b with 13 investments.
$100 Billion Creator Economy 🦄
Recently, Antler’s Ollie Forsyth published a report titled “Investing in the $100 Billion Creator Economy” offering guidance to founders on what to expect when they start, grow, and scale their creator economy startups. A couple learnings we want to highlight are:
Modern creator economy platforms need to build for scale. To achieve that, you need to consider features such as:
- Global accessibility
- Creator collabs and content bundles
- Limited take rates
- Ownership of a creator’s community data
- Additional revenue streams (community tokens, live commerce, etc.)
The top 1% of creators currently earn most of the revenue, but the creator middle class is catching up. Thus, platforms should support creators by helping them find their 100 true fans, enabling them to connect with those fans, providing compensation for referred creators, and personally engaging with the creators.
This is where we come in — Web3 functionalities allow creators to better scale their growth and monetize their 100 true fans, as we see with Roll Memberships.
Let’s Not Gatekeep Token-Gating 🔐
Token-gating is a novel technique for regulating and limiting access to exclusive rewards by requiring fans or customers to own a specific token or amount of tokens. The token(s) effectively serves as an access key, which can be easily verified by connecting one’s crypto wallet.
For example, if I’m a creator who launched a $CREATE token, I could set up my community tooling such that fans who own at least one $CREATE token can join my Discord server; fans who own at least two $CREATE tokens can access a premium item on my merch store that other fans cannot see.
By aligning incentives between creators and fans, as well as transforming services and products into assets that can be owned, traded, and governed, token gating offers numerous advantages for both creators and users. Some examples of token gating in action, both for creators and beyond, could look like the following:
- Creators can apply token gating in a variety of creative ways, such as letting fans unlock new content and rewards (MintGate, Submarine.me) and enabling gated NFT memberships (Creator Cabin Passports, Unlock Protocol). Platforms like Bonfire and Tellie also give creators a no-code solution to construct creator websites/storefronts with token-gated merch, content, etc. all in one place.
- Tokens can help automate membership management for private communities and DAOs, with tools like Guild.xyz and CollabLand currently token-gating Discord and Telegram communities. This extends to enterprises as well (which SENTR3 and Lit Gateway support); for example, a company can restrict private files and meetings for specific managerial levels.
- D2C store owners can now add token-gated commerce into their business. Tools like Novel, Shopthru, Manifold, and PERCS offer integrations to token gate Shopify stores. This isn’t just limited to exclusive discounts, rewards, or product drops; token-gated collabs, as one example, can turn exclusivity into wider inclusivity and audiences. (For more, here’s a great read about token-gated commerce by Alex Danco and Packy McCormick.)
- Event organizers can token gate their conferences and events, both virtual and in-person, to manage who can attend the event (or sections of an event). This is supported by tools like Luma and GET Protocol.
In combination with these token-gating tools, Roll Memberships can supercharge the experience for creators to build and grow their on-chain communities by offering exclusive content, community access, rewards, events, and more.
Special thanks to Catherine Yeo for putting together this report. Catherine Yeo is a creator, entrepreneur, and investor studying Computer Science and English at Harvard University. She recently published the book The Creator Revolution, which examines the historic rise of digital content creators and their impact on transforming both our present and our future. You can find her on Twitter @catherinehyeo.
The New Creator Economy 🌐
Staking and Membership launches 🚀
While we release Memberships and Staking, we will start a new section to feature creators launching with Roll Staking and Roll Memberships
- $PCC is launching its Memberships via Roll Memberships. Performante is piloting the Learn2Earn narrative with their social token $PCC. Members gain exclusive access to video training, PDF library, advanced tools such as Automated Trading Bots, and AI Trade Trackers. We’re here to democratize crypto education.Learn more about how to unlock the exclusive benefits the $PCC community offers via Roll’s Twitter Space on September 1@10am PST and the official launch is on September 2! Stay tuned for more upcoming Memberships launches!
Happenings in the Roll Ecosystem 🔥
The Professor ($CROSS) was featured in the new Netflix documentary, Watch Untold: The Rise and Fall of AND1. documenting the streetball era of basketball. It’s a rags-to-riches tale of a scrappy company AND1 transforming streetball into a phenomenon. You will find streetball stars Skip 2 My Lou, The Professor, Hot Sauce and more reflect on AND1’s journey in this documentary. Super cool 🔥
Take Up Space ($TUS) launched Contribute2Earn and Learn2Earn models. Through learning about Web3 and contributing to the community, community members can earn $TUS and unlock perks like branding workshops, merch, consultancy and even a Changemaker NFT, making the community even more accessible 🤝
NFT artist Skeenee ($SKULL) featured among one of the 50 best Crypto Artists in the first Phygital Book “Crypto Art – Begins”, with Special NFT drop on September 19th on Nifty Gateway.
Osinachi ($OSINA), Africa’s first and foremost cryptoartist and Top NFT100 Lister participated in Grails Season 2, a cool NFT art project by @proof_xyz that keeps the identities of the artists a secret only to reveal them after the mints, which according to Osinachi, “is very helpful in driving convos around the art and not just the money”.
$TIDE becomes the first twitch-based DAO. TIDE is a new social token for the Dapp Digest stream on Twitch. $TIDE will be experimenting with the best crypto has to offer in an effort to build a “Twitch based DAO”. This stream is intended to be a gas free experience for people who are new to crypto. The goal is to have the lowest barrier of entry for newer people.
The TIDE token ultimately poses the question “Can we create community governance over a Twitch stream & its treasury?” It also asks, “How decentralized can we make the decision making process over those funds?”. The community believes DAOs will transform our world in profound ways just like the internet attempted to do during the web 2.0 era. Twitch happens to be a perfect medium to communicate this intersection between Web2 and Web3.
For more info tune in to the DappStream held by @BradyMck_ every Friday at 4:30pm UTC!
$TALK byTBA hosted an event introducing the concept of social tokens at Soho House. The event invited a panel of compassionate, authentic, and ambitious builders in Web3 to discuss decentralization, social tokens, DAOs, and NFTs.
New Tokens on Roll 🎉
In the past few weeks, we welcomed dozens of new creators and their communities to the Roll family. We are excited to see creators and communities from all walks of life are interested in creating their own tokens and have innovative ideas around utilities.
- Esty ($EL) is a breakout bilingual Latin Artist and Roller Skater who blends her American/Dominican roots through her music. She is known for her soft angelic tone and addictive melodies. Check out her latest EP ESTYLAND on Spotify 🎧
- Negative Vibrations ($NV) is created by artist, illustrator and matte painter, Maciej Drabik. His recent projects include concept art for Hater, The Witcher on Netflix and Shades of Blue Season 2 (NBC series). Check out his NFT collection on SuperRare and portfolio on Behance.
- MetaTrekkers ($MTT) is built around the NFT project Meta Trekkers, 2.5k randomly generated NFTs bringing exclusive benefits, utility and unique experiences. The community will learn more about metaverse, web3 and the blockchain ecosystem together.