Community-Owned Media: How Coinage Is Reshaping the Creator Economy
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From privacy concerns to limitless potential, AI is rapidly impacting our evolving society. In this new season of the Brave Technologist podcast, we're demystifying artificial intelligence, challenging the status quo, and empowering everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. I'm your host, Luke Malks, VP of Business Operations at Brave Software, makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and search engine, now powering AI with the Brave Search API. ♪

You're listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist. In this one feature, Zach Guzman, who's the founder of the Web3 media company, Trustless Media, and host of Coinage, the first award-winning community-owned outlet controlled by its NFT holders.

Founded in 2022, Trustless Media has attracted the backing of Netflix's co-founder by unlocking a new way for creators to build with their fans and launched its second community-owned media brand, Best Dish Ever, in March. Guzman is also a former anchor and reporter with Yahoo Finance and CNBC. His work has been featured in Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal,

entrepreneur, and the Washington Post. In this episode, we discussed how Zach created a co-op model and DAO for coinage where NFT holders could own and be part of the media company, how NFT holders can collaborate with the DAO and earn dividends on their ownership.

Other ways that Web3 is changing the game for the attention economy and for creators in general. And how new types of NFTs and fungible tokens are being used to help influence and show milestones for different media projects. And now for this week's episode of The Brave Technologist. The Brave Technologist

Zach, welcome to the Brave Technologist. How are you doing, man? I'm doing great, man. Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, I've been looking forward to this one. We don't really have other media talent on here too often, so appreciate you joining and super interested in this conversation. Yeah, same, man. I think, listen, I think these discussions, a platform like this,

These convos don't happen all the time, so congrats on hosting all this stuff. I think it's super important to dig into more of why these builders are even doing these things.

Exactly, man. Exactly. And speaking of which, you've had kind of an interesting journey to get you to coinage and everything you're doing there. So why don't we like kind of set the table for the audience a little bit, a little on your background, maybe, or what coinage is and how it kind of sets apart from other media players in the space? Yeah. So from my background, I was an anchor at Yahoo and CNBC.

had gone down the crypto rabbit hole, had always really wanted to cover this industry in a way that I think traditional media doesn't really or can't really cover. And had the idea of doing a crypto show back in 2018, got laughed out of the room, basically. And I was like, OK, fine. Guess I'm ahead of it.

a little bit and a lot of people were and then we saw nfts blow up and that really re-triggered kind of the idea of what can you do around community ownership online and so had the crazy idea of creating a community-owned outlet with coinage and that's kind of what we launched first was the idea anyone committed nft and become a co-owner of the actual brand of the actual outlet and so it took us a while to figure out how to do that legally but now here we are

Three years later, one of the fastest growing Web3 outlets and actually walking the walk by being a DAO. And we just paid out our first distribution to NFT holders and made history as the first NFT project in the U.S. through the DAO co-op model to do that here. And so it's been a wild ride. A lot of ups and downs. I'm sure you would say the same thing. It's just building in Web3. You never really know what's going to happen.

Yeah, it's awesome, though. I mean, like, because it's not just like you guys making content, you entrepreneurial side of all this, right? Like kind of starting something new here and something that's kind of groundbreaking and using the technology to show people like ways that it can be used in different ways other than just, you know,

putting a JPEG in it or whatever. Maybe you can break that down a little bit. Like, how does this work? Is there like a total set of NFTs that users can buy or people can buy from a total collection or they just kind of mint on demand? How does it all work? Yeah, so when we started, I think that was the main concept. And, you know, the idea...

was back in 2021, 2022-ish when we launched, it was, hey, how do you do this legally? What's the right way to do this? And how do you kind of figure out what the right collection size is? And if you think back there, it was just like people were kind of just picking numbers and never really knew. And you hoped it minted out, but you can never really figure out supply and demand. And it's really tricky to kind of guess. And so what we decided was, well, what if we just kind of

didn't play that game. What if we just allowed anyone to mint at a price that, you know, I was willing to pay or anyone might be willing to pay and see and just go that route. And so that's kind of the model. We set a number. We said, all right, 5,000 NFTs, no more ever. And 1,000 of our other layer of NFTs. And those are essentially all the holders that

that can co-own coinage with me. And it was just kind of, you know, a natural experiment of, all right, if we put this out there, if we build it, will they come? And it's kind of been an ongoing, essentially an ongoing way to fund a mission together, which I think NFTs had, you know, attempted to do.

But interestingly, there's a lot of shenanigans that can exist in the NFT space. And we just said, well, what if we just did this super simply and said, those 5,000 people own half of coinage and those 1,000 people own the other half coinage and we'll split it 50-50 with our production company and that'll be that. And from the very beginning, that's,

It was just like very simple ownership and become a member. And the cool thing about being a cooperative is that like you can actually promise, like cooperatives are built to promise patronage dividends is what they're called. So if you're an active participant, you can unlock a patronage dividend from the co-op. And all we did was we took,

the idea of a co-op and put it on chain. And that's kind of what DAOs are, but we did it legally in Colorado as a registered entity. And so from the very beginning, we've been able to kind of build with that idea in mind of legit ownership. And I feel like, you know, with meme coins and everything else that's happening in crypto, like people want to see the own part of read, write, own. And there are not a lot of good examples to show that. And so at CoinEdge, we chose a different path, but I think now it's important that we're finally delivering on what we promised from the very beginning.

Oh, it's awesome. I mean, you guys actually dare to sound like adults. It's really cool. You see so many things that are called DAOs that are just a Discord chat room or something like that. But it's super cool to see that, okay, if you own the NFT, you've got a piece of ownership, and then you've got this DAO model too. How does that work? Do you hold regular types of meetings with the DAO where people can kind of put input in, or do you guys have meetings?

proposals that people vote on. Like maybe you can give folks a sense of how that works. Yeah. So it's been really cool. I mean, like, you know, when we launched the idea is not too dissimilar from Patreon. People are familiar with Patreon and the idea of unlocking content online or supporting creators. What we just wanted to do is like take the idea of Patreon and elevate it using Web3 tech to get to,

read, write, own, right? To get to that level of growing with the creator, not just kind of supporting a creator, which is great. And I think that's very cool for creator, as a creator myself. But I think like the idea of owning and growing is the idea of Web3 is like, how can we work together to grow this faster? And so when we launched, we had tiers of NFTs that people can mint to unlock our content. You can watch ad-free content

on coinage at coinage.media, or you can watch on YouTube with ads, totally fine too. But we give people that option. And then we have these ownership NFTs, which are like, okay, I want to become a member. I don't want to just be a passive subscriber. I want to vote on this stuff. I want to influence the show. And so anyone can buy an NFT, become a member and actually say like, hey, you should cover this or you should have this guest on and start to influence the actual content that we're putting out, which I think is really cool. Because when I was at Yahoo, it was like I was on an island. And this space is, you know, Luke, like it moves so quick.

It's like you can't keep up. And so my idea was like if we created a hive mind and brought together people with different interests, different bags, by the way, different biases, like we can create a show that's actually trustless, which is actually the name of the startup, the production company started called Trustless Media. And the idea is that like.

You can actually create more trusted content with this model. And it's better for the creator, too, because you convert a passive subscriber to being a co-owner who has a vested interest in helping you grow the channel. And, you know, I'm sitting behind this YouTube play button because we just crossed 100,000 subscribers. And I do credit a lot of our subscribers.

our owners, our co-owners, and I can say that, with like helping us get there because they've brought us better guests. They've brought us better stories. Breaking down the wall between a content creator and their audience in Web3 like really does create some powerful flywheel effects that like I didn't, like I wanted to believe back then, but now having done it, like I can actually speak to you, which is pretty crazy. Congrats on that milestone too. That's like no small thing, especially nowadays, like without competitive spaces for everybody's attention, but also like,

one thing that seems really interesting about what you just said is that, you know, so many people talk about how they don't feel like the news is like giving them the real story or like, you know, covering what they actually think is important. Right. Like, and it seems like this is a really novel way where,

you can actually get, it's almost like citizen journalism, but it's more interactive, but they're not actually the journalists. I don't know, but like, like you can actually kind of help to get people information that they care about or want to learn more about. It seems really interesting. Like how active is this community? Are they hitting you guys up like every week or something? Like how, how, what's a,

Give us a sense of what the interaction is like. Yeah, so, I mean, it's as involved as you want to be, right? Sometimes it can feel like a lot of DAOs. I don't know how many you're in, but sometimes it can feel like homework if you've got to check in and do all the stuff. It's like we never wanted to force that. And we also never wanted to go too far with the gamification of things. You can also go too far. And then it also feels like homework where it's like, oh, you've got to earn –

if we had a token, there were a lot of projects at the time where like, oh, you got to like our thing or you got to like retweet our thing to earn the token. And it's like, well, hold on now. And like, this is what I love about what Brave's doing in terms of like, it's just there, right? It's just like tokenized attention is just like, keep doing what you're doing and we'll like have this be easy for you. And so that's kind of the same way for us. It's like,

to be an active member, you need to vote a certain amount of times. And like DAO activity to be entitled to be an active member in the co-op and earn a patronage dividend is like the way that we've set this up. But it's not a very high hurdle. It's like you vote on, I think it's three things a year. Oh, it's like a board meeting or something. Yeah. And so what's really cool is that again, this has kind of been built organically with like RNFT holders,

And the idea of actually co-owning something kind of flips the script on like what we've seen with meme coins, which is where like some people come in, they buy it only to flip it. They're not actually interested in the project. But like what we've done, we have more than I think 6,500 NFT holders. I don't even know what number it is now. But more than 6,500 people who have come to us and say like, I want to actually be a participant in this ecosystem. And it's been really cool to see that grow because now we just selected our board and it's comprised of people who have been in our like token gated channels for

for like two years. And they've stuck around since the very beginning to like build this and actually cultivate a community-owned media outlet rather than just like, I think, the narrative that's out there, which is like all crypto is is speculation.

I mean, I think it's cool because it can be speculation. You could buy an NFT and not do anything with us. You just hold it. And that's totally fine because you still own X amount of what coinage is. And there are only so many, like the scarcity model of Web3 is definitely there. But I think you got to add something else. And I think that's what we're trying to pioneer. And luckily, it's been going pretty well and super gratifying as a creator to see now not being alone anymore with like our board being elected with people who have been with us from the very beginning.

Yeah, it's just a cool way to get skin in the game and like be part of something, you know, and like there are a couple of different projects like yourselves and we've had, you know, Luca Nets on from the Penguins and, you know, they have their kind of their overpassing where their community is doing startups and things like that just from the NFTs too. And I think this is a really cool way. I don't know if people necessarily saw this coming either, like when the NFT thing

waves started to happen but like what a cool way of using nfts to build a business to build a business model to build something where like you can have you know people have a stake in what happens right like and just based on how much they're participating it's so cool and like you're saying you know you think that this helps with the network effect kind of getting more and more of the word out there from from the community letting other people know about the shows and all that

Yeah, I think, you know, that's kind of one of the theses we had when we started this was just like, okay, if someone can co-own it, what does that even mean? First of all, we should define that. And then also, will it lead to faster growth? And I think we've definitely seen that higher engagement in terms of when someone, again, converts from being a passive subscriber to being part of something. It's, you know, it's not revolutionary in the sense of that model has worked before. And I think, you know, a lot of things are shifting in that direction in terms of like,

We've seen a lot of creators become like VCs because they have an existing audience. And so there's a lot of different things I think that Web3 unlocks and just like tokenizing something for tokenizing it doesn't necessarily unlock it. But you're right. There are a lot of examples to point to that got me excited about this. Like ConstitutionDAO is one that was the first light bulb moment for me. It was like, okay, you brought together a community of people online. They raised more than $40 million in like 10 days. Like that's crazy. And so like...

We just had the co-founder of the Constitution DAO in for an interview here at Coinage, and we had this crazy idea once we got the YouTube play button, like, could we recreate what Constitution DAO did back then in 21 with the idea of tokenizing something and letting the community own it, like a physical object? And this is the first one that's ever been tokenized, and we just launched that. And the reason why I was late, hop,

on with you, which again, apologies, is because I've been trying to manage this today, but it's crazy. We're like past $180,000 for this meme coin. It's the largest that's ever been on Pink Sale over the last two months. And so, yes, I think there's a lot of different ways to build community. I just, we really wanted to do this in a way that was more sustainable.

kind of like ConstitutionDow when they first launched, which is like, hey, we have this mission. You can participate if you want. It's not about number go up so much as it is like we're trying to build something or win something, as the case may be, at an auction. Like that, I think, is what makes Web3 really cool, the idea of community online.

Totally. I mean, I think it's super cool, too. And we've done this, too, throughout the past year or so where, you know, people lose sight of the fact that look like NFTs are non fungible tokens and you've got like meme coins are really just fungible tokens. Right. Like and it kind of each one can have different benefits for the community and you can use them in different ways. And like, I think it's super cool that you guys are like kind of using these things and showing people the kind of differences in tokens.

these different types of things and what they can be used for because nobody's really done a good job of doing that like there have been like it tends to be like all these like monolithic buckets of things like okay the right click the jpeg thing or you know the celebrity meme coin thing but really like meme coins can be like a brand or it could be a milestone or whatever that the community's just getting excited about like what you guys have done i think that's really cool yeah thank you

I mean, I don't know how it is. I mean, to me, I've looked at all this stuff as experiments. And again, like, I think that's what's really cool about any builder in Web3 that like does this is you're building. It's a hard job, man. You're building transparently in public. And so, like, again, props to Constitutional for what they did that like showed a lot of people what was possible. You mentioned Lucanets and Pudgy Penguins, like props to them. They kind of like were one of the projects that were like, hey, we're NFTs, but now also we got our own token. Like people are trying stuff and like.

the crazy thing too, like having covered this for so long, Luke, and I'm sure you feel the same way if you're, you know, having these conversations all the time, it's like, no one really knows, right? Like it's so new, like everyone just try and stuff. And it's like, could be right, could be wrong. But like, it's been really fun as a journalist to go from like passively covering it, just asking people to now throwing myself into the arena as like running a community owned outlet. That's a DAO, like in Web3, walking the walk. Now I kind of have a better understanding of every founder we talk to or every project. It's like, I've

I've been in those trenches. Like, I know, I know that pain. And like, it's different. I mean, like setting a precedent with this stuff is cool. I mean, like, I think, you know, I was going to ask you about that too. Like how transformative could this be for, for journalism or for media outlets? Like this model that you guys are starting, are you kind of thinking about it by like seeing like, okay, these things are working and this is a model that could be used by other folks in media? Or like, is it more of just kind of like,

we're really just trying to find the fit here. Like from your point of view, like how can this stuff really change the journalism space? Yeah, that's a great question. And it's one that like I'm super thankful that you've invited me on to talk about this because it's like something that like even I forget about sometimes about where we started. But really, honestly, to go back to it was like, you know, again, in 2018, when I wanted to do this, I got laughed out of the room, even though I knew it was a good idea. Like I knew there was an audience for crypto out there. It was early, but I knew they were there. And if only there was a way to like

crowdfund to get my idea off the ground and like launch this show back then. I'm glad it didn't happen because like we wouldn't have come up with the ownership model after I saw it was possible with NFTs. But it's like that is what we're trying to build here. And so I think this model works for like any creator. It could be journalists to create more trusted content, which is what we're trying to do here at Coinage. But it could be for literally any content nation. So, you know, when we started Trustless,

That was the idea. And the co-founder of Netflix is one of our backers, too, in terms of like he really liked the idea of decentralized media and what you can do with this technology to let fans of a creator co-own something with them. Because if you think about it, like in Web2 social, it's like you attract a massive following. Like that's what the Facebook's, the Instagram's like enabled was any creator could amass a community online. But they don't really have a way of tapping into the community they've built. Like all those people, if you follow a food influencer, you love food.

Like you just wanna like learn more about food and you wanna find good restaurants. And so like they've amassed these networks, but like don't have a way to tap into the shared passion around the show. And so like the light bulb moment after we've done this with Coinage is that like breaking down that wall between a content creator and their fans like creates a powerful flywheel effect. And so we tested this out with, I mentioned food 'cause we tested it out with a bunch of food creators in the food space to launch a community-owned food show.

And I think that's really cool because it was like a community-owned diners, drive-ins, and dives where pretty famous food influencers called Bestish Ever shot in New York. And anyone can buy an NFT to call on that and vote.

And I think that's really cool because it's like a decentralized Michelin guide, but like all great content. And that one grew super fast. And so like we're trying to do this with any creator in any content niche now at Trustless. And it's been super gratifying to see it kind of work in a way that, again, we all are here in Web3 because we believe. But like until you have like examples like that, I think it's hard to show.

Yeah, well, and I think you kind of touched on an interesting point, too, around like how, you know, these Web 2 spaces tried to kind of make community, but, you know, it seemed like all great kind of in the beginning. And then you kind of got into this space where the platforms were wanting to control in some ways, like the types of content and,

And, you know, whether it's demonetizing or doing other things like that, it sounds like with what you guys have, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you guys have built a model that's a lot more, like, resilient against or resistant to the kind of censorship or whatever just because the community owns it, right? Is that fair to say? Yeah, and I think, you know, similarly, you know, with Brave, I think...

It's cool to think about different ways that you can start to, like, what is a full stack? Like, when we first launched and the co-founder of Netflix was also, like, playing around with this too, it's like, what if you could just deliver content directly into somebody's wallet and never really had to deal with a platform? Like, you could legitimately have that one-to-one relationship to direct content. So that way, you'd never possibly be deplatformed.

And like things like that, I think start to get interesting. But yeah, I think it's fair to talk about it that way because like our whole idea is, you know, we can exist on YouTube. We can exist on Twitter or wherever. But like our token gated site is always ours. And like that's home base. So like anyone can go to coinage.media and like access our content that way. And like,

help fund it by buying an NFT that lets them unlock the content. And so like, that's a little bit more of a direct way to monetize for any creator than like, depending on getting pennies on the dollar on these other platforms that don't even like really unlock all that much other than like distribution, which is important. But I think, you know, increasingly creators have built up their own distribution pipes. Like that's why people work with influencers is because like they have access more so than like cable, like cable's dying. That's why, you know,

a lot of people in traditional media are scared. And yeah, so I think to your point, like this is just a more native way to let a creator and their audience like work together. And I think that like, again, Bitcoin proved this in traditional finances. Like the idea of removing intermediaries is good. The idea of like getting rid of gatekeeping is good. And like perhaps no other industry is more gatekept than like

And so, like, I think what we're doing is, again, like a really cool way to enable creators and like people who have a shared interest in whatever they're trying to build. Yeah, that's awesome. And given kind of like the amount of time you've spent in this space, you know, just from some of the references, right? It must have been interesting over the past four years, like trying to come up with a way to do this work.

DAO and this model amidst kind of the regulatory environment where, I don't know, like NFT projects were getting served enforcement notices, like all these other things. And it didn't seem like there was a really good rhyme or reason. Like how much did that impact your guys' work in trying to kind of get this off the ground? I mean, obviously if you're hitting the subscriber numbers you're hitting, like that's probably, you know, a sign in itself that things work.

went all right. But how tricky was that to navigate over the past couple years? No, it was really tricky. I think, you know, that was one of the paths we could have gone down because there are like traditional fundraising avenues to go. There's like the security avenue to go down and like registered pieces. And I feel like, I don't know, there are trade-offs in any decision you make. And like for us, at least when I was starting out, it was like,

I don't know if like that's the best path to really unlock what we're trying to do. Because like if you think about it, like I come from that space. Like I covered the stock market at Yahoo and CNBC for like a really long time. And like the powerful thing, I think, of the difference between like just owning something as an investor, like having a stock sit in your portfolio versus like

owning a membership in a cooperative is like you're in you're invested sure but like you're invested in a different way when like that the nft unlocks something or changes the way that you interact with that creator and like the you know interoperability of the nft and the way that it can be plugged in is like very different than just some thing that sits in your portfolio and so like if you start from that premise you're not it's not even like hey i want to you know

I want to go this path or that path from a regulatory perspective. It's like you have an understanding of like this technology works differently in a way that like stocks do not. And I think not to go back even further into history, but like if you think about the GameStop saga, right? And like that was a huge wake-up call for me being a traditional like media journalist in finance was like,

It was a David and Goliath story of like a community coming together to like hold GameStop stock. They brought down a hedge fund. It's like unthinkable. And the way that it worked was just like,

People in a Reddit group showed that they together were more powerful than a billionaire or hedge funds. And that was another huge light bulb moment where it's like, okay, if we go this path, the real value and the real power is not just the money you can raise, anyone can write a check, but if you have a community...

that is working together in a shared mission, like that is powerful. And so like, that's why we went that route. And yes, it took like a series painful to do this in the U S did get sued or like right when we were starting, I was like, Oh, but it's like, we, we went through this route because we wanted to build here in the U S we believe that at some point, and thank God it's happened now with Hester purse. Who's come on the show a bunch of times. Like, thank God that we have figured this out in the U S that it's like,

helpful to let builders build. But like from the beginning, we definitely wanted to go a route that was legal and regulated. And that's why we chose the Dow co-op model and again, registered in Colorado here in the US. But I think that that was kind of the thinking was like, hey, there's a reason to go this path. And sometimes it's helpful, but there are trade-offs, I guess.

You're feeling optimistic, it sounds like, about some of the changes that have happened recently in space? Yeah, I think so. I think, again, I understood at the time why some of these cases were being brought. And I think it's an unpopular opinion that

But I think, you know, with some of the NFT projects, like if you aren't a registered entity or like they're like even as a creator doing it, you would you should want that. Like, look at what happened with the Libra token in Malay and like, oh, yeah, I who's now caught there. And he's like, well, who owns the money? It's like you never want to be in that position. So like so like sometimes it's helpful to like slow down, talk to a lawyer, figure this out, make sure you're doing it right. We had that luxury of not rushing into anything, but.

But, yeah, I think generally the shift that's happened now, because we interviewed Hester Peirce for those two years where she was like, I don't know what Gary Gensler is doing. And now for her to be running her own crypto task force is like it's a night and day moment down there. And so I think that's really cool. Again, if you shift from kind of being a regulator who's like looking for reasons to go after you versus like looking for reasons to help others.

make rules that help everybody, like that's a huge difference. And so like, I'm glad that's happened now, but also like, I think there was a lot more that maybe some people could have done to be a little bit more safe when they were building earlier on just to be like completely a hundred percent fair. But I do get the pain. I get the pain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. No, that's great. Hester's awesome too. I think, yeah, it's just, it's kind of,

You had her on and one of the things she mentioned kind of blew my mind after the fact. And I kind of glossed over it was that she's like, we can't even use the tools. We have to go listen to podcasts to like know what's going on. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is wild. But no, it definitely seems like a new day. And I think on the community point too, and we've seen this as well, like

It's surprising how well connected a lot of people in these communities are to a lot of other business avenues and a lot of other networks. Do you guys see that? Are there people that have come to the community that have been able to help out in certain ways that you didn't necessarily see coming? How much does that community help with growing the business? Absolutely, 100%. And that's the thing. It's like I just

like I said, we had a thesis that like, okay, if we do this and we like let people co-own us, what will that do? Not just in terms of guests and better stories, but like what will it do for the business perspective of like actually being a co-op that people can co-own and earn patronage dividends. Like that is real ownership. Um,

And, you know, that's what co-ops are built for. What I didn't expect to happen was we had one of our members who had minted, you know, again, we have these two tiers. He's one of our higher members. He's like, look, I'm getting out of crypto altogether. He was a content creator. He's like, I've been working with this validator arm. I've been running my own validators. You guys should take those on. Like, I'm done. And I was like, okay. And I think he brought those to us, A, because, like, you know, I had gotten to know him and then he joined our community. Right.

And now that's like a whole revenue, like that's a piece of the business that I would have never even thought of. And like, he basically just brought it to us. And so like, that's one of those things where it's like, and now by virtue of doing that, like now we have, we run validators on like 40 different chains and anyone can stake with us. We're like one of the largest validators on SWE. Wow. And so all those, like those,

those rewards are split and go back into the DAO for us to help fund and run what we're doing. And so it's a sustainable business. And again, it's like a total, like it's a huge revenue arm that like I wouldn't even thought of. And like only came about because one of our members proposed it. And so like things like that, when you lean into it, it's corny. It's very corny. But like I interviewed Pitbull one time and he's like, money doesn't buy happiness, but like what does is like you got to give it away. And then like, I think about it and like, if you think about

web three and like attention and money merging in this era of the internet it's like as a creator you're like always like you said competing for other people to get attention get attention but like maybe one of the best ways is just like give people ownership in what you're building let them influence it let them feel like they're a part of it and like maybe you suddenly don't need to compete so hard for attention because like they're on your side and it's a crazy thing but it's it's kind of i think again what web three offers

No, it's awesome. It's like one of those things where if you're if you actually have the right ingredients, like people are kind of drawn to that in the space. And, you know, especially if they have a way of like adding value to it's super cool. I'm really curious to like AI has been such a huge thing trend recently. Is that influencing content creation on your side at all? Like what's your point of view on that? Yeah, for sure. I think anyone who works in this space is always like kind of somewhat terrified, like if you're if you're watching it.

Because it was supposed to be like, oh, robot jobs were going to happen first. But now it's like, oh, wait, if I work in design and you can spin up a logo with ChatGPT, like, oh. And so I think in the content space as well, it's gotten very interesting to think about, like, can you be more efficient? What are these tools going to change? And we're using it in terms of like, okay, where can this help with transcribing things or writing articles, like helping with that, like framing stuff.

But I think, like, that's kind of where this is going. Like, eventually it gets similar to how it's, you know, impacting every sector is, like, you kind of become an editor, right? And so, like, you're kind of, like, sitting there and for content and culture, it's like, okay, how do we want to use this tool to shape what we want to put out, like the product? And so...

When I think about content, it's, like, kind of interesting. Like, our model actually scales pretty well with that because it's, like, again, it's no different. It's, like, you might have a director or, like, some creator that has, like, a creative vision and a bunch of fans who like consuming that content. And so, like, suddenly if you don't need a huge studio to, like, whip all this up, like, all you need is IP. So we've actually talked to Jason and, like, the rest of the people at Story Protocol who are, like, working on Tokenized.

you know, IP. But like our model works pretty well with that in terms of like, okay, if you just have like the creator and the fans, could they co-own something together that's kind of like easier to produce and then, you know, grow with that depending on how it goes. And so like on the one hand,

Yes, some of this is scary. On the other hand, I think if that's where it's going, the idea of co-owned, community-owned content online that you can come together to crowdfund and see play out and then actually own that IP together starts to get into a weird... You could start to see where you could make Game of Thrones season whatever else and just taking that IP and using AI to not actually need online...

all those people working on it to just like see what comes out and own it. So I think there are going to be some interesting experiments. I don't necessarily know. I'm not an AI expert, but like in the idea of what we're building, it does still kind of work for some things, not for everything. Oh, it makes sense. It makes sense. Well, we covered a lot, Zach. And

Any plugs you want to throw in here for any of the few things that I want to make sure folks know about, like where they can go check this stuff out? Yeah. No, I mean, first of all, I just appreciate you having me on, Luke. In general, I think, you know, thank you for lining this up and for letting me come on and talk about it because I feel like, you know, I think –

It's hard to reach people sometimes in this space. It's hard to talk to people beyond the crazy stuff that goes on, and crypto is a crazy spot. But with what we're doing, if anyone wants to get involved, again, I make no promises in where this goes, but the idea of co-owning something together and influencing the first community-owned outlet to get to our size, you can head to coinage.media and co-own this with me as well as the co-founder of Netflix and the 6,500 NFT holders plus we got now. But it really does make us stronger with everyone minting.

we're growing. And so people want to get involved. That's the best way. And then join the telegram and help us plan all the content that's now won us one of these bad boys, this, this silver flag. Congrats, man. It's so cool, man. And, and yeah, and love to have you back to, to like check back in and see how things are going. And also, you know, see what we could cook up together. I really love what you guys are doing. I think it's a super cool way. There needs to be more cases like this where people are actually like using the technology because it's too often people are like, well, what is it? You know? And, and,

Well, coinage is a great example of what you can start to do with this stuff. So appreciate it, Zach. Thanks so much for joining today. We'll be sure to check back in soon. Thanks, man. Appreciate the time. Thanks for having me on. Thanks, man. Thanks for listening to the Brave Technologist podcast. To never miss an episode, make sure you hit follow in your podcast app.

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