The financialization of everything is a powerful feature in crypto, but not enough people talk about the consumer applications that don’t require any crypto to get started.
One of my favorite examples is Warpcast, a consumer application built on top of the Farcaster protocol. Farcaster is a “sufficiently decentralized” social network, employing a hybrid architecture to store identity onchain (e.g. creating an account) and data offchain (e.g. “casting” a message, following another user, reacting to a post, etc.). Aside from a nominal fee ($10) to cover account creation and storage, Warpcast is free to use. This is largely due to Farcaster’s architecture: since data is stored offchain, there are no gas fees associated with casting, liking, or commenting on Warpcaster or any other clients in the Farcaster ecosystem.
Blackbird, a decentralized hospitality platform, is another example of this. A crypto wallet is created for each user upon account creation. Anytime a user dines out at a Blackbird-affiliated restaurant, they earn $FLY (the app’s universal rewards currency), which can be redeemed throughout the network for discounts, special dishes, or other perks. There’s no crypto necessary to get set up — but users will earn it simply by participating in the network. I anticipate we’ll see this loyalty-driven model applied to other consumer passion areas (as an example, Receipts is bringing something similar to fitness).
Perhaps one of the most positive-sum examples of this is Zora’s Protocol Rewards program, which rewards creators releasing Free Mint projects and developers building on Zora with a portion of every Mint Fee (0.000777 ETH). Zora turned their business model into an expansive one, delivering ETH rewards for free creative work and directing portions of the collector fees to the creators, referrers, curators, and first minter of the NFT. Just last month, creators earned over $4M using Zora creator tools. No crypto required. No onramp needed.
We all know that crypto is a financial tool, but we don’t give enough credit to the fact that it’s also — even moreso — a social one. Increasing consumer accessibility to crypto products is good for the ecosystem and good for business, too.
The materials presented on Gaby Goldberg's newsletter are my opinions only and are provided for informational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice. It is not a recommendation of, or an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy, any particular security, strategy, or investment product. Any analysis or discussion of investments, sectors or the market generally are based on current information, including from public sources, that I consider reliable, but I do not represent that any research or the information provided is accurate or complete, and it should not be relied on as such. My views and opinions expressed in any website content are current at the time of publication and are subject to change.