Luke: [00:00:00] 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 Moltz, 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, and this one features 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 been 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 [00:01:00] entrepreneur, and the Washington Post.

In this episode, we discussed how Zach created a co-op model and Dell for coinage where NFT holders could own and be part of the media company, how NFT holders can collaborate with the Dow 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 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, 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 other media talent on here too often, so appreciate you joining and super interested in this conversation.

Yeah, same man.

Zack: I think, listen, I think these discussions platform like this, you know, these, these convos don’t happen all the time, so I. Congrats on hosting all this stuff. I think it’s, it’s super [00:02:00] important to dig into more of why these builders are even doing these things.

Luke: Exactly, man. Exactly. And in speaking of which, you’ve had kind of an interesting journey to get you to coinage and, 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, or what Coinages and how it kind of sets apart from other, other media players in the space.

Zack: Yeah, so from my background, I was an anchor at 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, you know, traditional media doesn’t really, or, 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, okay, 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?

so had the crazy idea of, of creating a community owned outlet. With coinage, and that’s kind of what we launched first, was the idea [00:03:00] anyone come into an 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, and made history as the first NFT project in the us. Through the Dow co-op model to do that here, and so it’s been a wild ride. A lot of ups and downs, as I’m sure you would say the same thing. It’s just building in Web3. You never really know what’s gonna happen.

Luke: Yeah. Well it’s, it’s awesome though. I mean like, ‘cause 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 a 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 are they just kind of mint on [00:04:00] demand? How, how does it all work?

Zack: Yeah. So when we started, I think that was the main concept. And you know, the idea was back in 20 21, 20 22 ish when we launched it was, Hey, how do you do this legally?

What’s the right way to do this? And, and how do you kind of figure out. What the right collection size in. And if you think back there, it was just like people were kind of just picking numbers arbitrary and you 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, to kind of guess. And so what we decided was, well, what if we just kind of, I. It 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 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 1000 of our other layer of NFTs. And those are essentially all the holders. That can co-own coinage with me. And it was just kind of, you know, a natural experiment of, alright, if we put this out there, [00:05:00] if we build it, will they come? Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. 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’t 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 1000 people own the other half of coinage.

And we’ll split it 50 50 with our production company and that’ll be that. And from the very beginning, that’s what it was. 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, wow, 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 [00:06:00] 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 Coinage 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.

Luke: Oh, it’s awesome. I mean, you guys actually dare to sound like adults. It’s really cool. You know, you see so many things that are called like DAOs that are just, you know, a discord chat room or, something like that. But it, it’s super cool to see that. Okay, like if you own the NFT, you’ve got a piece of ownership.

And, and then you’ve got this Dow model too, like. How does that work? Do you hold like re regular types of, like, meetings with the DAO where people can kind of put input in or, or do you guys have proposals that people vote on? Like maybe you can give folks a, a sense of how that works.

Zack: 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?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. To get to that level of [00:07:00] 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, right? 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. 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 wanna become a member.

I don’t wanna just be a passive subscriber. I wanna vote on this stuff. I wanna 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 as you know, Luke, like it moves so quick.

Oh, it’s so fast. 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. Mm-hmm. Like we can create a show that’s [00:08:00] 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, we’re, I’m sitting behind this YouTube play button ‘cause we just crossed a hundred thousand subscribers and I do credit Oh wow.

A lot of our, our owners, our co-owners, and I can say that with like helping us get there because mm-hmm. 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, I like, I wanted to believe back then, but now having done it, like I can actually speak to you, which is, which is pretty crazy.

Luke: Congrats on that milestone too. That’s like no small thing. Especially nowadays, like without competitiveness 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 PM people talk about how they don’t feel like the news is like [00:09:00] giving them the real story or like, I.

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 journalist, I don’t know. But like, like you can actually kind of help to get people information that they care about or wanna 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 what? Give us a sense of what the, you know, interaction’s like.

Zack: Yeah. So I mean, it’s, it’s as involved as you want to be, right? Sometimes it can feel like home, like a lot of DAOs, I don’t know how many you’re in, but like, sometimes it can feel like homework if you gotta like check in and do all this stuff.

It’s like you, we never wanted to force that, and we also never wanted to like, too, we, we never wanted to go too far with like, the gamification of things. Like, you can also go too far. And then it also feels like homework where it’s like, oh, you gotta earn, like. If we had a token, there were a lot of projects at the time, were like, oh, you gotta like our thing, or you gotta like retweet our thing to earn the to.

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 right. Tokenized [00:10:00] attention is just like, keep doing what you’re doing. And we’ll like have this be easy for you. Mm-hmm. And so that’s kind of the same way for, for us, it’s like technically to be an active member you need to vote a certain amount of times.

And like Dow 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. No, it’s like go to a board

Luke: meeting or something. Right? Yeah. And so, and so

Zack: what’s really cool is that, again, this has kind of been built organically with like RNFT holders.

The idea of actually conning 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. ‘cause now we just selected our board and it’s comprised of people who have been in our like token gated channels for like two years. Yeah. Nice. And they’ve stuck around since the very beginning to [00:11:00] 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 a speculation.

I mean, I think it’s cool because it can be speculation. You could buy an n ft and not do anything with us. Sure. You just hold it and that’s totally, ‘cause you still own X amount of, of what coinage is and, and there are only so many, like the scarcity model of Web3 is definitely there. But I think you gotta add something else.

And I think that’s what we’re trying to pioneer. And luckily. It’s been going pretty well and, 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.

Luke: Yeah, it’s such 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, and we’ve had, you know, Luca Nets on from the penguins and, 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 [00:12:00] 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, and just based on how much they’re participating. It’s so cool. And like you’re saying, you know, you, 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.

Zack: Yeah. I think, you know, that’s, that’s kind of one of the, the thesis 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, it’s not revolutionary in the sense of that model has worked before. Mm-hmm. 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 [00:13:00] tokenizing something for tokenizing, it doesn’t necessarily unlock it, but you’re right there. There are a lot of examples to point to that got me excited about this. Like Constitution Dao is one that was like, oh yeah. The first light bulb moment for me was like, okay, you brought together a community of people online.

They raised more than the $40 million in like 10 days. Like that’s crazy. And so like. We just had the co-founder of the Constitution do like 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 Dow did back then in 21 with the idea of like 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 hopping on with you, which again, apologies. It was because I’ve been trying to manage this today, but it’s crazy. We’re like past, oh, I bet $180,000 for this meme coin. It’s the largest that’s ever been on pink sale over the last two months.

And so, yeah, so 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 Constitution Dow when they first launched, which was like, Hey, we have this mission. [00:14:00] 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 a, at an auction like that, I think.

Is what makes Web3 really cool, the idea of community online.

Luke: Totally. I mean, I think it’s super cool too, and we’ve, 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, mean 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, in these different types of things and what they can be used for.

‘cause nobody’s really done a good job of doing that. Like there, there have been like, it, it tends to be like all these like monolithic buckets of things like okay the, the right click, the JPEG thing, or, 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 we, you, you guys have done.

I think that’s really cool. Yeah. Thank you.

Zack: I mean, I don’t know how it, I mean, [00:15:00] 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 constitution Now for what they did that like showed a lot of people what was possible. You mentioned Luca Nets 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 is like no one really knows, right? Like, it’s so new. Like everyone’s just trying 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 been, I’ve been in those trenches, like I know, yeah, I know that pain and like, it’s

Luke: different.

Well, I mean, like, setting a precedent with this stuff is cool. I mean, like, I, I think, you know, I was [00:16:00] gonna 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, 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?

Zack: Yeah, no, that’s a great question and it’s one that like, I’m, I’m super. Thankful that you’ve invited me to 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 outta the room even though I knew it was a good idea. Like I knew there was an audience for crypto out there. Mm-hmm. It was early, but I knew they were there and if only there was a way to like.

Crowdfund to get my ID off the ground and like launch this show back then. I’m glad it didn’t happen. ‘cause like we wouldn’t have come up with the ownership model after I saw what was possible with NFTs. But it’s like, that is what we’re trying to build here. Mm-hmm. And so I think this model works for, for like any creator, it could be journalists to create more trusted [00:17:00] content, which is what we’re trying to do here at Coinage.

But it could be for, for literally any content niche. And so, you know, when we started trustless. But that was the idea. And the co-founder of Netflix is one of our backers too, in terms of like, oh, cool. He really liked the idea of decentralized media what you can do with this technology to let fans of a creator cone something with them.

Because if you think about it like in web two, 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 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, you want to 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 power flywheel effect.

And so, mm-hmm. We tested this out with, I mentioned food ‘cause we tested it out with a bunch of food creators. In the [00:18:00] food space to launch a community owned food show. Mm-hmm. And I think that’s really cool ‘cause it was like a community owned, like Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives where. Pretty famous food influencers called Best Dish ever.

We shot in New York and anyone can buy an NFT to co that and vote and wow. I think that’s really cool ‘cause it’s like a decentralized Michelin guide, but like all the great content that that’s one grew, 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 ‘cause we believe, but like until you have like examples like that, I think it’s, it’s hard to to show.

Luke: Yeah. Well, and I think you kind of touched on an interesting point too around like how, you know, these web two spaces tried to kind of make community, but you know, it, 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, or doing other things like that.

Sounds like with what you guys have, [00:19:00] 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?

Zack: Yeah, and I think, you know, similarly, you know, with, with Brave, I think I.

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 de platformed. And like things like that, I think start to get interesting. But yeah, I, I think it’s fair to talk about it that way because like our whole idea is. You know, we, 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 ’em unlock the content. And so like that’s a little bit more of a direct way to monetize for any creator [00:20:00] 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 ‘cause 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, I. 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 gate kept than like Hollywood or like entertainment. And so like, I think what we’re doing is, 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.

Luke: Yeah. That’s awesome. And, 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 [00:21:00] Dao and, 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 hitting the subscriber numbers, you’re hitting, like that’s probably, you know, a sign in itself that things went all right.

But how, how tricky was that to navigate over the past couple years?

Zack: No, it was, no, it was really tricky. I, I think, you know. That was one of the paths we could gone, could have gone down. ‘cause there are like traditional fundraising avenues to go. There’s like the security avenue to go down and like registered pieces.

And I, I feel like, I don’t know, there, 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. ‘cause like if you think about it, like I come from that space, like I covered the stock market at Yahoo and CBC for like a really long time.

like the powerful thing, I think of the difference between like just owning something as an [00:22:00] 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 the, 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, I, 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 like they [00:23:00] together were more powerful than a billionaire or hedge funds and like, yeah, that was another huge light bulb moment where it’s like, okay, if we go this path, the real value and like the real power is not just like the money you can raise, like anyone can write a check, but like if you have a community.

Is working together in a shared mission like that is powerful. Yeah. And so like that’s why we went that route. And yes, it took like a series. It was painful to do this in the US and like summer cats did get sued, like right when we were starting. I was like, uhoh. But it’s like we, we went through this route because we wanted to build here in the us.

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 US 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, the Dow co-op model and again, registered in, 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, and sometimes that’s helpful, but there are trade-offs. I guess.

Luke: You’re feeling [00:24:00] optimistic of, it sounds like about some of the changes that have happened recently in the space. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think so I think,

Zack: again, I, I understood at the time like why some of these cases were being brought and I think, you know, it’s, it’s an unpopular opinion, 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, right? With the Libra token and Malay, and like, oh yeah, that guy who’s now caught there and he is like, well, who owns the money? It’s like, you never wanna 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. ‘cause we interviewed Hester Purse for those two years where she was like, I don’t know what Gary Gensler’s 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, yeah, I think that’s really cool. Again, if you shift from kind of being a regulator who’s like, looking for reasons to [00:25:00] go after you versus like looking for reasons help make rules that help everybody. Like that’s a huge difference. And so like I’m, I’m glad that 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.

Yeah. Yeah. Just to be like completely a hundred percent fair. But I do get the pain. I get the pain.

Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. No, that, that’s great. Hester’s awesome too, I think. Yeah, it is just, it’s kind of, we had her on and, you know, one of the things she, 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, this is wild. You know? But, but no, it, it definitely seems like a new day and, and. I think on the community point too, and, and we’ve seen this as well, like it’s surprising like how well connected a lot of people in these communities are to a lot of other business avenues and in a lot of other networks.

Like, do you guys see that, like are there people that have come to the community that have like, been able to help out in certain ways that [00:26:00] you didn’t necessarily, you know, see coming or, or like how much does that community help with, like growing the business?

Zack: Abso absolutely a hundred percent. And like that’s the thing is 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 from the business perspective of like actually being a co-op that people can co-own and earn patronage dividends. Like that is real ownership and you know, that’s what co-ops are built for.

What I didn’t expect to happen was we had one of our, 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 is 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, our community and now that’s like a whole revenue, like that’s a piece of the business that I would’ve never even thought of. And like, he basically just brought it to us.

And so like that’s awesome. [00:27:00] 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. That’s, and like, that’s great. Only came about because one of our members proposed it. So like, things like that, when you lean into it, it’s, it’s corny. It’s very corny. But like, I interviewed Pit Bull one time and he is like, he’s like, money doesn’t buy happiness, but like, what does is like, you gotta give it away.

And they’re like, I think about it. And like, if you think about Web3 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 [00:28:00] like they’re on your side. Yeah, yeah. And it’s a crazy thing, but it’s, it’s kind of, I think again, what Web3 offers

Luke: I. No, that’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 this space and you know, especially if they have a way of like adding value too.

That’s super cool. I’m really curious too, like AI’s been such a huge thing trend recently. Is that influencing content creation on your side at all? Like, and yeah. What’s your point of view on that?

Zack: 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.

Right, because it’s like, it was supposed to be like, oh, robot jobs were gonna happen first. But now it’s like, oh wait, if I work in design and you can spin up a logo on, you know, with chat GPT, like, oh. And so like I, I think, you know, in the content space as well, it’s gotten very interesting to think about, like, can you be more efficient?

What are these tools gonna change? And, you know, we’re using it in terms of like, okay, where can this help with, like, transcribing things or writing articles, like helping with that, like, you know, framing stuff. But [00:29:00] 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, for content and culture, it’s like, okay, how do we want to use this tool to shape what we wanna put out, like the product? And so. And I think about content, it’s like kind of interesting, like our model actually scales pretty well with that. ‘cause 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. Mm-hmm. 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, we’ve actually talked to you, 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, I. Yes. Some of this is scary.

[00:30:00] On the other hand, like I think if that’s where it’s going, the idea of like co-owned, community owned, like content online that you can like come together to crowdfund and see play out and then actually like own that IP together starts to get into like a weird, like you could, you could start to see like where you could make Game of Throne season, whatever else, and just like taking that IP and using AI to like not actually need.

All those people working on it to just like see what comes out and own it. Yeah. So I think there, there are gonna 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.

Luke: No, it makes sense.

It makes sense. Well, we covered a lot, Zach. Any plugs you want to throw in here for, for any of the, the few things that I wanna make sure folks know about, like where, where they can go check this stuff out?

Zack: Yeah, no, I mean, first of all, just appreciate you, you having me on Luke in, in general. I think, you know.

Thank you for lining this up and for letting me come on course and talk about it, because I feel like, you know, I, I think, you know, it’s hard to reach people sometimes in this space. [00:31:00] It’s hard to like talk to people beyond like the, the crazy stuff that goes on, and crypto is a crazy spot, but like with what we’re doing, if anyone wants to get involved, again, I make no promises in where this goes, but the idea of coing something together and influencing the first community owned outlet.

To get to our size you can head coinage, shop media and co-own this with me as well as the co-founder Netflix and the 6,500 NFT holders plus we got now. But it really does make us stronger with everyone. Mint. We’re growing and so people wanna get involved. That’s the best way. And then join the Telegram and help us plan all the content that’s now one us one of these bad boys.

This. This platform. Awesome.

Luke: Congrats man. It’s so cool, man. And and yeah, and, and love to have you back too, to like check back in and, and see how things are going and also, you know, see what we could cook up together. I, I really love what you guys are doing. I think it’s just super cool. There needs to be more cases like this where people are actually like using the technology.

‘cause 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, yeah. Appreciate it, Zach. Thanks so much for, for joining today and we’ll, we’ll, we’ll be sure to check back in soon. [00:32:00] 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. If you haven’t already made the switch to the Brave Browser, you can download it for free today@brave.com and start using Brave Search, which enables you to search the web privately.

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