a16z: Blockchain-Powered Creator Economy Is the Future
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a16z: Blockchain-Powered Creator Economy Is the Future
Blockchain represents ownership, and ownership implies independence.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: a16z crypto editorial team
Translated by: zhouzhou, BlockBeats
Editor's note: This article primarily discusses the connection and interaction between creators and technology, highlighting the potential of blockchain and NFTs in creation, ownership, and community engagement. Although there is growing demand for enforcing on-chain royalties, challenges remain in distinguishing between different types of NFT transfers. Newer royalty designs attempt to balance guaranteed royalty payments with NFT composability, while introducing two novel approaches leveraging incentive mechanisms.
Below is the original text (edited and abridged for readability):
This article explores the relationship between creators and technology, particularly how blockchain and NFTs demonstrate potential in creation, ownership, and community interaction. While increasing calls aim to enforce creator royalties on-chain, difficulties persist in differentiating various types of NFT transactions. Recent royalty designs strive to ensure royalty payments while maintaining NFT flexibility. Additionally, two new methods utilizing incentive mechanisms are introduced.
Special Report: Fixing the Creator Economy
Author: Chris Dixon
It should be a golden age for creators: technologies like the internet, media hosting platforms, streaming services, social media, and mobile devices have democratized access and expanded audience reach more than ever before. Yet most creators today still struggle to earn sustainable incomes from their work.
While tech platforms help us discover and connect with more artists—especially independent creators—creators remain dependent on a handful of powerful tech companies that make all key decisions. Despite being entirely reliant on user communities who build and populate their platforms, these companies share little control, ownership, or revenue with creators.
Larger creators may survive, but smaller and mid-tier creators often fail to thrive. The central challenge lies in returning control where it belongs—into the hands of creators and fans. A future defined by blockchain will return power to creators and users. Blockchain represents ownership, and ownership means independence.
Resource: Creators Unlocking New Possibilities with Blockchain
This week, we launched Voices Onchain, spotlighting creators who are using blockchain technology to unlock new creative frontiers. They’re building deeper connections with fans and exploring innovative monetization models. Click the link below to learn about our first cohort of creators and nominate others building on blockchain.
Also see:
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"Art, Authenticity, and Anarchism"—FEWOCiOUS began creating art at age 13. After selling his first painting at 17, he continued releasing and selling artwork through successful NFT drops, including an auction in collaboration with Christie’s.
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"The Creator’s Path to Self-Sovereignty: The Answer Is Within"—Latashá is a musical artist, worldbuilder, and emerging tech enthusiast. She founded TOPIA, a Web3 media brand dedicated to elevating independent artists, and previously served as community lead at NFT platform ZORA. As a singer, rapper, producer, and performance artist, Latashá integrates technologies like NFTs and MIDI controllers into her creative process.
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"Art and Wonder in the Age of Machine Intelligence"—Refik Anadol is an internationally recognized media artist (visiting researcher and lecturer at UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts). Last year, one of his works was acquired by MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) as its first tokenized artwork in the permanent collection. Anadol’s NFT designs span data-block sculptures, quantum computing, and space metaverse projects developed in collaboration with NASA JPL.
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"Telling the Creator’s Journey: Pleased 2 Meet U"—Emily Yang, known professionally as pplpleasr, is a multidisciplinary artist and co-founder of Shibuya, a decentralized content studio. She transitioned from creating visual effects for films such as Batman v Superman, Wonder Woman, and Star Trek Beyond, as well as ads and games, to defining the visual language of the DeFi movement and producing Fortune magazine’s first-ever NFT cover.
The Power of Community-Owned Characters and Decentralized Media
Author: Cuy Sheffield (2021)
We consume character-driven entertainment every day. A successful set of characters can form the foundation of franchises spanning decades (like Star Wars, Marvel, or Harry Potter), seamlessly integrated across multiple platforms and media formats.
Yet most successful characters are owned as intellectual property by single corporations. This leaves fans without governance rights—or direct ownership—forcing them into passive consumption of products and storylines determined solely by corporate decisions.
Today, blockchain and crypto technologies offer a new model for character development and ownership. These tools not only deconstruct traditional creative media but also lower the barrier for online communities to introduce new characters. Such technologies allow characters to more authentically represent the communities that support them.
Creators, Creativity, and Technology
with Bob Iger (2022)
In this deep conversation with Disney CEO Bob Iger, we explore the interplay between technology, content, and distribution. The discussion traces the journeys of multiple creators across industry evolution—from television and cable to the rise of the internet/Web 1.0, then to Web 2.0, streaming, advertising-based business models, and now emerging technologies like Web3, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR).
The podcast also touches on hot topics including intellectual property (IP), decentralization, remote work, and other themes relevant to both corporate leaders and community builders—such as the innovator’s dilemma, build-vs-acquire strategies, and managing creative talent.
Related Content:
Technology as Art, Art as Technology
with Simon Denny & Sonal Chokshi
We know technology transforms art, and artists evolve with every new technological advance—a story stretching from cave paintings to computers. Underlying it all are endless debates around invention and fusion, commerce and creativity, fringe versus canon, and how art reaches new audiences.
In this episode of a16z’s Web3 podcast, Berlin-based contemporary artist Simon Denny discusses how artists experiment on emerging tech platforms—from web browsers and iPhones to social media—how generative art has found its “native” medium on blockchain, and why NFTs became a focal point. He also explores whether we're living in a globalized, online monoculture, and much more.
How NFT Royalties Work: Designs, Challenges, and New Approaches
Authors: Michael Blau, Scott Duke Kominers, and Daren Matsuoka
Automatic royalty payments during secondary NFT sales have long been a core value proposition of NFTs. Ideally, creators could set royalties on-chain, ensuring automatic payments regardless of where the work is sold online—without relying on goodwill from marketplaces or third parties.
However, the desire for enforced on-chain royalties has outpaced technical feasibility. The challenge lies in distinguishing which NFT transfers constitute sales requiring royalty payments versus other transfer types—such as wallet-to-wallet movements or gifting. Newer royalty designs attempt to address this by identifying transaction types and enforcing royalties accordingly. But these mechanisms face significant trade-offs between strict royalty enforcement (ensuring payment) and composability (the ability of NFTs to interact freely with other on-chain applications).
This article examines the pros and cons of existing NFT royalty designs and their balancing act between royalty enforcement and composability. The authors present two new NFT royalty approaches that use incentive mechanisms to encourage marketplace participants to honor royalties. The goal isn't to advocate for any single solution, but to help developers consider different design options and their associated trade-offs when building NFT royalty systems.
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