The Web3.0 Journey of the Creator Economy
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The Web3.0 Journey of the Creator Economy
What's different about Web 3.0? Ownership. Creators want to own the platforms they build on and have voting rights. When the platform makes money, they earn too.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsOriginal: "The Creator Economy Will Slowly (Then Quickly) Migrate to Web 3.0"
Author: Tim Denning
Translation: Alex Zhang
Kelly Clarkson on The Voice is pure audio-visual delight.
Since I can't sing, I enjoy the sweet treat. One day I watched some creators singing on the show. They arrived at the studio dressed in their best Sunday clothes. They polished their shoes, styled their hair, sprayed on CK or Chanel No. 5, and then poured their hearts out with a scream of inspiration.
I was watching each contestant perform, and about halfway through the act, a small box popped up at the bottom of the TV screen.
Did you see that? The Voice gave approximately three seconds of promotion to its most valuable singers' social media accounts.
This had never happened before.
Previously, under every singer’s YouTube video there was only a description, no link to the artist's personal website. On the show’s official site, each contestant once had a profile page—yet even there, no links led to the singer’s own website. Now those profiles are no longer hosted on the show’s website at all.
Creators have been locked away for years, and we’ve allowed monopolies to harm them.
The Web 3.0 Shift
Web 1.0: Internet
Web 2.0: Social Media / Mobile Internet
Web 3.0: Blockchain / AI
We are now in the third phase of the internet. Many Web 3.0 skeptics believe decentralization won’t change anything. I disagree.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, believes Web 3.0 isn’t something entirely new. He says we’re re-decentralizing the internet—returning it to what it originally was. Why?
He says we need to “check the power of Big Tech,” and also because many countries have been excluded from the creator economy boom. Ask creators like my friend Chinedu in Africa. They struggle to monetize through PayPal and Stripe. Yet people like me have always taken this for granted. Your birthplace shouldn’t determine whether you can join the creator economy and make a living from it.
Creativity isn’t limited by country of origin. But Web 2.0 made us believe it was.
"Take rate" explains creator exploitation.
Social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok have a 100% take rate—they share zero revenue with creators! Great for them, bad for users.—Chris Dixon
Let me expand further on Dixon here. Twitter never shared revenue with its creators until CEO Jack Dorsey saw the power of Web 3.0—he has since relaunched his mission. He publicly announced he would decentralize Twitter and turn it into a Web 3.0 product. Moreover, Twitter has just launched its “Super Follows” feature, allowing creators to earn money from their content.
In addition, there’s the new Revue newsletter feature, enabling creators to charge for paid newsletters. That’s not all. Recently, the best feature yet launched: Twitter now offers cryptocurrency services. You can transfer money via Bitcoin on Twitter. For example, if you've ever tried sending money from the U.S. to El Salvador, this changes the game. Twitter proves the migration to Web 3.0 will happen 100%, albeit slowly.
However, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok still don’t understand this shift. They make content creators work like slaves. Creators build followers and gain views controlled by algorithms that might decide tomorrow they dislike your hoodie color. Platforms use this content to attract consumers and serve them ads. Zero dollars from ad revenue is shared with creators. Please read that again.
When content platforms first emerged, we were simply happy to use them for free. Now we’ve grown accustomed. Our standards have changed. Creators want fair revenue sharing from the profits platforms earn off our content. This is reasonable. But change won’t happen unless Zuckerberg is forced to share ad revenue instead of buying another house.
If creators stop providing content for free, platforms like TikTok would go bankrupt. Just imagine that.
Platform Ownership Is Being Broken
What’s different about Web 3.0? Ownership. Creators want to own the platforms they build on and have voting rights. When the platform earns money, so do they.
Content moderation policies are formed through voting rights, enforced via blockchain consensus—a process trusted across thousands of computers worldwide (even an orange president can’t influence a blockchain election).
Also consider platform features themselves. Have you ever opened your favorite app on a lovely Saturday afternoon, only to find everything changed—looking like it was designed by a freshman UI/UX student? Did you feel blindsided by the design punch to the face? It’s not the student’s fault. They’re too far removed from the creators’ reality. They’re outsiders.
Web 3.0 is different. Features are decided democratically by users. If a group dislikes a feature, they create a fork. A fork means running two versions of the same platform with different features.
When ownership is fixed and transparent, incentives shift. Ownership leads to user democracy, rather than the Web 2.0-style dictatorship: “Here’s the latest update, you filthy animal.”
Smart Contracts Are Powering the Revolution
Early 2000s: Build a website.
2010s: Develop apps.
2020s: Deploy smart contracts.
Many misunderstand Ethereum’s role in the new creator economy. Ethereum allows machines—not humans—to execute smart contracts.
Entrepreneur Mike Novogratz explains: “Blockchain will allow information to be not free, instead of free.” Remember Napster? You could download music for free, and no one could stop you—not even Metallica idiots.
The version of the internet we use today—Web 2.0—is not built for content ownership. If you wanted to, you could take any video off YouTube. It’s hard to detect. Hell, this very article could easily be copied and pasted and stolen.
Smart contracts change this. Smart contracts tell everyone who owns a piece of content. The creativity of NFTs lies in turning your content into portable digital assets, so you can publish it anywhere on the internet.
According to expert Eric Jorgenson, the arrival of Web 3.0 is simply due to divergence across these three areas:
Web1 = Free publishing
Web2 = Free communication
Web3 = Free transactions
More Ways to Monetize
Now that Web 3.0 solves content ownership and makes our digital assets portable, we creators can discover more ways to earn money.
Mike Novogratz says we’ll “see a shift from merchandising to creativity.” Creators will have ways to monetize their creativity—not just artistic creativity, but all kinds of creativity.
He even says we’ll wear NFTs on T-shirts, visible only when others put on AR/VR glasses.
You can share money with multiple parties. You can move your content from one platform to another based on which serves you better. Creators from around the world will collaborate and come up with wild ways to profit from our work.
No more earning $0 on Facebook while Zuckerberg gets rich. Money can flow into your pocket by the second, based on content performance.
Creators will accelerate Web 3.0’s growth because we simply want to get paid—so we can go full-time creating. Once content captors release us, more monetization methods will flood our creative minds. I can’t wait.
Web 3.0 Is Transforming Every Major Industry
ETH: Decentralized Silicon Valley
DeFi: Decentralized Wall Street
NFTs: Decentralized Hollywood
This shift isn’t unique to the creator economy. All industries will slowly change to reflect humanity’s obsession with democracy. Web 3.0 first targeted finance and became a sector worth over $2 trillion. The shift has now moved to the creator economy—for example, platforms like Bitclout invented coins allowing creators to become shareholders, letting users invest in creators.
The next wave of decentralization will hit YouTube, Spotify, and Facebook. Now is the best time to become part of the creator economy. Watch the transformation unfold before your eyes, and transplant whatever type of content you love into Web 3.0. This is how you—as a creator—can seize this incredible opportunity.
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