The under is a direct excerpt of Marty’s Bent Concern #1262: “The content material monetization by way of LN wave is right here.” Join the e-newsletter right here.
In March 2021 I wrote a bit that referred to as out the Web3 meme and the convoluted schemes that shitcoin initiatives have been/try: to have their tokens monetize content material. In that piece, I highlighted Sphinx as an utility constructed on the Bitcoin protocol/Lightning Community protocol (BP/LNP) stack that was proving that content material monetization would possible occur by injecting bitcoin by way of the Lightning Community into totally different content material mediums. Nicely, right here we stand 17 months later and the development has accelerated dramatically. I figured it would be a very good time to test in on this explicit vertical and spotlight a number of the cool initiatives being constructed.
Podcasting 2.0 has, in my view, the potential to be bitcoin’s first killer app outdoors of utilizing bitcoin as a sound financial savings car. I’ve been utilizing it for nearly two years now with “Tales From The Crypt” and “Rabbit Gap Recap” and the quantity of sats flowing and variety of individuals streaming them have solely been growing since we first added Lightning Community public addresses to our RSS feeds. Extra apps have built-in Podcasting 2.0 into their providers.
by way of Podcastindex.org
Podcasting 2.0 is simply the tip of the iceberg, although. The mannequin has stoked inspiration in builders internationally and we’re starting to see increasingly functions and tooling come to market that may make content material mediums of every kind monetizable by way of the Lightning Community. Alby is a browser extension pockets that makes it straightforward to pay Lightning invoices as you surf the net. Mash is a toolkit that content material creators like myself can leverage to monetize written, audio and video content material in addition to person interactions as they interact with sure options (likes, voting, feedback, and so forth.). Wavlake is an organization working to carry the Podcasting 2.0 mannequin to the music business (amongst different verticals), permitting musicians to put up their audio information, syndicate them out to customers and have customers stream worth over Lightning as they pay attention. That provides these musicians the power to separate funds to everybody else concerned within the manufacturing of their artwork mechanically.
These are however a number of of the businesses that come to thoughts when excited about the explosion of exercise happening on this explicit nook of the Bitcoin financial system.
What’s so thrilling about all of those functions and instruments is that they are going to start to permit creators and their audiences to experiment with new enterprise fashions that have been by no means earlier than attainable earlier than the emergence of the BP/LNP stack. As an example, Fountain has included a podcast clipping characteristic that permits listeners to receives a commission for clipping sure sections of podcast episodes. If different Fountain customers like a selected clip that you’ve clipped they will increase you for the work of surfacing that microcontent.
Creating income streams for listeners is a really untapped design area that ought to breed some mind-bending experiments. Not solely can listeners receives a commission, however this explicit mechanism introduces an natural avenue by which to floor the perfect content material. As an alternative of relying on some black field algorithm to place content material in entrance of you, the curated content material can be person generated and pushed by the worth assigned to it by the community of customers inside the app. Since actual worth (sats) is on the road, the cream ought to rise to the highest.
I like that many of the conventional Silicon Valley enterprise capitalists and everybody else enamored with the extraordinarily difficult world of “Web3” are sleeping on these developments on high of Bitcoin. There appears to be an incapacity for these sorts to again something or construct something that doesn’t have a rent-seeking token connected to it. The sign lies in the whole lot mentioned on this rag and all the different initiatives like them that haven’t been talked about. There may be actual, concrete infrastructure being constructed out that may have long-lasting endurance within the Bitcoin financial system whereas the “Web3” sorts get fully distracted by the shitcoin taste of the month.
Onward!