We just shipped the first version of coins on Paragraph — a new way for readers to support the posts they love and help great writing get the visibility it deserves.

Great writing has the power to change minds & bring people together, entertain & create new worlds, and shape the future. Despite their cultural impact, writers rarely receive the appreciation — or income — their work merits.

Today’s monetization options come with hard trade-offs: subscriptions require full-time writing and can feel impersonal; ads require a lot of effort & erode the reader experience; and tips & one-off payments rarely scale. We believe there’s room for something new.

Coins are part of our ongoing attempt to expand the idea economy. We hope coins will allow readers to:

• Turn up the volume on an idea that resonates with them.

• Signal something about themselves through the writing they back.

• Find others who share their interests or values.

• Support writing they enjoy and encourage more of it to exist in the world.

All while giving writers new ways to earn and feel like their work matters.

We felt like there was an opportunity to try a version of coins that wasn’t rooted in speculation, bending more toward durable, market-expanding motivations. We’ve tried to bring this to life through early versions of the product experience.

For example, in the first iteration of the post page with the side rail to buy coins, here are some of the things we did to keep the lightweight, simple, and focused on supporting the writer:

• Using less financialized terms: "support" instead of "buy", "trade" instead of "sell".

• Trying to reduce the mental overhead with buying coins, providing 3 tiers to choose from, avoiding the need to choose how many coins to buy, consider the price of the coin, and so on.

• Providing a popularity indicator instead of showing the market cap of the post.

We don’t expect to nail this out of the gate, but hope that this is a firm step in a new direction from which we can learn and iterate.

Coins also power discovery — we've shipped a new Explore page, where the most-supported posts rise to the top, sending great ideas into wider circulation and inviting more engagement.

As readers back a piece with coins, that support instantly boosts its visibility, creating a virtuous loop in which quality writing climbs the charts while authors earn more for their work. The result is a community-driven feed that surfaces the internet’s best thinking—not because an algorithm said so, but because real people decided it deserves the spotlight.

We’ve already received a ton of valuable feedback related to the challenges of coins in helping writers monetize their work. To that end, here are a few areas where we’re excited to experiment:

• Finding the right relationship between coins at a post-, writer-/creator-, and/or project-level.

• Experimenting with economics and incentives (e.g., increasing transaction rev share).

• Designing incentives for long-term holding.

• Post-level remixing, rewards, and new kinds of collaboration.

• Access to read, comment, attend events, etc. tied to coin ownership.

• Combining coins with limited-edition NFTs (or other monetization features).

Coins are live on Paragraph right now. To get started, simply connect your wallet & publish a new post.

To learn more, read our documentation on coins, or share your thoughts with us on X or Farcaster.

We're excited to continue experimenting with new economic models to expand the idea economy.