Hi frens. This is the beginning of a thesis that I've been reflecting on for the past several months. I've written about different component parts of this re bringing the audience into entertainment, fandom as a service and more.
Today I'll try to bring it all together to discuss what I think the next type of entertainment franchises are going to look like, and why crypto rails is a unique enabler for them.
Let's explore the Neo-Franchise.
TL;DR:
NFTs was a proof of concept for a new model of community-driven capital formation around IP.
Neo-franchises are deeply connected to internet culture and thrive on community participation.
Crypto infrastructure enables borderless, community-first growth for new IP.
Fans play a pivotal role as financial backers, marketers, and creators in neo-franchises.
The next entertainment powerhouse will be a decentralized network of community-driven IPs.
NFT Cycle and Why It’s Misunderstood
In 2021, NFTs went from a niche curiosity to a cultural phenomenon, with a trading volume of about $25 billion. To many in Hollywood and beyond, the boom was a speculative frenzy—a failed experiment that left most participants with empty wallets. The media often describes the NFT cycle as an embarrassing misstep, a gold rush that ultimately amounted to nothing. But this interpretation misses the deeper implications of what the NFT movement actually achieved.
The NFT bull cycle was more than a financial bubble; it was an experiment in forming capital from communities, with intellectual property (IP) at its core. Like many experiments, it ran wild, with much of the capital ending up in the pockets of opportunistic speculators. Yet, it demonstrated a powerful way to bootstrap IP—one that traditional entertainment industries haven't yet fully understood.
What Actually Came Out of It
Despite the skepticism, the NFT experiment laid the groundwork for a new kind of franchise: the 'neo-franchise.' The internet has been a cultural melting pot and a hub for cultural formation for years. It's inherently global, but also naturally chaotic. This is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because what was once too niche can now find large enough audiences to build viable businesses. It's a curse because executing business activities, such as raising capital through traditional means across multiple regions, comes with significant overhead costs that make it less viable to get started in the first place.
This is what building neo-franchises solve.
Every NFT project promised its community a roadmap, with the ultimate goal often being to build an IP franchise. Fast forward a few years, and it's clear that building a lasting franchise requires more than just a few million dollars. It requires a plan, a dedicated team, and a strategic approach to storytelling and audience engagement. It also requires appropriate infrastructure to build franchises onchain.
The NFT boom blew the doors open to what comes next for entertainment—something beyond the major IP franchises that have dominated the last decade. It carved a pathway for neo-franchises to form capital, proliferate, and thrive in and with a culture shaped by the internet. These neo-franchises are deeply tapped into the culture of the internet, much like comic books, video games, and novels were the foundation for earlier generations of franchises.
By way of technology, neo-franchises can structure and orchestrate the entropy of internet culture and attention, and funnel it towards building IP-based businesses without the same capital intensity that make incumbent franchises so defensible.
Neo-franchises can structure and orchestrate the entropy of internet culture
The Neo-Franchise
Neo-franchises are fundamentally different from traditional entertainment IPs. They are rooted in the culture of the internet, a space of beautiful chaos that is global by default. Like previous forms of entertainment IP emerged from comics, books, and games, culture today forms online—in memes, social media, and digital communities. Neo-franchises are born from this digital culture and thrive because of it. They are built not just for global audiences, but with them—engaging communities from the start and allowing them to participate in the growth of the IP.
To truly tap into the global potential of the internet, a neo-franchise must be built on rails that allow it to capture instant, borderless momentum. That’s where crypto comes in. Crypto rails enable global, community-first capital formation, providing the infrastructure for these neo-franchises to grow at a scale that can eventually rival traditional incumbents. This is why projects like Pudgy Penguins, Doodles, and Azuki have captured both capital and cultural attention—they bootstrap not only funding but also community and engagement.
Where traditional franchises built and now protects their positioning by brute force capex to win in the attention marketplace, neo-franchises can compete because they are structurally different. Fans are not the consumer at the end of the production line. They are core parts of the engine itself. Should they choose and want to be, of course.
But, it's here the uniqueness lies. Humans inherently wants to vibe with things they care about. If you have passion for something, you're naturally attracted to go deeper. Where traditional franchises offer no measured way to capture this fan energy (it's mostly left alone eg. on fan fiction portals) nor any reward for these efforts, a neo-franchise will provide both structure, rewards, opportunity and tooling for fans.
Humans inherently wants to vibe with things they care about
I expect we'll even see this go as far as neo-franchises providing super-fans to turn into "pro fans". A mode where fans build small creator businesses based on the neo-franchise. This activity both expands the franchise and increase the value capture (but split between franchise and fan-creator). It's also net-good for the overall franchise value, since it's all networked.
Proliferating the Neo-Franchise with the Right Tooling
As the infrastructure to build neo-franchises on-chain matures, there will be more opportunities to approach this space systematically. We will see incubators and accelerators designed specifically to nurture the seeds of neo-franchise IP—much like venture capital (VC) in the tech industry. These incubators will identify promising concepts, nurture their communities, and accelerate their growth into fully-fledged franchises.
This shift represents the entertainment equivalent of VC investing: rather than relying on massive studios and traditional gatekeepers, creators will be able to seek out targeted support and grow alongside their communities. The "next Pixar" or "next Disney" won't look like a copy of the current studios with different content or blockchain elements tacked on. Instead, the next franchise powerhouse will be a loosely connected holding entity—a network of neo-franchises that benefit from shared tools for creation, distribution, orchestration, and monetization, while also thriving on active contributions from thousands of community members.
Examples of Neo-Franchises in Action
Projects like Pudgy Penguins, Doodles, Azuki and a select few others illustrate how these ideas are already taking shape. They’ve managed to bootstrap capital, community, and attention—three critical ingredients for any successful franchise. These projects are leveraging blockchain to offer something new: decentralized brand governance, community-driven storylines, and fan ownership that goes beyond mere merchandise.
Pudgy Penguins, for example, has evolved from an NFT project into a brand that taps into its community to shape its narrative. The community-first approach means that audiences aren’t just consumers—they’re participants. Fans play a pivotal role—not just as financial backers, but also as marketers, storytellers, and collaborators. This level of engagement is something traditional franchises struggle to replicate.
The Next Pixar
The future of entertainment lies in these neo-franchises—entities that are built differently from the ground up. The next entertainment powerhouse will not be a centralized studio, but rather a collection of IPs nurtured by shared tooling, community involvement, and the ability to generate, distribute, and monetize content in ways that traditional studios simply can’t.
The "next Pixar" isn’t a singular entity; it's a decentralized network of creators, a hub of interconnected IPs where each franchise is driven by both a core team and its community. This hybrid structure—part studio, part community-driven platform—is uniquely positioned to leverage the collective creativity of the internet, tapping into cultural trends and community contributions at an unprecedented scale. The extremely viral distribution qualities of the internet—where attention spreads like a meme rather than through carefully managed blockbuster marketing campaigns—will be a defining feature of these new entertainment entities.
Why Traditional Franchises Struggle to Compete
Traditional franchises face a significant challenge in adapting to this new model—not because of crypto or blockchain specifically, but because of the unstructured, community-first approach that neo-franchises embody. The top-down, highly controlled nature of legacy IPs makes it difficult for them to embrace the chaotic, decentralized growth that defines neo-franchises.
Neo-franchises integrate fan communities into their very structure, inviting contributions, fostering relationships, and sharing value with those fans. This dynamic approach makes them inherently more agile, better equipped to adapt to shifting cultural landscapes, and more attractive to audiences seeking meaningful engagement. Fans are not just consumers; they are part of the creative force that propels the franchise forward, blurring the line between audience and creator.
Where We Go Next
The NFT boom may be over, but what it left behind is far from a failure. It revealed a new way to build and sustain intellectual property—one that is community-driven, internet-native, and poised to redefine entertainment. As the tools for creating and managing these neo-franchises continue to evolve, we’ll see more creators tapping into the power of community-first IP formation.
The internet has become the birthplace of culture, and the next wave of franchises will be born from this digital chaos. Neo-franchises will form the basis for the next generation of entertainment, challenging the old guard and bringing audiences closer than ever to the stories they love.
As always, reach out to me on X or Farcaster if you have feedback or are working on something cool you want to discuss.
