The web is for lurkers. User generated content drives most online activity today. The creators and engagers provide sites with this content, and an audience of lurkers bring in the revenue. Fortunately for the bottom line, lurkers outnumber the creators over 100 to 1. Crypto historically hasn't catered to these passive users, with its communities comprised solely of active token holders. For crypto apps to reach the broadest audiences, they need more than speculative utility, they need lurker appeal.
When block times were slow, UX was bad, and transactions were expensive, the apps that did well - ICOs, DEFI, NFTs - were innovations on even slower, more expensive, or less efficient products like crowdfunding, lending, and collecting. Though the industry inspired a few lurkers in the form of critics and nocoiners, the successful applications offered no utility unless its users were actively bought-in. Why is that?
Lurkers online are content consumers at their core. They may pay for this but prefer to sit through ads - whether for informative or entertainment purposes. For crypto to attract these lurkers, it needs to enable new, compelling content, and with a business model that can provide it for free.
We have seen glimpses of new content for crypto's active users. On November 18, 2021, I along with thousands of other ConstitutionDAO members held our breath watching a Sotheby's youtube livestream as our Twitter feeds filled with realtime commentary - speculation, FUD, hype, and humor - in a first-of-its-kind attempt to collectively purchase an original copy of the US Constitution. This amplified engagement was a result of all of our collective stake in the auction.
When users get a financial stake in an outcome, all sorts of content can capture their attention. For a few weeks in the summer of 2023, an unassuming stable of domestic hamsters captivated crypto twitter. The hamsters periodically raced over low fidelity livestreams and anyone could bet on the winners. My feed filled with screenshots of dramatic payoffs, performance analyses, and accounts of one perpetual underdog, "CK". Our ecosystem has not evolved much since then, except now the stakes are placed on what will be the next meta narrative - eg memecoin - to capture the markets and minds on a particular day.
As I discussed in my previous article, this approach of trading user's financial stake for their attention, is not ideal for growth. If the traditional web is any guide, we can expect with broad enough adoption, 90% or more of crypto users will not be active holders, but passive lurkers. They may be investing through their brokerage, but they will not buy your protocol token, let alone setup a wallet or move money over to your app.
One way to enable new forms of content for lurkers is through crypto fundraising. The "Stoner Cats" TV show, or the "Vitalik: An Ethereum Story" documentary are the best known examples, but this format has yet to distinguish itself beyond traditional means of producing content, à la Netflix.
The rise of crypto-enabled social networks have shown promise for attracting lurkers. On the surface, these are simply clones of X, but they have demonstrated that open platforms can foster strong communities and converge the most important updates, news, gossip, and discussion for a niche topic in one place. Ethereum technical discussions on Farcaster have the shape of a new type of forum or stackoverflow, with potential to bring in more outsiders seeking that information.
Prediction markets seem to be the only product currently growing lurkers en masse. This was most obvious leading up to the U.S. election, as millions of Americans refreshed the Polymarket results or scrolled its live commentary for a real-time unbiased pulse on the election as the exit polls and ballot results trickled in. While these lurkers sought just a single number, the implied odds of a binary outcome, this type of content is definitely new, meaningful, and step-function improvement over predecessors like PredictIt or traditional polling.
The proliferation of Polymarket into the mainstream consciousness may be a turning point in the battle for lurkers. I expect we'll discover more crypto products that utilize markets to produce useful signals that lurkers crave. And signals like this are becoming ever more premium in this era of AI, censorship, and algorithms that are eating up content on the web.
At kingpost, we're building something new for lurkers. Let's take crypto beyond just buyers for our bags.
