The business model for media is broken. Full stop.

When was the last time you felt good sitting through a YouTube ad? Or enjoyed having your favorite podcast interrupted with a pre-recorded ad? Or watched a creator you love shill products they don't use?

The reality is that content creators have been trapped in a painful paradox: to make money from their passion, they must first build a massive audience—and then immediately compromise the very content that built that audience in the first place.

Content deserves something better. A model where creators can get paid for the value of their work, without sacrificing quality (ads) or distribution (gated content).

Luckily, it's already here.

Find this article on Bankless.

The History of Media: Where We've Been

The internet revolutionized media by democratizing distribution. Before, creating content was reserved for those with resources and connections:

• Pre-internet: You needed equipment, teams, and industry connections just to get your content seen

• Internet era: Anyone could upload a video to YouTube or a podcast to Apple and potentially reach millions

But while the internet solved distribution, monetization was still stuck. The equation remained fundamentally unchanged:

Large audience + advertiser = Revenue

In this world::

• Creators spend years building audiences before earning a cent (if ever)

• ~98% of audiences actively dislike or skip the ads that generate revenue (avg CTR is around 2%)

• The most loyal fans get the same generic experience as casual viewers

• Platforms take massive cuts while providing little value at scale

• The relationship between creators and their true fans remains distant and ambiguous

I hate to be that guy – but crypto fixes this. Here’s how. 

The Future of Media: Onchain

Onchain distribution completely rewrites the entire relationship between creators, their content, and their audience. 

1. Native Monetization From Day One

When you publish content onchain, monetization is built in from the start.

No waiting years to build an audience large enough to attract sponsors.

Tokenized content—whether as NFTs or newer models like ERC20 content coins—allows any creator to immediately offer ownership and patronage opportunities to their audience. A new YouTube channel with 10 dedicated fans can generate revenue from day one rather than waiting for the algorithm to bless them with enough views to qualify for ads.

This isn't just creating a tip jar—it's transforming content from a one-time consumption experience into a permanent receipt that you consumed, enjoyed, and supported that creator at that point in time.

Through this mechanism, you begin to unlock a rabbit hole of potential benefits and experiences.

2. The Social Graph: Know Your True Fans

The most underrated benefit of onchain publishing is the insight into who actually values your work – the social graph.

Web2 analytics tell you broad demographics and view counts. But they can't tell you:

• Who specifically loved your work enough to pay you for it

• Which individual fans have supported you most consistently

• Who your earliest believers are

The onchain social graph is like having a real-time Spotify Wrapped of everyone who has ever meaningfully engaged with your work, ranked by their level of support and engagement.

Think about what this enables: Imagine you're a creator who sees that a particular account has collected every piece of content you've ever published. That's not just a viewer—that's likely someone whose life you've impacted.

That relationship is now visible, actionable, and valuable to both parties.

A leaderboard from an episode of Unchained on Pods. 

3. Direct Rewards: Turn Consumption Into Community

When creators can build relationships with their audiences, they can start rewarding them.

Imagine if Mr. Beast had a leaderboard of all of his fans, ranked by how early and how much they've engaged and supported his content. Not only does he have an identity that he can reference – but he has direct access to their Venmo & email account (i.e., an eth address).

What crazy shit would he be doing with this social graph?

Random $10,000 giveaways to fans. 10 random supporters from the last video make an appearance. The first supporter on his next video gets a lifetime supply of Feastables.

You get the idea. Onchain content creates a two-way street where:

• Creators can reward specific segments of their audience based on their support history

• Early believers can be compensated for their early faith

• Community becomes a mutual relationship rather than a one-way broadcast

This isn't a theory—it's already happening. Creators are:

• Giving exclusive access to token holders

• Creating new experiences based on collection history

• Airdropping new content to previous supporters

• Building multi-tiered communities where support is recognized and rewarded

This social graph of fans is entirely public – not only can the creator do this, but anyone can.

Brands can grant early access to their next product to a creator’s top fans. They can give them automatic discounts when they log in.

This creates a new relationship between creators, brands, and fans where all parties are aligned. But that's for another article. 

Read this to get a glimpse on what I’m talking about. 

4. Permissionless Distribution: Let Your Content Flow

When your content lives onchain, it's not trapped in a single platform's walled garden.

Publish once, and your content becomes publicly available across the entire onchain ecosystem:

• Collected NFTs appear on marketplaces and in wallets automatically

• New platforms can surface your content without requiring you to upload again

• Your content remains accessible even if any single platform disappears

• Engagement from any source benefits you directly as a creator

This "publish once, appear everywhere" model means your content works for you across the entire internet, not just within a single algorithm. Here's a prime example – Coop Records has a song featured as the hero on Coinbase Wallet.

Effectively an interactive banner ad, this placement in Coinbase Wallet drives engagement from its 7M users, exposing the content to an entirely new audience that it couldn’t reach before.

At Pods, we quickly began to see the power of public, permissionless distribution as podcast episodes began to appear in places we never expected, while new people started discovering the content because of it.

5. The Kitchen Sink Benefits: Ownership, Resistance, and Provenance

Beyond the practical benefits that we've built Pods around, onchain content offers several structural advantages that are becoming increasingly important:

• True ownership & censorship-resistance: Your content can't be deplatformed or removed at the whim of a policy change. Even if it's removed from the platform's front-end (like Pods), the content is tied to a smart contract that's 100% controlled by your account, and only your account. It's publicly available and can still be surfaced everywhere else that wants to support your content.

• Provenance against AI: As AI-generated content floods the internet, a premium is put on authenticity. Publishing onchain creates a direct provenance of who created the content and its origin.

• Historical record: Media is stored on permanent storage networks like IPFS or Arweave, allowing the creative journey to be permanently documented, creating a portfolio for life.

• Portability: Your content and audience relationships move with you between platforms. Like a newsletter where you can export the email list whenever you want, you can always export your list of fans and continue to engage with them, regardless of what platform it is.

Why It's Inevitable

Media has evolved in cycles. In the framework of Chris Dixon’s book, you can view it as:

1. Read: Few creators, controlled distribution (TV networks, publishers)

2. Write: Many creators, algorithmic distribution (YouTube, TikTok, Spotify)

3. Own: Creator sovereignty, direct relationships (Pods, Zora, Rodeo, Paragraph) 

We're witnessing the earliest days of this third era.

While it may seem niche today, the benefits are so fundamental and the value proposition is so clear that adoption is inevitable.

The best part? Onchain is an entirely additive experience for all creators. 

You can continue publishing on YouTube, TikTok, or Spotify while simultaneously publishing the same content onchain. 

There's zero opportunity cost for creators outside a few minutes of their time. But through it, they have infinite opportunities to capture value and build deeper relationships with their audience. 

How to Start Today

The entry points to onchain media are becoming increasingly accessible with a range of platforms offering a compelling, specialized experiences for both creators & fans: 

• Podcasts: Pods 

• Blogs: Paragraph

• Instagram: Zora, Rodeo 

• TikTok: Drakula (rebranding to 10K.world)

• Music: Coop Records, Sound 

Technology will continue to improve while interfaces simplify and more tools become available for creators to engage and reward their audience. 

But the fundamental value proposition is clear. 

The Future is Already Here

At one point in time, websites were a novelty. Social media was for tech enthusiasts. Uploading your content to the internet was weird.

Onchain content is at the same inflection point.

Eventually, we'll look back and wonder how creators ever survived without direct monetization, true fan relationships, and platform independence.

The question isn't whether content will move onchain. It's whether or not you're going to be early to it.

There's no reason not to start publishing onchain today. The upside is enormous, the downside nonexistent.

Your future audience is waiting. 

If you’re interested in getting your podcast onchain, apply here or reach out directly on X or Warpcast.

Thanks for reading – I’ll see you onchain :)