Why we aren't getting the album from Rihanna just like we aren't getting 110% effort on innovative product development and user onboarding from most post-TGE projects turned into Foundations.
Still streaming "ANTI" on repeat eight years later while Rihanna builds her billion-dollar empire. Her music catalog? Still pulling 2.5 billion streams annually. Yet no proper album since 2016.
Why?
Because Fenty Beauty alone generated $570 million in 2022, more than her entire music career earnings combined.
Savage x Fenty lingerie line hit a $3 billion valuation.
She's living her best life raising two(*three) kids with A$AP Rocky, running board meetings instead of recording sessions and touring.
Sound familiar? Post-TGE crypto projects follow a similar pattern.
Compound pioneered DeFi lending, revolutionary stuff. Post-token launch? hundreds of millions allocated to grants and governance, while core protocol development has slowed down. Other projects also sit on hundreds of millions, manage their treasuries and drop a marginal update once every 3-4 years.
The math is brutal: pre-TGE projects spend 80% of resources on product development. Post-TGE? Flips to 20% product, 80% ecosystem management, partnerships, token politics. Just like Rihanna shifted from 90% music focus to 10%. The incentives completely changed.
The growth pattern toward legacy
Both Rihanna and post-TGE projects follow an identical five-stage trajectory:
1. Original Product
Rihanna: Built her name on a strong identity, chart-topping albums, iconic performances. 14 Billboard #1 hits, 9 Grammy wins, full cultural dominance.
Foundation: Launched with core innovation: novel L2, AMM, staking model that captured early attention and liquidity.
2. Expansion Phase
Rihanna: Scaled into high revenue growth verticals like Fenty Beauty and Savage x Fenty, translating culture and brand equity into consumer empires worth billions.
Foundation: Leveraged hype and capital to diversify beyond core tech: spin out grants programs, VC arms, branded merch, ecosystem entities, etc.
3. Institutionalization
Rihanna: Became a business mogul. Her brands run with global teams, logistics, aligned with investor expectations.
Foundation: Enters the "governance era" with less experimentation, more process. Treasury management and political dynamics dominate decision-making.
4. Legendification
Rihanna: Her music is a legend. Her Grammy wins, iconic looks at the Met Gala, Super Bowl performance heighten this.
Foundation: OG developers, early community moments and origin story are baked into long tail brand marketing.
5. Current Output Focus (and Why No 'New Album')
Rihanna: Focusing on maintaining, continuing legendification and expanding the consumer empire. Music might be more interesting but has lower ROI and higher complexity.
Foundation: Avoids bold technical pivots or high-risk updates, focuses on treasury management and paced change instead with steady presence.
Funny how music streaming pays $0.003 per play while Fenty Beauty has 40% margins. Just like how breakthrough protocol innovations require massive R&D risk, while token management offers predictable, defensible revenue streams.
The balancing act: 3 strategies for sustaining output in the institutional legend stage
1. Subsidize the Risk
Rihanna: Uses Fenty revenue to experiment with wild fashion drops and one-off creative campaigns that would not work out otherwise.
-> Foundation: Use some of the protocol fees or treasury yield to fund experimental features, research, community grants. Allocate 15-20% of stable revenue streams to pure R&D with no governance oversight.
2. Narrativize the Returns
Rihanna: Drops treats as others would drop albums: Pregnancy announcements, "Lift Me Up" for Black Panther or the Super Bowl halftime show maximizing impact per appearance. The limited drops build mystique and premium attention.
-> Foundation: Release new features as narrative-driven moments tied to community lore or events. Always make us anticipate what's next.
3. Maintain Brand Equity
Rihanna: Stays culturally relevant through strategic public appearances, trend fluency, activist visibility, keeping connection to her artistic roots alive.
-> Foundation: Stay close to crypto-native values, trends, contributors. Engage with the community that made you, even when not shipping constantly.
Lessons: innovation doesn't have to die with success
The Rihanna-Foundation parallel shows a big universal truth: success creates new constraints, but it doesn't have to kill creativity. The most sustainable cultural forces (Apple, Rihanna, etc) find ways to subsidize risk-taking with institutional resources.
Keep reminding your users and ecosystem why they fell in love with your protocol in the first place.
The best institutions know when to act like startups again.
The question isn't whether you can afford to innovate, it's whether you can afford not to.
Rihanna keeps showing us that sometimes the most powerful move is the one everyone's been waiting for.
We're still waiting for both the album and the breakthroughs.
gberry, Reka
