“Fantasy Hollywood” — Crypto and Community-Owned Characters - a16z crypto

Now in the 2020s, as Web3 develops and a new era of digital ownership begins, creatives will be richly rewarded to the extent that they have the creative skill of building community around themselves – those creatives who best invent context and stories. It might be that this skill, more than the art itself, is what triggers unusual amounts of mone... See more

One of the most significant trends in web3 is the rise of community-generated media. Fans are becoming co-creators in developing media or applications on top of a character universe, or influencing the direction of content creation. Various examples are playing out across creative verticals, ranging from fans influencing the plot progress

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So crypto enables creators to bypass gatekeepers.

While most of crypto focuses on the realms of finance and art, Mad Realities tackles Hollywood head-on. Today’s power structures concentrate power at the top—in a handful of studio executives in LA and NYC skyscrapers. UGC has begun to change this, but UGC is lacking great monetization; most of the pie is hoovered up by the platforms.

One question I had is whether you can build giant fictional worlds this way. Right now the NFT market is full of speculators hoping to flip their acquisitions for a quick profit. There is more than a little of the mania that fueled this winter’s meme stock enthusiasm to be found on the crypto Discords. (More than a little cynicism among the investo... See more

Of course, it’s not all fun and games, either — DAOs, after all, are not just an abstract crypto concept, but systems of people. And while they create new models for human coordination around shared principles or goals, they also present new challenges for effective governance, day-to-day execution, and scaling.