AI Is Changing the Internet. What Does It Mean for Creators? (with Justin and Michael Blau)

**Justin** (0:00)
You don't get any data, there's no CRM for any creative, you don't know who the top 1% of your Spotify listeners are, you don't know who the top watchers of your YouTube videos are, and you can't directly communicate with those people.

**Michael Blau** (0:09)
Creator platforms, you might pay somebody like $5 a month to get access to their exclusive content, but with Bond, what you're doing is you're actually only paying or bonding $5 one time. You can withdraw and get your $5 back at any moment in time, but while you're bonded to them, they earn interest on your $5.

**Justin** (0:25)
Bond is some middle ground where the fan and the creator have that direct connection and it costs $0. We think that relationship should 1,000 percent be on chain because you can't take your audience with you if a platform like TikTok goes down.

**Robert Hackett** (0:43)
Justin, Michael, thank you guys both so much for coming on the show.

**Michael Blau** (0:46)
Thanks for having us.

**Robert Hackett** (0:47)
What is the biggest misconception that people have about the problem that you're solving?

**Michael Blau** (0:52)
I think we both have an answer, so you can go first.

**Justin** (0:54)
You want me to go first?
My spicy take is that people assume all creativity should be valued and that creators should be paid, which I definitely believe to be true. But the prerequisite to any of these themes of creator monetization is actually knowing who your audience is. Biggest problem in Web2, you don't get any data, there's no CRM for any creative, you don't know who the top 1% of your Spotify listeners are, you don't know who the top watchers of your YouTube videos are, and you can't directly communicate with those people. And so, I guess my take is, before you start thinking about creator monetization, just knowing who cares about you as a creator is one of the biggest unlocks that blockchain provides.

**Michael Blau** (1:34)
And what I would say is, there have been numerous, as you know, creator crypto products that let creators earn on chain on the internet in various ways. And the way that usually works is through some form of trading volume. So whether that's a meme coin or a content coin trading or an NFT secondary royalty, it's the same idea. And what that means is that creators earn more money as trading volume grows. But what we believe is that creators should earn more money as their audience grows, right? You could have a thousand very active traders trading your stuff and make some good trading fees off of that. But that has no tie at all to your content that you're creating as a creator or how big you are getting in the world and how many people are seeing your stuff.

**Robert Hackett** (2:13)
Yeah, because trading is more of like a mercenary behavior. You know, you're trying to make money off of something versus this complete other type of thing where you want to develop a loyal fan base and a loyal following. People who want to have this long term relationship with you. Those two things would seem to be, you know, opposed.

**Michael Blau** (2:30)
100%. Yes.

**Justin** (2:31)
And we think that relationship should 1,000% be on chain because you can't take your audience with you if a platform like TikTok goes down.

**Robert Hackett** (2:38)
So why on chain? Why is crypto necessary to solve this problem?

**Justin** (2:42)
Oh, man. Do you want to take that to start?

**Michael Blau** (2:45)
Sure. I think I'll give two answers to that. I think the first is putting whatever this relationship is, economic relationship, in our case, on chain, is just that better because it's open, it's transparent, everything can be seen. And especially with the fact that typically it's through wallet addresses, so the creator might have a wallet address and the user will have a wallet address. Now, in theory, they have a direct way to communicate with each other. So that's sort of like the table stakes reason. But I think the more interesting reason is the way that our protocol works, you need a blockchain to do it, right? And so we could in theory maybe build it on centralized rails, but that would require many intermediaries and lots and lots and lots and thousands and thousands of lines of code, whereas ours is 500 lines of code and simple.

**Justin** (3:31)
Chet, GPT said it's almost impossible for us to build what we've built on Fiat rails.

**Robert Hackett** (3:35)
I trust it then.

**Michael Blau** (3:36)
I think they said it would take 6 to 9 months to create an MVP, whereas we were able to do it in like two.