The Block Research Podcast

Before IreneDAO went viral last year, Irene Zhao only had a few hundred followers on Instagram. Today, the influencer from Singapore has nearly half a million followers on the social platform.

In this episode of The Scoop, Irene Zhao and Ben Tang share why IreneDAO is a proof-of-concept for their web3 startup named So-Col or 'Social Collectables', and how web3 could empower both content creators and fan communities alike.

As Zhao commented during the interview,

“IreneDAO kind of revolutionized the way the creator is able to interact with their fans… the relationship between creator and fans tends to be very transactional, because the creator just gives them exclusive content and then the fans just pay money in return… because of DAOs, all the fans are able to unite together, to come together, and come up with something that really aligns with the creator's vision.”

Zhao and Tang believe 'fan club DAOs' will allow fans to organize themselves in a way not currently possible outside of web3.

Zhao and Tang believe the problem with the current ownership economy in web2 is twofold: fans have a hard time organizing themselves and creators often rely on advertisements to monetize their content.

As Tang explained:

“If you look at monetization, there’s not a lot of ways to monetize apart from like selling out, doing a lot of advertisements, or doing like an OnlyFans, or things that people might not really be very keen to kind of do.”

This is something they believe will change with web3.

“The keyword here is ownership,” Tang explains, “In web2, you cannot own a stake in the creator’s fan club. Here, you can actually own a stake in it through NFTs.”

Tang and Zhao are not the only ones who see the potential of web3 to disrupt the ownership economy: digital ownership and DAO services are two topics that web3 VC funds have been paying close attention to.

Episode 26 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro, and Irene Zhao and Ben Tang, Co-Founders of So-Col.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross River

Fireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.

About Coinbase Prime

Coinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.

About Cross River

Cross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.