Wednesday W.O.W - Tokenisation of Culture 🧩💸
[5 min read] Your mid-week bite sized treat on emerging tech on our journey to the Metaverse. Learn about how our culture is undergoing a digital makeover where enthusiasts evolve into investors.
A nibble of knowledge in your inbox every Wednesday with a simple format:
🇼 What the technology is
🇴 Objective(s) - what is it trying to achieve, with some examples
🇼 Why it is important to users as well as businesses & brands.
This is week 39 of the 520 weeks of writing I have committed to, a decade of documenting our physical and digital lives converge.
🇼 What is the Tokenisation of Culture?
Ever considered not just cheering for your local team, or buying your favourite cult brand, but actually owning a slice of its success? This isn't fantasy – it's the reality of tokenisation, where culture undergoes a digital makeover and enthusiasts evolve into investors. European football clubs have taken this notion to heart, revolutionising fan engagement. Through tokenisation, fans can acquire club-specific crypto tokens that accrue value, while also conferring voting rights and exclusive content. This marks a shift from fan to stakeholder.
Crypto's evolution has been a rollercoaster, transitioning from a store of value to a universal payment method and digital asset. Just as you grasped these concepts, enter the stage: NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Artists harnessed blockchain to redefine ownership, sparking a trend that expanded into domains like virtual real estate, and IP. Now picture this: your favourite musician, brand, or sports team not only offering merchandise, but also a slice of their cultural heritage. This is where fan tokens, or social tokens, shine. Platforms like Chiliz have paved the way, issuing fan tokens for top-tier sports teams, empowering communities with digital ownership.
🇴 Objectives and Use Cases of Culture Tokenisation
Tokenisation doesn't merely digitise culture; it democratises it. Welcome to the era of the ownership economy, where blockchain empowers creators to monetise their creations on an unprecedented scale. Artists can craft and vend NFTs, retaining control, while influencers can tokenise their online personas, enabling followers to invest in their social impact. However, every revolution faces its share of challenges. In the ownership economy, the concentration of voting power among crypto token holders raises concerns of plutocracy. Moreover, there's the risk of culture being reduced to mere transactions. Balancing these pitfalls with the potential is the tightrope that tokenisation walks.
Here are a few examples of projects that exemplify the tokenisation of culture:
Chiliz has partnered with major sports teams globally to issue fan tokens, allowing fans to engage more deeply with their favorite teams. These tokens offer voting rights, exclusive content, and even influence over certain team decisions. This initiative has boosted fan engagement and created a new revenue stream for sports clubs.
Rarible is a decentralized NFT marketplace that enables artists and creators to mint, buy, and sell NFTs representing their digital art, music, and more. This platform has empowered artists by giving them direct access to their audience and a new way to monetize their work.
BitClout is a social network built on blockchain that allows users to buy and sell tokens tied to the reputations of influencers and content creators. This model turns social capital into a tradable asset, giving users a stake in the success of the personalities they follow.
Audius is a decentralized music streaming platform that empowers artists by allowing them to directly upload and distribute their music. Artists are rewarded with cryptocurrency based on their popularity and the engagement their content generates.
The Sandbox (my prev post on this here) is a virtual reality platform built on blockchain where users can create, own, and monetize content and experiences. This allows for the creation of a user-driven metaverse, where ownership and creativity intersect.
$MEME is a social experiment that tokenised a meme, creating a tradable cryptocurrency backed by a piece of internet culture. This demonstrated the concept of cultural items having tangible value in the digital world.
🇼 Why Tokenisation of Culture Has a Role in the Future of Society
Tokenisation's boundless potential necessitates guardrails. Governments and regulators must deftly balance fostering innovation with safeguarding consumers. Ethical considerations are paramount, ensuring that as culture adopts digital form, its essence and value remain intact. Intellectual Property principles need to be enforced. This is especially true with protecting indigenous/minority cultures from bad actors that would try to “extract” value.
Despite the hurdles, the ownership economy carries immense promise. Collaborative avenues like decentralized autonomous organisations (DAOs) can curb power concentration. Crypto social tokens and community-driven projects foster inclusivity and collective responsibility.
The journey of tokenisation has merely set sail. From fan tokens to cultural ownership, we're witnessing a shift that melds culture and investment. Just as the Renaissance shaped history by changing the relationship between artist and audience, tokenisation wields the power to shape our future. By navigating with care, addressing challenges, and nurturing its potential for good, we ensure that the tokenisation of culture isn't just a trend – it's a movement that makes society better.
That’s all for this week! If you have any organisations in mind that could benefit from learning about emerging technology, be sure to reach out. Educational workshops are one of many consulting services I offer.