What is decentralized media? How Web3 is entering journalism

On April 7, community-owned Web3 crypto news company Coinage released its first governance vote. The proposal asked community members of Coinage’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to decide whether to move 10% of the DAO’s treasury into the meme coin DOGE.

“Coin has a lot of money in ETH, but DOGE is going ⬆️. Does DOGE have a lot of wealth?? Go veiz up???” reads the proposal.

The vote closed after 72 hours, with 60% (140 votes) against the investment and 40% (94 votes) in favor.

Zack Guzman, co-founder of Trustless Media, the company behind Coinage, voted in favor of the DOGE investment idea, but was happy with the result because it showed that Coinage was truly decentralized.

“I think the first vote has proven that this decentralized model works, where even I didn’t get what I wanted,” Guzman told CoinDesk.

Decentralized media has become a prominent talking point among both Web2 and Web3 native journalists. While covering cryptocurrency news is one thing, using Web3 tools to expand journalistic practice is another.

Some developers in the area feel that media distribution has become too focused on numbers, traffic and ad sales rather than creating content for audiences. Instead of publishing to generate revenue, what if content was created with readers in mind, publications were driven by audiences, and the nature of the media industry became more collaborative?

Several journalists who have spent years in Web2 media are trying to shake up the industry and usher in a new Web3 era.

When the NFT Now (non-fungible token) publication launched nearly two years ago, the founders identified problems within the traditional media landscape they hoped to fix.

“We were acutely aware of how broken the Web2 media model is,” said Matt Medved, CEO, Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of NFT Now. “It’s something that from the very beginning … we knew we wanted to do something and we wanted to do it differently.”

Medved was previously editor-in-chief of the music publication Spin Magazine and founded Billboard Magazine’s Billboard Dance. Believing that the Web2 media industry is overly motivated by revenue streams that are misaligned with audience interest, he has made efforts to build NFT Now into a “true” Web3 publication through its content and publishing strategy.

Medved said NFT Now has committed to never running programmatic ads, implementing cookies or tracking user data. It has been slowly building its community prior to the launch of Now Pass, a non-fungible token that allows token holders to deepen their roots within the NFT Now community and media ecosystem.

“The Now Passport is the access card to the Now Network, and the Now Network is the foundation for all of our initiatives to build the future of tokenized media,” Medved said. “Now Pass is the first step for us in pioneering this community-centric media model, and starting to really redefine what the role of a media brand is in a Web3 environment.”

So far, Now Pass gives holders access to a Discord channel and “Alpha Chat” to share news and insights between members. It also allows holders to attend events, such as the NFT100 gala and an initial community meeting held in New York during NFT.NYC.

Medved told CoinDesk that in the coming months, NFT Now will establish a membership portal where holders can earn rewards for their participation in the ecosystem. Additionally, there are plans for an on-chain voting system for content curation and more token-gated events to bring community members together.

For a Web3 media organization to succeed, it must understand its audience and how to integrate readers into new technologies.

That’s how Dirt, a Web3-native publication, has grown in popularity over the past year, garnering praise from culture fanatics and NFT collectors alike.

Founded in 2021 by journalists Daisy Alioto and Kyle Chayka, Dirt aims to break down Web2 media regimes by publishing content from a network of freelancers, using blockchain infrastructure to keep media decentralized.

Alioto told CoinDesk that Dirt does not exclusively cover cryptocurrency, making it one of the only Web3-native media organizations to report on a broader range of content.

“The blockchain is simply a tool to recreate the relationship between the subscriber and the publication,” Alioto said. “If you understand how to create compelling intellectual property and a network around it, you can build whatever you want on those rails.”

Since launching in 2021, Dirt has not only raised $1.2 million in seed funding, but it’s grown into a community that engages with its content, which Alioto says has been called “the child of Vice and The New Yorker.” It has built its free newsletter that has 23,000 subscribers, but has found other ways to monetize content through NFTs.

Its annual subscription NFTs give its 229 holders access to token-gated Discord channels to discuss topics such as movies, books and recipes, among others. Dirt has also sold 322 Founder Passes, NFTs that give holders a lifetime subscription to Discord as well as privileges to vote on content that Dirt produces.

Alioto told CoinDesk that Dirt has demonstrated how Web3 can create fundraising and media credibility, bringing people to Dirt who were previously unrepresented by existing media infrastructure. She is bullish on the future of Web3 media as Dirt expands its brand verticals.

“I have a vision for the future of media-centric businesses that has been consistent for almost two years, and people who disagreed with me in the bull market are now trying to roll out newsletters and zines and airdrops anyway,” Alioto said. “It doesn’t work like that. You either have the sauce or you don’t. The future is dirty.”

While the proposal to move dogecoin into the Coinage treasury did not go as Guzman had hoped, the outcome showed how the decentralized media company is co-owning and co-creating its brand with the community.

Coinage, which Guzman co-founded in 2022 after years covering finance and cryptocurrency at Yahoo Finance and CNBC, revolved around producing Web3 media with holistic Web3 roots.

In its first year, Coinage not only produced a Society of American Business Editors and Writers award-winning TV show about cryptocurrency (see this interview with Terra founder Do Kwon about stablecoin’s death spiral), but also empowers the community to help shape the content the show produces .

“The earliest adopters make Coinage valuable, and in any media company that’s a pretty important number,” Guzman said. “Delivering value back to your earliest subscribers is essentially what we’re doing, which is pretty Web3 and cool.”

To build a Web3 community around its show, Coinage has released three different tiers of NFTs. The network membership passes, distributed at Coinage’s launch, help fund and give holders the opportunity to co-own the content of the show. In addition, Subscriber Membership Passes provide exclusive access to Coinage’s content before it is released to the public on YouTube, and Caucus Passes allow holders to weigh in on the topics that Coinage covers.

Among Coinage’s NFT holders is Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix.

“Randolph revolutionized the idea of ​​media once before, and to have someone excited about what we’re building is pretty cool,” Guzman said. “One of the main reasons he’s fascinated by it is the thesis of breaking down the wall between your favorite content creator and their audience, and that unlocks a bunch of powerful network effects.”

While Coinage produces weekly programs covering a wide variety of cryptocurrency-related topics, it is beginning to take its first steps in building out community governance, writing proposals, and asking token holders what topics they would like to see covered before putting them to a vote.

In its most recent governance vote that ended on April 17, 73% of members (76 votes) chose to cover the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the regulatory onslaught that the crypto industry has faced over the past month.

While the content may not always be crypto-focused, Web3 media primarily comes from publications native to the space. Still, the incentives for Web2 media companies to start experimenting with technologies like NFTs and DAOs are growing.

There is already a movement underway among major media publications to implement Web3 technologies into their content distribution methods.

In February, the men’s magazine GQ announced its first NFT collection. The GQ3 Issue 001: Change Is Good collection included a magazine subscription, GQ merchandise and an invitation to the party held last week during NFT.NYC.

As more Web3 media continue to emerge, more Web2 publications may be motivated to make the transition to remain competitive and provide added value to audiences.