As blockchain-based opportunities grow for brands, opportunities arise to create your own crypto-currency to reward your loyal fans.
San Francisco-based open platform Rally has created a crypto-currency that allows influencers and content creators to launch their own virtual economies.
Rally’s goal is to “give creators an extra boost in building a successful career.” In August 2020 Rally launched CreatorCoin.
CreatorCoin allows crypto-interested creators, influencers, celebrities, and brands to launch their own currency. Creators can create their own version of a digital currency, and fans can buy donate, and hold their favorite creators’ version of the Coin.
It is a little like having a VIP program for fans so creators can reward their fans with digital assets. If if I created a “ZDNet” token, you would be able to buy or use more and more ZDNet tokens in a given week, then more Rally tokens will back ZDNet’s token value.
Creator tokens’ value is backed by Rally’s token, $RLY, which is also held by notable venture firms such as Andreessen Horowitz and Canaan Partners.
The $RLY token is based on the Ethereum bitcoin protocol and creators can connect wallets such as Meta Mask, Wallet Connect, or Coinbase (which is currently being sued over crypto XRP commissions).
According to Rally, its token $RLY has undergone a review process with:
“The Coinbase Custody compliance team, including diligence conducted on $RLY by their team’s research of public records, as well as responses to a questionnaire designed to suss out, among other things, whether $RLY has characteristics consistent with treatment as a security.
Receiving approval following this process reinforces $RLY’s purpose and characterization as a decentralized ERC-20 governance token, designed to power the Rally Network.”
Since launching in 2020, Rally has attracted more than $10 million in deposits, resulting in $85,000 of earned yield delegated to the Rally community treasury. In December, it launched a feature that rewards fan bases for interacting more with the influencers they follow.
So far, the company has on-boarded over 40 creators, artists, influencers, and brands including international soccer star Keisuke Honda, global esports organization Gen G, gamer FanHOTS, top-selling Christian trio Selah, NFT artist and musician Scrilla, and Twitch streamer Alliestrasza
By launching their own creator token, these influencers are able to engage directly with their fans and communities and build their network while increasing their revenue stream and maintaining full ownership of their brand.
Soccer star Keisuke Honda has his own crypto-currency coin called KSK Honda Coin, which is used to reward fans.
Rally uses community reward distribution to drive actual usage and value of influencers’ self-created creator tokens. The more that fan bases interact with the creators, the more $RLY is allocated to their creator token.
The support volume for these creators is growing as fans use these tokens to interact with their creators. This idea could escalate significantly as more and more celebrities and influencers join the platform.
But, as I said yesterday, until the SEC defines which versions of digital currencies are or are not securities, we will continue to see mistrust and confusion about using the blockchain and Bitcoin.
So, if you regard your collection of celebrity tokens as a bit of fun, then buy them by all means. Just make sure your assets are fully protected by law if you come to withdraw your earnings in hard green cash.
