Social Token Projects Enlist Celebrities in Push for Adoption

Social tokens are becoming a breeding ground for adoption, with major names in music and sports all trying their hands at the web3-native fan engagement mechanism.

Just this past week, social token platform Roll announced a partnership with Akon for the Grammy-nominated music producer to introduce personal tokens to his Akoin community, including in the city he’s launching in West Africa to help propel blockchain technology.

And Rally announced Brand Coin, a social token for brands, celebrities and influencers, with international soccer player Keisuke Honda as one of the first to try the new concept with KSK Honda Coin.

$250M of Social Tokens on Roll

There are now over 250 creators who have issued tokens through Roll with the total value of all social money on the platform recently surpassing $250M, 25 creators through Rally, and Grammy-winning musician RAC who is using Zora.

While not directly social tokens, music streaming platform Audius airdropped its governance token AUDIO to 10k of its most active users.

It’s these platforms’ big push for mainstream usage; a light-lift attempt to train fans on interacting with ERC20 tokens.

Token-Permissioned Access

Communities forming around these tokens are pushing the needle on what it means to share a common interest, whether it be through NFT farming like Coin’s E-Den, token-gated newsletters like JammSession, or special discount codes like $RAC.

Another example of token-gated communities is Friends with Benefits, created by Brud founder Trevor McFedries. Anyone with 50 FWB tokens is able to access the Discord channel, which McFedries is trying to turn into a foundation for high-quality discussion, starting with a concept called ‘rough drafts’ to encourage collaborative content among trusted individuals.

Those who author rough drafts will soon be able to redeem upvotes for FWB tokens, yet another extension of how social tokens can offer rewards with financial value for community engagement.

Tooling

In practice, one of the tools creators and issuers are using to achieve this is CollabLand, which enables token-permissioned channels and the ability to assign roles to those who hold specific tokens. CollabLand is now evolving to add tipping to meet the demands of its over 400k users across more than 300 groups.

While the degree of community governance varies among all social tokens, there’s a commonality of allowing the group’s supporters to influence – and often drive – the most important decisions.

New Audiences

It’s worth noting that those opting into social tokens are starting to experiment with other mediums like audio NFTs.

Following RAC’s record-breaking 70 ETH NFT sale ‘Elephant Dreams’ on SuperRare, producer 3LAU offered all-access passes as a kicker to his 33 ETH NFT sale ‘Star Crossed’, alongside popular musicians Boys Noize, oshi and Metsa joining the Audio NFT conversation.

Capturing Value

If one thing is for sure, social tokens are giving creators new ways to capture value. While it’s still early, the inspiration around community ownership is one that speaks perfectly to the angles of DeFi that have driven the booming sector to where it is today.

Now, the question becomes – could social tokens become more successful than the financial applications we thought would bring about the next wave of users?