Introducing Rally Creator Coin
Simplifying Blockchain Technology to Revolutionize How Content Creators and Streamers Earn a Living and Interact with Their Fans
By Mahesh Vellanki, Head of Growth
The creator industry continues to grow at an astonishing rate, yet it’s still incredibly hard to make a living as a content creator. At Rally, we talk to creators and streamers every single day and regularly hear some variation of this story:
I’m a streamer with a stable group of viewers, and while my subscriber base is solid, my income from ad revenue, donations and sponsorships is inconsistent. I feel burnt out because if I’m not streaming, I’m not earning.
Often, after a couple of years of grinding away, the creator or streamer simply gives up. And with millions more ready to step up and take their place, it’s hardly even noticed.
A New Path Forward
But what if there was another path forward? At Rally, our goal is to give creators an extra boost in building a successful career doing what they love. While blockchain and cryptocurrency still remain unknown for a lot of the general population, there’s endless possibilities for how blockchain technology can benefit creators and streamers. We’ve made it so simple, with user-friendly interfaces and instructions, that no blockchain knowledge is needed to participate.
Our solution is a custom branded cryptocurrency that we’re aptly calling Creator Coin. Not only are Creator Coins digital currency that are custom branded to each creator, they are also the foundational building blocks in an easy-to-use blockchain toolkit that will allow creators to unlock better engagement and monetization models in their communities. Our team of execs from Twitch, YouTube, Disney, Kabam and Facebook has decades of knowledge and experience in content creation, community building, monetization and fan engagement and spent the last two years designing this network.
While my colleague Amit explored the mechanics behind Rally Network and Creator Coin, I want to walk you through why this is something all creators should pay attention to.
To give you a broad sense of how we can empower a creator’s success, let’s revisit the story above, but with a different ending.
Then I discovered Rally and launched my own cryptocurrency using their free toolset. At first, I set it up and was the only holder of my coin. But then I started talking about it with my fans, and rolling it out as a loyalty program to offer VIP benefits in my channel like special Discord access, shoutouts, and game requests. They got excited about the benefits and coin itself and started buying it, Word spread and more people started getting excited about my community and my economy, and my brand started to grow in an entirely new direction.
As my economy grew, I was offering more benefits to my coin holders, and cashing out my coin for consistent, significant income that allowed me to make longer term plans around my career and reduce stress. Fans were excited because they were contributors to my economy’s growth, too.
I then launched several sets of limited run collectible items in the form of digital trading cards through Rally. The rarity of these cards was verifiable on Rally’s blockchain and could only be obtained by depositing my coins.
A new marketplace around my brand formed, and I started taking a fee on every transaction. My community enjoys being able to participate because they love the new forms of support, the notion of real value, and receiving VIP channel benefits, and the best part is that much of this activity was happening when I wasn’t even streaming. I also built something that I truly owned and could take with me if I ever decided to move to another streaming platform.
What this hypothetical streamer did was form an ownership economy around her brand. She started thinking about her earnings not in terms of one-way income streams like ad revenue or donations, but rather how she monetizes goods and services changing hands in her own economy, all while letting fans participate and contribute. This dream scenario is very much within reach with Rally.
Why Crypto and Not Traditional Currency?
There are three main benefits that crypto can provide that traditional currencies just can’t deliver.
- Value Capture — Cryptocurrencies like Creator Coin can encapsulate the long term value of a creator’s brand. This means that creators will no longer be beholden to the changing value schemes of big social media platforms, i.e. advertising/partner programs, platform soft currencies, and subscription programs. Any value built up in a Creator Coin economy is owned by creators and their communities and completely independent of big tech platforms.
- Creator Owned — Creators have 100% control. In addition to removing platform gatekeepers and only allowing for payment processing fees and transaction fees that the creator may set for themselves (Rally takes no fees), creators also no longer have to contend with the usual fears around demonetization, deplatforming, and censorship when it comes to their Creator Coin economy.
- Transparency — Behind every cryptocurrency is a blockchain. Blockchain technology offers transparency (Who is holding coins in my community? Who owns an asset?), immutability (Is my transaction secure and verifiable?) and verified scarcity (What is the max number of coins that can exist in my economy?).
What Does Creator Coin Mean For Creators and Their Fans?
Now that we’ve established the benefits of blockchain, let’s go deeper into Creator Coin and explore the two main reasons why Creator Coin is a game changer.
- New Forms of Monetization — As it stands right now, creators earn revenue via a small percentage of rev share from advertising, subscriptions, or sponsored posts. In Rally’s vision for the future, creators will be able to grow their audiences and earn revenue by building their own digital economy fueled by their own currency, where they’ll be able to offer customized rewards and benefits, personalized digital item collection and trading, and methods and incentives for their fans to support them with donations, all while keeping 100% of the profits.
- New Forms of Fan Ownership and Engagement — Furthermore, fans will be able to support and also participate in their favorite creator’s success. Not only will they have new ways to interact with creators and access special benefits and collectibles, but by buying Creator Coin they also get to be a part of a creator’s brand.
How To Get and Use Creator Coins
Fans can obtain Creator Coin by heading to Rally’s website and purchasing via credit card. Additionally, creators can buy their own Creator Coin and award it to fans as a type of cash back loyalty program. For example, some of our Twitch streamers are giving Creator Coins to fans who subscribe to a higher subscription tier on Twitch (i.e. tier 2 and tier 3 subs).
Right now, there are three main ways to use Creator Coins:
- Transacting — users can transfer Creator Coins to the creator directly in the form of a tip or donation (no chargebacks!), or they can send Creator Coins to other users. Over time, there will be other ways for users to spend Creator Coin.
- Holding — many users will want to simply hold Creator Coin as a collectible asset as it represents their support of and loyalty to a creator. Additionally, savvy creators will use Creator Coin as a flexible loyalty tool to identify top coin holders and offer them valuable benefits and rewards. For example, one of our early music creators, ChewieMelodies, is offering top holders a custom song request on Twitch (no transaction required).
- Earning — Fans often help creators with community moderation, video editing, art/graphics production, and other valuable community services. Creators can use Creator Coin to reward loyal subscribers for past or future support, and in the future there will be more automatic ways creators can set up earnable programs using our toolkit.
Promising Pre-Launch
Rally.io launched the first Creator Coin on July 29. There were more than 500 sign-ups in the first five 5 days (July 29- August 2). As of yesterday (August 5), 11 different Creator Coins have launched with plans to double that number by the end of the month.
One Twitch channel, DownToQuest, generated more than $15k of DTQ coin purchases leading to a circulating supply of approximately 140k and a current price of $.80 (as of this morning)
Twitch streamer OneNightStanz’s community has driven more than 200 transactions of his coin in the first 5 days of his launch by primarily playing games with him.
Roll Out Strategy
We are rolling out in phases.
SUMMER- Pre-launch with Twitch streamers in July.
FALL- Full launch with new features as well as certain liquidity features for Creator Coin to be redeemed out of the network.
WINTER / NEXT YEAR- Longer term, we’ll be rolling out additional tools for creators to manage and monetize their Creator Coin economies, as well as more ways for fans to spend and redeem their Creator Coin.
Creator Coin is platform agnostic. While we’re starting with creators on Twitch, we’ve designed the product to travel across all platforms.
In an upcoming post, we’ll go deeper into the mechanics of Creator Coin and explain how supply, pricing, and liquidity works.
There’s an incredible future ahead for content creators that we hope will be powered by Creator Coin. For emerging creators, Creator Coin is a simple and free way to take your community to the next level and perhaps move from a part-time hobby to a full-time career. And for larger creators, Creator Coin can elevate you to even greater heights.
Right now, creator participation in our Alpha launch is by invitation only, but we’d love to hear from interested creators. Please reach out to us directly at creators@rally.io.
A special thank you to Arnold Hur (GenG Esports), Mateo Arias (Fade2Karma), Jason Maestas, and Nate Stanz for reviewing this post and supporting our launch!
