What Is a Creator Coin? Definition, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and Overview of Rally, Roll and BitClout

A creator coin is a digital token that acts as currency. The coins give creators the opportunity to create, manage and grow a digital economy with their followers and community. A “creator” is anyone who makes content or experiences on behalf of an audience. Creator coins are transacted on a technology platform using cryptocurrency.

Creator coin platforms record transactions on the blockchain, an immutable digital ledger that’s duplicated and distributed across a global network of thousands of computers. Information on all creator coin transactions is viewable on the blockchain.

Owners of creator coins can be treated like members of a loyalty club. Members can receive perks, like access to exclusive content or even direct access to the creators. Members can also spend the coins in exchange for products and services offered by creators.

Here’s how futurist, technologist and keynote speaker Brian Fanzo defines creator coins:

Chris Messina, inventor of the hashtag and head of West Coast business development for Republic, posted an interesting Twitter thread about creator coins:

🧵on creator coins:

“The #CreatorEconomy is a recognition that the people who create the value and beauty of the internet should be fairly compensated and valued for their contributions.

— Maybe: Chris Messina (@chrismessina) June 24, 2021

Chris recently announced his $HASH creator coin.

Creator coin platforms

There are several creator coin platforms and more will likely emerge in the coming months and years. Most platforms enable creators to manage and distribute their coins independent from any company or technology. In fact, some creator coin platforms aren’t conventional platforms. They’re built using open source code (i.e., free to use, modify and redistribute) and managed as an open source project, without an underlying corporate entity.

Creator coin platforms are open and decentralized

Creator coin platforms share a common set of beliefs and principles around open standards and decentralized control–in fact, a lack of control. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, which act as gatekeepers over their platform and users, creator coin platforms let users operate independently from any organization, platform or technology. 

In many cases, creator coin platforms operate without a company governing its rules and protocols and don’t charge fees. Instead, the platforms are managed by a community of users who make decisions collectively. 

The benefit of this open model to creators is that they’re not beholden to a single company or platform. They can now engage with fans and followers anywhere (i.e., across Twitch, Discord, YouTube, Instagram or any other platform).

Comparison chart: creator coin platforms

Next, we’ll provide a brief overview of three creator coin platforms: Roll, Rally and BitClout.

Rally

Currently, Rally operates in a closed beta, with approximately 100 active creator coins. If you’re interested in using Rally for your own creator coin, you can submit a request on their website.

Creators who are invited to launch their own coin are given a supply of 50,000 coins. On its website, Rally describes themselves as “the new and improved fan club experience that allows fans to be a direct participant of the creator’s economy.” 

The primary use case for Rally creator coins is to increase the quality and level of engagement with fans and followers, giving creators the tools to build their own digital economies.

Rally provides a creator coin leaderboard on their website, sorted by the coin price:

Rally is an open platform that enables creators to incorporate their coins wherever they engage with their audience. For example, several YouTube and Twitch streamers provide benefits to fans using Rally creator coins. Same goes for influencers on Clubhouse and Discord. Rally has a built-in integration to Discord, including a Rally creator coin bot. 

Rally has a Community Activity Rewards program that incentivizes activity and participation in a creator’s community. The rewards are distributed in the form of $RLY, a governance token that supports transactions on the Rally Network. $RLY coins can be “bridged out” into an Ethereum wallet, which can then be converted into fiat currency. Learn more in the Community Rewards FAQ.

Evan Kirstel, a tech influencer with 300,000+ followers on Twitter, provides the $B2B coin:

#Crypto For #Creators! @rally_io is an open network enabling creators to launch vibrant & independent economies powered by the #ethereum #blockchain 🔥 #Cryptocurency #cryptocurrencies #CryptoNews #Bitcoin #BitcoinMiami2021 #BitcoinMiami Find my coin at https://t.co/yVbhvbaL2v pic.twitter.com/YPpcq3fM5s

— 🟣 Evan Kirstel $B2B (@EvanKirstel) June 6, 2021

For more information, check out the Rally FAQ and their detailed post, “Creator Coin 101: A Brief Explainer on Rally’s First Building Block.”

Roll

Roll bills itself as “blockchain infrastructure for social money.” Like Rally, the Roll network mints branded creator coins. They utilize the Ethereum blockchain and call their coins “social money.” 

Social money enables influencers, musicians, actors, artists, gamers, bloggers and so many others to plug a new monetary system directly into their community.

— Roll (@tryrollhq) May 31, 2021

The minting and monetary policy of Roll’s social money is set by smart contracts and cannot be changed by Roll, its users or a third party. According to its website, “There will be exactly 10,000,000 units of your social money in existence. You can’t mint more and we can’t create more. We’re all bound by the smart contract code on the Ethereum blockchain.”

To use social money on the Roll network, users must fill out a form, which the company reviews. When new users are approved, Roll will issue the first 2,000,000 units of social money to their Roll wallets. According to their website, “After minting the first 2M, your social money will vest over a period of three years until the max supply of 10M units is reached.”

Roll users receive a coin symbol (e.g., $USER) and decide all the ways their social money is earned and spent by their community. Roll acts as a payment gateway for the rewards and experiences creators offer. 

Roll provides custodial Ethereum wallets for sending and receiving money. Their link-based system enables creators to send social money by sending a message on Roll. Users can withdraw social money from their Roll wallet and send it to their personal Ethereum wallet at any time.

Roll has some of the elements of Rally, but amounts to a rewards program that pays fans and followers in Ethereum instead of fiat currency. Think of it as enabling transactions in your community, rather than building a sustainable economy. 

Learn more on the Roll website.

BitClout

According to its website, “BitClout is not a company, it doesn’t have a board, and there is no CEO– it is just code that runs on nodes across the internet just like Bitcoin.” Imagine if Twitter assigned monetary values to its users and enabled cryptocurrency transactions for users to support each other. 

That’s basically what BitClout is. 

They refer to themselves as “a new type of social network that lets you speculate on people and posts with real money, and it’s built from the ground up as its own custom blockchain.” While Rally and Roll are in private beta status, BitClout is open to everyone. 

Today is a very big day. Today we’re doing something the dominant social media companies will never do.

Today we’re making all of the BitClout frontend code public.https://t.co/5CAEfTguuE

/1

— BitClout (@Bitclout_) May 1, 2021

BitClout preloaded profiles of the top 15,000 influencers from Twitter onto their platform. Anyone can navigate to a user’s BitClout profile and click “Buy,” whether that user has an active profile on BitClout or not. 

The owner of a reserved profile on BitClout can claim it by clicking a button to tweet their BitClout public key. According to BitClout, “When they do this, they gain full access to the account, as well as a percentage of the creator coins associated with their profile (see Founder Rewards). Only the owner of the Twitter account associated with a reserved profile can claim it.”

Here’s an example of venture capitalist Fred Wilson claiming his BitClout profile:

Claiming my Bitclout
my public address is:
BC1YLh1YEjhauU8cxmGAK59EFmGxbG65NmMrj92LfQfkjU2ZCgE7xUy#bitclout

— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) May 19, 2021

Independent of claiming a reserved profile, users can sign up for a free BitClout account. Once the account is established, a user interface is displayed that looks nearly identical to accessing Twitter from a browser. The difference is that the users in your feed are BitClout users and their posts were natively published on BitClout.

This is how the BitClout newsfeed appears once you create a free account. Looks a lot like Twitter 🙂

BitClout lists a number of use cases that creators can leverage to connect with fans using BitClout as currency. Under the heading of “What Are Creator Coins Useful For?” they list these examples:

• The Stakeholder Meeting
• Premium Messages
• Sponsored Posts
• Premium Content
• Distributions and Engagement
• Money Likes
• Emergent Phenomena

You’ll find a lot of detailed information at BitClout’s documentation site.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: What happens if a company like Rally goes under?

A: Like any company, those that provide creator coins can go under. If that were to happen, your creator coin could be affected. Think of it like an email newsletter, where your email provider goes under. Assuming you have access to your contact list, you can move your email newsletter to a new provider, bringing your contacts along with you. 

Rally is a company, but the creator coin platform it runs is community-driven, which means that the community determines the rules. If the company were to go under, the infrastructure would remain. And because it uses blockchain technology, the full history of past transactions is permanently preserved. If Rally ceased to exist as a corporate entity, it’s likely the community would step in to keep things running.

In a blog post, Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures wrote, “Here is the thing about blockchains and crypto – the data is public on the blockchain. Nobody controls it other than you with your private keys. And when you put open source software together with that, you get decentralized applications that nobody can mess with, not even the creators of those applications.”

Q: How do I get my coin symbol? What if it’s already taken?

A: Coin symbols are provided on a first-come, first-served basis by each creator coin platform. It’s similar to a web domain or a Twitter handle: the riches go to the early adopters. Coin symbols are NOT unique across creator coin platforms and also not transferable. 

Q: How is a creator’s coin priced?

A: Each platform provides its own algorithm or methodology for pricing coins. Most involve fairly complex mathematical models and algorithms. Read how BitClout prices their coins.

Pricing of Rally’s Creator Coin is designed to operate like a real economy. According to their website, “Rally’s technology enables the price to reflect market forces using a programmatic supply/demand curve – these curves are financial instruments called token bonding curves (TBCs).” 

Q: How can creators turn their coins into real dollars? (i.e., fiat currency)?

A: It depends on the platform. On Rally, creators can “bridge out” or convert some of their coins into Ethereum, which can then be converted to fiat currency, such as US Dollars and euros.

According to the Rally FAQ, “Creators and their community can convert Creator Coin into $RLY, USDC, and/or “bridge” Creator Coin (in the form of $RLY) into their Ethereum wallet. Such transactions may be subject to passing compliance requirements, restrictions and limitations on amounts.”

A certain amount of $RLY is embedded in every creator coin on the Rally platform. $RLY is “an Ethereum blockchain-based asset that can be sent and received in the Ethereum mainnet network.” For more details on redeeming creator coins on the Rally platform, read Selling Creator Coins with “Redeem” on the Rally wiki.

BitClout has the concept of a “founder reward,” which allows creators to keep a certain percent of coins for themselves. The BitClout website suggests that the better way for creators to participate in the upside of their coin is to buy it themselves early on, while setting the founder reward to zero. 

According to the site, “This works because the coins are cheapest at the beginning of the curve, and it has the upshot of reducing friction on subsequent purchases of their coin.”

Q: How are creator coins different from a service like Patreon?

Let’s first cover how they’re similar. Like creator coins, Patreon enables fans to pay and support creators. With Patreon, fans use a credit card and payment is handled on the Patreon platform.

With creator coins, fans buy coins using their credit card or cryptocurrency. Unlike Patreon, fans who own creator coins share in the value of the creator’s economy. The more creators grow their economies, the more the creator coin is worth.

Bremner Morris is Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Revenue Officer at Rally. Previously, Morris was Head of Global Go-to-Market & Revenue at Patreon. In a Forbes interview with David Armano, Morris said, “If you’re a holder of a creator’s coin, not only do you get access to the benefits, but you also share in the value of the coin … Not only are community members fans, but they now have a stake in the continued success of a creator’s overall economy.”

Glossary of related terms

Along with creator coins comes an entirely new dictionary of terms. Here are terms you might come across.