Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has recently expressed his critical views on the concept of creator coins, asserting that they miss addressing the core problem in today”s digital landscape. In a recent post, Buterin emphasized that the primary issue is not the lack of financial incentives for creators, but rather the overwhelming abundance of content and the challenge of filtering out high-quality material.
Buterin”s analysis highlights a significant shift in the internet”s evolution. In the early 2000s, content was scarce, making the need for incentivizing creators logical. Fast forward to the present, where content is not only plentiful, but also increasingly produced by artificial intelligence, the focus has shifted to discerning valuable content from the noise.
This critique comes at a time when various crypto-oriented platforms are experimenting with mechanisms like tokenized attention and social tokens, often yielding unsatisfactory long-term outcomes. Buterin notes that many of these systems tend to reward visibility, speculation, or pre-existing fame, failing to elevate original and thoughtful work consistently. As a result, creator coins have transformed into financial popularity contests rather than effective tools for discovering new talents.
The Flaws in Current Creator Coin Models
According to Buterin, the attempts to incentivize content creation over the past decade have not achieved lasting success. Earlier platforms such as Bihu and Steemit, as well as newer models like Zora, have struggled to provide meaningful results. The problem lies in the fact that these platforms often perpetuate a cycle where attention drives price, and price in turn drives attention, without a reliable mechanism to assess quality.
Successful Curation Over Tokenization
In contrast, Buterin cites Substack as a successful model for creator incentives. At first glance, Substack”s approach appears simple, requiring users to pay for subscriptions to access writers” work. However, its strength lies in its focused curation. In its formative stages, Substack actively selected writers to cultivate a specific intellectual vision, providing revenue guarantees and fostering a curated environment.
Buterin argues that this curation, rather than mere tokenization, is what enabled Substack to highlight quality and diversity, as opposed to amplifying irrelevant content.
Proposing a New Framework for Creator Coins
Instead of abandoning the notion of creator coins, Buterin proposes the establishment of small, non-tokenized decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) inspired by the Protocol Guild. These DAOs would consist of a limited number of members, allowing for manageable governance, with the ability to vote creators in or out. Each DAO would focus on a specific content type or ideological perspective, aiming to create a strong collective brand that can discern quality and negotiate revenue opportunities.
In this new framework, creator coins would still exist, but their function would shift. Creators could launch their coins freely, but real value would be recognized only upon admission into one of the high-quality DAOs. This model would encourage speculators to act as predictors, helping to surface promising creators for evaluation rather than simply fueling attention for financial gain.
Buterin believes this approach reflects a broader trend towards governance mechanisms that combine large-scale prediction markets with small, purpose-driven decision-making groups. Ultimately, he suggests that the true winners in this ecosystem will be those who can accurately predict which creators will be valued for their quality.
This perspective offers a fresh take on the evolving landscape of creator coins, challenging the notion that higher financial incentives are the solution, and instead advocating for a focus on quality curation.
