The Creator Economy: An Interview with Rally.io CEO Bremner Morris

Bremner Morris is CEO at Rally.io, a crypto platform for creators and their communities to build their own independent digital economies from the ground up.

Defined as ‘a crypto toolbox for creators’, Rally builds tools for creators enabling them to develop economic relationships with their fans by launching their own personalized creator coins, i.e., cryptocurrency (dubbed social tokens) and NFTs.

“Think of creator coins as a modern-day fan club where coin holders unlock benefits and direct interaction with the creator,” says Bremner.

Creators can now offer their fans physical and digital goods and services – including NFTs, exclusive access, content, merch and more – in exchange for their currency, building sustainable, independent economies with their fan communities. Fans can buy these tokens demonstrating they belong to the fandom of a creator and use them to gain access to all the exclusive content and experiences, or they can hold onto them as they rise in value, and then sell them for a profit.

For the first time creators and their communities are operating as a creative community, and the opportunities for creation seem endless for creators and Rally.

We’re very excited Bremner will be joining us at the annual Marketplace Conference on November 16 and 17 (more details below), but we couldn’t resist chatting to him in advance about the creator crypto economy, the new creator-community dynamics, and the future of the creator economy. 

Check out our chat below.

What do you think about crypto in the context of the creator economy (the “creator crypto economy”) and how is it changing the way creators connect with their audiences?

Blockchain technology offers unique benefits and opportunities that can help creators both in monetization and community engagement. At Rally, we see two of the most promising immediate benefits for creators as (1) digital scarcity and (2) direct ownership. Giving creators direct ownership of their financial relationship with fans removes fee-taking intermediaries from the equation, letting creators keep their earnings. Digital scarcity, such as limited-run NFTs or supply-limited social token economies, are unique new perks that creators can offer fans, who have shown that they’re willing to offer their financial support in exchange. 

We also believe that decentralization will be a key benefit for creators down the road, but the industry still has work to do to address the technical challenges of balancing decentralization with a familiar and compliant user experience.

Defined by Chris Fortier as ‘a crypto toolbox for creators,’what's distinctive about the Rally model and how it empowers creators to monetize their passions and their audience in new ways?

Rally stands apart from other creator-focused projects in the space because it is built on a sidechain. Due to the fact that both creator coins and NFTs on Rally doesn’t rely on a distributed group of computers to process or service transactions, creators and fans are able to reap the benefits of digital scarcity and direct ownership, while avoiding the exorbitant network fees and carbon consumption that are drawbacks of popular proof-of-work blockchains. Operating on a sidechain allows for more experimentation in a compliant and user-friendly environment, which are critical factors for creators and fans who are new to the technology. 

Additionally, Rally focused on building the tools for creators to mint and distribute social tokens and NFTs while empowering a network of developers and partners to build additional experiences for creators and fans on top of our Web 3.0 infrastructure. As such, social tokens and NFTs can appear in all of the locations where creators and fans interact today and in the future. Finally, our business model is such that we don’t have to structure a revenue share take rate thereby allowing creators to take home 100% of the proceeds of their economies.   

What in your view are the most exciting use cases NFTs are being used for right now? What other exciting use cases do you think are coming next for the creator economy?

At the moment, utility is the most exciting use case for NFTs. Platforms are beginning to understand that focusing only on scarcity to create digital “collectibles” is an interesting, but extremely limited and transactional, use case. NFTs should be more than just an income stream for creators; they should drive deeper connections between creators and fans. 

We’re particularly excited about NFTs that unlock unique experiences and recognize and reward fans for their support. 

It sounds like it is a really exciting time for creators with Web 3.0, NFTs, social tokens and the ability for creators to reach their audience globally. Where do you see the biggest opportunities opening for creators and what particular challenges might they face in the next few years?

Opportunities are already beginning to emerge for creators who historically relied on advertising-powered platforms. The offer of direct-to-fan monetization through Web2 platforms like Patreon and Substack, or Web3 platforms like Rally, is a major financial step for any creator. There is still a long way to go for the growing “middle class” of creators that I mentioned previously – the top echelon of creators is earning the majority of the revenue generated in the creator economy. 

However, as platforms improve discovery and creators become more accustomed to owning their financial relationships with fans, the middle class of creators are set to be rewarded as well.

Are you interested in hearing more about the boom in marketplaces?

For a deep-dive into different marketplace models, trending topics and how to scale a network effects company from zero to infinity, you do not want to miss our 2021 Marketplace Conference on the 16th and 17th of November. Embedded Finance is one of our focus themes and we’ve got an amazing lineup including:

• Bremner Morris, CEO Rally.io 
• Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, ex-President StubHub
• Eric Demuth, CEO Bitpanda
• Laura Wu Behrens, CEO Shippo
• Felix Ohswald, CEO GoStudent
• Elmar Broscheit CFO Gorillas 
• VCs from Battery Ventures, Bessemer, Lightspeed, NFX and more...

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