CrowdPad: A Deep Dive
Do you dream of becoming a YouTuber, a singer, or an artist but do not think you’ll earn enough or acquire a fan base?
Fret not.
CrowdPad is here to help you monetize yourself and find the best way to connect with your early believers.
Did you Know? Approximately 500 videos are being uploaded every minute on YouTube and only 1% of YouTubers make minimum wage!
It is well known that the more saturated an area is, the harder it is to make decent money.
Intimidated by humungous competition in the space, new creators, more often than not, find it difficult to make money, and give up their hopes of becoming successful too early in the process.
But what if there was a way for you to earn as a creator by connecting with your early fans, whose interest in you, could simply grow your value, status, and figures?
Isn’t that exciting?
CrowdPad could make that a reality for you.
Before we get into the details of CrowdPad’s vision and how they aim to achieve their objective, let’s take a deep dive into some of the necessary background information that I’m pretty sure you will need to know to fully understand this modern take on branding.
Let’s dive in. 🤿🌊
You must’ve come across the word Web3 a numerous times on your social media feeds but if you still have no clue about what it is, congratulations, you’re officially tested negative for FOMO :)
Web3 is gaining huge popularity and its communities are continually growing.
The whole purpose of building web3 is to consign the power to the hands of creators and consumers in a network rather than an organization in charge.
Through encryption and distributed computing (i.e., sharing files across many computers), blockchain technology enables decentralization (i.e., power distribution to nodes in the network).
The idea that NONE but the creator is the true owner of his/her content and that no other organization or intermediary parties can claim otherwise is simply revolutionary and a dream come true for many.
As a creator, one of the ways you can leverage this modern technology is by using social tokens.
/* I say “one of the ways” because you could also use NFTs to your benefit. */
What are Social Tokens?
At present, creators generate revenue through advertisements and endorsements which are highly frowned upon by consumers. Nobody wants to see random, irrelevant ads.
Social tokens help monetize the creator in better ways.
The current subscription models could be replaced by modern tokenization that helps create an ecosystem that’s far more rewarding to both the creators and fans.
YES! Rewarding.
Now, imagine Ariana Grande launches her own “coins” a.k.a. tokens. If you are an Arianator, you could show your interest by buying as many Grande coins as you want. As her fandom grows, the value of her coin will accrue. Not only will the coin’s value grow high, but you will also benefit from maybe getting exclusive content, free concert tickets, and anything she decides to do for the coin holders EXCLUSIVELY.
And who knows, maybe even giving out free REM Beauty kits! 👀
/* Don’t mind me. I’m just obsessed with the woman. If she were to launch her coin one day, I would die to get myself some, unless it requires me to sell my house to possess it, in which case, RIP. */
As insane as it sounds, it’s only the beginning of an endless list of possibilities to benefit as a coin holder, and not only that, it adds great value to the creator, especially to a previously unknown personality to solicit recognition.
Social tokens can be broadly classified into two main categories:
Personal/Creator Tokens are created by individual artists, influencers, singers, or brands.
Community Tokens are created for the membership of a club/community. Ex: Friends with Benefits token ($FWB)
They function very similarly to cryptocurrencies.
But why social tokens?
Why resort to using social tokens that use a complex technology as cryptocurrencies?
Why can’t we just join an Ariana Grande club (if she launches one day) that gives us all these perks?
Well, tokens offer more than what membership does.
It’s not a regular spot in a community or a mere place for you to passively involve yourself. Rather, it helps you have a say in the community such as being part of decision-making.
With a token, the holder has the liberty to transfer or sell his token which is not the case with traditional memberships as they are not tangible.
Also, as a holder, you get to reap the benefits through an increase in the value of the token with the creator's success. Therefore, their success also has a positive impact as long as you hold the token. 💰
A token’s value is a better way to measure success than the number of fans/ followers. Here’s a thread that explains that in the simplest of ways.
How many of these tokens can exist?
The rules for these tokens are present in their underlying smart contract.
Only so many coins as mentioned in the smart contract can be generated.
If Ariana Grande decides to have 1 million Grande coins (as mentioned in her smart contract), then only 1 million of them can be generated and circulated.
With that being said, it’s time to FINALLY talk about CrowdPad.
Hope you still have your gear on.
Time to dive deeper.
My tryst with CrowdPad…
(a short breather before we dive)
When I used to be proactive on Instagram, killing time, and just when I began my journey exploring the blockchain world, IG algorithms did me a favor by sliding one of CrowdPad’s posts onto my feed.
I vividly remember coming across the above post a few months ago which led me to their page.
I didn’t need to scroll too much to know that they were going to get big soon.
What I love about their page is that they not only give a “sneak peek” (yeah, a sneak peek) into what they’re building but also put out very informative content to the world about the space that most people are ignorant of, even today.
Little did I know that I’d be doing a deep dive into their project a few months since I followed them. :”)
Without further ado, LFG! 🚀
CrowdPad
We just saw the potential that social tokens have to unlock opportunities for creators.
But that would just be a dream if not for platforms like CrowdPad that help do that with ease, perhaps with just a click of a button!
A tokenized community-building platform for the everyday creator.
Time to see Who, What, Why, How, and Where. 😉
Buckle up 🌊
Who founded CrowdPad?
Joel Tom Alexander, the CEO of CrowdPad, founded alongside Drishti Chawla, who is the CTO.
Joel is a finance grad from the London School of Economics and Political Science while Drishti is a Computer Science grad from Loughborough University.
In his blog post at CrowdPad, Joel says,
Drishti & I kept exploring the crowdfunding space, trying to hack away at different ideas when we met our founding engineer Harman who introduced us to the idea of holding crowdfunded money on smart contracts as opposed to in escrow and that’s when I really dove deep into crypto and was able to fully fathom the potential of social tokens, NFTs and DAOs.
Read the full article here to learn more about his journey.
What do they do?
They are developing CrowdPad to be a tokenized-community building tool for all kinds of creators.
CrowdPad allows them [creators] to create, discover, and manage their tokenized communities all in one place, using a simple TikTok-style video-first approach to community discovery. (Source)
Now, that’s a very cool concept.
Nobody wants to go through an endless series of steps to be able to achieve this kind of outcome finally. Creators would rather love it if all the management could be done collectively in a seamless manner.
It is exactly what CrowdPad aims to achieve.
Long story short, they are building an operating system for Creator DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) using a mobile-first approach, being the first in the Web3 social space to make that move.
Why are they doing it?
Web3 is changing the creator-fan dynamics.
Fans are more than just consumers as they can now be looked at as community members who not only bring value to a creator but also benefit as early believers.
Creators can use social tokens to create their communities consisting of their “fans” and choose the kind of incentives(perks) to offer them.
This is a huge benefit for budding artists as it helps them avoid becoming victims to wolfish management.
For example, consider you’re an aspiring singer. All you need to do to build your community is to launch your own coin/ token and choose the perks to give your early fans/ community members. The capital from your early fans will help you monetize and keep that fire burning in you.
This will remove the need for you to approach record labels and other organizations to a large extent but rather make headway through just your caliber and a nurtured community.
… You don’t have to be in LA to be a big artist, or in Silicon Valley to be the next big entrepreneur — you can be where you want and still have that global network.
— Joel Tom Alexander (Source)
Although it might seem easy to implement the idea using the existing platforms, it isn’t because currently, it’s a lot of steps to launch your social token and maintain a community.
Therefore, CrowdPad is on the mission to make the process very creator-friendly :D
How does it work?
Remember my “sneak peek” allusion?
Well, yeah CrowdPad hasn’t disclosed everything about their app yet. It’s currently in the private beta stage (which is live on TestFlight with access to limited members within the community). The public beta will be out soon and you can join their waiting list to get early access.
However, what we do know is that they are building on the Solana blockchain.
CrowdPad is leveraging the Solana ecosystem and challenging the status quo on Web3 DApps by building on mobile-first, which is where the majority of us spend most of our time… (Source)
Solana is an open-source project implementing a new, high-performance, permissionless blockchain. You can learn more about Solana here.
Why Solana?
… Everyone has their own thesis, Solana in our opinion is one of the fastest, cheapest and scalable blockchains out there which make the end user experience as seamless as a Web2 experience today…. the developer community building on Solana have been some of the most supportive and amazing folks we’ve met. And finally, the future is multichain. All we care about is giving our users the best experience and we’re choosing to build our moat on Solana.
- Joel Tom Alexander on Discord.
Moving onto a few more deets about the platform that I managed to gather.
How can one become a creator on CrowdPad?
To become a creator on the CrowdPad platform, all you need to do is:
Install the app.
Create a wallet. (They have a native CrowdPad wallet that can send or receive tokens supported by the Solana blockchain.)
Launch your creator coin.
And of course, you’ve got to be a human. ;)
What determines a token’s value on CrowdPad?
In their discord server, the CEO revealed that they are looking at bonding curves to derive the value of a token.
Bonding curves on a 21 million supply curve ( homage to the OG).
Bonding curves revolve around the simple concept where the price of a token is determined by its supply i.e., the more the distribution, the higher the price.
To understand the concept with illustrative examples, read this article.
Where are they now?
In November 2021, CrowdPad raised $125K in their first round of institutional funding from On Deck’s ODX Accelerator Program.
In the same month, they joined hands with Superteam DAO to hire the best talent from the Web3 space.
In January 2022, they released their private beta version 1 on TestFlight, accessible to only a few selected community members.
In February 2022, CrowdPad made the revelation about its native non-custodial wallet (i.e., you have sole control over your private keys Ex: Metamask; unlike custodial wallets where a third party is involved in controlling your private keys Ex: Binance).
In March 2022, they announced that they also support NFTs (i.e., digital tokens that are unique and immutable) on their wallet.
Now they also have their token called CrowdCoin!
What’s next?
CrowdPad is set to release its public beta version soon. 🚀
The crux of the matter
CrowdPad is building an OS for creator DAOs and is a one-stop solution for launching your social token, putting out content, getting discovered through Tik-Tok-like videos, and building & maintaining communities with a friendly interface for a smooth transition from Web2 to Web3.
Period.
My take on this…
I’m going to break down my perspective on the matter by posing the following two questions.
Do I think that this project is necessary? Why?
Absolutely yes!
It is going to have a HUGE impact on new creators who wish to establish a community purely out of their talent and without having to go through intermediate parties to “get big”.
The amount of independence and advantage decentralization gives to creators is huge because, unlike the present scenario where the big platforms regulate and set rules, DAO transfers powers to the hands of its people.
In addition to that, both the creators and their fans get rewarded. While the former gets to grow his value and reputation, the latter get to enjoy perks and grow with the creator.
However, the concept of social tokens isn’t very new. It has existed for quite some time now.
In fact, Rally and Roll are some of the platforms that help creators launch their tokens.
Now that brings us to another obvious question.
2. Do I think that this project is still essential when there are others in the same space?
Sure, the idea of social tokens isn’t new and others platforms enable influencers to launch their coin. But apparently, it isn’t easy to keep it going. There’s a lot of manual work to be done under the hood. Ex: Create a pool, distribute the tokens, keep the community going, etc which could be very very cumbersome and especially hard when you don’t understand how it works.
Therefore, there’s still a lot of room for improvement.
Moreover, there are additional benefits that CrowdPad promises to offer apart from helping launch a coin and run communities.
Well you can launch with Rally or any other social token issuance platform — the difference is here [at CrowdPad] you have access to token gated events, perks, votes/polls & posts all in one platform — and there’s some other exciting features on the roadmap that’ll get everyone super excited but not revealing just yet. Moreover our video discovery mechanism alongside our native wallet and DEX will allow for Web2 communities to easily enter, adapt and transition into tokenized creator communities
— Joel Tom Alexander on Discord
Therefore, I believe that the mission that they’re on will produce valuable outcomes that are different from what’s already existing, making it necessary and worth building in the Web3 space.
Wrapping Up
If you successfully made it this far, I appreciate you. I know I took you to the depths of concepts and information (with 2700+ words 👀) but I hope you’re leaving from here with a lot of valuable information about social tokens and how they could change everything for the creators (for the better, obviously) and how CrowdPad is working towards making that happen. 🚀
Join their waitlist to get early access to the beta version of their app to analyze and come to a better understanding of how it works.
I can’t wait for the launch!
Are you excited to try it out as much as I am?