Social tokens are one of the many layers of the metaverse (something I wrote about recently). Some argue that a blockchain-dominated structure could be a better system, with creators and consumers having a bigger slice of the pie than the current system dominated by big players like Meta, TikTok and so on. P00ls is a platform that expects Web3 to break this space. Its platform allows creators and brands to launch their own social tokens and distribute them to their communities, becoming coins for each respective ecosystem. Today we interviewed Hugo Renaudin, CEO of P00LS, asking him some questions that arise from the ambitious project, as well as asking about the newly launched Creator World and token.
(CoinJournal) CJ: Creator Worlds sounds like an interesting concept. What is your plan to attract users to it, as opposed to the competitors that exist in the space with similar protocols? I think the key here is that we built for fans rather than speculators, whereas the previous generation of fan token platforms targeted cryptocurrency traders and speculators. What that means is that we focus on creating experiences for people to earn (vs buy) and use (vs sell) their favorite creators’ social tokens to access meaningful experiences and interactions. When you think of Creator Worlds, this is where this community-creator interaction happens and where people can easily use their social tokens to gain utility. This is the heart of the fan-creator relationship, where a social token allows you to unlock levels of community participation and engagement that you don’t see in similar fan token protocols, or even web2 social media platforms.
CJ: With a lot of social media and internet content creation controlled by big companies (TikTok, Meta etc), do you think your influence and network effects could translate in the future to the web3 space? For example, what would stop Meta from releasing a centralized version of something like Creator Worlds? You are right, consolidated web2 platforms have a competitive advantage because they already have a massive audience and user base. Some have made super successful pushes to web3, as has Reddit – which has created millions of wallets for its users. That said, for Meta and Tiktok to create social tokens would be completely against their current model. When you think about what a social token can do, it’s an amazing way to meet and interact directly with a community of fans. If you launch a social token and distribute it to your fans, you know who your most engaged fans are (they have a lot of tokens) and you can interact with them directly (through P00LS worlds or in a token-closed Discord channel, for example). On the other hand, the business model of Meta and Tiktok is to make creators and brands pay for this information. The interesting thing is that we can use Meta and Tiktok to create value and meaningful interactions for social tokens. We may use these platforms to deliver content directly to social token holders. For example, we just launched a private Instagram account for one of our creators Hugo Comte, which is only accessible by owning some of his social tokens.
CJ: Is it difficult to launch zerozeroDEX , as far as attracting liquidity early on? In fact, we are happy to release our DEX with low liquidity! The way we envision a healthy lifecycle for a social token is to initially launch with zero liquidity and make it profitable only by one community through engagement and iteration, then gradually introducing more and more liquidity. We are in the early stages now so we don’t need a lot of liquidity as fans can always earn their social tokens. Our bet is that as these communities grow, so does demand, which will naturally drive liquidity.
CJ: The P00LS token was recently launched amid the bear market. How difficult was it trying to build while the market was falling this year? I think this is a much better time to launch than at the height of the market. You can now have a token at a much lower price than the launch price. That said, I love to build on bear markets. People are much more focused on building than speculating, and people in the community are here for the long term, not just short term speculation.
CJ: Most social tokens are down 90%+. In previous bear markets, many illiquid coins dropped so low that they never resumed those highs – do you think we will see the same again here? Again, the previous generation of social tokens was created for cryptocurrency speculators and traders and we are focusing on the fans. This makes a huge difference: regardless of token prices, there will always be fans earning tokens through engagement and using them to access utilities and experiences that allow them to be closer to their favorite creators. That will never change, regardless of the token price, which is why we are putting so much emphasis on social token adoption by real fans as opposed to speculators.
CJ: Have you ever thought about trading without a native token? For example, have you considered using $ETH to trade creator tokens instead of the native P00Ls token? Not. From the beginning we wanted to build a community, a collective future where we can make users and creators interested in our protocol on the same level as our team or our investors. For that you need a token, otherwise we are just another web2 company!