Thread by @The_ReadingApe

Jᵾlien Genestoux's (@julien51) dream is to change the incentives around content creation

He is also the founder of @UnlockProtocol 🔓

He shares his thoughts with @AndrewSteinwold on this episode of the @zima_red podcast

Read on 👇

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red Background

🔓 Software engineer, entrepreneur, and founder
🔓 Started to learn how to code at 13
🔓 In his first year of university, he created an online job board for students because he was bored
🔓 After 3-5 months, McDonald's started to put job offers on his website

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red 🔓 It grew to a couple of 100,000 students on his website
🔓 When Google AdSense launched, he integrated it. In the first month, he earned $8,000 in ads. His father was shocked and created a company for him

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red "This internet thing is magic. It allows anyone to, you know, make a little business, create a thing that's useful for everybody else."

- Jᵾlien Genestoux

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red Path after college

🔓 Worked as a banker for BNP Paribas in San Francisco for 2 years doing leveraged buyouts
🔓 Was still running his student job board business remotely
🔓 Was using RSS feed readers a lot during the early days of blogging

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red 🔓 Left the bank to create a company called @superfeedr, a RSS Feed API that allows anyone to publish and consume RSS feeds
🔓 Superfeedr became a profitable business very quickly
🔓 @Medium acquired Superfeedr. Joined Medium and worked there for about 2.5 years

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Experience at Medium

🔓 Was his first tech job
🔓 Learned a lot of things, such as working with a team of people. Before that, he was kind of a solo entrepreneur
🔓 Had a very good internal culture
🔓 Medium had some issues with monetization

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium 🔓 Eventually ended up with a membership model where medium users pay to unlock features, content, or status on the platform:
1️⃣ Text-to-speech medium stories
2️⃣ Original content only available for members
3️⃣ Medium members getting a green halo around their avatar

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Current structure of the internet

🔓 Andrew: Current biz model of the internet is ad prevalent and encourages outrage as that drives the most engagement. What are his thoughts?
🔓 Thinks that it is unhealthy and is worried for the web as he sees the web as our collective brain

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium 🔓 If we incentivize for content that triggers, we not only end up with fake news, but info overload
🔓 When BuzzFeed launched, people were celebrating the publishing of hundreds of stories each day
🔓 He thinks this is dangerous as it's mainly information overload with clickbait

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium "I mean, if you read hundreds of crappy stories, is it better than five good stories? I don't think so. But clearly, from a financial perspective, it's better to write hundreds of crappy stories than five great ones."

- Jᵾlien Genestoux

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Initial attraction to #crypto

🔓 First time he heard about crypto was in 2011. One of his contractors wanted to be paid in Bitcoin
🔓 Bought some Bitcoin on Mt. Gox
🔓 His friend introduced him to Ethereum very early on. Tried the Mist Browser and found it too complicated

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium 🔓 While at Medium, he started discovering that they had a lot of crypto content on their platform
🔓 Was researching on ways for Medium to pay writers from anywhere in the world and stumbled on crypto again. This is when he started to dive into crypto

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Thoughts on #DAOs

🔓 Thinks that DAOs will eventually replace a lot of institutions
🔓 Thinks that the first DAO is Bitcoin. People were willing to invest in a miner and get paid by the system for mining blocks
🔓 New kinds of structuers and workers will emerge

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium 🔓 A DAO doesn't have to be everyone voting on everything. Could be a delegation of votes towards people who are good maintainers/stewards
🔓 People could collectively co-own the infrastructure/public good that they use

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Learning about #NFTs

🔓 Left Medium to look at ways to represent memberships
🔓 In the physical world, people use badges or member cards to represent membership
🔓 Realized that the ERC-721 standard could be used for unique collectibles/membership

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Unlock Protocol

🔓 Goal of Unlock Protocol is to change incentives around content creation and to ensure that creators are rewarded based on the value they create for their members. They do not need to resort to stealing their fans' attention

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium 🔓 Creators are able to deploy a membership contract, which is called a Lock
🔓 A Lock sells access membership in the form of NFTs. Whenever someone purchases a membership, they get a NFT that represents that membership

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium 🔓 Memberships can be partially transferred
🔓 Makes money when users use their credit card gateway
🔓 Their wallet is non-custodial. It's like a Web2 account with an email login and a password
🔓 The password is used to encrypt the private key

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium 🔓 Working with different companies and projects and integrating Unlock Protocol at the core of their applications
🔓 Launched Unlock DAO a few weeks ago for users to vote on the upgrades of the protocol

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Marketplace for Memberships

🔓 Foresees it emerging

Best and hardest things about being a founder

🔓 Best things: Seeing your vision being executed is very exciting
🔓 Hardest things: The feeling of loneliness that people can't see his vision of the world

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Unlock Protocol in 10 years

🔓 Unlock is used for Netflix and Amazon
🔓 Creators on Netflix opening up their content to their members who are not on Netflix
🔓 Have an Amazon Prime NFT in his wallet
🔓 Get discounts on audio swag because he is a Zima Red subscriber

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Most controversial thought on NFTs

🔓 NFTs are way more than just art

If you could improve one thing in the space

🔓 Onboarding users who do not have wallets

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Links:

Podcast: anchor.fm/andrew-steinwo…

Thanks to @AndrewSteinwold for this episode!

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Links:

Substack post: thereadingape.substack.com/p/zima-red-ep-…

@julien51 @UnlockProtocol @AndrewSteinwold @zima_red @superfeedr @Medium Like our work?

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~ End Thread