Token Gated Access & The Future of Work

A better subscription model

Following on from my newsletter on Why Creators Should Choose Protocols Over Subscriptions (which ended up on Hackernoon), I found a similar article published by Joey DeBruin and nir.eth called All SaaS Should Be Tokenized. The takeaway being that you can use tokens to create a better subscription model.

This was the first article on the web3 publishing platform Mirror I've seen that uses token gated access - if you click on the link above you will see that you need to connect your crypto wallet with a minimum number of tokens to access.

This Mirror publication is by the Forefront community which is great as I'm a member and had the 1000 $FF required to access (also I could have accessed using the 60 $FWB tokens I have which was another option).

This paywall functionality uses infrastructure from Mintgate where (after you connect your Metamask wallet and sign a transaction) you get redirected to your own unique URL on mgate.io that you can access. Interestingly, the link works in incognito meaning you could share the URL with others.

As such, restricting access is now a third option for creators. This is in addition to the existing NFT crowdfunding option, as well as tipping (image above) seen on the Evolution of the FWB DAO article (mentioned last week), written by Alex Zhang along with Coooper Turley who gets a 1/3 split along with the Friends With Benefits community he founded.

Tomorrow, your wallet will be your résumé

Over the last week, RabbitHole announced that it raised 3.6M to build the on-chain resume for the future of work.

RabbitHole, co-founded by Brian Flynn, enables people to get paid to learn about crypto protocols. This looks similar to Coinbase Earn where, looking at my dashboard (referral link gets us both $10 in Bitcoin), I can currently earn $9 COMP by learning about Compound, or $3 GRT by learning about The Graph.

However, the big difference is that you become more than a token holder. With RabbitHole you engage on-chain with protocols and can use your skills to become a contributor to crypto projects:

At RabbitHole, we also believe Web3’s core building blocks can be organized in a way to fundamentally reshape the future of work and talent organization. By curating an on-chain graph of a user’s prior achievements, RabbitHole can develop a system of verifiable credentials... Projects can then use these credentials on RabbitHole to locate the best future participants and contributors.

The future of work is one where those with proven on-chain participation on a crypto protocol will be rewarded for their contributions through ownership.

I'm excited to share with you what I discover as I myself go further down this crypto rabbit hole.

Cheers!

Richard