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A letter to Hypersub
Key Takeaways
Through Hypersub, the Fabric team is enabling creators to think differently on how to approach community building, patronage, & monetization.
The primary goal for my creator journey is to prioritize being a full stack onchain creator. We're in the first mile of onchain marketing. My mission is to try experimenting with new models for growth & monetization that are unique and utilize the new suite of creator tooling.
Yesterday, I launched a Hypersub called Terminally Onchain! If you're active in the OP stack & Farcaster ecosystem (Zora, Base, Optimism), then I highly recommend checking out the membership perks on the page.
Call to Action: If you have been enjoying my writing and creator journey so far, I would love for you to check out Terminally Onchain and support if you find the value proposition and experiment interesting!
Hypersub is a product that enables creators to generate recurring revenue through time bound NFT subscriptions.
The product creates a new canvas for creators to innovate on the traditional patronage, crowdfunding, and subscription model. Having the subscriptions onchain makes it possible for creators to try out a variety of mechanisms to interact with their audience and bring new kinds of value for their community.
In the past month, Hypersub has been gaining a ton of momentum. I visit the website almost everyday and it's wild to see how many new creator pages have been popping up.
Many folks in the Farcaster ecosystem are experimenting with unique models for their pages. There's a variety of parameters to mess around with here, for example:
What's the price point for the subscription? Low price could mean volume, but high price could lead to quality subscribers
Is there a cap on the number of subscriptions? How much does scarcity matter for your offering?
What % of revenue are you willing to share with subscribers? Is it worth sharing a high % and using it as a marketing tactic to drive growth?
Do you think referrals are a good strategy? If so, what does a good referral reward rate look like...how much is too much?
And most importantly, what exactly are you offering? Is it purely a patron hypersub (i.e. buy me a coffee)? Or are you trying to provide value or financial upside of some sort for your subscribers?
The point is that there's no one right answer here and the opportunities for creators to come up with interesting ideas are endless.
Many of the hypersubs out there right now are awesome - I'm personally subscribed to 5 different creators and have been loving the output so far.
I've been trying to learn as much as I can from these initial Hypersub models to better understand how I can approach my own.
Here are 3 examples of Hypersubs that caught my attention. They're all different models and approach the concept of subscriptions & value add in unique ways.
Hypersub Examples
No subscription cap
Cheaper price point
Art and airdrop focused
Only 3 subscriptions
High price point ($8800)
Serves as a pseudo employment contract for Design work
Capped at 69 people, 0.008 eth per month
The goal is to make an intimate group that interacts with Ted on a more personal level and gets access to fun perks such as IRL meetups, token gated chat & essays, etc.
I thought it was so cool that her club met up in person to have a Topics of Controversy discussion around crypto casinos and degen activity.
Terminally Onchain
Okay, so what model did I end up taking? What is Terminally Onchain?
Well, let me give you some context first.
When I started my creator journey, I always assumed I would be following the typical newsletter route: get a ton of subscribers and then either do sponsors at the top of my posts or charge for premium content.
But here's the thing. Folks like Ben Thompson, Packy McCormick, Lenny Ratchitsky, etc. have been doing that for years now. And they're so freaking good at it.
The truth is...I don't think doing traditional sponsorships for my small hyper niche community makes sense. There's nothing unique about it and the total addressable market (TAM) for the content is too small! Every founder and creator needs to think about what their value proposition and arbitrage opportunity is.
For me, I believe that is embracing being a full stack onchain creator.
How can I create a model for growth and monetization that is unique and uses the new suite of tools crypto founders are building?
This past week, as I hit 1000 subscribers, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to structure my hypersub and what the path for monetization looked like.
It's still so early with onchain marketing that I don't even know how I'm going to grow my brand and make a living out of this.
BUT...I do know that whatever it ends up being, it'll be a new gap that I explore and make the most of. It's more interesting to innovate and create a new model that other creators are inspired to follow as well.
Imagine an onchain distribution strategy that is soooo good that I can make a compelling case for top Substack/Beehiiv creators to port over! That would be the real win.
We're still in the first mile of onchain marketing.
Crypto creator tooling is rapidly improving, but it's up to the early onchain creators to develop new playbooks for crypto native growth and distribution strategies.
Right now, the path ahead is not crystal clear but eventually "these gaps will seem obvious; it will seem inexplicable that no one has tried x or wondered about y" (Paul Graham).
And with that being said, I'd like to introduce...
Think of Terminally Onchain as a "ClassPass for OP Stack".
I will be working with creators & founders to bring all the hyper-subscribers first access to drops, discounted mints, announcements, and fun airdrops.
My mission is to make this hypersub a group of the most active collectors and contributors in the ecosystem.
The goal is for Terminally Onchain to be a no brainer launchpad for creators & founders in the space.
Each membership costs 0.0042 eth / month which comes out to ~$15.
I set my subscriber rewards to 4.2% meaning that's the revenue share that will be split amongst the community. And the referral reward is set to 5%.
In the first 12 hours of the launch, the community already raised over 1.7 eth ($6859)!
I'm feeling so grateful for everyone who decided to support me, it means more than you can imagine :)
With that being said, what exactly am I offering?
Well, as the saying goes, underpromise & overdeliver.
I kept my membership value add simple to start off with. This will let me do a high quality job from the get go and I can slowly add and iterate over time.
Membership
(Distribution-as-a-service) Once a month, if a hyper-subscriber wants to share a link for their brand/product/company, I will include it in Onchain Letters (Sunday's post). This can be an announcement, request for feedback, a new project, etc.
Onchain Letters currently has 1,000+ subscribers and 90% of them have their wallets connected. The average subscriber makes ~3 transactions every 24 hours.
Note: I have the right to reject if I think the link is spammy or malicious.
Weekly airdrop of a key takeaway from my newsletter. Think of these like Zora notes.
At least 1 Monthly partner perk: discounts, early access, etc. for Terminally Onchain subscribers.
The first partner perk will be with Neynar!
For those of you need a refresher, check out my letter to Neynar,
The Neynar team will be offering 10 lucky Terminally Onchain subscribers 2 months of free API access through an NFT promo code! If you're a winner and don't want it, you can always transfer the NFT to a friend :)
Other ideas I had for partnerships (note: these are not confirmed or discussed, just a brainstorm to show you what I'm thinking)
Bountycaster credits
Discounted subscription to SeeMore, Supercast, Airstack, etc.
Merch deals with Coinbase Commerce, Slice, Warpcast, etc.
Paragraph custom domain
To be honest, the ideas are endless. What's most important is making sure these collabs are done fully onchain and I hustle to keep thinking of creative ideas and partnerships for the community.
If you have been enjoying my writing and creator journey so far, I would love for you to check out Terminally Onchain and support if you find the value proposition and experiment interesting!
I'm excited to keep all of you updated on the progress and how things are going over the next few weeks!
If you have any questions or feedback, please reply to the e-mail and I'd be happy to discuss.
That's all for today's letter.
I hope you all have a great weekend!
- YB
