$ZORA reached a historical high on August 12 after rising nearly 10 times over 20 consecutive days, with a 24-hour increase close to 50%, and a circulating market cap nearing 480 million USD. Perhaps it is due to the listing of perpetual contracts on Binance or the surge in user momentum and trading volume after the integration of the Base App. The strong rise and Coinbase's active promotion even led to community members jokingly referring to it as having been 'officially adopted' as an official token.
Regardless of how the driving factors are dissected, this round of price increase, coupled with the previous debate between the founders of Base and Solana on this issue, once again brings the focus on 'content/creator coins' to the forefront. What exactly has it done? What opportunities can we find in its ecosystem?
Is Zora's rise driven by 'content' or institutional promotion?
Zora's new paradigm is that each creator has 1 Creator Coin (total supply of 1 billion, 50% vested linearly to creators over five years); at the same time, each post is also a 'content coin', whose pool is paired with creator coins and then with $ZORA. To reduce the three-step exchange friction from 'USDC→content coin', Zora introduces solutions like 0x aggregation on the routing side, enhancing the flow access efficiency from fiat entry to content assets. Creators take a 1% fee from each transaction, establishing direct incentives for continuous creation.
The benefit of this model is that, compared to launch platforms like Pumpfun that need to 'carefully plan' to create a setup and attract 'attention' through wealth effect tokens, Zora's approach is different. Their strategy is to 'first increase the quantity'; issuing tokens on Zora seems less burdensome. Each 'post/token' is paired with creator tokens, and the 'value of content' gradually increases under the overall account, allowing Zora's token issuance to reach over 2 million in a short time, while its trading pairs with Zora have explosively increased Zora's adoption.
From the chart, it can be seen that Zora's adoption is positively correlated with its price increase, source: Messari
Pumpfun has currently issued about 12 million tokens, with a daily increase of about 20,000 to 30,000 tokens. Zora has currently issued 2 million tokens, with a daily increase of about 35,000 to 55,000 tokens, while Pumpfun's DAU remains above 100,000, and Zora currently has only 35,000 creators (DAU 10,000 to 20,000), resulting in a tenfold difference in the proportion of tokens produced per user between the two. Although not comprehensive, this means that in terms of token quantity alone, Zora generates a network effect 10 times that of Pumpfun for every new user.
In the past month, with the release of the new Base App, it gradually connects Zora, Farcaster, and Noice, with Zora responsible for 'turning content into tradable assets' (Creator Coin / Post Coin), and Noice responsible for 'social distribution and tipping' (USDC/multi-currency tips, direct payments within the timeline), forming a closed loop of 'creation—distribution—monetization' within the same user interface of Base.
After the integration of Zora into the Base App, creators can mint, trade, and receive payments without switching platforms; Noice announced on July 27 that it has integrated Zora, providing a lightweight monetization mechanism of 'one like, one tip'. The combined effect compresses the previously scattered links of 'posting / wallet / DEX / tipping tools' into a single entry point, improving conversion rates and retention.
On one hand, there is the growth of communication channels, and on the other hand, the improvement of the creator system. Additionally, Zora and Base officials are actively recruiting artists and content creators from outside the circle to join the platform. SamandColby's Chief Operating Officer Kong Pham revealed that some Web2 content creators with large followings are about to flock to Zora and Farcaster. A series of actions have significantly increased Zora's MindShare on social media (1456%), and in this era where 'attention' equals 'opportunity', Zora seems to have found a growth method beyond 'pump and dump', which is making money at no cost (as seen in the flood of tweets on X where Base system creators earn money by posting).
In addition, Zora's influence distribution channels are also very numerous. Multiple platforms have integrated Zora's content coin dashboards or indicators, including indicators launched by indexy (the top 20 influential tokens/creators on Zora), Zoracle, Matcha, Zora Terminal, TBD, and others, while Slayed, the founder of Loudio, also announced plans to establish a Zora index fund to create a DAO that increases communication avenues for co-creators.
What tokens are there in the ecosystem?
zxbt
This 'autonomous AI artist' project is created by former Wall Street high-frequency traders and AI Builder dev0xx, generating an original artwork every day and automatically minting the corresponding content coin and NFT without human intervention. The key lies in the process and ideas of creation being distributed daily along with the final work. A recent interesting update is that Messari researcher Jake '@immutablejacob' suggested an artistic style direction for the next work on Twitter, sharing a painting in the style of Van Gogh. The AI creator dex0xx stated, 'ZXBT was initially very stubborn, but as the community demanded more diversity, it kept evolving. In this article, @zxbt_agent directly tagged a user in the description, sharing with us who influenced his art. In my opinion, the influence on each work's style should be allocated based on the influencer's impact.'
This means that each token/work it issues can be further disseminated through the 'recommendations or promotions' of more influential people, with this time Messari's researcher being one example. Meanwhile, zxbt itself can drive its artworks through more impactful aesthetics, and all the transformation processes can be seen on the official website and platform.
zxbt reached a market cap of 18 million USD, currently has a market cap of 13.8 million USD, with a trading volume of 290,000 USD in the last 24 hours and 1,400 holders.
FakeTaxi
FakeTaxi, a well-established adult content brand founded by Jonathan Todd and Lew Thomas in 2013, launched its first Creator Coin $FakeTaxi. The official statement indicated plans to migrate exclusive content to the Zora platform, replacing traditional social media venues. By burning a certain number of tokens while holding specific Zora NFTs, users can receive benefits such as actor voice greetings, custom selfies, exclusive behind-the-scenes videos, and even signed physical items. $FakeTaxi hopes to create continuous consumption scenarios through tokens, forming a naturally deflationary drive to create a new interactive experiment that deeply integrates adult entertainment with the Web3 fan economy.
Theoretically, this is not the first time these two fields have 'cooperated', but some community members believe that the successful business logic of Onlyfans can serve as a cautionary tale for content platforms like Zora, and this collaboration logic seems to also serve as a model for other related projects or creators entering Zora.
Faketaxi reached a market cap of 12.5 million USD, currently has a market cap of 7.36 million USD, with a trading volume of 148,300 USD in the last 24 hours and 1,184 holders.
Visualize Value
Visualize Value is a content and education platform operated by Jack Butcher, the initiator of well-known art NFT projects Opepen and Checks VV, essentially serving as a platform for his own artistic thinking to disperse. Through minimalist and insightful graphics and texts, it teaches people how to communicate ideas using graphic language, used to illustrate mental models, philosophical concepts, efficiency tools, and other abstract concepts.
Visualize Value reached a market cap of 16 million USD, currently has a market cap of 5.03 million USD, with a trading volume of 30,000 USD in the last 24 hours and 2,073 holders.
11AM
It is a live show driven by Seed Club, hosted by @thattallguy and @joshcrnls. The name '11AM' refers to the show starting promptly at 11 AM ET from Monday to Friday (Live M–F 11 am ET). The show emphasizes 'Early to narratives. Earlier to founders. Front-run the future.', meaning they are eager to engage with new creators and concepts before trends form. The show often invites industry experts, founders, and developers to discuss new trends in Web3 and the creator economy, with topics typically covering the Web3 creator economy, memecoins, creator coins, decentralized social, and on-chain communities.
11AM reached a market cap of 2.2 million USD, currently has a market cap of 1.83 million USD, but has low on-chain liquidity, with only 317 holders.
Zora's recent surge, whether driven by capital or product, reflects the same trend: content is becoming the core entry point for on-chain liquidity. From Zora's initiation to creator tokens and the tokens created by creators, the interconnected 'layered盘', coupled with the integrated circulation certificates of creation, distribution, and monetization, has altered Zora's valuation and narrative in the market.
From zxbt's algorithmic aesthetics to FakeTaxi's adult entertainment experiment, and to the social content expansion of Visualize Value and 11AM, these projects are not only a microcosm of the Zora ecosystem but also a potential future blueprint for the Web3 content economy. The next thing to be amplified may not be the market of a single token, but the overall explosion of the creator economy on-chain.