Arming adult creators with NFTs
Porn is not a collectible, but certainly a good investment
We couldn't say that it’s boring to work in the adult industry. We had some interesting times since we released Flames on Uniswap in July.
And, like always, we also learned a lot. For example about the Porn-NFT craze. Looking at all the big stories about porn and NFT, NFTs are not working very well with porn. And the reason is that porn is not a collectible. But porn is certainly a good investment — and there lays the real use case for NFTs in porn. But later more about that…
Let’s do some recap and also an outlook into what’s gonna happen throughout autumn and winter.
Sharesome is growing and getting better by the day
Our main focus was always and will always be Sharesome. We’ve been coding, moderating, and rolling out new features throughout the year.
At the end of September, we rolled out Sharesome v20 that brought us Sharesome Pro containing an ad-free app experience, a special profile badge, and priority support. Sharesome Pro is available through a subscription service for 1,000 Flame Credits a month, or 10,000 Flame Credits a year.
We also implemented a tab for original content (OC) on the newsfeed. Now you can easily filter OC posts from people and topics you follow, as well as discover new OC recommended for you. We want to give OC more visibility on Sharesome and make it easier to discover creators.
But the new feature also had a positive impact on engagement. Together with the Best of the Day Feed and the Newsfeed, the total page views increased with the new OC Feed around 10%.
Sharesome now also remembers your scroll position in feeds, so that you can return where you left off.
Compared with 1 year ago in September 2020, the amount of Monthly Active Users (MAU) grew more than 30% to around 1.6M in September 2021. Also, the general activity on Sharesome grew by around 70% and reached now over 20M page views per month.
#SharesomeLove
And while we are working on new features for the platform, we want you all to #SharesomeLove in real life too.
That works certainly best with a Sharesome or Flame shirt that you can order now in our brand new love-store: https://sharesomelove.com/
We love you!
Meanwhile at the OnlyFans Headquarter: Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes…
OnlyFans, the subscription service website that is on track to generate $2B in revenue this year with adult content, announced at the turn of the month that it will block sexually explicit photos and videos from October 1.
“In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our platform, and continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines,” OnlyFans said in a statement.
After a lot of Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes, OnlyFans suspended the ban on sexually explicit content, only to later blame banks for the decision.
Let us be frank: OnlyFans would not exist without the labor of sex workers. Even more, it would not be a billion-dollar company without the labor of sex workers. The fact that OnlyFans turned on sex workers and tried to prohibit their use of the platform and to cast them out is unacceptable.
We already see a movement in the market. A lot of creators on Sharesome already replaced their OnlyFans with Fansly or other fansite alternatives.
Sharesome’s position in the market was always clear, as we wanted to close the gap between production and monetization with our content discovery platform. In light of the recent events, we are re-thinking that position and working on a possible path to building a one-stop-shop.
Arm the creators
Creators turned the adult industry upside down. The commoditization of business infrastructure means that any adult content creator can now transform their audience into a scalable empire.
Production? Check.
Discovery? In the making.
Monetization? Check.
Creators are the new powerhouse in the adult industry. Slowly everyone is realizing that the creator economy is here to stay and will replace the old gig-based economy.
There is only one thing left that distinguishes creators from traditional companies. While a company can raise millions of dollars in a few weeks, creators often struggle for years to build their audience and make ends meet to finally quit their day job and focus on content creation as a full-time job.
Right now, an OnlyFans creator with revenue lower than life costs, but higher than pocket money has very often only one option to quit a full-time job and focus on content creation: dept.
But it only works for small investments. You need a new camera and you know that OnlyFans pays out in 5 days? Go and leverage your credit card debt. But quitting your job and hoping that you cover rent and health insurance with your credit card limit — that is crazy. And going to a bank to take a loan is mission impossible. Banks separate customers into two categories: Consumer & business. Creators are neither, so they are underserved. Plus, adult content creators are vice-industry customers and have no standing at banks.
The next option is equity. Besides the fact that equity financing is like a tattoo (very hard to get rid of), adult content creators do not have exit scenarios that can make their investors rich. First, because there is no money floating in the adult industry — only out. Second, the best scenario is a steady stream of positive cash-flows and not a 10–20x multiple IPO.
The most likely option for creators is a model that is based on future revenue. That means creators taking an investment in return for a percentage of the creator’s income and the IP they generate over a certain amount of time.
Technically that could be built with fractionalized NFTs.
This option would theoretically be best suited for up-and-coming creators who would need ~$50k to focus 100% on their content for about a year and see if they can make it as full-time creators.
We are working on a whitepaper for an NFT-based creator crowdfunding solution where creators can basically tokenize themselves on Sharesome.
The crypto train has left the station
While Facebook is still struggling to launch its native cryptocurrency Diem, we started to roll out Flame Tokens in July on the Ethereum blockchain. Right now XFL has more than 8,000 hodlers and is already integrated into Trust Wallet and Token Pocket.
But we also have bad news: The launch of our Uniswap v3 LP program failed. Unfortunately, we couldn't launch the necessary smart contract for the staking on Unsiwap v3. Technically the staker was ready, but the frontend is still a work in progress. After weeks of waiting, we pulled the plug and will move the project to Sushiswap.
We will announce the new roadmap asap. Meanwhile, follow Flame here:
Flame Token homepage: https://flametoken.io/
Sharesome: https://sharesome.com/FlameToken/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FlameToken
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/XEeBD5cPJY
Telegram: https://t.me/flametoken
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/flametoken
Medium: https://medium.com/flametoken
Best regards
Ralf Kappe, Flame CEO & Founder
https://sharesome.com/RalfKappe/
https://twitter.com/RalfKappe
