Nigel Eccles is the CEO and co-founder of @vaultapp_, and the co-founder of @starstock, @betdexlabs, and @fanduel.

I’ve been building consumer applications for over 20 years. But I can’t say that I have ever been as excited as I am today about the future of the creator economy.

Why? Because we are at the beginning of an explosion of creativity driven by the convergence of two powerful, symbiotic forces: creators and crypto.

Web2 sparked an explosion of creators. Today we estimate that over 50 million people earn their living as creators. They are posting videos on YouTube, sharing music on Spotify, publishing newsletters on SubStack, populating every algorithm and ad-fueled platform on your phone today.

There’s just one problem: Many of them are miserable.

Success as a creator comes with a price: If you want your success to continue, you can never stop creating. You are stuck on the treadmill, a slave to the algorithm. Relevance, subscribers, revenue… they all demand that you keep posting.

One of the earliest and most powerful examples of this is Michelle Phan.

Michelle Phan started on YouTube around 2007. Over 10 years, she built up an enviable following and accumulated over a billion views. She launched a company and inked major advertising partnerships. She was the very definition of success.

And then — she disappeared. Her posts just stopped coming. People genuinely thought she had died.

It wasn’t until two years later that she posted a video about it: Why I Left.

If you care about the creator economy and the talented people that drive it, I recommend watching the full video. But there is a key moment for we that defines everything that is wrong with the creator economy as it exists today:

“Once I was a girl with dreams, but then I became a product and I was just selling.”

Web2 is detrimental to creators. There are many reasons for this — advertising and subscription-based business models, devastating algorithm changes, and much more.

But at the end of the day, we often overlook one simple fact: Web2 is not built for the creative process.

The creative process is not about continually pushing out content. Nor is about constantly seeking relevance. If you try, the outcomes are often a decline in quality and / or creator burnout.

NFTs, however, fit much better with the way creativity actually works.

NFTs allow you to ideate, to reflect on what you’re going to build, and then deliver it. And then, after you’ve launched an NFT, you can rest.

The best part? Thanks to secondary royalties, you’ll keep earning while you rest. Punk6529 put it best:

This is just one of the reasons why we’ve seen an incredible explosion of NFTs and incredible interest from creators. Just look at the numbers.

OpenSea grew from tiny sales volume in early 2021 to doing billions of dollars per month in Ethereum sales alone.

This data doesn’t include sales from other L2s or other L1s like Solana. All in, the NFT space generated $10.67 billion in trading volume during 3Q2021, an increase of 704% from the previous quarter.

The great thing here is that 90 to 95% of that value is going straight back to creators. NFTs are a phenomenal unlock for creator value.

But there’s another problem: NFTs don’t work for all creators.

At least not yet. Let me give you an example.

You may know the artist Grimes. She is a multi-talented, multi-award winning artist and musician who has released five albums with millions of listeners and followers across social media.

Grimes dropped a phenomenal NFT release back in February 2021. All 303 copies sold out in under 20 minutes for a list price of $7,500 each. This is incredible work from an incredible artist. But how is this art performing over time? On secondary markets, these NFTs have seen an 84% drop in value.

And Grimes is not alone. Steve Aoki, the award-winning DJ with 16 million monthly listeners on Spotify, released the character X NFT collection in March 2021 for $2,500 each. It’s an incredible NFT… but it has seen a 60% drop in value. And that’s if you can even sell it — sales volume has essentially dropped to zero.

Now, these are not cash grabs. These are bonafide artists trying to create something innovative using new technology that they want to see appreciate in value. So what’s the problem?

In my view, here are the fundamental flaws with NFTs as they exist today:

1. We have failed to unlock the power of NFTs for all creators in their medium of choice. NFTs today work well for graphic artists… but for writers? For musicians? For filmmakers? For educators? For athletes? We need NFT technology that supports multi-media NFT technology, all in one place.
2. NFTs tell static stories. Today, NFTs are limited to a piece of work at a point in time. They prevent creators from unveiling work over time, from growing and evolving, and from surprising and delighting fans with new moments and experiences. We need to give creators the ability to do what they do best — tell stories and create experiences — that can grow and change with them.
3. NFTs are not mobile friendly. Sure, you might pull up your NFTs on your phone at a party. But that’s where today’s real-world NFT experiences end. We need to create optionality where NFTs can coexist with — and better yet, enhance — the real-world art experiences we enjoy today, like going to a concert, visiting a museum, shopping at a mall, and much more. In my view, that means building NFT technology with a mobile-first mentality.

Building the Future of Fandom on Blockchain

I believe in the power of creators, and I believe in the power of crypto. That’s why I’m proud to be building VAULT, an NFT creator platform on the Solana blockchain.

We’re on a mission to empower all creators to use the power of web3 to share and monetize their work — in any medium.

Unlike subscription or ad-based platforms, VAULT gives creators full control over their content, their business, and their fan experience.

Here’s how it works:

• The Vault platform allows creators to create a vault full of exclusive content — think behind-the-scenes content, photos, videos, music, messages, and more.
• Vaults can only be unlocked by the holders of a key. The twist? The keys are fully tradable NFTs. A fan buys a key to unlock the Vault and access the content inside.
• The creator sets the price and number of keys to their Vault, giving them control over rarity and exclusivity. And creators can add content to their Vault over time, offering a more valuable fan connection compared to a single NFT.
• Because the keys are NFTs, creators earn each time a key gets sold. Creators also earn a royalty every time a key gets re-sold on secondary markets, creating a perpetual revenue stream.‍

Whether you are a musician on tour, an artist creating a new collection, a writer publishing a chapter a day from your new book, or an NFT artist offering an exclusive preview of your new project, VAULT opens up a whole new way for you to unlock the value of your work and share it with fans.

And we’re just getting started. Let me know what you like to see the change in the creator economy in 2022 and beyond. You can find me on Twitter (@nigeleccles) and you can learn more about VAULT at the links below.

• **Twitter: **@vaultapp_
• **Website: **vault.fan
• Interested in creating on VAULT? Join our Creator Beta by emailing us at [email protected] or sending us a DM on Twitter.