Livepeer 2023 grantee MadFi is on a mission to make creativity pay.

Influencer marketing on Web2 social media platforms has become essential to brands, making content creators more important than ever. The reason is simple: people trust other people more than they trust businesses. So they listen when those they admire or relate to tell them something is worth buying.

The global influencer market is now worth some $21.1 billion, more than twice its 2019 level, and one-quarter of marketers in the United States regularly turn to influencers.

And yet nearly half of those who call themselves creators earn $15k or less a year. Since most Web2 platforms do not share ad revenue with influencers, creatives instead must rely on sponsorship deals, often with opaque terms and inefficient processes and payment methods.

Frustrated by this status quo, MadFi Co-founders Carlos Beltran and Nathan Mueller built a suite of tools designed to democratize access to advertising revenue.

MadFi got its start in March 2022, when it won the LFGrow hackathon, a contest aimed at developing apps for the Lens Protocol, a decentralized social media platform, by making it possible for creators to earn by renting NFTs for their Lens posts to fans.

From that modest beginning, MadFi has grown into a fully fledged next-generation multimedia marketing platform that offers on-chain payments and analytics, verifiable attribution, AI-generated creative content, and clear avenues for content monetization.

With MadFi’s Subscriptions tool, creators can earn recurring revenue in USDC by offering monthly subscriptions or by setting up transparent brand sponsorships.

There is also an easy-to-use interface that allows creators to set up token-gated access to livestreams. Creators issue special NFTs that allow admission to streamed events: a great way to reward fan loyalty or earn one-off income.

MadFi’s Smart Posts further boost the revenue potential for creators by drawing upon Lens’s Open Actions feature. Open Actions allow any publication on Lens to be assigned a custom action, making it possible for sponsors and advertisers to reward creators for actions taken during a stream (e.g. mirrors/comments). It also enables the minting of NFTs right from the livestream page.

MadFi’s Bounties, a feature that links marketing agencies and brands with creators, are also helping to rebalance the sponsorship model in creators’ favor.

To find a creator, a sponsor creates a bounty that sets out what they’re looking for and the budget they’re willing to pay. They then deposit the amount pledged (in any whitelisted ERC20 token), and invite creators to submit bids.

MadFi’s dashboard displays all live bounties for creators, who submit bids according to the parameters set by the sponsor. MadFi even provides an AI Assist button for creatives who want to use ChatGPT to help with the creative process.

Once all the bids are in, the sponsor simply accepts the one that works for them. Once the successful bidder’s post goes live, the payment is transferred from escrow to the creator’s wallet address.

The whole process is safer and more transparent for all parties: sponsors know they are getting quality work in advance and creators are guaranteed payment.

Sponsors can find out which creator’s bids translated directly into on-chain sales through the MadFi attribution engine. By tracking and verifying sales conversions, MadFi’s infrastructure helps ensure that creators get proper credit – and compensation – for the impact their content has on sales.

Sponsors can reward community-generated content with sponsored sticker NFTs: fun, easy-to-create on chain status badges.

And MadFi hasn’t forgotten the value that fans bring to the influencer game.

It now offers Social Club Badges, non-transferrable NFTs that allow creators to spot their biggest fans and reward them for their support. If the creator has a following on Friendtech, Sound, or any creator-oriented protocol, they can reward those supporters as well. When a supporter interacts with a post, they earn points.

Rewards can be anything from merchandise to exclusive access to video streams or other content. Or creators can choose to share their revenue from Bounties or other protocols with badgeholders, based on how many points they have. And if a creator is sponsored by a protocol that wishes to distribute their own token as an incentive, they can base this on MadFi’s on chain loyalty data.

The massive influencer economy would be nowhere without its three pillars: creators, sponsors, and fans.

With MadFi, all three can at last be properly rewarded.

Stay tuned for even more great features when V2 launches at the start of 2024!