Blockchain enables brands to achieve a new level of growth by distributing digital assets to community members as a form of brand equity, empowering and financially rewarding emerging community leaders at scale. An online brand has distribution. An onchain brand has an economy.

Today, brands must go through web2 social media platforms in order to get connected to consumers and creators. Creators and consumers drive brand growth through content creation, community-building, and product purchases. Yet, media and distribution platforms like Amazon, Google, TikTok, and others capture most of the value, leaving consumers as subjects of monetization and creators with limited upside. YouTube is the most generous, giving creators at most 50% of the ad revenue their videos generate. The economic value that creators create for YouTube is taxed heavily and monopolistically.

Even though the brands, creators, and consumers are building the ecosystem, the major platforms end up winning. This phenomenon happens because everyone — the brands, the creators, the consumer — is a renter, and not an owner, of the network effect provided by media and advertising giants. “Renters” engage with distribution networks by contributing their attention and creativity for free in the form of likes and comments and content, where most of the value accrues to platforms who can sell this attention to brands that pay with advertising dollars. With blockchain and digital assets, creators and consumers become owners of the distribution networks themselves and brands can redistribute value directly to the users who care about them the most.

When you own something, like a house or company equity, you’re likely to nurture, improve it, and it becomes a part of your identity. You see this in practice when you compare between apartment renters versus homeowners, or contract workers versus company owners. Renters may overlook minor issues like paint chipping, knowing they will move out soon, whereas homeowners invest in property upkeep to maintain its value. Similarly, an employee with equity is more likely to go above and beyond, behaving like an owner, unlike a contract worker who only gets paid for discrete transactions. This is a key reason why Silicon Valley tech companies outperform many overseas IT corporations that haven’t adopted equity-based compensation structures.

Ownership enables autonomy, motivation, financial security. What’s exciting is that blockchain technology now gives us the capabilities to provide ownership native to the internet world, in a way that is more global, instant, and connected than ever before.

Let’s take a look at some of the fast growing onchain communities today and see what they have in common:

• Bitcoin — launched in 2009 right after a huge financial crisis with this message embedded in the genesis block: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”. Bitcoin has seen many market cycles, as is now worth over $90K USD per $BTC with a total market cap of $1.8T, with major financial institutions like BlackRock and Bitwise operating ETFs to allow people to trade the asset. Today there is a flourishing ecosystem of miners, custodians, advocates, traders, etc, all incentivized to build value in Bitcoin for the long term as co-owners of the network. Bitcoin gives you ownership over digital gold.

• Ethereum — launched in 2015 in order to allow developers to build decentralized applications. Current market cap is just under $400B, and has spawned a massive industry of dapps, infrastructure providers, brands, DeFi applications, L2 developer ecosystems, and more. Owning $ETH is like having digital oil and a share in growth of the decentralized internet.

• Pudgy Penguins — launched in 2021 and acquired by Luca Schnetzler in 2022 for $2.5M; is now one of the fastest growing IP and consumer crypto brands in the world with over 40B Giphy views and over 3M followers across social media platforms. Pudgy Penguin owners have founded impactful community groups like Pudgy SF and Pudgy Singapore, and are building businesses like the Vibes Trading Card Game that benefit from instant distribution across the Pudgy Penguin ecosystem. When $PENGU launched in Dec 2024, 70% of the $4B token was distributed directly to the community.

All of these onchain communities grew exponentially as new businesses, new transactions, and new customers onboarded by participating in ownership of the blockchain-based digital assets core to each community. By celebrating digital ownership, onchain brands allow individuals to emerge as leaders in digital economies, allowing creators to contribute and maintain creative flywheels of growth for the communities they love.