🎙 New Episode 🎙

Hi, it’s Dana. Writing to let you know about our latest podcast episode, available now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

How can brands and creators monetize their work without competing in the “Attention Economy?”

This week, our guest on Web 2.5 is Julien Genestoux, the Founder and CEO of Unlock, a web3 protocol for memberships and loyalty.

Julien was motivated to find a way to avoid the “Attention Economy,” the rat race in which brands and creators are forced to compete for attention by publishing a never-ending stream of divisive content. Instead, he sees an opportunity to empower these brands and creators with tools to monetize their work through memberships.

As a result, Julien and his team are building Unlock, an open-source protocol that enables anyone to create, manage, and distribute membership contracts by leveraging the blockchain in the background. With a simple interface to create an NFT-based membership using self-set parameters, Unlock gives developers, brands, creators, and platforms the ability to offer unique benefits and experiences to their fans and followers by “membershipifying” anything.

In this episode, we will discuss what a protocol even is, how Unlock works and makes membership creation super seamless, and some broader themes and trends that Julien sees for memberships and loyalty in web3.

Here’s a clip from this week's show:

Season 2 Sponsor

🙏 Shout out to our Season 2 sponsor Hang, a web3-powered, no-code customer engagement platform. If you let them know you heard about them on Web 2.5, they will also waive their $10K implementation fee 🙏

Show Notes

0:00 Episode announcement

0:33 Show intro

1:19 Julien’s intro and career prior to web3

5:55 Julien explains how the “Attention Economy” is unhealthy

7:15 Julien’s take on how the “Attention Economy” can be remedied with the “Membership Economy”

10:13 Julien explains what is Unlock and what is a protocol

16:51 Julien shares use cases for Unlock

18:17 How to customize a membership on Unlock

19:59 Sponsored message from Hang

23:11 Why Unlock was created

24:32 Julien explains what it means for a protocol to be community-owned and governed

26:08 How DAOs are used as incentives for Unlock

27:30 How Unlock generates revenue while being community-owned and governed

29:12 Julien shares his ideas on the future of social media and how Unlock can be leveraged in those spaces

31:54 Julien details why a decentralized platform is better

33:07 Julien’s opinion on the most misunderstood part of web3 and decentralization

34:53 Julien shares his vision of success

35:43 Shill

36:43 Wrap-up

36:53 Closing

Show Resources

Unlock’s Website

Unlock on Twitter

Flocker’s Website

Julien’s Website

Julien on Twitter

Julien on LinkedIn

DISCLAIMER: This content is strictly educational. None of this is financial, tax, or investment advice — and not a solicitation to buy or sell assets or make financial decisions. Please always do your own research. For important disclosures, see www.web2point5.io/disclosures.