After IreneDAO: a world made for superfans

Wen Token, gm, Wen moon, yes ser – there’s no dearth of meme slang or crypto slogans in IreneDAO, a collection of non-fungible tokens on OpenSea. These NFTs, which feature a variety of crypto influencer Irene Zhao’s pictures superimposed on minty green backgrounds, have raked in over US$5 million since the collection launched in January.

IreneDAO’s unexpected success proved that there was a concrete way for creators to monetize content without being dependent on brand sponsorships or advertising gigs, which have so far dominated the influencer community.

As proof of concept for the fan economy, it’s also a glimpse of “what the creator economy would look like in the future,” say Zhao and Benjamin Tang, co-founders of Social Collectibles or So-Col, the startup behind IreneDAO.

The NFT collection also served as a slingshot for So-Col. In February, So-Col announced that it had raised US$1.75 million in a seed round co-led by DeFiance Capital and Animoca Brands. Three Arrows Capital, Mechanism Capital, and Double Peak Group are some of the investors who participated in the round.

Banking on the fan economy, investors and So-Col’s co-founders describe the startup as a consolidation of platforms like Patreon, Discord, and OnlyFans under a single ecosystem. So-Col seeks to shape the emerging social finance (SocialFi) space.

The Singapore-based startup is currently raising another round of funding and is soon expected to launch its own SocialFi platform, the co-founders tell Tech in Asia.

From no crypto to going all in

All revenue from sales of the IreneDAO NFTs go to the DAO’s treasury, say So-Col’s founders. “We don’t take any of that money.”

The duo met almost six years ago and became fast friends, even venturing into a number of brand partnerships with Zhao in front of the camera and Tang behind the lens. After stints in the startup space and a detour that saw Zhao work as a commodity broker and Tang at an investment bank, they banded together to form So-Col.

Zhao and Tang took a closer look into the crypto space only in late 2021. Up until then, Tang had no interest in building in the crypto space “because for a very long time, the only use case of crypto was to get rich.”

NFTs changed that. But for these tokens to reach mass adoption, people have to stop thinking of them as an investment, says Tang.

See more: Meet Singapore’s pioneering NFT creators

Besides offering creators a better way to earn and make room for interactions, So-Col’s platform will also simplify the process of buying NFTs, which, by most accounts, can be tedious.

It’s also hard for content creators to scale on platforms like OpenSea or Rarible. “If you want a little more flexibility on OpenSea, you’ll have to make the smart contracts yourself,” says Galen Law-Kun, founding partner at Double Peak Group. He adds that So-Col lets people build their own storefront, which offers not only redeemable benefits but also gives access to social benefits within the app.

NFT holders have the wheel

Banking on simps and community