Farewell, Substack
Tokenized access vs. subscriptions
This is my last post on Substack and the beginning of a new journey on open platforms.
For years, creators have been trying to figure out how to build sustainable businesses online. On Instagram, the playbook is to build a following, get sponsorships, and then launch your own merch brand. On SubStack, the playbook is to pick a niche topic, become the expert, and launch your own subscription.
For myself, I have written this newsletter for two years, initially starting with non-fungible tokens in crypto.
Picking a niche allowed me to grow my audience and make a name for myself. But there’s this awkward “messy middle” where a creator realizes that they don’t want to be limited to “being that person who does X.” It happens all the time for YouTube creators or even Twitch streamers. If Twitch streamers make a name for themselves playing a game, a fan might get upset if the streamer starts streaming a different game. The streamer then may feel forced to play the original game, often leading to burnout.
At the beginning of the newsletter, I felt like I “needed” to write about NFTs, because that’s what my audience signed up for. Once I stopped writing about NFTs, my readership dropped. But I was happier. By writing about whatever I wanted, I felt like I could unleash my creativity and just “jam” about whatever I wanted. That’s why I renamed my newsletter to “Jamm Session.”
Eventually, I decided I wanted to write about the intersection between crypto and creators. What better way to document the journey than to write about what you’re building and dogfood it at the same time.
And so I kept writing about this newsletter, thinking about what the end goal was. It didn’t feel right to launch a subscription for my newsletter because I was unsure what the price of my writing was worth. Ultimately, a subscription gave a path to reward readers for the past two years with $JAMM. The subscription was a bridge between the platform and the community, a transition from being a reader of this newsletter to a member of a community.
The past few months have demonstrated that membership is powerful. OnDeck is a good example of this. OnDeck isn’t a subscription: it’s a one-time membership fee to get access to a community with benefits.
But the problem with the membership model is that you need exclusivity to drive quality - and so you end up having scaling issues later on. You start to misalign as you hit scale. But there’s a solution to this - in the form of tokenized memberships.
Tokenized memberships give existing community members skin-in-the-game, creating an opportunity for them to contribute to make the group more valuable. Members are no longer just consuming the benefits of the membership, but they’re working to make the community more valuable for all participants. And tokens increase that opportunity by giving everyone a way to make the community valuable.
That’s the missing piece with creators and communities today. Ownership in a community directly aligns incentives while giving superfans the ability to contribute and increase the value themselves.
That’s what $JAMM believes in.
The $JAMM manifesto
What is $JAMM? Well, let me start by saying what $JAMM isn’t:
$JAMM is not my personal token
$JAMM is not future revenue of my newsletter
$JAMM is a membership to a community of crypto-natives. We’ve done it before. We’ve been there. We’re searching for meaning while we build really cool shit.
This newsletter will be the beginning to cover that journey of the community which I’ll write every week. The only way you’ll be able to access the newsletter is by holding $JAMM. For now, that number is 1000 $JAMM, but in the future, the community can change that number through a vote.
With $JAMM, you’re not just getting access to content, you’re getting access to new products, and exclusive drops every month. Think of it as like a StitchFix for digital products.
But the real asset that you’re getting is whatever the $JAMM community creates.
Think of $JAMM like a treasure map for communities. We know there are templates out there that can work for communities, just like tokenized telegram channels. A tokenized newsletter (and maybe even publication) might be another template that works. But $JAMM is going to be experimenting with these models first.
$JAMM is a search for those templates. When we have a new template that exists, we can plug it into the $JAMM ecosystem. $JAMM will exist between multiple interfaces and platforms.
So I invite you on this journey of trying to find which of these templates that work while experimenting with the community. Signing off from Substack and into the new open digital world.
The newsletter will continue on a tokenized access version of Ghost starting next week. You will need $JAMM to continue to access the newsletter. Paying subscribers will continue to receive Jamm Session in their inbox.
P.S. After I launched my paid subscription for Substack, Stripe cut me off for rewarding my subscribers, so unfortunately it’s no longer possible to subscribe.
Long live open platforms.
If you have any questions about the migration or $JAMM, feel free to DM me on telegram @flynnjamm
Should we cancel subscriptions here on Substack then?