I'm finding the "positive sum" language around coins really misleading.

It's literally the opposite. If the way users make money from their content is when other users buy it, it's literally zero sum, financially. Not everyone can be making money, unless external capital is being injected from a another source (which is losing money).

I think this misses the bigger picture. 

if you treat coins purely as a closed system with buyers and sellers, it looks zero sum. but that ignores the fact that attention and discovery are not fixed resources.

the “positive sum” comes not from everyone making magic internet money, but from the system enabling value to emerge where there was none before.

leads to better discovery, better content, and more people opting in, that is net positive. also remember that money is infinite, and if not injected here, its injected elsewhere.

totally fair to be skeptical. but i’d argue the key difference here is skin in the game. traditional attention signals (likes, shares, comments) are cheap and often gamed through bots. this model forces users to back their attention with actual capital, even if small. that creates a higher fidelity signal.

yes, there will be gaming. there always is. but paid markets tend to resist noise better than free ones. and while there is a rake here, remember that there is always a rake somewhere in any system. nothing is free.

i do not think its perfect. but opens space for some new incentive structures.

Does it though. I understand the theory. But in practice. I envision more trickle up. And gaming. 

By those who can. 

How is this different than other attention to signal. This one is just paid attention. With a nasty rake by the protocol.

building @emptyblock / prev director of research @coinmetrics

Are these users in the room with us right now? 

I’d love to know who you’re referring to

it is happening.

users with an audience are making $.

no platform is going to pay you if you don’t have a mix of audience/influence.

This is all nice in theory. But just not really true in practice 

Look at the data. None of what you’re describing is actually happening

see all that SOUNDS cool but no one is dying to use zora or tba. this can prolly be applied to some other app in the future. 

also everytime something pops off "sofi" wise, dan just steals it and adds it to farcaster which i appreciate.

check the Collectable on FC. Is there really "better discovery" there? I'd argue the most "valuable" casts are those that already get the most attention on the network

only way for coins to not be zero-sum is if value is created in the system and demand flows toward that value. Speculative value isn't real value