Pirate: Positive-sum piracy
Back in October 2023, I published Original Pirate Material: A Manifesto for Positive-Sum Piracy onchain, and since then, I've been pondering how I could revise the narrative of digital piracy, "from one of roguery to one of radical inclusion and mutual benefit.”
Today, I'm introducing Pirate, an experiment in positive-sum piracy, and consumer crypto app, built on Zora rewards.
Why choose piracy?
Contrary to popular belief, musicians were actually better off when Napster was a thing. Pirated distribution often led to more record sales, more dates when touring and more fans buying merch. For both the artist and the fan, it cut out the middle man.
In a video titled Why Spotify Will Ultimately Fail by a renowned musician, YouTuber and data scientist, Benn Jordan described the above pay-per-stream chart as a "bait and switch, especially when Spotify subscriber growth looks like this:"
Streaming services clearly put consumers first and their suppliers last. Yet according to Parks Associates research, piracy will cost streaming services $113 Billion in losses by 2027. Whether it’s torrenting or password sharing:
- all information wants to be free, and
- artists still need to get fucking paid.
And no, this ain’t a dichotomy. Free as in freedom. What I’m proposing is a vampire attack on the incumbents, to bring artists onchain, the same way Napster brought them online. As the late Steve Jobs once said, "better to be a pirate than join the navy.”
Why back a pirate?
Pirates ship. Pirate will set sail soon, in the aggressively simple form factor of "one-click piracy." Pirated copies of anything. Deployed by anyone. Collected by everyone. Rewards claimable by the original creators only. Paid out in ether.
Imagine you're first to pirate a track. The artist sees $X in mint proceeds, verifies media ownership, scribbles a signature, and the associated token metadata updates with their autograph. Depending on who they are, you'd expect the secondary market to react accordingly.
Powered by Zora rewards, not only does the artist withdraw $X, they also get trading fees from the Uniswap pool, forever. As for the Pirates, one of them earned a % of mint proceeds, while others earned a % for mint referrals.
Infinite treasure hunt
Pirate is effectively a never-ending, collaborative treasure hunt, encouraging communities to discover new content through Decentralised Piracy (DePi) incentives. In practice, it's a headless Zora client, powered by their protocol rewards model, with subsequent collecting and trading happening natively on their app.
Pirates bring unique URLs onchain, as cards, analogous to embedded link previews with stylised metadata (not actual piracy). They're rewarded for bringing the pirated copies onchain. Small portions of the associated rewards also go to the Pirate team, seed the Uniswap pool, and pay the Zora fee. The majority are held in escrow for original creators to claim once privy to their bounty:
- Creator reward ✧ 55 → Escrow
- Mint referrer ✧ 22 → Reflinks etc
- Create referral ✧ 11 → Pirate team
- Secondary market ✧ 11 → Uniswap
- Mint fee ✧ 11 → Zora company
Rewards are per mint and quoted in Sparks (✧), a new Ether denomination imagined by Zora, where ✧ 1,000,000 = 1 ETH. How the original creators qualify to claim is by authenticating they're the controller of a given URL (or slug) minted. I'm working with Coinvise, who are leaders in offchain authentications for onchain claims. Fun fact: I'm #2 ranked user (all-time).
To keep things interesting (and nounish) I plan on attacking this collaboratively and documenting the entire journey. Nick Hollins, the founder of UFO (see above screenshot) invited me to launch a show as part of their onchain network. I've decided to accept the offer and will be bringing Pirates Ship to the airwaves. As well as sharing my journey, I'll be speaking with other builders who would "rather be a pirate than join the navy."
Pirate is more than a one-off experiment—it’s a replicable framework for content creators across all forms of media: music, art, books, videos, and more. With Nouns’ support, we can start a cultural movement in positive-sum piracy.
The ship's captain
I'm Gami, an Australian entrepreneur and early Nouns contributor. I purchased my first Noun (189) on January 27, 2022, and was awarded Noun 13 for my contributions in November 2023. Here's a few in summary:
- Gnars: headless action sports accelerator and nounish sub-cult launched Feb 2022
- Raffle: provably fair NFT raffle protocol used in Forgeries to give away Noun 401
- Contributed to proposals 51, 164, 165, 189, 231, 260, 266, 269, 363, 382, 393, 402
- Contributed 215.9 ETH to the Nouns treasury purchasing Nouns 189, 401 and 542
- Podcasts with UFO, Web3 Galaxy Brain, UFO, Defire, Mint, and Independent Reserve
Maiden voyage
I'm requesting 13 stETH to embark on my maiden voyage as an AI content tidal wave approaches. Crypto could be the difference between authenticity and anarchy. I see provocative new ideas, such as positive-sum piracy, presenting an opportunity to accelerate crypto adoption before the wave crashes upon us. Public good.
Pirate is our vessel, and with Nouns as co-captain, we can chart a new course "of radical inclusion and mutual benefit.” Pioneers can unlock a free Pirate NFT for early access:
- Join the /piracy channel on Warpcast
- Repost announcement on X and in /nouns
- Subscribe with email on claim page
Please reach out if interested in collaborating with me on this.
Fair winds to ye️.
