What works (and doesn’t) in an NFT-backed newsletter
Silphwave / Dirt Funding a media outlet is a tricky business, and in recent years, some journalists have looked toward the cryptocurrency world to do it. That includes Dirt, an entertainment newsletter co-founded by Kyle Chayka and Daisy Alioto in late 2020. Dirt has raised money since launch by selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and earlier this week, it announced plans to work those NFTs into a decentralized autonomous organization or DAO - giving its audience input into where Dirt spends its money.
Dirt isn't the first blockchain-based media outfit. In 2017, for instance, a project called Civil funded a panoply of websites using its own cryptocurrency token. But Civil collapsed after a difficult launch and initial funding that quickly ran dry....