creators and builders era

the rise of creator economy and mini apps

Jul 28, 2025

2025 is a huge year for the creator economy. From social media monetizations to AI vibe coding, there hasn’t been a better time to be a creator, despite your location.

While the race for the next big social media website intensifies, crypto-native platforms seem to have cracked the code in onboarding creators. First, it started with the infoFi narrative with Kaito democratizing content creation on X using a solid incentive model for both projects and creators alike.

Then, it’s now morphing into the tokenized content with Base App and Zora frontrunning it.

Coinbase built Base App to make Web3 easier. It connects to Farcaster and Zora without extra steps. Before you needed a separate wallet and marketplace. Now you open Base App and do it all. You can chat, trade crypto, and mint creator tokens in one place. Minting costs under fifty cents. Gas fees on Base remain low.

Base App combines a wallet, a layer‑2 network, and a suite of dapps. It’s made to feel familiar, so people spend less time learning and more time creating or trading. And with its low fees and Coinbase support, it lowers the barrier for both creators and traders. That’s why it’s fueling so much new activity on Zora right now.

Now, here’s the catch. Zora lets you turn each piece of content into a token. Your main token is your Creator Coin. For instance, if your handle is @paul your core token is $paul. Each post you make becomes its own token that ties back to $paul.

You choose how many copies to mint and set a price. Then you list them for sale or auction. Buyers can hold or trade those post tokens. They also earn trading fee rewards when someone swaps those tokens.

All statistics on Zora are on the upward trajectory, from new posts to trading volume to trading fees. Interestingly, the Zora token has done about 865%+ in the last 30 days - that screams product-market fit.

Old platforms like YouTube or Instagram keep most of the revenue. They pay creators less than half the value they generate. Here, creators can see their share directly on-chain. You know exactly how many tokens sold and how much you earned. You get paid whenever someone swaps your post token. You do not wait for monthly ad payouts or external accounting.

The Rise of the Mini-Apps

If you want distribution, there has never been a better time to be a crypto builder. Let’s start with Worldcoin, the human network. Currently, they have 30 million users, with about 14 million unique users. And they recently had a new all-time high of 1.55 million mini-app users.

These are numbers to easily bootstrap any idea and scale.

Not just that, the newly launched Base App is also calling for mini-app builders to start creating and testing. They launched a $200k rewards campaign to reward based on your app’s usage in July/August.

Coinbase already has the numbers, so distribution is certain. These ecosystems offer support too for builders, and sometimes, marketing.