Bonsai.so - Patreon for Web3
The Problem: Centralized Closed Platforms
Whether it’s Patreon, OnlyFans, Teachable, Shopify, etc– they own your content, your audience, your business, and so they basically own you.
The Solution: Decentralized Open-Source Platforms
In the future, you will have a convenient open-source option. You will have the option of owning the software that you and your community use. You will own all of the rights to make the decision whether you want to run it on your own server, or pay somebody else to manage it for you. Either way, you own the full code repository and the database. You will own your business.
Key Differentiators
- Unlike Creaton, Bonsai gives you the option to pay in cash or other trades of value
- Unlike Patreon, Bonsai is open-source and web3 ready out of the box
Education
For now, I think going to focus on education as the foundation of the product. I know that you want Unlock Protocol to widely adopted, and I think more education on the topic will help. Especially in video form.
Bonsai DAO
I’m glad that I haven’t taken any investments yet, because a company like this needs to be formed as a DAO. Most traditional investors wouldn’t have allowed that. I would love to learn more about how you’ve structured Unlock DAO.
Focus
I’m going to focus on Patreon for now. I wasn’t focused enough in 2021. In 2022 I’m going to focus on a narrow vertical, rather than building a wide array of features. I will only add features when/if one of our grants receives interest, and I can find a good team to complete it.
Simple LMS
Patreon can be used as an LMS. But when people pay for content, I see little need in quizzing them. You give them the content they pay for, and if they value it, they will use it. That allows us to cut out most of the LMS functionality, and still use it as an LMS.
Freemium Content
Julien Genestoux from Unlock Protocol told me about a plan to allow people to unlock content with a Twitter follow or share. Also a Patreon OAuth integration. I see this as more of an OnlyFans feature where you can follow for free, then pay per individual post. Except instead of paying for individual posts, you could incentivize a visitor to unlock it with a subscribe, follow, share, comment, etc. It’s almost like a freemium version of Patreon.
Later on, I could build a custom way to do this with Stripe, but I will focus on using Unlock Protocol for now.
Use Cases
- Education
- Community Building
- Podcasting
- Blogging
- Vlogging
- Art
- Music
- Entertainement
User Benefits
- Community Owner: Create exclusive communities
- Community Owner and member: Use time-limited NFTs for access to communities and events
- Community Member: Resell your NFT if you want to rage quit
