A Deep Dive Into Rug Radio, The First Fully Decentralized Media
A rare NFT project with a sustainable business model
What is Rug Radio?
Founded by @farokh, Rug Radio runs one of the best podcasts in the Web3 industry, whose content is entertaining, educational, and accessible. Their “GM Web3” Twitter spaces have hundreds of listeners, including me, every day.
Rug Radio has hosted some big names as guests - BAYC founders, Yat Siu from Animoca Brands, Ryan Wyatt from Polygon Studios, Kevin Rose from Proof & Moonbirds, and many more.
Rug Radio has had some big companies as sponsors - Uniswap, Ledger, etc - and they sponsor big crypto events like Metaverse Miami (Nov 28 - 30).
What’s up with Rug Radio NFTs?
There’re two types of NFTs: Rug Radio - Genesis NFT and Rug Radio Membership Pass.
The genesis NFT yields $RUG tokens daily. 1800 $RUG can be converted to a 1 $RDAO token, which grants you voting power in the RugDAO governance system.
The membership NFT is your way to vote & participate before you hold DAO ownership. In addition, it's how you can gain all kinds of benefits from participating in the community. You can also use the membership NFT to earn $RUG in the ecosystem through participation in shows, Learn 2 Earn, and more.
Rug Radio Business Model
The revenue from the podcast sponsors goes back to the Rug Radio ecosystem - 15% of it goes to the Rug DAO and the other 85% is used to buy back Rug Radio NFTs. The Rug DAO treasury wallet has collected ~1,300 ETH (~$1.6M USD) so far.
The sponsored guests pay to get exposure in the Rug Radio podcast, the Rug Radio NFT holders benefit from the floor sweep, and the listeners enjoy great content.
The team also collects a 7.5% fee on secondary NFT transactions on OpenSea. The total trading volume of the genesis NFTs and the membership NFTs is ~15,000 ETH combined, so the team has earned around 1125 ETH (~$1.3M USD) from the royalty.
Lastly, their podcast is on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple, so they collect ad revenues from the big Web2 media platforms, too.
Rug Radio is one of the very few Web3 projects with a sustainable business model.
What makes Rug Radio special?
The great content
Their content is much better than most other so-called web3 podcasts on Twitter, YouTube, and Spotify. The moderation by Farokh in “GM Web3” is great and they set up a nice environment for guests to talk about their thoughts, projects, and vision.
@farokh (Farokh Sarmad) and Rug Radio are OGs
Farokh is a well-known Web3 individual on Twitter with +330K followers. He’s been actively expressing his thoughts on crypto and NFTs for years and he’s a rare influencer who’s not “pumped-and-dumped” on retail investors.
More importantly, he’s been running the media company called Goodlife Media Communications Inc since 2015. He knows how to scale a media company.
Rug Radio started about a year ago, being the OG NFT project in the Web3 media space. They started early, so they just had more chances to gain more audiences.
The speed of expansion
The amount of content they’re releasing is rapidly increasing. I think being decentralized helps them scale since they let anyone apply to become a host and reward the hosts within the ecosystem according to their performance.
Rug Radio has shown that an NFT project can have a sustainable business model in the media space. I strongly believe that NFT projects in other industries can replicate Rug Radio’s strategies to create a sustainable business model and spread NFTs to different areas.
Thanks for reading and have a great day 😊
Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.