Internet Explorers5 Maj 2025

Zora Founder on the Plan to Pay Creators | Internet Explorers Ep. 78 (LIVE!)

If content "wants to be free", how can creators get paid?

In this special edition live interview, we sit down with Jacob Horne, cofounder of Zora, for a candid conversation on the company's evolving vision—and what they got wrong early on.

Jacob opens up about Zora's shift from marketplace to protocol, why onchain media matters more than ever, and how consumer apps in crypto have been missing the point. If you've ever wondered what Zora actually is or where it's going next, this is the episode to hear it from the source.

Along the way: protocol tradeoffs, the fragility of NFT incentives, and why Zora is now all-in on supporting the onchain internet through composable creation tools. It's a peek behind the curtain of one of crypto's most culturally influential companies.

This episode unpacks

Why Zora is no longer a marketplace company
How protocol thinking changed their product strategy
The tension between creator and collector incentives
What "onchain media" really means to Jacob
The risks of speculative activity dominating apps
Why Zora is focused on creative tooling
How Zora thinks about interoperability
A breakdown of Zora's current app ecosystem
What success looks like for a protocol
Why this is a 20-year project

Chapters:

00:00 — Intro

01:05 — Jacob joins the stage

03:02 — Zora is not a marketplace

07:33 — What went wrong in 2021

10:56 — Owning the protocol

13:31 — Measuring success

17:24 — Creators vs speculators

21:44 — Zora's real product

26:07 — What it means to be onchain

30:30 — Long-term vision

34:53 — Future of Zora apps

39:27 — The internet is half-finished

44:10 — Open protocols to black boxes

49:15 — What meme coins unlock

53:38 — Why the DAO model broke

57:20 — Building for liquidity, not hype

01:00:42 — UX is the real innovation

01:04:17 — How Zora builds for decades

01:07:39 — Farcon week & final thoughts

Internet Explorers is a weekly rundown show where extremely online individuals broadly explore (romanticize, even) new consumer Internet experiences.

Join us⁠ live on Twitter/X, Fridays 10am PT / 1pm ET.

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