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. Seed Club Twitter: https://x.com/seedclubhq Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/internet-explorers/id1756599282 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iJk3xZoij7pVhlNbTP9qS?si=4cda0ac044dc4c6a Pods.media: https://pods.media/internet-explorers