every crypto project still spends most of its marketing budget on the wrong things. the agency retainer, the kol round, the conference sponsorship, the paid threads on twitter. those line items kept budgets allocated for the entire 2021 cycle. they are increasingly the worst place to put a dollar in 2025. the reason is not that those channels stopped working. the reason is that creators learned to do the same job for a percentage of revenue instead of a flat fee, and once that math compounded, the old model lost on every dimension that matters.
this is the article on why creator economies are eating the traditional crypto marketing stack alive — what changed, what the new model looks like, and how uponly built itself around the new model from day one.
the legacy stack
the legacy crypto marketing stack had four big line items, in roughly descending order of spend:
- agency retainers. monthly fees for content, ghostwriting, twitter management, sometimes paid ads.
- kol rounds. allocations of tokens or usdc to a list of named twitter personalities in exchange for "coverage."
- event sponsorships. logos on banners, side rooms, panels, after-parties.
- paid ads on twitter, telegram, and the occasional google search campaign.
all four share a structural feature. the project pays upfront for an outcome the marketer cannot guarantee. agencies promise a certain volume of content. kols promise a certain number of posts. events promise foot traffic. ads promise impressions. none of them promise actual users, real volume, or recurring revenue. the project carries all the conversion risk.
why this was acceptable, and then was not
this model survived as long as it did because attribution was hard. nobody could prove which dollar produced which user. in that environment, paying for activity was the only viable approach. agencies could point to deliverables. kols could point to followers. events could point to attendance. the project marketing team could point to "brand awareness" and the cfo would shrug.
two things broke this. first, attribution tooling got dramatically better. wallet-aware analytics, in-product event tracking, and creator-side tooling like findclout.com made it possible to see which post led to which signup led to which trade led to which revenue. the post-to-revenue link was finally visible. second, the audience figured out that paid kol posts were paid posts. trust on flat-fee posts collapsed. the conversion rate on the same post format dropped by an order of magnitude over twenty-four months.
what creators figured out
the creators who survived the trust collapse did one thing. they stopped accepting flat fees and started taking revenue share. the shift looked small on the surface — same content, same audience, same posts. underneath, the incentive structure inverted. if you only get paid when the audience actually converts, you only post about products that convert. you stop posting bad calls because bad calls poison your audience. the trust comes back, because the post is now a recommendation, not an ad.
the creators who refused to make this shift are still in business but their economics are deteriorating. their cpm is dropping. their audience is increasingly skeptical. the flat-fee deals they used to land are getting smaller because projects have realized that flat-fee posts do not convert at the levels they used to.
the new stack
the modern creator economy stack for a crypto product looks completely different from the 2021 stack:
- permanent rev share program. typically 30 to 50 percent of fees, paid from the cohort, forever.
- creator-grade tooling for attribution and reporting. findclout-style dashboards that let creators see exactly which posts converted.
- a small in-house content layer to seed the funnel — usually one or two people writing for the brand.
- minimal paid ads, used only for retargeting and low-funnel conversion, not awareness.
- no traditional kol rounds. those budgets are reallocated into the rev share pool.
the headline difference is that the marketing budget is now mostly variable. the project pays when revenue happens. when revenue does not happen, the project does not pay. cfos love this. the only reason it took years to get here is that the tooling was not ready.
why uponly was built around the new model
we did not have a budget for the old stack. uponly was built in one night. the only growth lever we could afford from day one was creators. so we designed the entire product around making it easy for creators to bring traffic and get paid permanently.
concretely, this meant:
- 50 percent affiliate rev share, forever, no tier games. see the uponly affiliate program for the math.
- a one-tap onboarding that does not require the creator to teach their audience how to trade.
- share cards built into the product so every winning rip becomes a marketing asset.
- a fee model with zero fees on losing trades, so the audience does not get chewed up and ghost the creator.
- weekly shipping cadence so creators always have something new to talk about.
the result is that we spend almost nothing on traditional marketing. the creators bring the audience. the audience converts because the product is built for it. the rev share keeps the creators motivated. the cycle compounds.
what creators get wrong
creators are not always rational about this transition. the most common mistakes:
- still accepting flat fees from low-quality projects because the upfront check feels real. those checks are getting smaller and the audience damage is permanent.
- not building tooling around their funnel. without attribution, the rev share argument falls apart and creators leave money on the table.
- splitting attention across too many projects. the highest-earning creators concentrate their promotion in one or two products they actually use.
- underestimating retention. one viral post is fine. consistent posting is what compounds the rev share into real income.
where this ends up
the endgame for crypto marketing is a market where projects compete on rev share generosity and creator partnerships, not on ad spend. agencies will shrink to creative production roles. kol rounds will disappear or get repackaged as advisor allocations. ad budgets will keep getting reallocated into creator pools. the products that win this transition will be the ones that built the new model into their economics from day one.
we are biased toward this future because we already live in it. if you operate a meme page or run a creator channel and you want to test the new model, open uponly and look at the affiliate flow. for the cultural context on why this works, see the meme page economy.