Zora’s New System: Every Post Is a Coin

Onchain social network Zora has adopted a new minting system, making posts instantly tradable as ERC-20 tokens.

Why it matters

Previously, Zora centered around minting content as ERC-1155 NFTs.

In 2024, Zora released an experimental standard, ERC-20z, where posts began as nonfungible ERC-1155s open editions and, after reaching 1,111 mints, were then wrapped into fungible ERC-20 tokens for trading on Uniswap.

This hybrid system bridged Zora's NFT roots with the advantages afforded by ERC-20s, like easier liquidity, onchain secondary markets, and built-in creator royalties.

With its new system, Zora has shifted from ERC-1155 NFTs to a model where posts now launch as fungible ERC-20 tokens, i.e. Zora Coins, that are automatically tradable on Uniswap. Older posts remain collectible as NFTs.

How it works

Now when you post on Zora, you create a coin on Base with a 1 billion total supply, from which you instantly receive 10 million coins.

Consequently, you earn 1% on every trade through your coin's associated Uniswap liquidity pool, with half coming from a Trading Fee and half from a Market Fee.

With the switch to coins, GIF, JPG, PNG, and MP4 files up to 2GB in size can be uploaded for posts, with support nixed for 3D, MP3, and PDF files.

From the collector side of things, you buy and sell posts straight from your feed on either the Zora website or the mobile app for Android or Apple devices. You can also still pay with ETH via other chains besides Base, like Arbitrum, Ethereum, OP Mainnet, and Zora Network.

Community reactions

The community response to Zora's coin update has been largely positive, though some people have expressed uncertainty or skepticism, which is natural around a change this big. Some recent takes include:

• Dee Goens: "coins make it so that creators are 1) less platform dependent and 2) don’t have to work as hard to generate early demand. how? the coins are natively discoverable across every major crypto protocol and platform: defi, dexscreeners, wallets, etc."
• Jesse Pollak: "I think that all content is going to onchain. We've already started to see this with open editions, Farcaster, and more, but we're still at Day 1. I also think that over time the most composable, liquid way of 'pricing' that content will be the one that wins out."
• winnie: "embracing lower market cap coins. not everything needs to run to a $1b ... I would very much rather get $100 market cap on zora than 100 likes on instagram. onchain > online."
• 0xLuo: "now each Zora post is a memecoin, more direct than the previous ERC20z (no limited-time mint NFT phase) ... Ideally, memecoin degens enjoy trading, art fans enjoy collecting, and creators enjoy rewarding. but the reality is probably more complex."
• Nounish Prof: "I want old Zora back ... This won’t be used to tokenize content—it will be used as a memecoin launcher. They pushed away the content creators by taking away the amazing features it used to have. So we’ll see but I’m skeptical."

Go deeper

Check out the new posting and trading approach on Zora to see what you think for yourself.

Love it or hate it, we can expect the Zora team to keep tinkering on this system with new feature releases, like payments splits. We can also expect many more community experiments here as people try tokenizing their content and seeing what sticks.

Will all content eventually be tokenized? Only time will tell. But Zora's now definitively through the breach in this fight to reimagine what content can be in the 21st century, so keep this upgrade on your radar.