Independence Over Influence

Some things seem so obvious in hindsight. When trewkat and I established IndyPen CryptoMedia last year, in the wake of the collapse of BanklessDAO’s relationship with BanklessHQ and our subsequent decision to shutter Bankless Publishing, it wasn’t necessarily because we had this great vision about what IndyPen could become. To be honest, we just loved writing and shipping crypto educational content, both our own writings and those of the hundred or so authors with whom we have worked over the years.

Since inception nearly one year ago, we have shipped a few articles, but to be honest, we were a bit worse for the wear after three years of burning the candle both ends at Bankless Publishing, and at least for me, I didn’t really have a sense of what IndyPen was or its point for existing outside of a place to ship with my dear fren. Part of that is because I’m a purpose-driven person, but we didn’t really have an articulated vision; we just knew we wanted to do something like we had been doing at Bankless Publishing.

I’m not sure it’s ironic, but in this space where we advocate for transparency and censorship resistance, crypto media is anything but. It took The Wall Street Journal, of all things, to report on CoinDesk’s firing of its top three editors after they wrote an article mildly critical of Tron founder Justin Sun’s $6.2M purchase — and subsequent consumption — of banana-based art. CoinDesk later deleted this article from their website, purportedly because Sun’s team complained not only to the editors, but to CoinDesk’s parent company, here-to-unknown crypto exchange Bullish.

It turns out, nearly all crypto media outlets have a master. The story of The Block, founded in 2018, makes for a good read. Initially backed by venture capital, it later received undisclosed funds from FTX-adjacent Alameda Research, leading to resignations and a later layoff of one-third of its staff, closely followed by a sale of an 80% stake to venture capital firm Foresight Ventures for $60 million. A few weeks ago, Axios reported that The Block is attempting another funding round.

Blockworks, begun by two founders in 2018 and the shipper of my favorite daily newsletter, took on $12 million of VC funding in 2023. On their website they assert that “[o]ur newsroom is completely independent. Our co-founders, owners and investors do not have input or visibility into what we choose to cover, when we cover it, or how we report on any story”. It’s hard not to think that those at CoinDesk once believed the same thing.

And then there is Decrypt, which spun out of crypto conglomerate Consensys in 2022, raising $10 million from VC firms and DAOs. I was excited for Decrypt’s independence from Consensys, as I have always been critical of the company’s ownership of both the most popular wallet in history, MetaMask, and also the primary infrastructure to communicate with Ethereum, Infura: a perfect recipe for a blockchain panopticon. No surprise I didn’t want them to also control a major crypto media outlet. For Decrypt to break away from Consensys was a positive development for the crypto media landscape, but I’m not so sure anymore, as these days many of the stories are “generated by AI, curated by humans”.

As crypto rapidly moves mainstream, we are seeing legacy media outlets cover our industry with increasing understanding of not just how blockchain works but some of the minutia that makes crypto culture special, putting corporate-owned crypto-native media into an even more desperate, and precarious position. Is this what you want the Future of France to look like?

I realized this is precisely why we need IndyPen CryptoMedia. Our ~20,000 subscribers will never see an advertisement or sponsored article, and that’s because crypto desperately needs independent media, now more than ever. If our readers like what we’re doing, that's enough. Maybe we’ll charge for minting articles at some point or throw up a ‘donate’ button, and years down the road we may make greater use of blockchain ponzinomics to help contributors (and founders) make a little money.

The absence of financial motivation means that we are free to ship whatever we want. But that also means we won’t ship all the time. We are not AIndependent CryptoMedia, so you won’t find us generating AI stories to fill space. For now, we’ll ship as often as we can. I imagine sometimes we’ll be shipping with real regularity; other times it may be a few weeks before the next piece comes out – whatever it takes to stay independent and free, both in cost and ethos. 

Many of us came to the cryptoverse to help build a better future because that’s the potential that this technology offers: the opportunity to empower and to liberate. But if we allow the corporate voice to dominate the discourse yet again, then we will have failed. I, for one, am not yet ready to fail. 

Thanks for being with us frens; we’re excited to be back.

Author Bio

Hiro Kennelly is a writer and cofounder of IndyPen CryptoMedia, buidler at Black Flag DAO, and governator at DAOplomats. He loves people, Moloch, and degenerative cryptoeconomics.

Editor and Designer Bio

trewkat is a writer, editor, and designer interested in the potential for web3 to disrupt fat cats, with a particular focus communicating this knowledge to others via IndyPen CryptoMedia. She is a long-time contributor at Black Flag DAO despite living in the Southern Hemisphere.

This post does not contain financial advice, only educational information. By reading this article, you agree and affirm the above, as well as that you are not being solicited to make a financial decision, and that you in no way are receiving any fiduciary projection, promise, or tacit inference of your ability to achieve financial gains.

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