Daily News 19

Tag: ZORA token

  • Zora Co-Founder Dee Goens Steps Up as CEO After 98% Revenue Plunge

    Zora Co-Founder Dee Goens Steps Up as CEO After 98% Revenue Plunge

    Zora Co-Founder Dee Goens Takes CEO Role Amid Sharp Revenue Decline

    Zora co-founder Dee Goens announced Wednesday that he has assumed the chief executive position at the onchain social network, succeeding Jacob Horne. The leadership change arrives during a turbulent period for the platform, as its creator-coin business has contracted dramatically since peaking in 2025.

    Understanding Zora’s Token Ecosystem

    Zora’s terminology often creates confusion. The $ZORA token serves as the platform’s native asset, distinct from Zora Coins—the protocol activity metrics tracked by DefiLlama—and Creator Coins and Post Coins, which users trade to speculate on creators and their content. The $ZORA token functions primarily for reward distribution and liquidity provision, but it confers no governance rights or ownership stakes to holders.

    This distinction is critical. Zora’s recovery depends on reigniting trading volume for Creator and Post Coins while establishing a compelling incentive for $ZORA holders to support the platform’s growth. As CEO, Goens must demonstrate that token-based attention can sustain long-term trading activity, generate meaningful revenue for creators, and strengthen the connection between Zora’s business fundamentals and its native token.

    Revenue Collapse: From $5.6 Million Quarter to Near Zero

    The financial data underscores the severity of the downturn. According to DefiLlama, Zora Coins protocol revenue reached $5.64 million in Q3 2025. That figure plummeted to $3.06 million in Q4 2025, $279,810 in Q1 2026, and $106,540 in Q2 2026—a 98.1% decline from the Q3 2025 peak. The current Q3 2026 figure stands at $46,810, though the quarter remains incomplete.

    Recent onchain activity reflects the same weakness. DefiLlama reports $14,971 in fees, $6,165 in protocol revenue, and $551,284 in DEX volume over the last 30 days. Cumulative fees total $10.43 million, with overall DEX volume reaching approximately $399.47 million.

    Why Momentum Stalled

    Zora’s initial model tied tokens to both creators and their output: Creator Coins represented individuals, while Post Coins represented specific posts. A 0x case study notes that Creator Coins were linked to $ZORA, whereas Post Coins were tied to the creator’s own coin.

    Distribution mechanics drove the 2025 boom. When Coinbase integrated Zora into the Base App feed, daily token creation surged from roughly 6,000 at the start of July to nearly 50,000 by month’s end, per 0x data. The platform’s Swap API subsequently facilitated $59 million in volume across 352,000 trades using Zora coins.

    That momentum reversed in 2026. As reported by Cryptopolitan in February, Base App discontinued its Creator Rewards program and Farcaster-powered social feed, pivoting toward trading—despite having allocated over $450,000 in rewards to more than 17,000 creators.

    Betting on Pairing Infrastructure and Multichain Expansion

    Goens is now steering Zora toward a broader trading infrastructure. “Pairing and social trading will create new waves of adoption for crypto,” he wrote on X, adding that “Zora is here to help grow the pie.”

    The product has begun moving in that direction. Custom Pairs now allow creators to choose the asset their coin pairs with—options include ETH, USDC, Robinhood stock tokens, or Solana tokens across Base, Robinhood Chain, and Solana. These pairs carry a 1% trading fee, with 0.70% allocated to the creator. Trend Coins charge a minimal 0.01% fee. An August update added support for Robinhood Chain and native Solana deposits, plus gas sponsorship for cross-chain swaps across the three networks.

    The Proof Ahead for Goens

    Token alignment remains a central challenge. While Goens has mentioned buybacks or rewards as potential mechanisms to align $ZORA holders with protocol success, he has not disclosed the amount, funding source, timing, or mechanism for such initiatives. This matters because $ZORA holders currently hold no legal claim to protocol revenue or treasury assets.

    The deeper test is longevity. Galaxy Research has observed that new token markets tend to be highly concentrated and capture attention only briefly, producing liquidity bursts rather than sustained activity. Zora will need more than another viral cycle. Goens’ ultimate challenge is whether quarterly revenue can grow through ongoing multichain trading rather than a one-time distribution spike.

  • Zora Co-Founder Dee Goens Replaces Jacob Horne as CEO

    Zora Co-Founder Dee Goens Replaces Jacob Horne as CEO

    Dee Goens has assumed the role of chief executive at Zora, succeeding co-founder Jacob Horne, who is departing after more than six years at the helm. Goens announced the leadership transition in a post on Wednesday.

    Leadership Change

    “After more than six incredible years as the company’s co-founder and CEO, Jacob is transitioning out of Zora and onto his next chapter,” Goens wrote. “I will be stepping into the CEO role as we continue building and stewarding Zora.”

    Staff Reductions and AI Integration

    Goens said Zora reduced headcount earlier this year and now operates with fewer than 10 people, a smaller team than at the start of the year. He did not disclose the previous headcount or the number of departures.

    “As a result, we’ve gotten more AI native with agents running throughout Slack, writing code, and resolving incidents,” he wrote.

    Shift to Custom Pairs

    The company has pivoted from the Creator Coins model it launched on Base last year to a focus on trading pairs across multiple networks. Zora opened Custom Pairs on August 20, allowing users to choose the asset a new token is paired against rather than defaulting to $ZORA or a Creator Coin. The feature is live on Base, Robinhood Chain, and Solana and carries a 1% trading fee, of which 0.70% goes to the token’s creator, according to Zora’s documentation.

    Goens said more than 4,000 pairs have been created since launch; Zora reported over 2,000 as of August 28. Over the summer, the protocol expanded to Robinhood Chain and Solana, added cross-chain trading across those two networks and BNB Chain, enabled trading through its agent in direct messages, and removed fees previously applied to DMs and comments. Zora also launched attention markets on Solana in February.

    Fee data from DefiLlama shows a steep decline on Zora’s Base deployment, the only one tracked. Fees totaled $14,768 in August, down 99.4% from $2.51 million in August 2025. Over the past 30 days, the deployment collected $14,971 in fees, of which $6,165 went to Zora, while its pools traded $551,284 in volume.

    Buyback Plans and Priorities

    Goens outlined five priorities for the remainder of the year, starting with “aligning our business with $ZORA token holders by implementing buybacks / rewards.” He provided no details on size, funding source, timetable, or mechanism. The remaining priorities are:

    • Rebuilding community trust by over-communicating progress
    • Onboarding new users with an emphasis on the mobile app
    • Restarting distribution of community incentives
    • Acting on feedback

    “There’s a ton of work for us to get through as we eye the end of the year,” he wrote.

    ZORA Token Performance

    $ZORA traded at $0.00814 at 19:52 UTC on Wednesday, down 8.5% over 24 hours, up 11.5% over seven days, and up 55% over 30 days, for a market capitalization of $36.3 million and a fully diluted valuation of $81.3 million, according to CoinGecko. The token remains 94.4% below its record high of $0.1456 reached on August 11, 2025.

    In the five minutes before Goens’ post at 18:02 UTC, the token was at $0.00831, implying a roughly 2% move since the announcement. Daily trading volume stood at $21.4 million. Ether traded at $2,466.98, down 0.4% over 24 hours.

    Horne’s Departure

    Horne describes himself on his personal site as “cofounder of Zora, previously at Coinbase.” He and Goens have worked together for more than six years. Horne led Zora through an NFT marketplace, an Ethereum Layer 2, and the June 2025 shift to Creator Coins, which made every Zora profile a tradable token. The Defiant reported in December that $ZORA slipped to $0.038 as the model’s highest-profile launch, the creator coin of journalist Nick Shirley, fell 79% from its record within 48 hours; the token has lost a further 79% since.

    “I’ll be sharing more on what I’m spending my time on next in the near future,” Horne wrote. “In the meantime I’m eternally grateful for the community, experiments, lessons and crazy journey over the past few years.”

    Goens said Horne is “not going too far” from crypto.