📝 Editor's Note:

Welcome to OurNetwork's latest, the second installment in a two-part series covering onchain culture. In this issue we have Mist covering Zora, Winnie covering Clanker, Oğuz on Base app, and Maus covering Rodeo.

Also, scheduling announcement: OurNetwork is returning to its one-issue-a-week cadence. The editorial calendar for September can be seen here.

With that, let's check out onchain culture.

– ON Editorial Team

Zora | Clanker | Base App | Rodeo

• Zora is a social platform where creators can earn by coining posts and their subsequent trading fees. Zora recently surpassed 100k monthly active users and has maintained engagement in terms of posts. Both content coins and creator coins now trade actively, pushing aggregate fully diluted value (FDV) past $150M. The catalyst for the growth is Zora's inclusion in the Base app social feed powering content coining. This is the earliest glimpse yet of a “coined internet” where every post can carry value, even if speculative.

• Zora's retention is improving as new cohorts scale. In July, one cohort of nearly 12,000 creators had 7-day retention of 45% and 30-day retention of 27%. Even as weekly cohorts swelled above 70k, creators still return to mint and transact, showing engagement beyond pure speculation.

• Quote pairing, pioneered by Virtuals, has become Zora's fee engine. Zora has averaged ~$500k in weekly revenue (~$27M annualized) since July. The Base app plus an integration with Farcaster were the catalysts, driving both creator activity and monetization at scale.

• What started as a token launcher agent on Farcaster has now evolved into a protocol that spans beyond just Base. Clanker has now expanded to other chains such as Arbitrum, Unichain, and Abstract, serving as the primitive for token launchers in these ecosystems. The ecosystem has now grown with different frontends such as Bankr, miniapps such as Noice, Bracky, and clients such as a new streaming platform called Retake. Clanker generated $37M in fees, and reached 367k active traders.

• Clanker generated the sixth highest fees among apps in the Base ecosystem, trailing Aerodrome, Virtuals, and Base itself. Clanker rolled out v4.1, introducing automated buybacks of any token with generated fees. These buybacks happen on both buys and sells, so each swap creates positive buy pressure for the token.

• There's been roughly 425,000 tokens launched via Clanker. Recently, Clanker has expanded to the Abstract, Unichain, and Arbitrum. Clients such as Bankr are able to launch tokens across these new ecosystems via Clanker. Notable tokens in these new ecosystems include Grow on Abstract and Pro Agent on Arbitrum.

• Base app has roughly 16,500 creators so far. The chart below shows the number of content creators by day, segmenting them by their total number of posts on that day. Since Aug. 10, there's been more activity from groups D, F, E, and G, (repeat creators), signaling users are sticking around.

• As of Aug. 22, the number of posts on the app was 226,000. However, if you visit the app, posts appear with higher frequency. This is because the chart below only counts content made directly on the Base app and does not include content that is automatically mirrored from Farcaster.

• Every piece of content on the Base app is tokenized. When you publish a post, you automatically mint 1% of its total supply as a creator's share. And you earn a 1% commission on every purchase of your content. The chart below shows the amount of commissions distributed to creators.

• Rodeo’s balance between new and returning daily posters from June 2024 to June 2025. Growth accelerated into late 2024, peaking in January 2025 with over 2,000 daily posters. While activity cooled after, returning users make up the majority of engagement, showing a sticky core community. New users continue to onboard steadily, reinforcing organic growth momentum.

• Since mid-2024, the majority of mints consistently came through referrals, often making up 70 to 90% of total mints. This highlights strong network-driven growth, where community sharing and referrals remain a key driver of adoption.

• Rodeo daily posts surged from mid-2024, peaking at over 3,000 per day in early 2025. While volume has normalized since, activity remains strong with between 500 to 1,000 daily posts, far above early levels. Rodeo shows a maturing, sustainable community that continues to generate consistent engagement.