Internet Explorers

If content "wants to be free", how can creators get paid?

In this special edition live interview, we sit down with Jacob Horne, cofounder of Zora, for a candid conversation on the company’s evolving vision—and what they got wrong early on.

Jacob opens up about Zora’s shift from marketplace to protocol, why onchain media matters more than ever, and how consumer apps in crypto have been missing the point. If you’ve ever wondered what Zora actually is or where it’s going next, this is the episode to hear it from the source.

Along the way: protocol tradeoffs, the fragility of NFT incentives, and why Zora is now all-in on supporting the onchain internet through composable creation tools. It’s a peek behind the curtain of one of crypto’s most culturally influential companies.

This episode unpacks:
- Why Zora is no longer a marketplace company
- How protocol thinking changed their product strategy
- The tension between creator and collector incentives
- What “onchain media” really means to Jacob
- The risks of speculative activity dominating apps
- Why Zora is focused on creative tooling
- How Zora thinks about interoperability
- A breakdown of Zora’s current app ecosystem
- What success looks like for a protocol
- Why this is a 20-year project

Chapters:
00:00 — Intro
01:05 — Jacob joins the stage
03:02 — Zora is not a marketplace
07:33 — What went wrong in 2021
10:56 — Owning the protocol
13:31 — Measuring success
17:24 — Creators vs speculators
21:44 — Zora’s real product
26:07 — What it means to be onchain
30:30 — Long-term vision
34:53 — Future of Zora apps
39:27 — The internet is half-finished
44:10 — Open protocols to black boxes
49:15 — What meme coins unlock
53:38 — Why the DAO model broke
57:20 — Building for liquidity, not hype
01:00:42 — UX is the real innovation
01:04:17 — How Zora builds for decades
01:07:39 — Farcon week & final thoughts

Internet Explorers is a weekly rundown show where extremely online individuals broadly explore (romanticize, even) new consumer Internet experiences.
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Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/internet-explorers/id1756599282
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iJk3xZoij7pVhlNbTP9qS?si=4cda0ac044dc4c6a