Year of the ZAO - Day 179
Invisible wallets, real-world scale, and 100% artist profit margins? This changes everything.
This week, a major unlock happened in Web3 music infrastructure—and most people missed it. In one night, SZA’s surprise afterparty brought 3,000 mainstream fans on-chain without them even realizing it. Her team gave ITM Studio only five minutes’ notice to spin up the entire on-chain ticketing system, and the platform handled it on the fly.
No seed phrases. No MetaMask. Just a link and a tap for fans to claim their spot. Behind the scenes, each fan was automatically issued a soulbound ERC‑1155 ticket, dropped directly into an embedded wallet they never knew they had. Zero friction. Full ownership. Complete trackability.
For those of us building in the on-chain music space, this wasn’t just another tech demo—it was proof of concept for everything we’ve been working toward.
Why does this matter? Because it shows that:
Web3 tools can be invisible to fans but transformative for artists. Mainstream users had no crypto knowledge or wallets, yet the blockchain did its job in the background.
The same platform that handled a SZA activation in minutes can be used by any independent artist right now. ITM’s team noted that “3000 high intent SZA fans were brought onchain… Anyone can build on top of this permissionlessly”, underscoring that this infrastructure is open to all creators.
Artists using these tools can capture virtually all of the revenue their fans spend—no middlemen, no gatekeepers, no “streaming pennies on the dollar.” Going direct-to-fan means artists keep the value: for instance, traditional streaming pays about a third of a cent per stream, but selling music directly to 500 fans at $20 each would earn an artist around $10,000 (far more than 1 million streams) (2). In short, artists finally get to keep what their fans pay.
As someone who’s spent the last year trying to build direct pathways between musicians and their supporters, I can say clearly: this is the closest we’ve seen to Web2-level usability at Web3 scale.
Thirdweb’s infrastructure stack—especially their Connect wallet integration (for frictionless onboarding), In-App Wallets (for seamless invisible wallets), and Engine backend (for scalable, instant deployment)—gives artists something they’ve never had before: total control of their fan experience without needing to write custom code or worry about gas fees (3).
With these tools, an indie artist can launch an on-chain ticket or album drop as easily as creating an event on Eventbrite, but with no tech headache and no revenue cut taken.
And if you’re still thinking this is just about ticketing, look deeper. The EVEN platform already proved what’s possible — hip-hop artist LaRussell sold over 4,000 NFT albums and earned $95,000 in just two weeks through direct fan support on EVEN (3). (For context, that payout is about what he’d get from 24 million streams on Spotify.)
With on-chain fan communities, artists can do things like merch gating and drop royalties (even giving fans a cut of album revenue), while accessing real-time audience analytics and owning their fan data in ways never before possible.
This isn’t speculative tech—it’s creative infrastructure. It’s a new blueprint for music monetization:
Tickets and albums = access keys. (Every ticket or album NFT is a key to experiences and content.)
Drops = moments of fandom, not just distribution. (Releases become interactive events for the core fans.)
Wallets = relationship infrastructure. (A fan’s wallet becomes a direct line for membership, rewards, and communication.)
We don’t need fans to understand why it’s Web3 — we just need them to show up. The right tools make everything else invisible. And that’s exactly what happened: fans showed up for SZA, and the tech quietly handled the rest.
This is why I’ve been so bullish on thirdweb’s approach. They aren’t just making crypto widgets; they’re building music liberation infrastructure. When an artist can drop an NFT ticket or album and immediately get paid — with all the buyer data in hand — that’s a game changer. If you’re an independent artist trying to foster a real connection with your fans and actually keep the money they spend on you, this is your lane.
Let’s build it together.
– BetterCallZaal on behalf of the ZAO Team
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