Vitalik on Creator Tokens: Enabling a Non-Tokenized DAO to Utilize Creator Tokens as Prediction Market

Feb 1 – Vitalik Buterin published an article analyzing incentive design failures in the crypto space, including Steemit and BitClout. The core issue: those models failed to lift up high-quality content, instead amplifying the influence of people with existing social status. He praised Substack’s successful model, which drove content diversification and constructive discussions by manually curating top-quality creators (such as its top 10 subscription authors). Vitalik proposed creating a non-tokenized DAO (similar to the Protocol Guild framework) with two key goals: build a collective public brand larger than any single creator, and collectively negotiate profit opportunities—while keeping the group small enough for manageable internal governance. The critical detail? Creator tokens would act as a signaling tool: new members must burn some tokens to join the DAO, ensuring speculators function as quality filters rather than fueling self-reinforcing hype. This way, token speculators won’t just play a self-referential, attention-seeking game. The ultimate arbiter is high-quality content creators, and individual speculators’ ability to keep participating (and profiting) depends on their ability to accurately predict the creator DAO’s actions.