There were and are ethical shops in the field who do it right
"
Curious for some examples, because, in my mind, ethical means honesty and transparency. Crypto PR is very rarely transparent about who's paying for the PR. And I doubt highly after the thousandth claim that /this/ crypto token is actually going to be the revolutionary one, that they believe most of what they write or say.
I'd say on a spectrum of dishonesty and duplicity, crypto PR shops (along with crypto influencers like Logan Paul) are barely a step up from crypto lobbyists, whom I loathe.
But let's face it, you can't just âbuild it and they will come.â Even in Fields of Dreams, where that line comes from, the main character was basically on assignment. He knew there was an existing, desiring market that sought him out directly (as ghosts, but still). Otherwise, you can't just build a baseball diamond in the middle of nowhere, tell no one, and expect anyone to come.
So how does one do crypto PR ethically? And possibly successfully?
One solution, I think, is double-blind task assignment and apparent, censorship-proof payment and assignment details using what crypto is best at, a visible and immutable ledger.
Now, to be double blind, that would actually require a pool of possible requestors and a pool of possible fulfillers.
Let's say the fulfiller pool isâoff the top of my headâDZM, SamCZSun, ZachXBT, Molly White, Gupta Mudit, Coffeezilla, Jeff Roberts, and Nathan Anderson. Each of these are respected names in cutting through finance BS, many specializing in crypto BS, and can probably command similar rates. (I've read something by all of them, except Coffeezilla, as I refuse to watch YouTube videos for information, except maybe how to assemble or disassemble something.) Rate for each person is fixed at $500 per hour. Not per word, but per hour. And the minimum job is $5000. Thus, the requester is guaranteed 10 hours of work if the job is acceptable. If the requester wants to offer longer jobs, that is fine, but that's up to the fulfillerâs discretion. If fulfillers want to spend extra, uncompensated time on the assignment, that's also up to them.
A github, or the like, will detail each fulfiller's crypto addresses for their work. But you cannot send funds directly to them. Instead you need to send the funds to an intermediary vault address. The transaction should include both the funds and instructions. The transaction must come from a âcleanâ address.
Since we're just talking about PR assignments, the OpSec does not need to be insane on âclean.â A clean address can be one that has never been used before except to get funded, e.g. by Coinbase or similar centralized exchange for example. If the requester wants to use something fancy like Railgun for the funding, that's fine. But if the proposed payment does not seem sufficiently anonymous, then the assignment can be rejected.
Similarly, the assignment details need to be sufficiently anonymous. A piece on, say, a single, specific crypto project may not be. If these were less scrupulous fulfillers, I'd say it absolutely wouldn't be. Because less scrupulous fulfillers would always write glowing praise, and thus the crypto projectâs proponents would be who is requesting the assignment. These as-far-as-I-know-scrupulous writers (for the most part they are writers) though are more likely to expose a project as BS than shovel glowing praise onto it, so the requester's identity is slightly obfuscated, as it could be a competitor requesting the profile. Still, there should be a rule that no actual specific projects should be named in the request. Instead the assignment should be more amorphous. A typical acceptable request might be a âtop 5 / 10 / 20â piece based on an uncontroversial metric. E.g. âTopic: Top 5 DePIN projects by Token Market Capâ or âTopic: Top 10 Stablecoin projects by Total Value Lockedâ.
So, funds get sent to the intermediary address, along with the instructions. The instructions can simply be included in the transaction details. A sentence or two shouldn't be too expensive for any major blockchain, and the instructions should be sparse. Then there's a one week cooling period where /any/ of the fulfillers can reject the request as not anonymous enough. They can also, via blockchain, request further information and the requester can provide it, until the week is over. At that point, unless the request was denied for not being anonymous enough (or possibly other ethical groundsâthough, these potential grounds should be described and posted in advanced), one of the fulfillers is randomly/programmatically selected and /has/ to do the assignment. That is, the selected person associated with the randomly selected wallet must spend those hours in good faith on the topic. That's the extent. They should be expected to âshow their workâ but that does not mean a finished, polished copy that meets the entirety of the request.
Then, once done, the work is published permanently and directly by the author/creator. Of course, again, I'd recommend using blockchain to capture the work, such as an NFT that is public to all, but sent to the requester's wallet. Now, for that, some chains will be far more expensive (Bitcoin), so the publishing should not require the same blockchain as the payment/assignment. It just needs to be a resource (blockchain) with a fair likelihood of longevity and anti-censorship.
As far as the rights of the requester or anyone as to what to do with the final NFT/content? What stipulations should be made regarding distribution, modification, and/or attribution by the requesterâor anyone? Well, my knee-jerk reaction is just have all content have a CC0 license. But how does a CC0 license fit into a world that might scrape your work, then shovel your work into an AI, then spit it out as a mangled unattributed mess, all while claiming attribution isn't possible, while ignoring that AI not preserving attribution was likely built that way specifically to hide IP theft?
Regardless, I'm sure the fulfillers can come up with sensible rules that aren't applied ad hoc and are detailed in advance.
But, yeah, ethical PR. Sounds hard.
[edit 5 minutes later. Oh and the Datafinnovation guys, they would be added to the group too. I started to read the next substack and remembered their excellent takedown of Barry Silbert.]
I wonât deny itâs a fine line in terms of messaging, but in this case I mean something very specific: ethical PR shops pitch story ideas to reporters who choose their coverage out of journalistic interest, not because theyâre getting paid by the PR shops/subjects of the articles.
ethical PR shops pitch story ideas to reporters who choose their coverage out of journalistic interest, not because theyâre getting paid by the PR shops/subjects of the articles.
â
Oh, that is interesting. So using the linguo of my model, the PR shop would be (one of) the ârequesters,â not the fulfillers. PR shops are more middlemen (and middlewomen). They would be secondary requesters after the primary requesters I was considering. And in fact, one could consider the PR shop of my model a âmiddleâ too. Just on the fulfiller's side. And more a middleware than a middleperson. Interesting.
Your model (and likely the current model) for ethical PR, if I understand it:
Primary requesters: Founders, C-Suite, Investors (and for the big entities, âBusiness Developmentâ types).
Secondary requesters: Ethical PR shop employed by the primary that then pitch loose ideas to fulfillers. What makes them ethical is they do not offer financial reward to the fulfillers? Just access for quotes, I'm guessing?
Fulfillers: Reporters with no financial motive or constraints. They can choose to take the story idea or leave it. I highly doubt writers need help coming up with ideas to write about. (Ideas that translate into money, that's really what writers yearn for, if anything.) They probably want the inside access. Of course, if they then /don't/ write glowing prose, they might not get it again. An ethical PR shop, though, could have a reputation that access is not rescinded even if the resulting piece is unflattering.
My proposed model:
Requesters: Founders, C-Suite, investors, and Business Development. They pitch directly to the PR shop. No secondary requesters.
Primary Fulfiller: PR shop, but it's not a human, it's just an autonomous service that doles out the work. (Hmm, maybe Andre Cronje would like to revive his dead Keep3r project for itâbut I think he should create something different that is simply permaweb and un-upgradable with no token to it. Most things with a token and âgovernanceâ and upgradability go to s***.) Not even âmiddlemenâ or âmiddlewomen,â just middleware, as the rules are set by the âsecondaryâ fulfillers, co-op style, and then it just runs.
Secondary fulfiller: Reporters. Same possible âproblemâ of unflattering prose reducing the amount of potential work and leading to fluff only. But that risk is now distributedâand dilutedâamong people who request and people who fulfill. Further the up-front terms and double-blindedness should help keep things ethical, much like they would in any scientific process.
"
There were and are ethical shops in the field who do it right
"
Curious for some examples, because, in my mind, ethical means honesty and transparency. Crypto PR is very rarely transparent about who's paying for the PR. And I doubt highly after the thousandth claim that /this/ crypto token is actually going to be the revolutionary one, that they believe most of what they write or say.
I'd say on a spectrum of dishonesty and duplicity, crypto PR shops (along with crypto influencers like Logan Paul) are barely a step up from crypto lobbyists, whom I loathe.
But let's face it, you can't just âbuild it and they will come.â Even in Fields of Dreams, where that line comes from, the main character was basically on assignment. He knew there was an existing, desiring market that sought him out directly (as ghosts, but still). Otherwise, you can't just build a baseball diamond in the middle of nowhere, tell no one, and expect anyone to come.
So how does one do crypto PR ethically? And possibly successfully?
One solution, I think, is double-blind task assignment and apparent, censorship-proof payment and assignment details using what crypto is best at, a visible and immutable ledger.
Now, to be double blind, that would actually require a pool of possible requestors and a pool of possible fulfillers.
Let's say the fulfiller pool isâoff the top of my headâDZM, SamCZSun, ZachXBT, Molly White, Gupta Mudit, Coffeezilla, Jeff Roberts, and Nathan Anderson. Each of these are respected names in cutting through finance BS, many specializing in crypto BS, and can probably command similar rates. (I've read something by all of them, except Coffeezilla, as I refuse to watch YouTube videos for information, except maybe how to assemble or disassemble something.) Rate for each person is fixed at $500 per hour. Not per word, but per hour. And the minimum job is $5000. Thus, the requester is guaranteed 10 hours of work if the job is acceptable. If the requester wants to offer longer jobs, that is fine, but that's up to the fulfillerâs discretion. If fulfillers want to spend extra, uncompensated time on the assignment, that's also up to them.
A github, or the like, will detail each fulfiller's crypto addresses for their work. But you cannot send funds directly to them. Instead you need to send the funds to an intermediary vault address. The transaction should include both the funds and instructions. The transaction must come from a âcleanâ address.
Since we're just talking about PR assignments, the OpSec does not need to be insane on âclean.â A clean address can be one that has never been used before except to get funded, e.g. by Coinbase or similar centralized exchange for example. If the requester wants to use something fancy like Railgun for the funding, that's fine. But if the proposed payment does not seem sufficiently anonymous, then the assignment can be rejected.
Similarly, the assignment details need to be sufficiently anonymous. A piece on, say, a single, specific crypto project may not be. If these were less scrupulous fulfillers, I'd say it absolutely wouldn't be. Because less scrupulous fulfillers would always write glowing praise, and thus the crypto projectâs proponents would be who is requesting the assignment. These as-far-as-I-know-scrupulous writers (for the most part they are writers) though are more likely to expose a project as BS than shovel glowing praise onto it, so the requester's identity is slightly obfuscated, as it could be a competitor requesting the profile. Still, there should be a rule that no actual specific projects should be named in the request. Instead the assignment should be more amorphous. A typical acceptable request might be a âtop 5 / 10 / 20â piece based on an uncontroversial metric. E.g. âTopic: Top 5 DePIN projects by Token Market Capâ or âTopic: Top 10 Stablecoin projects by Total Value Lockedâ.
So, funds get sent to the intermediary address, along with the instructions. The instructions can simply be included in the transaction details. A sentence or two shouldn't be too expensive for any major blockchain, and the instructions should be sparse. Then there's a one week cooling period where /any/ of the fulfillers can reject the request as not anonymous enough. They can also, via blockchain, request further information and the requester can provide it, until the week is over. At that point, unless the request was denied for not being anonymous enough (or possibly other ethical groundsâthough, these potential grounds should be described and posted in advanced), one of the fulfillers is randomly/programmatically selected and /has/ to do the assignment. That is, the selected person associated with the randomly selected wallet must spend those hours in good faith on the topic. That's the extent. They should be expected to âshow their workâ but that does not mean a finished, polished copy that meets the entirety of the request.
Then, once done, the work is published permanently and directly by the author/creator. Of course, again, I'd recommend using blockchain to capture the work, such as an NFT that is public to all, but sent to the requester's wallet. Now, for that, some chains will be far more expensive (Bitcoin), so the publishing should not require the same blockchain as the payment/assignment. It just needs to be a resource (blockchain) with a fair likelihood of longevity and anti-censorship.
As far as the rights of the requester or anyone as to what to do with the final NFT/content? What stipulations should be made regarding distribution, modification, and/or attribution by the requesterâor anyone? Well, my knee-jerk reaction is just have all content have a CC0 license. But how does a CC0 license fit into a world that might scrape your work, then shovel your work into an AI, then spit it out as a mangled unattributed mess, all while claiming attribution isn't possible, while ignoring that AI not preserving attribution was likely built that way specifically to hide IP theft?
Regardless, I'm sure the fulfillers can come up with sensible rules that aren't applied ad hoc and are detailed in advance.
But, yeah, ethical PR. Sounds hard.
[edit 5 minutes later. Oh and the Datafinnovation guys, they would be added to the group too. I started to read the next substack and remembered their excellent takedown of Barry Silbert.]
I wonât deny itâs a fine line in terms of messaging, but in this case I mean something very specific: ethical PR shops pitch story ideas to reporters who choose their coverage out of journalistic interest, not because theyâre getting paid by the PR shops/subjects of the articles.
â
ethical PR shops pitch story ideas to reporters who choose their coverage out of journalistic interest, not because theyâre getting paid by the PR shops/subjects of the articles.
â
Oh, that is interesting. So using the linguo of my model, the PR shop would be (one of) the ârequesters,â not the fulfillers. PR shops are more middlemen (and middlewomen). They would be secondary requesters after the primary requesters I was considering. And in fact, one could consider the PR shop of my model a âmiddleâ too. Just on the fulfiller's side. And more a middleware than a middleperson. Interesting.
Your model (and likely the current model) for ethical PR, if I understand it:
Primary requesters: Founders, C-Suite, Investors (and for the big entities, âBusiness Developmentâ types).
Secondary requesters: Ethical PR shop employed by the primary that then pitch loose ideas to fulfillers. What makes them ethical is they do not offer financial reward to the fulfillers? Just access for quotes, I'm guessing?
Fulfillers: Reporters with no financial motive or constraints. They can choose to take the story idea or leave it. I highly doubt writers need help coming up with ideas to write about. (Ideas that translate into money, that's really what writers yearn for, if anything.) They probably want the inside access. Of course, if they then /don't/ write glowing prose, they might not get it again. An ethical PR shop, though, could have a reputation that access is not rescinded even if the resulting piece is unflattering.
My proposed model:
Requesters: Founders, C-Suite, investors, and Business Development. They pitch directly to the PR shop. No secondary requesters.
Primary Fulfiller: PR shop, but it's not a human, it's just an autonomous service that doles out the work. (Hmm, maybe Andre Cronje would like to revive his dead Keep3r project for itâbut I think he should create something different that is simply permaweb and un-upgradable with no token to it. Most things with a token and âgovernanceâ and upgradability go to s***.) Not even âmiddlemenâ or âmiddlewomen,â just middleware, as the rules are set by the âsecondaryâ fulfillers, co-op style, and then it just runs.
Secondary fulfiller: Reporters. Same possible âproblemâ of unflattering prose reducing the amount of potential work and leading to fluff only. But that risk is now distributedâand dilutedâamong people who request and people who fulfill. Further the up-front terms and double-blindedness should help keep things ethical, much like they would in any scientific process.