Solana liquid staking startup Sanctum trials ‘creator coins’

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.

---

Sanctum, the Solana startup focused on growing the network’s liquid staking ecosystem, launched a new primitive today called creator coins. 

Creator coins are essentially Solana liquid staking tokens that Sanctum issues while giving the yield to creators. Fans can earn loyalty points for holding creator coins, and creators can use those points to dole out perks. It’s a new spin on an old concept in crypto, but Sanctum thinks launching with more crypto-native creators can help it pick up adoption where others have failed.

Sanctum is a newer startup that came up through the Solana Foundation’s startup incubator this spring and promised to create an “infinite LST future” on Solana. Its initial flagship product was called INF — a token that helps provide liquidity to a pool of Solana LSTs.

It then carried out a much-hyped airdrop focused on “earnestness” that ignited some controversy over the summer. Since then, Sanctum has been a bit quieter, most notably launching LSTs with Asia-based crypto exchanges including Binance in the early fall. 

Creator coins are a concept Sanctum has seemingly toyed with for a while as well — co-founder FP Lee created the fpSOL liquid staking token as a “personal LST” experiment in May. 

Creator coin holders forgo their SOL staking yield to support creators. Sanctum takes a small cut of this as well, Sanctum’s anonymous co-founder J told me. Sanctum’s Solana staking APY is around 10% on average, J added.

In exchange, users earn “seeds,” which are loyalty points that can track fans’ investment and let creators offer loyalty perks. 

When I asked why creator coins couldn’t just pass along some staking yield to users while charging a commission for the creators, J said giving creators all the rewards “makes economic sense for now,” but this could be changed in the future.

One obvious target audience for creator coins is celebrities who — like the “Hawk Tuah” girl — seem to keep launching volatile memecoins that end in lawsuits or reputational damage. Creator coins may come with less immediate upside, but they also come with less risk. 

Still, Sanctum isn’t the first to try luring creators with crypto-based loyalty programs. Jack Harlow joined a loyalty platform named MITH last year, for instance, but other creators appear to be somewhat slow to adopt the platform, which hasn’t posted on X since May. As a response to this, Sanctum is limiting creator coins to just crypto creators for now.

“A lot of previous attempts often failed because there’s a certain disconnect between the creator and their supporters,” J said. “This is why we didn’t necessarily want to get the biggest creators for the beta launch. We wanted Solana folks who were really dialed in and connected to their fanbase.”

---

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

• Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
• Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
• Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
• 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
• Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
• The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
• Supply Shock: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.