One of the most well-known personalities in cryptocurrency has publicly criticized Ethereum’s co-founder’s intention to change the way digital tokens function for online artists.
This past Sunday, Vitalik Buterin presented his vision on X, describing an architecture that combines betting markets with community voting groups. His objective is to ensure that financial backers have a genuine stake in the quality of their work while assisting digital artists and content creators in connecting with their audience.
But Billy Markus, co-founder of Dogecoin, isn’t buying it. He dismissed the concept entirely, describing these digital assets as lifeless tokens with no real future.
How the proposed system would work
These blockchain-based tools allow fans to own pieces of a creator’s work, gain special access, or earn royalties. The problem, according to Buterin, is that current platforms care more about how much content gets produced than whether it’s any good. He pointed out that automated content made by artificial intelligence only makes this worse.
Back in January 2026, Buterin made similar points, saying the cryptocurrency world needs to build “better DAOs” instead of just bigger ones.
In order to implement his suggested approach, creators would generate their own digital tokens and submit them to painstakingly overseen “creator DAOs.” Members of these groups would then vote to decide whether projects or artists should be accepted.
Prediction markets allow anyone who wants to earn money to speculate on which submissions will be accepted. This would put the focus on discovering quality rather than merely supporting extra content.
The value of a creator’s token may increase if their work is accepted. Additionally, the voting parties would destroy some of their own tokens, increasing the scarcity and potential value of what is left.
Buterin noted that popular creator coin platforms like BitClout and Zora mostly feature famous people or those with “very high social status.” This setup makes it tough for regular creators to break through based purely on what they make. He contrasted this with Substack’s model, which he praised for its proactive curation and support of diverse writers.
He also talked about bringing back “decentralized social networking,” with plans to push this forward during 2026.
Dogecoin founder calls model fundamentally flawed
In response, Markus declared that the creator coin concept was fundamentally flawed. He said these tokens will just end up getting dumped and forgotten, following the same fate as the millions of other digital currencies produced every year. Most fade away rapidly, which is why he sees no point in trying to repair the creator token notion.
He went on to say that a lot of cryptocurrency social projects have traditionally put speculation ahead of usefulness, which will eventually cause them to fail if token prices drop.
Markus, who sometimes blogs under the handle “Shibetoshi Nakamoto,” has long argued that the great majority of new tokens are minted in seconds for a few pennies and lack any intrinsic value.
In his view, the “cathedral” of idealistic blockchain building is often destroyed by the “casino” of speculative gambling. He emphasized that adding more complicated layers, such as prediction markets or voting groups, does not change the fact that most people participate in these ecosystems merely to sell their assets to the next person at a greater price.
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