Mad Realities engages cryptocurrency users through reality shows

Web3 doesn’t have the most inclusive reputation, yet so many cryptocurrency founders talk about integrating the next 100 million users into the space. Statistically speaking, the next 100 million cannot be made up entirely of a homogenous group of white men who spend the majority of their waking hours coding and/or day trading (no shade, just pointing out a fact)!

This week onwards Chain reactionI interviewed Devin Lewtan, a 20-year-old founder who seems to have found the secret sauce when it comes to bringing web3 to new audiences.

His New York-based media company, Mad Realities, just debuted its first season of “Proof of Love,” a dating-focused reality show that lets viewers interact with the plot and vote on key decisions via NFT . This April, Mad Realities raised $6 million in a seed round from investors including cryptocurrency firm Paradigm and socialite Paris Hilton to build a platform they hope will become the “Netflix of web3.” You can listen to the full interview with Devin below.

“We think what’s going to drive the next 100 million people to cryptocurrency is the content, because it’s intuitive. It’s a real consumer use case,” Lewtan said in the podcast.

Lewtan, catapulted into global tech fame when she co-released the viral Clubhouse show “NYU Girls Roasting Tech Guys” during the height of the pandemic, first became interested in NFTs when she started talking to her friend and co-founder Alice Ma how cryptocurrencies could help change the way media is funded.

“We put out a blog post basically saying, what would it be like if we put on this dating show where people minted our NFTs and could vote on who got on the show, what happens and who wins and have fun, special, benefits in terms of governance based on the level purchased,” Lewtan said.

Shortly after publishing its first blog post in November, the Mad Realities team had raised the equivalent of ~$500,000 USD in ethereum to fund production. Within a few months, they had mounted a five-week interactive show filmed in person in New York City.

The audience for the first season, which ended in April this year, was about 55% female and made up mostly of people who were initially only there for the entertainment value of the show rather than the its connection to web3, Lewtan said.

Devin Lewtan, CEO and co-founder of Mad Realities. Image credits: Provided by Devin Lewtan

Once audience members saw the benefits and voting rights afforded to Mad Realities NFT holders, called “roseholders” in a nod to “The Bachelor” franchise, they were intrigued.

“They were able to tell their friends, I’m pretty sure these roseholders that keep appearing are people who bought NFTs, and those NFTs allowed them to vote on things, and then the money from the NFTs funded the show. And then they say , this actually makes sense to me, more than most projects in the space… it’s not really like the kind of scam use case I think about with NFTs,” Lewtan said.

As for the future, Lewtan said the next season of “Proof of Love,” scheduled to launch early next year, will inform the startup as it crafts a broader vision of what a web3 media platform might look like. They’re experimenting with ideas like bringing other content creators to the Mad Realities platform and helping them launch their own NFT projects to their audiences, she added.

Above all, Lewtan emphasized the importance of keeping ease of use top of mind when building the product.

“One of the things we’re focusing on now as we develop our app is that it matters [creating a crypto wallet] it is not one of the steps in the process. You should just be able to create an account and not think about it being linked to a wallet,” Lewtan said.

“A wallet is compatible, but if you sign up, you should be able to have an NFT in your wallet and in your app and not even think about it… So a lot of the things we’re focusing on are: what’s the like to be so easy to use and mobile-first that it doesn’t even feel like a crypto product?”

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