Web3 has the potential to empower online creators by providing them with more control over their content and reducing the risk of being deplatformed, according to the new COO of Lukso.
Creative individuals have historically relied on centralized online platforms such as Google, Meta, and Spotify, which can alter their rules at any time, affecting the creators’ audience and income. Lukso (LYX) aims to leverage Web3 technology to give creators more autonomy.
The company recently appointed Jan-Oliver Sell as its new Chief Operating Officer. Sell, who previously served as the Managing Director at Coinbase Germany, shared his thoughts on the potential of Web3 for creators with crypto.news.
crypto.news: AI has enabled a larger number of individuals to become creators. However, many creators are apprehensive about the impact of AI on their work. How does AI align with Lukso’s mission to empower creators?
Jan-Oliver Sell: AI is reshaping the creative landscape, but it also raises concerns regarding authorship, attribution, and accountability. LUKSO’s focus is on establishing a verifiable presence for AI systems on-chain through Universal Profiles.
A Universal Profile not only caters to humans but also serves as a digital identity for AI agents. This allows AI to operate on-chain transparently—execute transactions, share content, manage assets, and engage with other profiles—all under a persistent, verifiable identity. The Universal Profile can reference off-chain training data sources, models used for training, and track actions for accountability.
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Significantly, Universal Profiles are customizable and adaptable. Various individuals—such as developers, curators, or safety auditors—can be authorized to oversee the AI’s profile through LUKSO’s LSP6 key manager standard. This promotes secure, collaborative supervision of AI agents. The profile can even establish a following, earn credibility, and evolve socially—similar to a human creator.
CN: How does Lukso address intellectual property rights, and how does it correspond with existing IP regulations?
JS: LUKSO is not a rigid system with predefined functionalities, but rather a sandbox for exploring limitless solutions. Intellectual property management can be enhanced through technology, making it more transparent. Instead of replacing legal frameworks, the focus is on enhancing them—enabling creators to attach licenses, metadata, and provenance directly to digital assets. This creates a clear, tamper-proof trail of ownership and rights, bridging traditional IP laws with the evolving digital realm.
CN: Lukso positions itself as the blockchain for the creator economy. What are the challenges associated with centralized platforms like Instagram or Spotify for creators?
JS: Centralized platforms operate as closed systems, regulating content visibility, creator earnings, and permissible features. Creators are subject to fluctuating algorithms, opaque policies, and data silos that they do not own or control.
Through LUKSO’s LSP smart contract standards, particularly Universal Profiles, the focus is on rebalancing the power dynamics. Universal Profiles are completely on-chain, resistant to censorship, and publicly accessible. This implies that creators possess their identity and content, allowing anyone to view or interact with the data—be it fans, applications, platforms, or new protocols. No one has the authority to shut down or shadow-ban a profile. Once published, it becomes part of a shared, permissionless environment.
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This open framework facilitates novel relationships between creators, communities, and developers. Fans can develop tools based on creators’ profiles. Artists can experiment freely without the fear of being deplatformed. New protocols can emerge that treat creators as independent participants rather than merely content providers. This ecosystem fosters innovation, freedom, and sustainable connections.
CN: What are the benefits of Web3 platforms compared to centralized platforms? What challenges does Web3 face?
JS: Web3 introduces transparency, ownership, and user empowerment. It enables creators to monetize directly, own their audience, and operate without intermediaries. Nonetheless, mainstream adoption is impeded by complexity—unfamiliar tools, convoluted interfaces, and security apprehensions. To address this, I reimagined user accounts from the ground up with Universal Profiles—introducing smart, recoverable, and user-friendly blockchain identities to the Web3 experience.
Web3’s progress is hindered not by the tools and decentralized applications (dApps), but by the foundational elements such as the pure private key account system and the absence of a standardized smart contract-based account system. This challenge has now been overcome and is accessible to all Web3 users through the LUKSO Standards Proposals (LSPs).
CN: Despite the advantages of decentralization, centralized entities persist in the blockchain space. For instance, centralized exchanges (CEXs) and memecoin launchpads are popular due to their accessibility. Can decentralized platforms bridge the accessibility gap?
JS: Decentralized systems often encounter obstacles related to scalability, speed, and user experience. These limitations have led to the emergence of centralized intermediaries even within Web3, as they offer the convenience and speed that users are accustomed to. However, with the right standards, this gap can not only be closed but transformed into an opportunity to leap forward.
We enhance the user experience layer by utilizing Universal Profiles and new standards that render blockchain accounts intelligent, recoverable, and expandable. This revolutionizes the user interface of Web3, making it more intuitive and powerful than Web2.
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What sets this approach apart is composability. In Web2, applications and platforms are isolated—Instagram cannot be integrated with Spotify. Within LUKSO’s ecosystem, protocols can be embedded directly into profiles. A single mini-app can function as a token launchpad, event ticketing system, or fan token distribution tool. When integrated into a Universal Profile on UniversalEverything.io, the profile itself becomes the application: an artist’s profile transforms into their ticket store, a project’s profile becomes their launchpad. This level of modularity and cross-functionality is absent in Web2.
By implementing proper standards, decentralization can not only match the convenience of centralized platforms but surpass it by offering greater flexibility, ownership, and creative potential.
CN: What are the key areas that Lukso is concentrating on to assist creators?
JS: LUKSO’s primary focus is on constructing the digital infrastructure essential for creators to thrive—where identity, ownership, and creativity are deeply intertwined with the blockchain.
Key areas include:
- Universal Profiles: Intelligent, on-chain accounts serving as a creator’s digital identity. They encompass assets, reputation, and permissions, enabling creators to establish trust, history, and engagement across various platforms.
- Token standards (LSP7 for fungible, LSP8 for NFTs): These standards transcend conventional formats like ERC20 or ERC721, facilitating automation, real-time responses, and seamless integration with profiles and applications.
- UniversalEverything.io: An open, adaptable frontend where creators and developers can explore the ecosystem, create mini-applications, and develop new experiences for their fan base. It functions as a dynamic dashboard for the decentralized web—where a profile is not just a presence but a programmable environment.
Collectively, these components establish a foundation where creators are not constrained by platforms—they own their identity, data, and audience, and can expand their ecosystem on their terms.
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