My Journey Into Zora: How I Turned an Idea Into the Zaps Universe

Zora — Post, discover, and trade what’s next

My Journey in crypto has taken me through a lot of different corners of the space, but one of the most interesting places I discovered was Zora. To me, Zora felt different from platforms built purely around speculation or trading. It felt like a place where I could actually experiment, create, and put ideas into the world. I wasn’t just looking at charts or trying to predict what a token might do next. I was building something. That experience eventually led me to create my own little universe called Zaps.
When I first started exploring Zora, I was fascinated by the idea that a person could take an idea that existed entirely in their imagination and turn it into something people could actually collect and interact with. Art, memes, characters, stories, and digital culture could all become part of the same ecosystem.

I started thinking less like someone trying to “make an NFT” and more like someone building a brand. That shift in mindset completely changed how I approached the space.
That’s where Zaps was born. What started as an idea slowly turned into a world of its own. I began creating characters, visuals, lore, collectibles, and different concepts around the Zaps identity. I wanted Zaps to feel like something bigger than a single image or token. I imagined a growing universe where people could discover characters, collect digital items, participate in events, and feel like they were part of something that was still being created in real time.
One of my favorite parts of building Zaps was experimenting with the idea of a community around it. I played with concepts like Zapsmon, inspired by the feeling of discovering and evolving creatures in games I grew up loving. I imagined a system where holders could see their Zapsmon grow based on their involvement, with mechanics like burning Zaps to evolve. It was less about creating a perfect product and more about asking myself, “What would be fun?” Zora gave me a place to experiment with those ideas.
I also started thinking about Zaps as a brand rather than just a crypto project. I created ideas for merchandise, collectibles, a Zaps store, digital artwork, and even concepts for a Zaps app. I imagined leaderboards, holder experiences, evolving characters, and a whole visual identity surrounding the project. Some ideas were serious, some were ridiculous, and some were probably a little bit of both. But that was the fun. I wasn’t afraid to try something just because it hadn’t been done exactly that way before.
One of the most memorable things about the Zaps journey was creating community events. I experimented with airdrops, buyer events, raffles, and collaborations. I remember running events where buyers could receive additional tokens or participate in special giveaways. I even created a raffle concept where the number of tickets was connected to how much Zaps someone held. These experiments taught me something important: sometimes the most valuable part of a crypto project isn’t the asset itself. It’s the experience you create around it.
The Zaps universe also became a way for me to connect different parts of crypto culture together. I experimented with ideas involving Zora, Farcaster, tokens, digital collectibles, merchandise, and community interaction. I wanted to see how all these pieces could fit together. Instead of thinking of crypto as just a place to buy and sell assets, I started seeing it as a toolkit for creating internet-native communities and brands.

Looking back, I don’t think I ever approached Zaps like a traditional startup founder with a perfect business plan. It was much more organic than that. I was learning as I went, creating things because they were interesting to me, and watching to see what other people enjoyed. Sometimes an idea would get attention and sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes I would completely change direction. But every experiment gave me another idea for where the project could go next.
That’s probably the biggest lesson I took away from my time building on Zora: creating in crypto can be fun again. There is so much focus in the industry on price, charts, market caps, and making money that it’s easy to forget why many of us became interested in this technology in the first place. For me, Zaps was a reminder that I could simply make something because I thought it was cool. I could create a character, invent a story, build a community experiment, or launch a collectible and see what happened.
My journey with Zora and Zaps is still a work in progress. I don’t know exactly what the next version of the Zaps universe will look like, but that’s part of what makes it exciting. The project became a creative playground where I could test ideas and learn about crypto, branding, community, and digital ownership all at the same time. Whether Zaps eventually becomes something much bigger or simply remains one of the most fun creative experiments I’ve ever worked on, I’m glad I took the chance to build it. Sometimes the best thing you can do in crypto isn’t chase the next big thing—it’s create your own.

My journey with Zora and Zaps is still a work in progress. I don’t know exactly what the next version of the Zaps universe will look like, but that’s part of what makes it exciting. The project became a creative playground where I could test ideas and learn about crypto, branding, community, and digital ownership all at the same time. Now, I want to take that same creative energy and bring it to Publish0x. Instead of only building characters, brands, and digital collectibles, I want to start creating posts that share what I’m learning along the way. There are so many new and interesting projects in the crypto space that I’ve discovered through my journey—especially projects that offer different ways to earn, participate, and explore the ecosystem. I’m excited to use Publish0x as a new creative outlet to document my experiences, introduce people to projects I’ve discovered, and hopefully help others find new opportunities to earn crypto while having fun exploring this space. If Zora was my playground for creating, I’m hoping Publish0x can become my playground for sharing.