Rug Radio: a cozy media startup with rugs

Rug Radio is a media that belongs to Farokh Sarmad, his team, and the listeners. According to the project’s website, every participant can participate in building a network “where the incentives favor truth, ownership and long-term care for the commons.”

Rug Radio is a content platform whose creators experiment with tools rather than formats. After selecting a media sphere that matched their interests and would not become irrelevant, they moved it to Web3 for maximum sustainability and efficiency.

Farokh Sarmad Tehrani is widely known today as a reputable influencer who has no problem calling the Porsche NFT sucky or criticizing digital artwork purchased by Justin Bieber. But it should be noted that he became popular long before the NFT boom, having received many followers on Tumblr, Instagram, and Clubhouse.

According to Farokh’s with Decrypt, a fateful conversation about the NFT world took place at the Clubhouse with the participation of Logan Paul, Fewocious, Greg Mike, Lady PheOnix, ThankYouX and other leading participants in the ecosystem. Shortly thereafter, he decided to focus on Web3 and NFT, leaving social media consulting.

Rug Radio and its foundation RugDAO were launched in January 2022. RugDAO demonstrates how ecosystem members retain ownership over time. RugDAO manages the project bank RugBank, which implements user reward programs.

The reward system was developed and tested by Studio Artemisia led by Artemysia-X. It entails the distribution of RUG tokens for the creation and consumption of content, participation in Twitter and Discord, as well as collaboration with leading Web projects to provide members of the ecosystem with whitelisting places, subscriptions to apps, free minting, RUG to NFT exchange, and so on.

RUG can be obtained for being active on the platform as well as owning items from the Genesis NFT collection. It contains 20,000 digital rugs of varying rarity, each of which generates a set number of tokens per day. RUG can be spent on various items as well as collected for later exchange into the RDAO governance token.

Currently, Rug Radio's schedule includes a wide range of programs to suit all tastes. Here you can find not only authoritative reviews of NFT, acquaintances with artists and leaders of Web3. There will also be an open panel, interviews with fashion brands, author programs, and shows for underrepresented groups in society for ecosystem participants.

Rug Radio's actual revenue model consists of Genesis NFT royalties, content creator sponsorship deals, and a classified art project that has evolved into the Faces of Web3 collection of NFT avatars. Will such a format be viable? The startup team will have to find out shortly, after the six-month period specified in the start-up budget.