In brief Individuals can stake DAI to reward meme creators.

Creators earn rewards off the interest generated.

The process is called no-loss content sponsoring because users generate staking funds instead of giving money.

Decentralized media marketplace Alethea AI has introduced a program that gives meme creators a chance to garner digital funds.

Individuals who take part vote on which memes they would like to see in the future and can even commission material by staking DAI, a decentralized stablecoin. Users earn Alethea AI's native ALE token for staking. They can unstake their DAI at any time should they decide to walk away.

Alethea AI CEO and co-founder Arif Khan told Decrypt memes are the first content category his company is focusing on, given that crypto enthusiasts are intimately familiar with memes and regularly utilize them.

“Anybody can be a meme creator or developer,” he explained. “The distinction here is that deep learning technology is enabling a new category of content to be created where you can swap [Changpeng Zhao’s] face into a martial arts flick or have Vitalik Buterin sing a song.”

Founded in 2019, Alethea already allows users to create and monetize their AI-generated media in a trusted environment. Last October, the company’s technology was featured at a Binance-sponsored hackathon in San Francisco to demonstrate how users could spot altered or manipulated videos and continue the fight against fake news.

The process it’s using for meme creation is known as “no-loss content sponsoring.” Staking cryptocurrency allows someone to earn interest on their holdings, thereby boosting their assets. In this case, all interest earned on the DAI is handed over to the user’s chosen meme creator to support upcoming content.

Khan describes the new feature as a collaborative one. Members of the Alethea community pool their DAI together and stake it through what’s known as the Compound.Finance protocol, an Ethereum-based platform that allows users to lend out their DAI and other assets for the purpose of generating interest.

The process also doesn’t cost users anything. They’re only required to let their money remain idle in what’s called a meme pool while staking funds are generated. Content creators receive financial support, while members get the content they want.

While Alethea is primarily focused on staking DAI for the time being, Khan said the program is looking to integrate more stablecoins in the future, giving content creators the opportunity to explore new tokens and build their digital asset portfolios.