Zora co-founder Dee Goens takes over as CEO after 98% revenue plunge

Zora co-founder Dee Goens announced on Wednesday that he has taken over the position of chief executive of the onchain social network from Jacob Horne. The appointment of Goens comes at a challenging time for Zora, as its creator-coin business has declined significantly since its peak in 2025.

Zora’s lexicon can confuse people. The $ZORA token, which is the platform’s native token, differs from Zora Coins, which are the protocol activity tracked by DefiLlama, as well as Creator Coins and Post Coins, which are the tokens utilized by the users to trade. The $ZORA token is used for paying rewards and adding liquidity to the project, but does not give holders any governance rights or ownership.

That difference is important. The recovery of Zora hinges on its ability to get people to start trading Creator and Post Coins again, while providing a clear incentive for $ZORA holders to promote Zora’s expansion. This task will be a part of Goens’ role as he will have to prove that the token-based attention can create long-term trading activity, generate good income for creators, and strengthen the link between Zora’s business and its native token.

From a $5.6 million quarter to a fraction of it

The figures illustrate the extent of the difficulties being faced. DefiLlama’s ZORA Coins figures point to a revenue of $5.64 million for the protocol in the third quarter of 2025. However, it fell to $3.06 million in the last quarter of the same year and to $279,810 in the first quarter of the following year and $106,540 in the second quarter, a drop of almost 98.1% from the third quarter revenues earlier stated. As of now, the current figure for the third quarter of the year is $46,810, although the quarter has not yet ended.

The recent activity seems very poor in comparison. DefiLlama posts the fees for the last 30 days at $14,971, protocol revenue at $6,165, and DEX volume at $551,284. Cumulative fees amount to $10.43 million, and the overall DEX volume totals at around $399.47 million.

Why the momentum stalled

Zora’s initial approach was to use tokens for both the creators and their work. Creator Coins represented individuals while Post Coins represented their posts. According to a 0x case study of Zora, Creator Coins were associated with $ZORA, and Post Coins were associated with the creator’s coin.

Distribution made a big impact during the boom in 2025. The moment Coinbase adopted Zora into the Base App feed, its daily token creation rose significantly from 6,000 at the beginning of July to almost 50,000 at the end of the month, according to 0x. Later on, its Swap API managed to complete transactions worth $59 million across a total of 352,000 trades with the help of Zora coins.

The success, however, has been less prominent this year. As reported by Cryptopolitan in February, Base App was shutting down its Creator Rewards program as well as the social feed powered by Farcaster and was changing its focus to trading, despite having spent over $450,000 on Creator Rewards for more than 17,000 creators.

A bet on pairing and multichain reach

Goens is now attempting to push Zora to a wider trading infrastructure. “Pairing and social trading will create new waves of adoption for crypto,” he wrote on X, adding that “Zora is here to help grow the pie.”

Indeed, the product has taken a step in that way. Custom Pairs allows creators to select which asset the coin will be paired with. This could be ETH, USDC, Robinhood stock tokens, or Solana tokens in the case of Base, Robinhood Chain, and Solana. The pairs charge 1% trading fees with 0.70% going to the creator. Trend Coins charge 0.01%. Zora’s August update added support for the Robinhood Chain and native Solana deposits, as well as contributing gas for swaps across the three chains.

What Goens has to prove

The issue of tokens is becoming increasingly hard to dismiss. Although Goens mentioned buybacks or rewards among his goals for bringing the business in closer alignment with $ZORA holders, he still has not revealed the amount, source, timing, or mechanism for the funding. This is significant because $ZORA holders do not currently have any legal entitlement to revenues generated by the protocol or its treasury assets.

However, the real test is longevity. Galaxy Research has pointed out that new token markets tend to be very concentrated and tended to draw attention only for a short period of time, generating bursts of liquidity instead of long-term activity.

Thus, Zora will need something more than another viral cycle. Goens’ biggest challenge is whether or not the quarterly revenue will grow, and whether it goes up thanks to ongoing multichain trading and not to the one-time spike in distribution.

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