Dee Goens takes over as Zora CEO with a fading creator-coin business to revive. ByMicah Abiodun 3 mins read Published 10 hours ago * Zora co-founder Dee Goens has replaced Jacob Horne as CEO as the onchain social platform tries to revive its creator-coin business. * Zora Coins quarterly revenue fell about 98% from $5.64 million in Q3 2025 to $106,540 in Q2 2026. * Goens is betting on custom trading pairs, multichain expansion and stronger $ZORA holder incentives to rebuild sustained activity. 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. FAQs. Who is Zora's new CEO? Dee Goens, a co-founder of Zora, said on X on Wednesday that he is now CEO of the platform, taking over from fellow co-founder Jacob Horne after more than six years working together. What is Zora? How far has Zora's coin revenue fallen? Disclaimer. The information provided is not trading advice. Cryptopolitan.com holds no liability for any investments made based on the information provided on this page. Cryptopolitan strongly recommend independent research and/or consultation with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions. Micah Abiodun makes good use of his Environmental Engineering and Management (MSc) at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) to polish content and price prediction news at Cryptopolitan. Now on his 7th year in the crypto media space, he covers major cryptos, altcoins, DeFi, stablecoins, macro trends, and emerging tech. TABLE OF CONTENT

Zora co-founder dee Goens replaces Jacob Horne as CEO. Goens said Zora is now under 10 people after a headcount reduction this year and named ZORA buybacks among his first priorities. Fees from the protocol's Base deployment are down 99% from a year ago. Dee Goens has taken over as chief executive of Zora, replacing co-founder Jacob Horne, who is leaving the company after more than six years, Goens said in a post on Wednesday. Goens, also a co-founder, inherits a company that has cut itself to fewer than 10 people and rebuilt its product around trading pairs on other networks rather than the Creator Coins it built on Base last year. Fees on Zora's Base deployment, the only one DefiLlama tracks, totaled $14,768 in August, against $2.51 million in August 2025 - a 99.4% decline, according to DefiLlama. Over the past 30 days the deployment took $14,971 in fees, of which $6,165 went to Zora itself, and its pools traded $551,284. "After more than six incredible years as the company's co-founder and CEO, Jacob is transitioning out of Zora and onto his next chapter," Goens wrote. "I will be stepping into the CEO role as we continue building and stewarding Zora." Fewer than 10 people. Goens said Zora reduced headcount earlier this year and is "now smaller than we were at the start of the year, less than 10 people." He did not give a prior figure or say how many people left. "As a result, we've gotten more AI native with agents running throughout Slack, writing code, and resolving incidents," he wrote. Pairs, not Creator Coins. Zora opened Custom Pairs on Aug. 20, letting users choose what asset a new token is paired against instead of pairing it to ZORA or a Creator Coin, according to Zora. The feature is live on Base, Robinhood Chain and Solana, and carries a 1% trading fee of which 0.70% goes to the token's creator, per Zora's documentation. Goens said more than 4,000 pairs have been created since launch. Zora put the figure at more than 2,000 on Aug. 28. Zora also began issuing on Robinhood Chain and Solana over the summer, added crosschain trading across those two and BNB Chain, opened trading through its agent in direct messages, and dropped the charges it had applied to DMs and comments, Goens said. The company launched attention markets on Solana in February. Buybacks top of mind. Goens listed five priorities, starting with "aligning our business with ZORA token holders by implementing buybacks / rewards." He gave no size, funding source, timetable or mechanism. The rest were rebuilding community trust "by over communicating our progress," onboarding new users with an emphasis on the mobile app, restarting distribution of community incentives, and acting on feedback. "There's a ton of work for us to get through as we eye the end of the year," he wrote. ZORA 94% below record. ZORA traded at $0.00814 at 19:52 UTC on Wednesday, down 8.5% over 24 hours, up 11.5% over seven days and up 55% over 30 days, for a market capitalization of $36.3 million and a fully diluted value of $81.3 million, according to CoinGecko. The token is 94.4% below the $0.1456 it reached on Aug. 11, 2025. The token was at $0.00831 in the five minutes before Goens' post went up at 18:02 UTC, putting the move since at roughly 2%. It has turned over $21.4 million in the past day. ETH traded at $2,466.98, down 0.4% over 24 hours. Horne's next chapter. Horne describes himself on his personal site as "cofounder of Zora, previously at Coinbase." He and Goens have worked together for more than six years, both said. Horne ran Zora through an NFT marketplace, an Ethereum Layer 2, and the June 2025 shift to Creator Coins, which made every Zora profile a tradable token. The Defiant reported in December that ZORA slipped to $0.038 as the model's highest-profile launch, the creator coin of journalist Nick Shirley, fell 79% from its record within 48 hours. The token has lost a further 79% since. "I'll be sharing more on what I'm spending my time on next in the near future," Horne wrote. "In the meantime I'm eternally grateful for the community, experiments, lessons and crazy journey over the past few years." Goens said Horne is "not going too far" from crypto.