Online video is the fastest growing medium. It is set to account for 82% of all consumer Internet traffic by
2021
1 and the market is worth $312 billion
2
. Yet the online video business model is fundamentally challenged
With the advent of online video platforms, both video creation and consumption are more accessible than ever
before. This has led to a significant increase in content production and consumption as audiences shift online
for digital entertainment. However, under current advertising models, companies like Facebook and Google
stand out as the winners generating $191.8 billion
3 of net advertising revenue between them in 2017 by
controlling the distribution of content and the sale of advertising.
Audiences have fast turned into a commodity. Their personal data is sold to corporations for more targeted
advertising, while creators and publishers receive a percentage of revenue after the platform and
intermediaries take a significant share of the advertising revenue. In recent years, content creators and online
publishers have been very vocal on these issues, as the limited revenue they are generating means they are
unable to re-invest into content and, therefore they struggle to maintain their channels.
With these monopolies controlling the majority of online content, they continue to turn the screw to increase
margins, change algorithms that demonetize creators and decide what content is monetizable. Any competitor
who sets out to challenge this status quo and gains audience attention is quickly acquired and controlled,
threatening future consumer options online.
Verasity is developing a next-generation video sharing platform. This platform will empower Creators and
improve the experience of watching video online.
There are many existing challenges identified with the online video space today. Verasity’s team of media,
technology and blockchain experts are building a new model where Creators and Viewers transact directly on
the Blockchain, removing the need for intermediaries. The Verasity Player and online video platform is fully
functional and can be seen at: verasity.io This includes the Verasity Player Wallet prototype
The “VERA” token is a new medium of exchange and reward for video creation, sharing and viewing across the
Verasity community. Anyone watching videos can earn VERA currency. If they choose to watch adverts or
share the videos with their network, they will then receive further rewards in VERA. The platform gives Creators
and Publishers a variety of monetization solutions to choose from. Verasity’s mission is to help them generate
more value from their content. All transactions of the VERA token will be tracked and stored on the Blockchain
utilising Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS).
In a goal to bring Creators and Viewers together to support the creation of great video content. “Spark” is a
brand new take on a Marketplace where Viewers can fund Content Creators using VERA. Creators can opt to
sell a “stake” (VeraSparks) in their channel to finance production of new high quality content. Then those who
have supported them can share in their success.
To ensure transparency and integrity for the community, Verasity are developing a proprietary “Proof of View”
technology. Every video view will be securely tracked and stored on the Blockchain. This provides the security,
flexibility and scale to support a flourishing new environment for Content Publishers, Advertisers and Viewers.
The project vision is for the Verasity Protocol to also be adopted across the wider web and for VERA to
become the cryptocurrency to power the future of online video.
Problems in the Current Video Sharing Market
The estimated total addressable market for online video is $312 billion. Two of the largest video platforms
generate over 1.1 billion hours of video watched per day
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, yet fail to effectively balance the conflicting
interests between different stakeholders including Viewers, Creators, Advertisers and their own
Shareholders.
Facebook, Instagram and YouTube force users to watch ads to generate revenues for the platforms.
Users have concerns regarding the use of their personal data.
Platform businesses need to generate revenue and profits to pay for the technical infrastructure,
operating expenses, the many advertiser intermediaries, and a share to the Creator. The share paid to
the creator has been reported to be as low as $0.30 on the dollar.6
All this data is centrally stored so there is no way a Creator or Publisher can actually prove what their
share was and they often need to wait 60 days for before they receive their payment. Platforms can often
change policy, or tweak an algorithm, which can result in loss of revenues for the creator, who has no
voice to complain
In a race to replace lost revenues, Creators create a higher volume of content. This creates a total
oversupply of content commonly known as “content shock 7”. This means there are more videos on the
platform than is humanly possible to watch, and there are insufficient ad revenues to satisfy all
Creators. Now the platforms have an abundance of low quality content which they need to pay to store
and host, increasing operating costs.
Revolutionising Online Video Sharing
Verasity is designed to enable the online video economy and ecosystem, as a whole, by restructuring the
relationships between Content Creators, Advertisers and Consumers. This is contrary to existing video sharing
platforms that try to facilitate a legacy ecosystem with many layers of middlemen and vendors between the
ecosystem participants.
Verasity will fundamentally change the existing dynamic of how content is valued to be driven directly by
consumer engagement. In legacy advertising driven media economies, the value is assigned to audience
demographic and size, not the content itself. This abstraction layer skews the content value to high volume
engagements benefiting the Advertiser, rather than high quality engagements benefiting the Consumer and
Content Creator.
Verasity adheres to the following fundamental principles:
- A platform providing trust, transparency and integrity to the video sharing community.
- Viewers should be able to purchase and view high-quality video across multiple devices and operating systems anywhere on the globe without buffering, latency or playback issues.
- Viewers should have the opportunity to sell their time-based attention to the highest bidder but not be required to do so in order to engage with content.
- Viewers should be able to decide if they wish to receive targeted advertising and if their demographic information can be used for targeting.
- Creators should be able to easily upload, share, monetize and retain control of the distribution of their content.
- The platform should optimize for high quality consumer experiences, while minimizing the cost of distribution thereby creating more margin for Content Creators, and more affordable media for Consumers.
- There should be multiple monetization methods to best suit each perspective participant within the ecosystem where payments are processed and received in near real time. 8. All value exchange should stay within the economy and ecosystem supporting both growth and innovation as well as ensuring that all participants are fairly compensated for their contributions.
VeraPay
The VeraPay component will provide the ability for users to buy VERA easily. This is by using a third party
integration to manage all the necessary transaction and security protocols. VeraPay will support the VERA
microtransactions between Viewers, Publishers, Creators, Advertisers and Sponsors. This ensures users
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have a seamless experience to join and utilize the ecosystem. Atomic swaps between other crypto tokens will
also be explored for ease of decentralized transactions between cryptocurrencies and VERA.
Proof of View (PoV™)
Verasity has a patent pending system to securely verify audience metrics (views) in a way that is publicly
transparent and tamper proof. This system ensures the integrity of the all elements of the Verasity economy
which relies upon audience metrics.
Wallet Solutions
Management of Verasity intends to launch a desktop wallet application to safely store users’ VERA. The
desktop wallet application will also allow users to act as Verafiers to verify transactions and participate in the
creation of new blocks.
The Web wallet offers users easy access to their VERA on the platform. The wallet is built into the player,
providing users access to their balance in realtime, and enables the VeraPay protocol to seamlessly send and
receive VERA within the ecosystem. Users can transfer funds between each wallet.
Verafiers
Within the Verasity Blockchain, users can be elected as representatives to witness / verify the transactions in
the Blockchain which is a core component of the stability, and legitimacy of the underlying platform.Verafiers
are compensated in VERA for performing this role in the ecosystem.
Smart Contracts
Verasity uses Smart Contracts to facilitate all types of transactions in the ecosystem. Smart Contracts are
digital constructs in the Blockchain that facilitate, verify, and enforce an agreement. They make transactions
between participants instant without the need for third parties.
Similar Blockchain Projects
Basic Attention Token - basicattentiontoken.org/
Basic Attention Token (BAT) is building a decentralized, transparent digital ad exchange based on Ethereum
Blockchain. This uses the Brave Browser to insert adblock and cut out adtech. This enables a creation of a new
economy where users buy BAT to pay Publishers based on attention (or time spent on site). Advertisers can
buy BAT to be able to circumvent the browser adblock, where value goes directly to the publisher.
BAT launched a token sale in May 2017 and raised $35m in 30 seconds. In January 2018 they had a market
cap of $864m claimed adoption of 8000 Publishers verified, including 6000 YouTube Creators with an
audience of 100m13
. Users are required to download and utilize a new browser. Google’s Chrome have recently
released an updated version including a built in ad filter. Brave’s solution acts to block advertising revenue to
insert their own revenue or direct payment. This may breach the terms and conditions of some Publishers or
Platforms.
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Steem - steem.ioSteem, is a social media platform based on its own Blockchain to support distribution and rewards for content
publishing. Contributors publish onto the platform and users upvote content, which generates Steem for the
Creator. The platform is governed by its users which includes discouraging spammers, copyright and illegal
content. Today Steemit.com has over 34m users according to Similarweb and Steem is valued at over $5 a
coin. Steem have paid out $22.8m in rewards to date and has a market cap of $1.2B as of January 2018.
Props - propsproject.com
Props by YouNow is “the next generation platform that leverages the power of cryptoeconomics & participation
in digital media”. YouNow is an existing live streaming site so have an existing team and impressive investor
list. Props is based on Ethereum Blockchain, and aims to decentralize digital media. It has a currency (PROPS)
but also Coins, which are used for micro transactions, but not hosted on the Blockchain (not a cryptocurrency).
The technology use case today seems to be designed for mobile applications with ‘many to many’ live
streaming solutions.
Flixxo - www.flixxo.comFlixxo
offers a P2P, decentralized video platform which aims to give more power and revenue back to the
creators. It is a merge of BitTorrent and Blockchain. Videos are distributed using the peer-to-peer network and
viewers use FLIXX tokens based on Ethereum to watch. FLIXX is earned by being a seeder on the network and
will offer CPU, storage and energy to support the network. The team are based in Argentina and the network
requires users to download software to participate. In November 2017 Flixxio raised
TEAM
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