Decentralized Content Distribution

NFTs are the ideal way to tokenize premium content while distribution via blockchain is censorship-resistant. Creating a new content economy

Economics graduate technical writer for Blockchain projects. Plutus Pioneers Cohort One, Alonzo Purple tester, and EMURGO Academy graduate.

Plan in Detail

First, we should have some basic concepts down:

Content: In publishing, art, and communication, content is the information and experiences that are directed toward an end-user or audience. Content is "something that is to be expressed through some medium, as speech, writing or any of various arts".

Content creator: A person who derives most of his/her income from the creation and distribution of content.

Content distribution channel. The means a content creator uses to distribute his/her creations to a targeted audience or public.

Content economy: The economic activity that originates from the creation of content by content creators. The content economy went from less than one billion US dollars in 2016 to more than 13 billion in 2021.

Premium content: content sold for a monetary value that it's restricted behind a paywall. It could be a one-time purchase or using a subscription model. 

On average, the content economy has grown 30% year over year for the past decade. It has attracted enormous attention and it is one of the most dynamic sectors of the economy. There are over 19 million content creators in the US. Of them, 68% are under 35 years of age, and it keeps growing. 112 million US citizens have purchased at some point premium content from various platforms. 

Yet, there have been some problems with the current internet architecture and payment systems. Content creators are encountering a lot of friction:

Lack of ownership of their content: Since content distribution is generally done via centralized platforms, content creators do not own their work.

Piracy: current centralized platforms do not provide adequate protection against piracy or easy to verify ownership. Content is pirated easily, sometimes in less than 31 hours for popular content creators.

Content theft: lack of verifiable attribution leads to content online being stolen. 

High fees: current content distribution channels have very high fees. Places like YouTube and Twitch take between 55% and 45%. While Patreon and SubscribeStart take 20% to 25%.

Hidden fees: current platform use the legacy financial system for payment of content. This means that on top of the fees charged by the platform there are bank transfer fees, overseas transfer fees (if the public is outside the home country of the creator), and disadvantageous exchange rates when converting to local currency.

Censorship: content creator livelihoods are at the mercy of the platform.

Vague Terms of Service: are designed to be vague. The reason being that platforms want room for interpretation so they can apply ToS clauses discretionary and unfairly.

Our proposal

Most of the problems outlined previously will be solved by creating a decentralized content distribution channel. In fact, NFTs are the perfect model to allow content creators and audiences the ability to interact, support, and grow together. Some of the advantages are:

Ownership of content: NFTs and wallet addresses ensure content ownership is attributed to the deployer's wallet.

Different NFT use cases: NFTs can be used to sell galleries of content, cards, collectibles, and many other formats. This can help the content creator designing new monetization strategies and boost audience engagement.

Effective micro-transactions: Cardano's fee structure allows for the real transfer of small amounts of money. In the current system, content creators need a minimum money amount to accumulate before being able to withdraw.

No middle-man: there would not be any sort of payment processor dictating terms to the content creator or audience.

Censorship resistance: no centralized actor can ban a content creator based on arbitrary criteria.

The audience of the content creators would also be able to benefit via the use of the unique properties of blockchains:

Liquidity mining: The platform can ensure rewards via a native token to those followers that use their tokens to show support to a particular content creator. Like staking, but instead to a pool of DeFi vault, lock one's funds with a particular content creator. 

A secondary market for NFTs: Content creators that release their galleries using NFT can benefit from a secondary market where audiences trade them between each other. A portion of the re-sell value would go to the original creator. While people with native tokens on their wallets could have reduced fees, or even no fees, for trading on the secondary market. 

Social tokens: content creators can also issue fungible tokens that would benefit from a larger ecosystem. There would no be more rug-pulls because these would have value within the platform.  

Those are just some of the benefits and products that can be delivered via the Cardano network to those participating in the content economy. The value of bringing the creator economy to the blockchain is also immense.

We are talking of a new type of blockchain user audience that can complement proven use cases like DeFi. A gateway for the adoption of blockchain by the masses not through financial products by the entertainment.

Definition of success

The expected launch for the platform itself would be January 2022. But all the items in the first three months would be delivered in 2021.  

First 3 months:

• Onboard content creators prior to launch.
• Start community engagement via social media presence.
• A first draft of the logic behind the smart contract's design.
• An initial draft of the tokenomics for incentives.

Next 6 months:

• Release the first tokenized content via NFTs.
• Release smart contracts for NFT distribution.
• Token sale to raise further funds.
• Create new NFT standards that have different use cases (collectibles, fractional ownership, on-chain decentralized royalties, others).

Next 12 months:

• Expand the platform to offer DeFi services.
• Start the transition to a decentralized government structure.

Budget breakdown.

• Smart contract and tokenomics design Cost = 30%
• Developing costs = 50%
• Publicity costs = 10%
• Promotional costs =10%

Competition

The promise NFT holds for the creator economy has been recognized by other projects in different chains. The superior technology and higher security of Cardano would be better applied here. Some of the competitors are:

https://fanadise.com/

https://vodra.io/home

https://creaton.io/