I would store the content creators and followers on blockchain for instance I would store food cooking video’s to streamline you could purchase them with stablecoins plus also using hyperledger to purchase a box of ingredients where there would be traceability and transparency of goods.
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In order to determine what parts of a Youtube type video sharing platform we would decentralize and not decentralize we first need to determine
- The users/stakeholders
- Their needs
- The process flows
- Technological possibilities and limitations
- Rules and regulations (de law)
This would be very extensive to do and since I do not have all insights into a youtube type platform I would probably come up with very inaccurate assumptions therefor I am sticking to the more systematic way I believe the platform could be organized. I also make the assumption for this case that we are building a platform with prioritizing protecting the creators and content providers.
Since the advantages of blockchain do not lie in storing large data file, we can immediately take the stance that we will not be storing content on the blockchain. Storing content is something that the content creator itself, or other third parties should be taking care of. This video platform will therefore provide a plugin for users to use in order for them to show their content.
Youtubers build their business by collecting subscribers. Try to increase their exposure by understanding the algorithm of Youtube on why and when videos get better or worse exposure. They are not in charge of the rules that Youtube create and need to continuously adapt to changing circumstances. A part of the video platform that could very well be decentralized would be the rules of the algorithm so content creators themselves are for example are voting on changes that are proposed. How to prevent for certain users to obtain to much control is one bridge to far to describe here.
Another part that can be decentralized is the following of the creator. When Youtube bans an account the creators loses its whole following. By making this decentralized a user would be able to always keep ownership of their following. In a decentralized environment maybe a creator would like to switch platform for some sort of reason. Then the creator would be able to easily move its business to a new platform as well.
A big problem with a decentralized video platform is to comply with laws. Lots of unregulated underground platforms have shown to be feeding grounds for dark and shady activities. The question is if you would like the platform to decentralize moderating of the video platform or centralize this. What would be a good idea is to for example incentivize users to do moderation while punishing content providers for listing harmful content. Like Ethereum 2.0 proof of stake system content providers could be punished if a moderator finds harmful content and a moderator could be punished for falsely claiming to have flagged content as harmful while this is not the case. In that way you incentive both users to stick to the rules of the law and platform. Rules can be changed by agreement of the majority but if the platform is structured in such way that it stimulates users work for and not against platform this most likely should a self-regulating process. In this setting you would be able to decentralize that regulatory authority.
This was just a small part of a possible platform but for as far I can determine some important aspects where discussed.
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You could work with “server builders”, like you have miners for bitcoin. These builders/miners maintain and constant update the servers and representative speed and quality. they can get paid likewise as the bitcoin system. the cost for running the system like that determines the price of adds and other income streams
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For a decentralized video sharing platform we could proceed as follow:
On the Blockchain
- An integrated cryptocurrency incentive, as watching, uploading, sharing, and commenting on videos via an immutable blockchain helps users earn coin. The tokens can then be exchanged to other cryptocurrencies on supporting exchanges.
- Special native objects (things that can somehow be found on the site by completing tasks and are scarce, these can be used to incentivize initial adoption by users and creators)
- Rules and Regulations (amendable only through voting of users and developers who hold the native token)
- User profiles with wallets.
- Content creator profiles and link to the video (excluding video itself)
- Advertisements
- Advertiser profiles
- Miner Profiles
- Followers
- Payments
- Copyright protection. Each upload and purchase is recorded, thus making it easier for content rights owners to carry out infringement actions against those who unlawfully republish their content.
- Establish content creation rules.
Off the Blockchain
- Content creator videos
- Centralize storage of most videos but leave option to store some videos on the blockchain (for example to be used as proof. This feature will be chargeable)
- Comments and likes
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Storage, managemnt and presentation of the video content could be decentralised anywhere
Administration of user idetities and permissions, posting history, comment history would be on Blockchain
- payments if relevant
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The problem with the centralized service like Youtube is trust in
- the amount of views
- censorship
- fair payment (based on views)
Good aspects of the service of Youtube (alikes):
- well known
- stable
- fast performance
You don’t want to decrease performance but want to focus on the trust issues. These issues should be more transparant. Each view could be seen as a transaction, these transactions could be used in a blockchain. Maybe the content of the view could also be financialized, giving wheight to the kind of view. Maybe it is possible to have an account with tokens, either bought or payed based on the amount of viewing commercials. The tokens can then be used to pay the maker of the content. When the maker wants a wider audience he can decide to reduce the price or when it is a pricy production the producer could ask for more.
using solely transactions in a public blockchain and the content centralized could make the performance stable and the reward system transparent.
But the censorship problem is not resolved yet. this was not identified as a problem in the instructions, but I think that is a massive flaw in the Youtube-like services.
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Centralized features : storage of videos, ability to censorship of inappropriate contents
Decentralized features : all data which relate to how Youtube algorithm calculate an income for content owners for example all statistic data such as viewed, like, shared, etc., information related to followers, ability to customize the advertising in the videos.
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This assignment is a bit over my head. With the limited knowledge I have about website design and blockchain I think my most important initiatives will be:
Centralize
- Video content (to assist with space and make sure highly inappropriate or false information can be removed. boo hiss )
Decentralize
- Views, clicks, subscribers, etc.
- Smart contract with payment terms and disbursement
- Tokens to promote utilization
- Wallets
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With all its faults, YouTube is a great platform, a fantastic product. Having said that, our goal is to take away the frictions, the management controls YouTube has over content providers, advertisers and users and revenue streams.
There are three parties in the transaction with YouTube, the content providers, users and the advertisers.
One of the solution I see amongst many is to bridge or a gateway between central and decentralized systems.
All three participants to register on the platform, (if available we can use decentralized storage companies for storing video content) for now we can use a central servers backed by blockchain to facilitate membership, video submission, user management, advertisers, and revenue stream management.
By taking control of revenue streams the participant to govern the system by voting and share revenues amongst content creators and users by way of tokens, base on per view, per ratings, per subscriptions and tipping for content.
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My solution would be to decentralize video content, as that would be the target of attack if it was deemed controversial. It is the video content that needs to be protected and made immutable. I understand that this will require huge resources, but technology will catch up and traction will eventually build.
All other data, monetizing, creator, subscriber can also be decentralized, but that would be taken in on a case by case basis.
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Sorry i was breaking my head over it, couldn’t come up with anything interesting xD the few things i thought about were also dissaproved by me after further thinking about it lol.
Interesting point:
- An important point think and decide about the business model. The actual YouTube site is making money with advertisement or if you don’t want to see it you can pay for YouTube.
- Youtube is there already for many years and is worldwide very big and popular.
If you want to be less dependent on YouTube you need to have your own channel and post the results on YouTube. At that moment you are in control although if YouTube blocks your channel it will become more difficult to attract new people.
Let’s say you start 100% from scratch. I think you need to store the likes, read and comments in the blockchain decentralized. Based on this the fee needs to be based and paid everymonth by YouTube. When you get a strike from YouTube it needs to be placed in the blockchain with a clear reason.
This is how I look at it.
I think the two pain points identified should be the primary focal points 1) resolve the dependence of the monetary issue and leverage blockchain for users to pay for content they appreciate. 2) Focus on a blockchain solution where content creators can align with their followers.
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[quote=“Colin, post:6, topic:6419”]
Essentially, most succesful YouTubers are business people who are monetizing their content, even if that wasnt their original intention when joining the platform. The problem with a centralized platform like YouTube is that they(YouTube) can, at will, remove or reduce exposure to someones content thereby adversely effecting their business.
The solution, in my mind, is to decentralize only the metadata which would include a link relating to the video content ,by placing it on a blockchain. The video content itself could be held on a centralized server which could be hired or owned by the video creator themselves.
This is, of course, a compromise on a fully decentralized video platform but could serve as a better option than a fully centralized platform at this point in time.
Colin’s homework is great! Thanks Colin for sharing
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On a video platform, the most sensitive information is around data that affects advertising payments. Therefore, I would put all variables for the ad formulas on the blockchain, ex. views, likes/dislikes, comment count, advertiser budgets, ad spend, and creator payouts. This sensitive info would benefit from the security, immutability, and consensus algorithm of a blockchain, which helps safeguard ad money flows. On the other hand, the content of video files, titles, descriptions, search algorithms, and comment details could be stored on a centralized server network or a distributed network like IPFS.
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The video project i summarize it as following:
1- Regarding the centralized part:
As we know the classical database has more performance and efficiency when it comes to video streaming, for that the videos will be stored in classical database
2- What we we ill decentralize:
-
Users, authentications,
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Users permissions: Users can gain access by contributing to the network( Need some more research to find out how we can do that)
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Subscriptions
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Likes
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Comments : Comments will have like/dislike, any negative comment can be automatically hided, so is a democratic censorship
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History of video watched
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Report (Censorship): Will be more transparent and democratic, like comments, videos number of dislikes >Likes 51% will be automatically moved to a specific section of disliked videos with limited access to a specific category of users with specific permission.
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To avoid video deletion, i suggest that every video should have an intro of 10s, this part to be on the blockchain and linked to centralized part, no deletion will be possible.
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Monetizing content : We can monetize the content using a circle were publishers and viewers both got encouraged to view and publish contents( Need to dod more research and time to find an algorithm to release this)
3- What Blockchain system?
Since videos is a public matter that need a high scalability platform , i suggest a blockchain powered video streaming like Theta, with a high number of transactions per second by establishing a Multi-Level BFT.
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Regarding building your own video stream platform:
I am not a youtuber but I will try to summarise my thoughts:
My first problem with youtube that I would solve is the centralized rights in content creation and deletion.
Secondly, the content`s life could be also set by the content creator. The longer life the content has the more network fee would be applied.
Thirdly, the content monetization: the content creators would be able to set their own monetization strategy by having full control on it.
Hi Filip,
The Shipchain project was the one thing i could imagine as a use case because it was well publicized and Maersk Line is obviously the largest ocean Carrier and they also have an alliance with MSC which is the world’s Number 2 Ocean Carrier. However the one thing where Maersk has miscalculated their efforts (as is usual with them) is that they try to make their own life easier while then trying to impose their way of doing things on to the supply chain industry and this is one reason why many companies either hate to work with Maersk or outright refuse to work with them (as being impossible to work with).
The biggest challenge in the Supply chain industry is that you have several actors who all have paperwork intensive jobs (in many countries still requiring physical stamps) and each actor has different expectations of data that they work with. Obviously this is where Maersk is just focusing on the ocean freight part and maybe on final delivery but their solution does not cover the whole chain (it would be incredibly complex to do so).
As such it is a good example of where it can facilitate things for a company internally, but it raises the bar for external partners, thereby adoption will have unforeseen consequences for Maersk.
This is the reason why there are several “neutral” projects now being developed specifically to avoid being hooked (being dependent on) by one carrier
There are a number of aspects that come to mind when thinking about a video sharing platform:
- The user experience (because that will drive popularity)
- The content creator’s experience (Does he have an incentive to upload quality content that users will want to see)
- The business case (can the video sharing system run sustainably as a business with revenue streams which support the backend infrastructure that is required to to grow with popularity
While no business will survive without being profitable in the long run, I believe the user experience will be key. If people do not come to the platform because it wasn’t designed well, no matter how much quality content there is, and no matter how much content creates get paid to upload content… people will not return, or at least not in the numbers that could drive real profitability. So the question begs… what does a person want… what made Youtube a big platform… and what are the things that could become the undoing of Youtube… in what places could you be better?
Because of the scale of Youtube the automation behind it is very much in hand of AI/Algorythms. This has upsides but also downsides. People are now frustrated about shadow bans of crypto related content just because somebody high in the tower flicked a switch. People lose monitization because of algorythms and the burden of proof is always with the content creators. This is alsmost a case of “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”. People look for certain content (e.g. Crypto) and do not get to see it… hence there is ad-revenue lost because of algorythms.
Finally… what is it that drives a business, that drives monitization… it is revenue. This can be either from ads or from subscription basis. Ads are based on user profiles which involves a certain level of personal data/profile storage. This content could be subject to privacy rules (i.e. Youtube user data is subject to GDPR and other privacy rules)
So when deciding what technology to use there are questions about optimal technology, about speed and ease of use and of security/confidentiality
While Video is just another big database (with big files) it is not suitable to be stored in a decentralized manner.
Equally, user data cannot be stored in a public blockchain. Most likely it will be stored in a private SQL database or private blockchain with the user choosing to be part of certain groups/fields of interest etc… In such case matching (anonimized) users could be part of a blockchain with people being awarding content creators in the form of ad-revenue or subscriptions.
Different revenue models could also be offered (i.e. white label/branded merch) offered to the content providers with revenue sharing models.
Once money gets involved parts can be handled on chain, but at the end of the day, user data is involved and this can only be stored off chain.
The decision of where to store data should be driven by the solution, not by a blind ambition to add another blockchain project to the list
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I do agree with whole being said. Another thing is control of the content. There needs to be some sort of a mechanism to remove unwanted content ( child abuse or pornography etc) there is a lot of freaks trying to upload stuff
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