Hyperledger in Business - Discussion

Blockchain Business Course
#42

Here is my piece on the video-service on Blockchain:

I cannot help thinking that youtube and alike are working wrong-way around. They should fight for content creators then traffic, but instead they have an oligopoly like because of ‘being first’. The product they sell to users is not advertising nor the video platform, they are a distributor, re-selling the content with added service/value of relevant advertising&platform. Perhaps they realise it with the YouTube TV paid service.

Because of this and since Blockchain is about transactions, let’s drop the content piece completely (central storage services like AWS/IBM cloud) and instead go wide for a transactional system to cover also online Newspaper subscriptions, video/gif/picture libraries, paid online courses, etc.

Private, and permissioned, read&append-only blockchain, with users as contributors and spenders in one (like steemit), Single-Sign-On via APIs to different content portals (youtube, paid newspaper web, HarvardX university) who will be the nodes since they witness the transaction (+optionally content-creator), between viewer and content-creator. Public and private keys for certifying their identities and enabling wallets. The network consensus would happen between nodes of say youtube and the content creator, so only parties who see user transactions are ones involved in the transaction (e.g. buying credits in a FB game and donating to an Instagrammer for their content would still be only 2-4 nodes but with directly involved parties).

I am struggling here - please if anyone has ideas how to involve more nodes to validate transaction but without revealing users transactions to 3rd parties?

All parties so far have eco.incentive to participate including content platforms incentive to compete fairly for content-creators who are followed the most but also who have following that spend the most. i.e. Platforms could be scored based on Advertising reach-to-conversion score.

No mining, limited amount of utility tokens released gradually based on user-base growth, available to buy at exchanges/wallet providers. Finality, immutability, consensus, decentralisation of power and infrastructure(nodes and ledger), provenance, all the rest applies.

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#43

Super interesting take! That all makes sense. Appreciate your insight. Competitive edging for sure.

Re: the provenance aspect, as I was working through that paragraph my mind jumped to actually being able to sell a license to another without ‘authorization’ from the t-mobile. Did I go too far in my thinking there? In as far as what you were conveying?

Thanks!

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#44

@bridgdora Thanks! Much appreciated 0:-)
Much respect. I was heading there. You figured me out :smiley: Second-hand marketplaces or in B2B called ‘Bokerage’ solutions are very expensive too. No ‘participants’ ever want to pay that bill, but if it comes included by the SW originator :slight_smile:

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#45

This is certainly the most interesting discussion thread in this class so far.

I agree with what many others have said above.

I think creators should be in complete control of their content/videos. This means they need to be on the blockchain somehow. Immutability is key, they shouldn’t be able to be censored or taken down. How can this be done on the blockchain effectively? That’s to be determined (I’m not a programmer).

I think smart contract enabled payments/subscription should be enabled to allow people to freely contribute to channels/creators they appreciate.

I think payments should be anonymous on both sides, and that both creators and viewers have the opportunity to be anonymous as well. Happy HODLdays everyone.

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#46

I think it would be great to store the content creator information and followers on the blockchain, and also the comments, like and shared information in blockchain level. I do think the streaming of the video in centralize servers but I do think that is good to store an hash of the video inside the block chain as a references. Even if the website who host the website is taken down content creator will be able use the original hash stored in the blockchain to build another website to references to the correct video content.

Payment for the content creator could be using smart contract to release the funds so there is no centralize party to hold the funds.

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#47

I think at the end of the day, it depends on what the purpose of that video-sharing platform is. If it’s free speech, no matter what, then I think storing the videos on a blockchain might be crucial. This way moderators that consider a video isn’t aligned with their own beliefs or legal/regulatory laws, etc. couldn’t remove the video. An option for this would be that a “moderator” flags a video that could warn viewers of the nature of the content of the video (basically a warning for viewers). A second option would be to have a “voting system” whereby different moderators located in different geographic regions (to avoid cultural bias) would have to vote on a flagged video to decide whether or not it should be removed.

However, if viewers prefer a more efficiently-ran platform and they don’t mind censorship, then the videos themselves wouldn’t have to be on a blockchain. Instead, they could be hashed. The video would be stored on a server with a specific hash, and that same hash would be linked to a user’s public key for evidence of ownership (I know there could be a potential susceptibility here should someone gain access to the server and could modify the hashes associated to a public key or video, but let’s put that aside for now). Using a smart-contract, payout could happen automatically based on views and subscriptions. If you want to take that a step farther and know that all views and subscriptions are “real”, rather than bots, you could have an unintrusive/simple KYC process to ensure that all accounts created are real humans (although this may be unnecessary/over the top).

Besides the payout structure using a smart-contract or needing to completely remove censorship, I don’t see much value in using blockchain elsewhere.

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#48

In the example of DTube, I agree that the entire platform does not need to be setup on the Blockchain. To combat the censorship issue, video content can be timestamped and provide encoded links in the form of metadata on the Blockchain. The video content should be stored on a centralized server and the metadata and financial payouts should be on the Blockchain to create an immutable record. I would use a cryptocurrency for payment options. I would use Bitcoin, Litecoin or Dash for payments.

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#49

After watching Flip’s solution video, I realize the power of listing the pain points first. The idea of storing important records for monetization, followers etc. would streamline immutability and lay foundations for a trusted platform for content creators. Thanks Flip!

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#50

This module was a great idea. I have thought about this a lot and came up with a few options. However, we must be considerate of all needs of such an enterprise- from content creator, to end user, to company. The creator needs centralized storage if there are a multitude of videos. The host, the YouTube company in this case, has a need to preserve their business model in order to stay in business. The audience wants to watch great videos. That being said, my solution is based upon dividing front end and back end.

For the end user, the viewer in this case, nothing should change from the YouTube current model. We all want viewers to easily visit and enjoy the videos of their choice. This includes the additional information displayed to aid them in choosing a video.

For the back end, the only changes would be minor- sufficient to ensure that YouTube is not holding accounts “hostage” based upon arbitrary criterion. Essentially, it would be regarding permissions.

The content creator needs to keep tabs on YouTube to ensure the survival of the channel and monetization. YouTube needs to show good business practice.

My solution is, a shared ledger shared between both the content creator and YouTube. This ledger would display all accounting and marketing of the YouTube channel, immutable on YouTube’s end, and, “view only” on the content creator’s end. This would ensure YouTube is “playing fair”.

#51

Store and share videos has 2 main problems: cost of space to store its and speed to download/share. To this you can add scalability of the space with the increase of the number of the videos. For this reasons an hybrid solution is required. Video could be stored on servers external to the blockchain. Only the videos that reach a certain number of views in a certain period of time will be kept in the server (10.000 views in 1 month for example), other will be delated. All the system is based on incentives (tokens) based on views, and adv, and people that upload the video must pay in token for the space they needs but will be remunerated from the incentives based on the views. It is a capitalistic system with vote based on token all on the blockchain, except for Storage servers paid by a % of the token gained from the uploader (a sort of tax to keep his/her video on the server indefinitely).

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#52

My crude idea:

  • A token to incentivize verifying nodes is provided. The token’s value come from actual money paid by advertisers.
  • The video storage can be arranged like a private blockchain, with verifying nodes grouped in clusters spread in different locations (for quicker access to data). Clusters are open to different server businesses that can verify within each other. They are incentivized by sharing the portion of payment by companies that advertise. A big chunk, say 40% of the payments should go to these server businesses because they are essential to keeping the site running.
  • The revenue payment based on advertising can be put in a public blockchain, with amount and smart contracts deployed depending on the content creators’ influence. The content creators share say 40% of the advertiser’s money. But each server business is represented as one entity in the public blockchain. This allows transparency of where the advertisers’ payments go to.
  • Individual nodes that verify payments are open to all who can meet the technology requirements. Remaining portion of the advertiser money, say 20% is to be shared by these verifiers.
  • Tipping is allowed to allow new content creators growth. This can also allow established content creators who don’t want to “sell out” receive revenue. The transactions of tipping can also be deployed in a public blockchain, with a different type of contract. The reward of verification of tipping transactions is also shared with the 20% allocation mentioned earlier.
  • In this case, big players may only find it more rewarding to act as servers that are in the private blockchain, instead of eating a chunk of public blockchain verification incentive.

I don’t know if I made sense, LOL

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#53

Today: A decentralized “youtube” like on the blockchain will have to look like this in my opinion…

What you cannot put on blockchain: the actual video files they are simply to big and require high availability (ain’t nobody got time for buffering with today’s attention span of a restless fly syndrome)

What can put on blockchain: the login information, ID’s, subscriptions, view numbers and monetization for the content creators and viewers (add a tipping feature while we at it). The blockchain in its fully decentralized form keeps the ledger of what is happening on the platform without the fear of being censored or de-platfomed (nobody can take your viewers, and nobody can part you from your content if you have created it) while the actual video files sit on multiple centralized data centers that can serve the video fast. If business is good the video hosting can be paid by content owners simply from getting paid or tipped by subscribers.
The blockchain keeps the data public and you can take your reputation to any other platform that will recognize the blockchains code (let’s say all of the sudden I just want to take pictures on a Imgur.com like website)

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#54

Currently the problem is that Youtube can:

A - decide on its own to display, delete or change content or information (like, subscribers, etc.) of a content creator without any guarantee for the latter

B - change the way to pay or the logic to pay content creators.

There is also to say that Youtube has:

  • all the interest to promote valid conventions on its platform to attract visitors
  • in some ways the role of censor to avoid the publication of videos with dangerous or illegal content as much as possible.

The introduction of the blockchain can be interesting to ensure the creators of content not to lose visibility, fans and revenue painstakingly built over time but should not undermine:

C - performance in terms of video playback

D - the incentive of the creators of the contents to create valid and interesting videos

E- the presence of an algorithm that proposes videos following the interests of visitors and potential viewers

F - the possibility to intervene in case of non-legal contents

A totally decentralized solution on a public blockchain that manages, through a token / coin, the logic of display, advertising and payment would meet the A, B, D, E points but would be hardly suited to guarantee the C and F points.

For point C it could adopt a sort of subchain with a few nodes with high performance for storage and video playback, while still offering a gain, always through tokens, to those who make the tokens available. Instead, centralizing these activities would lead to someone’s ability to change or delete videos.

On the other hand, the possibility of intervening on non-legal content (point F) leads to the possibility to choose for this function a private blockchain where everyone can upload the contents and view them and only specific users (police for example) can cancel or modify the contents.

5 Likes
#55
  • What part on BC vs not on BC
    • On BC
      • User Mgmt Setup (ordinary users , content creators , advertisers/sponsors, moderators)
      • Channel Ownership
      • Content meta-data tracking (Owner, Title, ‘likes/not liked’ etc)
      • Content Usage-Stats ( hits, payment-units earned on a per-view basis etc)
      • Moderator selection (who, for how-long they are elected, rating)
    • Off BC
      • Video content
      • Promotional material
      • Commentary
      • Payment Interface so that content providers paid based on stats on the chain (payment-units earned)
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#56

Hi @bridgdora or more Live blockchain examples in business or public, check out a page I take care of @IBM… http:// ibm.biz/IBMServicesPortal

a few good examples in Blogs: https://www-01.ibm.com/easytools/runtime/hspx/prod/public/X0027/PortalX/page/pageTemplate?c=ad67cc0e40264a828e4f32306468a768&s=420f47624f3b4f239fcca260302abdef

#57

Hi fellow blockchainiacs!
I am a professor at a university in the Northwest US. I am interested mostly in enterprise blockchain. I have question around Hyperledger Fabric. I know that consensus is wildly different that PoW, PoS et al… So we have three types of peers - endorser, committer and consenter. First, in what order do these peers conduct their business on a transaction. Second, are there norms or rules about how many peers need to agree in a Fabric scenario?

#58

A Youtube like platform using private blockchain:

Using a public blockchain would make the platform very inefficient and raise some integrity issues therefore using a private blockchain would be more appropriate.

How can we use blockchain technology for this project?

Membership & Identity

Here are the 3 main type of users: (one user can be all 3 type)

Content creators

Viewers

Advertisers

Users and the content they create should be verified. The entity running the platform should ensure that no sensitive or illegal content is broadcasted through its platform. Using a public blockchain would be a problem. If a content is inappropriate, you need an entity in charge in order to edit (modify, delete) the blockchain.

Same on the advertiser side, an ad content and its source should be verified and broadcasted to the appropriate audience.

Therefore, specific entities in the network should be entitled to validate, to authorise, these users and content.

Content

Uploading video on the blockchain would be time consuming, costly and unnecessary. But for copyright purpose, it would be interesting to use blockchain to record and timestamp all video creations.

Money

The main issue with Youtube is that Youtube control everything from your videos to you income. it would be interesting to have a decentralised payment system where advertisers would pay content creators directly and where viewers could also tip their content creators without the funds having to go through the middle man, Youtube.

1 Like
#59
  1. The endorser and committer are more like roles. A peer can be both an endorser and committer. Endorsing takes place first and makes basic checks of the transaction and “endorses” the transaction to be added to the chain. Then the peers that are committers will add the transaction to their chains.

I’m not sure what you mean with consenter, could you clarify? Are you talking about the orderer?

  1. Yes, and thats up to the system owner to configure.
#60

In the hyperldeger documentation I was looking at there was a peer role called consenter shone on the graphic below. What does that third peer or role do? Also, what is the norm for number of peer nodes to log a transaction and a block. I would think that if there were only a couple or few peers, security may be a concern.

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#61

Thanks. Ok I found it now. The consenter is the same thing as the ordering service. You can check out more about this in the lecture about the different peers. https://ivanontech.teachable.com/courses/blockchain-business-masterclass/lectures/6040268

Yes, that’s correct. The fewer peers you have the more trust you must have in each peer.

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