Why existing Web3 applications are not arousing a mass-market response
We currently have a number of application projects with Web3 as the vision, but none of them have aroused a response from the consumer-grade mass-market beyond the market of cryptocurrency. Why is that? Could Web3 be a pseudo demand? In FavorTube’s view, it’s not that Web3 is a pseudo demand, but that none of these projects have made users feel the revolutionary breakthroughs and benefits brought by Web3, both technically and commercially. In other words, these projects haven’t brought the user experience of Web3 to users and haven’t made users feel the benefits brought by Web3. Here we’ll dissect what kind of Web3 applications users really want from both technical and business perspectives.
The technical framework of existing Web3 projects
From the perspective of technology, Web3 decentralized technology is anti-censorship and anti-blockable, and it can implement fair and transparent distribution between consumers and content creators through smart contracts. This means, first of all, that the application clients of Web3 are anti-censorship, or that the content in Web3 applications should not be controlled by a single organization. But for all of the current projects with a vision of Web3, the technical architecture of their systems doesn’t support censorship resistance. Let’s describe by taking the relatively early DTube and recent ContentOS as examples:
The upper part of the diagram shows the basic framework of a traditional Web2 streaming platform, which consists of three parts:
1. Database is used to implement high-performance adding, deleting, modifying, and querying operations on structured data
2. Cloud storage is used for storage and high-performance reading of a large number of streaming files
3. HTTP Server users display the content of video data to customers
In the actual video reading process, as streaming media needs to take up a large amount of bandwidth, CDN acceleration is required to meet the requirements of stable playback on the client when it plays videos. Of course, in order to meet the different bandwidths of the clients, the same media will be stored in multiple resolutions, and a client will choose a different resolution according to its own bandwidth. We’ll not describe too much about these technical optimization details.
Analysis of the problems with existing Web3 projects
The only difference between DTube and the traditional Web2 media application architecture is the use of IPFS network instead of cloud storage. Since IPFS is decentralized, we can think of file storage as decentralized. However, the video file information is stored in a database, which provides services externally through the HTTP Server, and consumers can use any browser or HTTP-enabled client to access the video data.
Similarly, in ContentOS, we see that in addition to replacing CloudStorage with IPFS, an additional ContentOS chain has been made instead of Database, which seems to be more decentralized. Besides, the content creators can be rewarded through the ContentOS chain, so it’s a bit closer to Web3 in the economic model.
One question that hasn’t been addressed in these systems is how DTube/ContentOS differs from Web2 for consumers. Are there specific benefits to be gained from changes in the technology architecture? The answer is No. Furthermore, these projects are far less capable of transmitting media data than traditional streaming platforms without the support of CDN. To get an idea of how much effort traditional streaming media puts into stream videos smoothly across a huge number of clients, please see here — Netflix, here — YouTube, or here — HBO.
Problems with existing Web3 projects
So, these projects with a vision of Web 3 streaming do not benefit or impress consumers, and the Web 3 applications that want to impress consumers need to give them access to content and make them earn revenue that is not available on Web2. For content creators, only when the Web3 platform really generates value for consumers and can attract them, content creators are willing to transfer their content to the Web3 platform. Besides, only when the data advocated by the Web3 platform belongs to users, the fair and transparent distribution system will be attractive to content creators. And for consumers, where does the appeal of Web3 come from?
The technical framework of FavorTube
After careful analysis, FavorTube identified anti-censorship and anti-blocking as attractive factors for both consumers and content creators, both of which can only be implemented with complete decentralization. FavorTube has designed a completely decentralized structure as follows.
The structure of FavorTube is also divided into 4 effective parts + 1 presentation part:
- The database storing structured data is implemented here in the FavorX Basic Module (FBM), and the decentralized database of which is implemented by the computational subchains, as detailed in the FavorTube White Paper.
- Streaming files currently use IPFS as the decentralized storage, and in the future will use the storage modules in FBM to provide rewards for storage nodes to incentivize miners to participate actively.
- Favor Network is a network with the capabilities of P2P multicast and decentralized content distribution, and all nodes in FBM modules, nodes connected to IPFS, client nodes, and nodes with various other functions are unified into this network, and:
- A client is a light node in a P2P network, which can be directly discovered and connected to the full node in the P2P network.
- Nodes in the system can form separate groups. For example, IPFS nodes and FBM nodes form respective groups of their own.
- A client can send requests to a group and get responses through the request/response mechanism of multicast without directly connecting to the group. For example, a client can send requests to the FBM group and get responses through an intermediate node.
- The IPFS node group is a dual node, which is both an IPFS full node and a node in the Favor Network system.
- All full nodes in the Favor Network have the capabilities of data caching and accelerated distribution, thus forming a decentralized content distribution network with optimized algorithms to meet the requirements for concurrent reading on massive numbers of clients.
- Multiple nodes are used to form a group to interconnect with another blockchain, and the node within this group also plays a dual role, which is both a node in the Favor Network and a full node of the other blockchain (or a client connected to the RPC of the blockchain). Compared with the existing solution that Web3 project clients are connected directly to the blockchain via RPC, this solution has the same anti-censorship and anti-blocking capabilities and improves the degree of decentralization.
- The original HTTP Server layer kept only for demonstration purposes is used in order to make customers intuitively feel some features of the application without downloading the client.
Product showcase of FavorTube
- FavorTube login with Wallet
Video: https://youtu.be/pqG9l3ePQuQ
- The client directly subscribes to the chain, and only after subscribing can it have permission for watching
Video: https://youtu.be/M-7GDshBrdc
- The client node directly accesses the network through a P2P connection
The schematic diagram is as follows: A node connects multiple full nodes (nodes with *)
Therefore, you can view the basic information and address of the current node on the client
On the client node, you can view the files downloaded locally, and the downloading progress.
- Full nodes are connected to full or light nodes, and you can view which full and light nodes are currently connected
- Full nodes cache the data
- You can view the files currently cached on the full nodes and from where they were cached
- Full nodes are actually the content distribution layer of IPFS, which improves read performance for IPFS
Video link：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTqC6DzvIHI
- Real-time HD video playback can be implemented over the whole P2P networks
Video link：https://youtu.be/kTqC6DzvIHI
- Full nodes are directly deployed to implement storage and bandwidth mining:
Video link：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEt1o56Khbg
Business model analysis of FavorTube
With the above solution, FavorTube has built a completely decentralized network, and we can feel the advantages of Web3 with the FavorTube client.
From the perspective of consumers:
1. Anti-censorship content: FavorTube’s community norms prohibit videos about child pornography and extreme violence, while other videos are not banned by the community. As long as the data service is not banned by community voting, it is technically impossible for any government or organization to unilaterally censor and ban the service unless all miners are banned.
2. Globalized payments: Consumers can purchase content by paying FVT whether the countries or regions have introduced it or not.
3. Additional revenue: Consumers can earn revenue by viewing ads
From the perspective of PGC:
1. No need to create a basic system: Currently, the PGC creators, such as Disney, Netflix, and HBO, need to build their own streaming platforms to support the subscriptions and content distribution for massive subscribers, which is feasible for the PGC solutions with a large number of IPs at the head, but for most producers of movies and TV dramas, the building and operating costs for their self-built basic systems are too high to be economically cost-efficient, whereas in FavorTube, they can simply create on channel of their own.
2. Direct revenue from the world: Content buyers purchase directly by paying FVT. As the buyers come from all over the world, they don’t need approval from the countries or regions where they’re located. The cross-border payments are not required either.
3. New source of revenue: The original advising revenue is all captured by the platform. After FavorTube is adopted, the advertising revenue generated by advertisers’ investment is automatically distributed through smart contracts.
4. New fundraising channel: The fully decentralized FavorTube can generate ongoing revenue for content creators, so that the decentralized financial products can be built. For example, it is agreed that when the movies in a certain FavorTube go live, all the revenue generated will be distributed to all NFT holders in a certain proportion, so that funds can be raised by selling NFTs at an early stage.
From the perspective of UGC:
1. Direct revenue from the world: The existing We Media practitioners are dependent on the media platform, and all revenue is distributed by the media platform. By using FavorTube, We Media creators earn revenue directly through their channels or content subscriptions, which is paid directly by consumers, and the creators receive the revenue directly from the order system and contract distribution. And they receive FVT income directly from the FavorTube platform, which can be converted into any fiat currency at low cost on the exchange.
2. Additional source of direct revenue: The original UGC can only be distributed by the platform for revenue. In FavorTube, in addition to the channel revenue sources, the ads invested by advertisers are automatically distributed among the channel’s content creators, the platform and consumers directly based on the results of playbacks within a certain channel, according to a predefined sharing ratio.
3. New fundraising channel: For UGC, it is possible to pre-sell NFTs of certain data and agree that all revenue generated by the channel will be distributed to all NFT holders in an agreed proportion. In this way, NFT has financial value, and content creators can also get funds in advance to produce better content.
From the perspective of participants:
1. Passive income: FavorTube allows blockchain and Web3 to generate usage value in the mass consumer market for the first time. As the number of users continues to grow, the increase in token prices is out of question, so you can simply earn revenue by holding the tokens.
2. More investment channels: Users can participate in the NFT fundraising of PGC or UGC at an early stage, and earn revenue continuously by holding the NFTs. Due to the large number of PGC and UGC, it is equivalent to generating numerous investment channels for users Users can analyze and choose different PGC or UGC creation teams to invest in according to their own judgment, the team’s previous creative experience, and successful cases, and other dimensions.
3. Zero-cost revenue: Users can also receive AD revenue distributed by the system even if they don’t invest.
Summary
From the above analysis, we can see that the reason why current Web3 application projects haven’t entered the mass consumer market and changed the competition pattern of existing streaming platforms is that these projects are not fully decentralized and thus cannot have access to the technological and business model changes that decentralization has brought in. And with the fully decentralized technology, FavorTube is able to become a killer app for Web3 by making the benefits of Web3 available to content consumers, content producers and token-holding users.
