Hello from MovieBloc team!
As mentioned in our last biweekly report, Decenter, a major Korean crypto media, has featured an interview article with Chris Kang, CEO of MovieBloc.
Below is the translated version of the whole article, and you can also read the Korean version here.
<1st generation streaming venture company, Pandora TV, to get into Blockchain Industry>
Pandora TV’s KMPlayer develops a DAPP. Interview with CEO Chris Kang.
Film industry with non-transparent revenue share adopted blockchain technology.
How did they differentiate themselves from other projects? Various participant roles in the ecosystem: creator, curator, translator, users, etc.
MBL token will be used to watch content on the MovieBloc platform.
Chooses to build on ‘Ontology’ platform as it is “developer & user-friendly”.
People can hardly live without YouTube these days; however, Pandora TV, founded in 2004, was the first video streaming platform in Korea. It hosts user-generated content (UCC) which has helped the platform become so popular.
Pandora TV is preparing for the next steps using blockchain technology. KMPlayer, video player of PandoraTV, launched ‘MovieBloc,’ a reverse ICO project to create a decentralized movie and content distribution platform using blockchain technology.
What’s the reason Pandora TV decided to get into blockchain industry? CEO of MovieBloc, Chris Kang said “we are leveraging blockchain technology to build next-generation business models for video streaming, a multimillion-dollar industry that continues to grow. Movie industry’s revenue sharing process is still opaque. It has to be decentralized to fairly reward all participants in the ecosystem.”
What is MovieBloc’s strength?
CEO of MovieBloc, Chris said, “Other blockchain-based film projects primarily focus on maximizing the profit of the CP (content provider) and rewarding the audience by removing the middleman. However, this put more burdens on the CP with marketing, translating, etc.” Chris added “MovieBloc differentiates itself from other projects as it comprises of production, marketing, and translation activities, all done by MovieBloc participants. MovieBloc will decentralize the film industry to create an ecosystem with transparent rewards catered to the participants’ role and contribution. Participants will experience a new ecosystem by taking upon the role of a creator, curator, translator, reviewer, viewer, etc.”
MovieBloc consists of three layers: Community, Market, and Fundraising. Community Layer, titled ‘.BLOC,’ is a decentralized film community connecting all MovieBloc participants: creator, curator, translator, designer, audience, etc. Market Layer is where films, subtitle, and marketing materials can be traded among the participants. Fundraising Layer motivates the creators to keep providing high-quality films to MovieBloc by hosting a film festival and implementing a donation channel to the creators. It’s a structure where every participant can be rewarded.
KMPlayer’s huge user base is another MovieBloc’s strength. According to Chris, ‘Mass Adoption’ is one of the hottest topics in Blockchain industry. MovieBloc will collaborate with KMPlayer, which has over 800 million downloads, to successfully achieve ‘Mass Adoption’ by acquiring the users from existing KMPlayer users.
However, there’s another blockchain-based film project with user base CPT (by Watcha). Chris addressed that the difference between CPT and MovieBloc is “We will acquire more worldwide users from Ontology, our partner.” Also, he added that “quarterly held film festival is another unique feature of MovieBloc. We will select 3 winners and reward them with $10,000 value of MBL token, and thus, there’s more chance for creators to get rewarded with MovieBloc.”
Where will MBL be used?…What is MovieBloc’s token economy?
It’s not hard for MovieBloc participants to earn reward tokens. The users can be the content creator, curator, translator, and audiences and fulfill their tasks. The problem is there must be a motivation among users to earn the MovieBloc token, MBL. This is what all blockchain based services have to overcome, too.
Chris continued and pointed, “The recent boom of content platforms such as Netflix and YouTube Red has generated the demands for good content. In MovieBloc service, MBL token will be used primarily to pay to watch the content. MovieBloc must have good contents that people want to watch, and thus content acquisition is our biggest task right now.”
Every payment and settlement processed on the smart contract is another strength of MBL. It forms a transparent token economy, where the viewers can pay for what they only watched. Chris highlighted, “Netflix and other video platforms are subscription-based VOD service, where the audiences have to pay even if they don’t watch the content. With smart contract, the users will be asked to automatically pay based on exactly how much they have consumed.”
MovieBloc picks Ontology… “We will be a user-friendly Dapp”
MovieBloc chose Ontology as its mainnet platform to build its service. Among other competitors, Ontology has “fast TPS up to 5,000 per second and cheaper gas fee than Ethereum. Ontology is very Dapp friendly. They have been supporting the project not only on the development side but also through funding,” Chris said.
However, MovieBloc will not store the entire transaction and trade data on Ontology Mainnet. Chris explained, “Saving the whole transactions on the mainnet will be inefficient, and disclosing the personal information can create a legal issue. Thus, some of the data will be stored on our database. Only transactions related to the revenue sharing or settlement, such as IP trading, ad revenue data, the donation on fundraising layer, and reward transaction will be stored on the Ontology mainnet.”
Another reason why MovieBloc chose Ontology is to create a user-friendly Dapp. MovieBloc’s goal is to create a service for users to enjoy without even noticing the blockchain service is included. Chris said, “Ontology provides amazing user experience (UX) such as crypto wallet. We are adding our MovieBloc service by PandoraTV’s product design team, well-experienced on video service design.”
For people who aren’t familiar with token payment even with the integrated crypto wallet service, MovieBloc is preparing a service to lower the entry barriers to their Dapp. Chris said, “we are preparing some content to watch without any token payment, but just by watching ads. For premium content, a credit card will also be accepted.” To question the token economy getting weaker with accepting credit card payment, Chris further explained “We are also planning partial refund policy for viewers who for one reason or the other stop watching a movie at an early stage. The refund policy will only be available to viewers who paid with MBL, so we will try to encourage these credit card users to enter our token economy.”
After the seed investment from Ontology Eco Fund, MovieBloc will release its beta service in July and official service in the fourth quarter. Chris commented, “The beta service will be web-based model, and the 4th quarter 1.0 version will also be available on the mobile app.”
/Written by HyunYoung Park
