What’s in a Comic Chain?

Some of the Industry Dynamics and Technology that Brought Us Here

For us this process is about being accountable and showing up for the largest, most valuable, but obscure network in comic book media. When we say largest, we mean it. There are over 12,000 independent comic publishers worldwide. When we say most valuable, we mean that as well. Independents are creating somewhere north of $7bn dollars of IP value each year. Despite all those values, their logistical and business needs are not well met.

When we talk about accountability we’re talking about our team developing a system that recognizes who those creators are, what they own and that same system facilitating their peer and customer engagement activities, and other business needs. In the commercial comics and media entertainment markets, the indie comic sector is seriously overlooked. Frankly, it’s too large and too valuable to ignore any longer.

Thankfully today developed nations are moving towards more efficient and defined, creator economies. Prosumers, a term created by Alvin Toffler, definitely applies today. Creators are better informed when it comes to buying and selling. They show greater awareness of choices and opportunities within local and global markets. Another distinct advantage found in the creator economy, peer feedback loops - stronger today than ever before. Peers are acting exponentially to increase awareness by signaling moves and trends within a market. All supported by the 24/7 presence of social media, which seamlessly lends itself to a constant barrage of updates on reputation/status, ownership, consumption and production.

The comic creator economy requires models and digital environments where what is owned, produced, transacted and communicated can all be registered, secured and managed.

While Multiverse is the brand for the indie comic producer economy, Comic Chain is that specific digital environment which acts as a non-human, without ulterior motive, to recognize, secure and keep track of independent comic publishers, their Comic Assets, values and activities.

Within Comic Chain, the creator’s environment moves along with them, often laterally. Unlike most self serving web 2.0 comic news, convention and retail platforms which persist within a top - down model. The Comic Chain ecosystem has defined perimeters for monetization, cooperation, rewards/incentives and brand growth. This includes an environment where status and reputation are based on a peer to peer collaboration and innovation, not macroeconomics.

In a peer based environment who better to keep track and validate what is happening than the peers themselves. And if those peers by majority are in agreement with what has been transacted and if the records of those transactions are made permanent, then there is little room to distort, pre-empt or leave out important indie creator data, because it doesn’t fit the narrative of what larger brands want in the commercial comics and media entertainment markets.

We researched a number of blockchain development environments, what it came down to for us was an environment that is, one, secure. Two, has a governance model that lends itself two are Proof of Reputation governance model. And three, an environment that would allow us to function autonomously in the use of our own sovereign blockchain. These three ideas are at the very surface of our requirements. We had a deeper set of requirements. Having already created the HeroLedger Dapp on Ethereum, we needed an environment that would allow us to migrate and continue developing using its native programming. It was important for us to do this without going back and creating the entire HeroLedger Dapp from ground zero.

At the end of the day when we looked at the Cosmos Network and its goal to achieve broader blockchain compatibility through Inter-blockchain Communication protocol (IBC), we knew we were looking at a future of greater software and networking opportunities. Cosmos' early efforts to programmatically combine the Ethereum Virtual Machine on top of Tendermint to create Ethermint makes complete sense to our team. We understand how this architecture can benefit developers and projects. In essence, keeping the programming and system functionality, developers used in Ethereum, but building and deploying with Ethermint can help to lower various costs, minimize scaling and security concerns, not to mention, lower transactional friction. The decision to build using Ethermint became pretty clear to us. Its use of the Proof of Stake consensus model is another value to our project for two reasons: one, we can evolve into our Proof of Reputation model due to very similar governing processes. Two, there is a retail component to our blockchain environment that requires transactions to be complete and accurate at point of sale. A common feature in most fiat transactions. Fast, accurate and low cost when working to achieve block finality is very important to us. The Tendermint system within the Ethermint architecture is responsible for speedy block finality.

The Cosmos software development kit (SDK) has been relatively straightforward to deploy. It helps that we have a very experienced blockchain software developer on our team, but mainly because the SDK was written for ease and was definitely laid out well by the Cosmos developers.

Hands down, the Cosmos Network is an important environment contributing valuable blockchain and programming tools to our mission. Tools to assist us in providing security, accountability and growth for independent comic publishers around the world. We look forward to expanding further into the Cosmos Network using more programming tools and working with other blockchain and Dapp developers there. Likewise, Rastr looks forward to developing new software innovations blockchain developers in the Cosmos ecosystem will also enjoy and find useful.