Introducing Sparkshot.io — Art on the Lightning Network ⚡⚡⚡
Art on the Lightning Network ⚡⚡⚡
Sparkshot has entered public Beta today!
Don’t read this article! Have a visit to the site and look around: https://sparkshot.io.
What is Sparkshot?
Sparkshot is a platform for artists to monetize the release of the art they have invested effort in. Users can pay for the reveal of individual pixels of the art for satoshis over the Lightning Network. The pixels will be instantly revealed to the world upon the completion of the transaction along with a message the purchaser provides. The grouping of selected pixels and the message will be forever displayed with those pixels.
This is how the new Lightning Network-powered web operates — satoshis for instant interactive results in the browser; money being earned for providing good content.
A Satoshi Economy
The artist is credited with 70% of the revenue the art earns which can be withdrawn from the platform via a Lightning Network or on-chain payment.
Successful art on this platform is defined by the satoshis exchanged for the release of the very pixels that comprise it. Therefore, satoshis are also a metric of audience engagement that converts to value.
Artists that wish to market their art via external means are encouraged to do so. To assist this, we have made easy-to-share links to the art that will display nicely when circulating on other social media platforms.
We don’t expect all art to be successful, however, the successful art can be ranked by the metric of satoshis spent. This is non-falsifiable and a reliable measure of someones value willfully exchanged for the art. On Sparkshot, a satoshi is the equivalent of an ‘upvote’ for ranking content on our main page.
No Logins
Sparkshot does not rely on an identity system for its users. The interaction is from paid Lightning Network invoices and nothing more. We have been given frictionless money and Sparkshot takes advantage of that as a key feature. Otherwise, what’s the point?
For artists uploading content, identity is completely optional. Some artists are completely anonymous as a key feature of their persona — that’s rad and something we want to encourage and 100% support. To authenticate artists, we utilize the same pseudonymity that Bitcoin uses. Artist uploads are authenticated by signed messages from private keys corresponding to an on-chain Bitcoin address.
If that sounds complicated, don’t worry, we have made it easy. We provide a built-in wallet that provides artist addresses from a BIP39-seed-phrase that performs the signing automatically in-browser. However, that in-browser ‘hot’ private key might be undesirable for ultimate security. For increased security, we also allow signing from any external wallet that supports message signing (Trezor, Ledger, Electrum, etc.).
For an artist to get paid their earnings, we require that they perform this signed-message authentication with the same address used to sign the upload of the art.
Good Clean Fun
We want Sparkshot to be a great first Bitcoin demo you can show to friends and family. It has colors and instant interactivity for highlighting aspects of Bitcoin that are not commonly understood.
Images uploaded to Sparkshot do go through a manual moderation process before they go live on the site. It is not our mandate to be gatekeepers of artistic taste and expression, but we don’t want new Bitcoin users to get a bad experience from unexpectedly encountering pornography, NSFL images, calls to violence, or other directed harm.
Fun for the Users
A behavior we observed emerging in our alpha trials is for users to riff off each other’s messages and pixel selections, which further makes for interesting metadata for other users to see. We are excited to watch what creative contributions emerge from the non-artist users.
We have also made the user interface a smooth browsing experience for observers of this activity. There’s zero friction involved in dipping in to a piece of art to check out what is happening.
Bitcoin For The Unconverted
At the current stage of the industry, the majority of products and services in the space are built to cater to people that are already on-boarded into the Bitcoin ecosystem. While these products and services are necessary, this customer base is relatively small and relatively stagnant between market cycles.
From the start of Sparkshot’s development, we have taken on the mission that for Bitcoin to succeed and become a mainstream technology, we need significantly more products that are built for and reach out to non-Bitcoin audiences. We want apps like Sparkshot to help non-Bitcoin-hodlers to get some exposure to the concepts and value proposition of this payment rail.
Without needing to install a wallet or any sort of application, on Sparkshot you can see some Bitcoin stuff happening. We want Sparkshot to be a catalyst to entice those users to get themselves a wallet and get some satoshis from a faucet, tip or buy a small amount at an ATM to be able to join in.
We want you to join us
Sparkshot.io is in public Beta today and it is a great reason to install a Lightning Network wallet and experience the cutting edge of Bitcoin.
If you are an artist, we would love you to submit an image to our site to try it out.
Join us in our Telegram and follow us on Twitter and Instagram
Thanks!
