Implementation of Decentralized Video Platforms
We have seen previously that a number of blockchain projects have identified major flaws in today’s video industry. While all projects share the same analysis of unfair revenue distribution, centralization of power and decision making, we see different approaches in the solutions being proposed. Each focus on a different part of the video chain: front end, community, transcoding, live streaming, VoD, storage, delivery.
We will look at a few comparison tables which use the following colors:
Blockchain
Every decentralized video project we are analyzing here is based on a blockchain of course, but we see 2 approaches. The first approach is using an existing blockchain or smart contract platform such as Ethereum or RSK. Flixxo, Livepeer, Theta and Viuly chose Ethereum smart contracts to register their transactions. It is interesting to note that some projects will be somewhat blockchain agnostic. This could be a defining feature and being able to quickly adopt a new smart contract platform might be a significant competitive advantage in this fast evolving industry. Especially considering the “3rd generation” blockchains currently being developed.
BitTube, LBRY, Videocoin and Viewly on the other end are developing their own blockchain in order to control the development of new features required for the deployment of a large decentralized video distribution network.
The new blockchains are created to handle different processing roles which require new consensus systems. This is how we are seeing emerging Proof of Storage, Proof of Retrievability, Proof of Transcoding, in addition to the traditional Proof of Work and Proof of Stake systems. All being rewarded with coins. It will be interesting to follow the evolution of those platforms offering more alternatives to earn coins, in which each user or node can define its own role.
Content Processing: Live streaming & VoD
Although the distribution of the projects is clearly unbalanced, with most projects focusing on stored content, the technical requirements for stored vs live content still represents a key technical difference between them. The need to transcode a given source to several formats, for many devices, in real time, as planned by Livepeer, Theta and Videocoin, requires a very specialized ecosystem with huge processing power.
Lets note that Livepeer is the only project here that only focuses on live streaming, without offering any storage option. Projects aiming to support both stored and live content are currently giving priority to the former.
Looking at the VoD projects, we see that they all use an existing p2p distributed file system: IPFS, Swarm or Bittorrent. Videocoin is the only one creating its own storage system with their own Sonata,a fork of HDFS.
Front end
By “front end” we refer to the player and content discovery capabilities of a platform. This is the second key distinction between the decentralized video distribution projects: offer a framework for developers to create DApps, or offer a user facing solution.
Instead of content creators, viewers and advertisers, a “framework” project will have to focus on getting developers on board
Every project has some sort of front end of course, but some are concentrating their efforts on creating a framework or a protocol, and will rely on external projects to be built on top of it. This will require different steps in the go-to-market strategy and implies some business development efforts in order to encourage the use of those platforms. Instead of content creators, viewers and advertisers, a “framework” project will have to focus on getting developers on board. “Developer” here refers to any physical or moral entity using the platform to build its own product. It could range from a blockchain enthusiast, to student working on an academic project, to a startup, all the way to one of the tech giant planning to enter the blockchain industry. The holy grail here is to be the platform Youtube and Netflix turn to when they realize that they have to embrace the blockchain revolution.
The holy grail here is to be the platform Youtube and Netflix turn to when they realize that they have to embrace the blockchain revolution
All the projects studied for this article are planning to become open source at some point, and as expected, the “framework” projects (Livepeer, LBRY, Theta, Videocoin) offer an API for developers. It is interesting however, to see projects with no API but which will be open sourced in the future. This indicates that they will not give access to their platform to external projects and that it will only be possible to search or view content using their official application. Nevertheless, if the source code is ever made public, it will be possible to use or fork the software in order to create another instance of the platform, but with different content. Interesting!
Advertising & Payment
BitTube, Livepeer, LBRY and Viewly chose not to directly handle advertising on their platform. The content creator is of course free to include any kind of advertising in his video. But it becomes the uploader’s responsibility to authorize what product can be promoted within his content. Without being a full endorsement, it is still a deeper involvement than with traditional video distribution platforms.
A model where the platform doesn’t deal with advertising would also force the advertisers to make direct contacts with the channels or content creators. This could possibly lead to a form of centralization where advertisers would mainly deal with big content providers, making it difficult for smaller creators to have access to advertising revenue.
Rather than encouraging ad-hoc advertising, however, the goal of the ad-free platforms is to encourage the use of their token/coin to pay for the content.
An interesting exception here is BitTube, where the viewer pays for the content by hashing on the behalf of the content uploader while watching a viedo.
The ad-enabled platforms like Flixxo, Theta, Videocoin and Viuly, want to leverage the potential of the blockchain to bring a next-generation advertising model to the video distribution industry. Advertising on the blockchain is a topic in itself and can bring a number of interesting features to the industry: rewarding token to viewers for watching ads, giving more transparency on the exact ad view counts to the advertiser, including challenges in the ads to test the viewers attention, etc…
To summarize
It is quite complex to analyze and consolidate the information about as many multifaceted projects. With the 4 sections above: blockchain, processing, front end and advertising, we clarified the positioning of some of the upcoming offering in the market. But as we dive into the details of each project, there is a lot more to learn, analyse and compare. We can also assume that there still remains a lot of decisions to be made by the teams, meaning that this will be a very active and exciting field to follow.
As of now — Q2 2018 — if two principal dimensions had to be selected to categorize a decentralized video distribution project, it would be: (1) live vs stored content and (2) front-end vs back-end focus. This will probably change as the projects evolve and you can expect updates looking at different angles and combination of features. But for now:
