Beam Payment Protocol — Enabling Real-Time Income for Creators
Our team at Content Fly built Beam for the DFINITY Supernova Hackathon, a real-time streaming payment protocol integrated into Content Fly as the first use case. It is a payment option for Buyers when they create a job in Content Fly, with the other option being lump-sum. It enables creators to be paid in a continuous stream of payment each minute over the duration of a job, instead of 100% payment upon completion. It will be live as a payment option for jobs on Content Fly in July 2022, as part of our first proper Alpha testing incorporating smart contract escrow payment. 🤫
Out of 400+ projects in the Dfinity Supernova Hackathon, Beam Payment Protocol was selected as a Top 7 Finalist in the Asynchronous DeFi category. While we did not win any prizes, we are proud of our achievement and super excited for the future of the Beam Payment Protocol!
To watch our pitch, click this link: Youtube Video Link
The Problem
Why are workers still paid at the end of the month/job?
When do you get paid? At the end of the week, end of the month, or upon completion of a job? And how do you plan your finances, with money coming in and out at different times?
Is work now, paid later fair?
Workers are forever in debt of time spent working, in work now, paid later type arrangements. Workers are used like credit cards, with employers (buyers) benefiting through real-time work production, an interest-free period, and then paying days or weeks later. While workers go weeks without pay.
Buyers also heavily benefit from the interest earned and superior cash flow. They have complete utility over the funds throughout the whole work period, while workers are always behind when it comes to cash flow. Upon receiving payment, the worker pays upfront for many services and subscriptions. This is standard practice, accepted and unchallenged for thousands of years. The little guy and girl, getting screwed from both sides, squeezed in the middle.
This arrangement oozes inequality; however, where there is no history between a buyer and a worker, or a worker and a service provider (a low state of trust), it is the safest arrangement for the buyer and service provider to avoid losing money. In these low states of trust, issues arise when money is paid to a worker that does not produce work, or a service is provided to a customer (the worker) that does not make payment.
But what about the safety of payment for the worker, with the chance that the buyer does not eventually pay for the work produced or where a worker pays upfront for a service or subscription that does not meet expectations?
These lump-sum arrangements also cause cash flow inefficiencies in a system. With manual payments and mismatched cash flow timing, the velocity of money is reduced, often with capital sitting idle until payout, instead of being utilized, automatically in real-time.
The birth of Beam
When sufficient trust is established between a buyer and a worker, the timing and frequency of payment usually become more flexible. However, there is always one party that is either paying more money than the amount of work produced or spending more time working than they’ve been paid for. To achieve a state where the time spent working equals the money paid, payment must be streamed in real-time, at a constant rate over the duration of the job performed.
Benefits and The Beam Ecosystem Vision
Workers paid in real-time for the work they produce enables them to utilize that money straight away.
Our vision of Beam’s future would enable workers who receive streamed income, the ability to stream it straight out again, automatically into their existing savings, investments, or purchases.
Imagine being paid each minute for the work you are performing, but instead of the funds sitting idle in your wallet until you send them somewhere else, they continue flowing. Automatically paying off loans, investing in diversified portfolios or various savings buckets, in real-time, every minute!
The number and type of services that could be integrated into the Beam Ecosystem are endless. Existing apps will be able to utilize the Beam Payment Protocol SDK to allow funds to be streamed into and out of users' accounts within their app. Whole new apps can be developed, with a two-way stream transaction, where one party receives streamed payment and the other receives a streamed service. Paying for live or on-demand video streaming, only while watching, is the most obvious example that comes to mind. Services such as insurance, storage, renting, physical labor, and subscriptions have an enormous potential for disruption through integrating streaming payment & service. We predict the number and type of streamed service apps will increase greatly in the coming years.
In a system containing a network of streams between parties, the velocity of money is increased which enables a higher economic output without the need for adding debt to make up the gap between outgoing and incoming payments.
In this new streaming world, the little guy and girl living paycheck to paycheck will have a much easier time managing cash flow as their paycheck is streamed every minute instead of every week or month. We hope this results in less reliance on buy now, pay later services and aids in protecting people from spiraling into unpayable debt.
What it Does (Now)
The Beam Payment Protocol enables creators to be paid in a constant stream over the duration of a job on the Content Fly platform. As the buyer awards a job to a Creator they select the payment type for the job and deposit the payment into the self-custody escrow smart contract. Once payment is deposited, it immediately begins streaming to the Creator.
Both the Buyer and Creator can view the live status of the Beam payment on the “Payment” page of the job as it updates in real-time. The Creator has an additional box showing the amount of live claimable funds and a “Claim” button to send the funds to their wallet.
To watch a more in-depth Beam integrated into Content Fly video check this out: Youtube Video Link
What Is next for Beam Payment Protocol
While Beam will remain a job payment option, we plan to feature Beam Fi as its own service on the Content Fly app home screen, for people to use without having to create a job. Beam Fi will allow anyone to stream payment to employees/freelancers that they already work with or are in discussions with for an ongoing role that does not suit the one-off task style job that Content Fly focuses on now. We plan to have several optional add-on features to Beam Fi (milestone check-ins, descriptions & tags/projects categories).
We will also explore supporting Bitcoin and stable coins e.g USDC as deposit payments once direct integration with Bitcoin and Ethereum is available in IC. A more sophisticated use case like staking the escrow payment or creator’s claimable tokens in AMM DEX LP automatically could also be considered once the technology is matured and secure. That will essentially improve the efficiency of idle money, allowing users to earn passive income.
If adoption of the community is strong we plan to raise seed funding/conduct a token sale to build out the greater vision of the Beam Payment Protocol!
To stay up to date with Beam, follow all the usual Content Fly social media accounts:
⭐️ Content Fly Dapp
🚀 Content Fly Web Landing Page
🐦 Content Fly Twitter
🏖 Content Fly Discord
📧 Email Us >hello@contentfly.app
