Dear COSers,
I am writing this letter to all of the people who supported us along the way and to share some thoughts I had in my mind for a long time.
I have a dream for global content creators, and now we are turning that dream into a reality.
“A place where every content creator who has a dream can achieve it.”
It will be the future of global content creators, the future of Contentos.
A long time ago, a content creator told me, “I wish I could have the resources of top YouTubers. If I did, I could create 10 times better videos than them, and realize my dream as well.”
At the time, I was only in a position to listen. I was only able to suggest them go live more often to collect more virtual gift from fans and all I could do was continue looking for a technology that could do some good for global content creators and improve their daily lives.
Until I found blockchain and created Contentos, the content blockchain truly built for global content creators. I know there is a way, even if most people do not see it or believe it right now.
In my vision, a self-sustainable content eco-system should be composed of four key components:
(1) A large audience who is willing to contribute value to content. The value can be either their “attention,” which can be just “watching” and engaging such as “Like”, “Follow”, “Comment” and “Share,” or active support in the form of direct donations or subscriptions to creators.
(2) Both ordinary and professional content creators. Anyone who produces and shares content with the public is qualified to be a content creator. Most importantly, these content creators must love what they are doing and be willing to produce the highest quality content they can. This content should be able to acquire enough exposure with a potential audience without the worry of over censorship. So the content can generate a decent amount of “attention” and direct support from its potential audience.
(3) Advertisers. “Attention” generated by the audience is the most valuable asset to advertisers. The reason why global advertisers are willing to spend significant amounts of money on the Facebook Ad network is because Facebook can effectively help advertisers acquire the attention of their potential target audience and convert them into customers. The true value that advertisers can contribute is fiat currency into the content ecosystem becoming the fundamental support of an ecosystem or support of any native utility token circulated inside a system.
(4) Rule makers and infrastructure supporters. In traditional centralized content ecosystems, it’s the centralized platforms such as Facebook or YouTube that play this role. These platforms pay the infrastructure and operation costs and make the rules in the ecosystem. They also have the last word altering anything inside the content ecosystem at anytime, especially when there is a conflict of interest. However, in the decentralized content ecosystem, this role will be replaced by the infrastructure builder, operator and community. Everyone has a right to participate in the regulation and moderation of the eco-system. It will be everyone’s responsibility to build a healthy, self-sustainable content eco-system where they will be able to share the profit generated.
In my vision, any content creator who has an ambitious dream can achieve it in the Contentos content ecosystem. A dream can be funded just like any startup, a creator can be incubated just like an entrepreneur, and the future can be shared with believers and supporters. That’s why I am presenting you with my 2021 vision of a global content creator’s life. A life just like this:
David Jackson is a video blogger focused on extreme sports in skateboarding. He just took part in a small European competition and recorded the entire event, then posted his video to vlog.me (a video site based on Contentos content public chain technology). As always, this video has been madly supported by many extreme sports enthusiasts. David has received more than 110,000 likes and hundreds of comments, and many loyal fans are fully committed to his list on the “Daily Top Chart.” At the same time, the video of this competition also gave David the support of dozens of paid subscriptions.
David is not satisfied with this though. His goal is to compete in the World Championships in LA three months later. However, the cost of participating in the World Series is huge. To make a professional-level record of the event, it will cost even more. David decided to release the exclusive David Jackson@LA 2021 Token for this LA competition through the Fans Fundraising Program on the Contentos platform. The goal is to raise 50 thousand USD. Later, David created a dedicated 10,000 DJLA2021 Token through Contentos’ smart contract template, and set the exchange rate to 1 DJLA2021 = 0.5 COS. After completing the fundraising plan and providing the sponsor with the priority to watch the video/behind the scene, David pledges part of the COS and completes the public release of the DJLA2021 Token.
In just 2 hours, David successfully raised COS equivalent of 50,000 US dollars, and immediately used part of the initial start-up capital for the LA Extreme Contest. To get the rest of the COS, David must complete each set of mission phases, such as providing a dedicated sponsor’s warm-up video 10 days before the game to unlock a portion of the COS funds raised. Through the sponsorship of the fans, David began to realize the skateboarding extreme sports dream step by step!
Tom is the sponsor of David. After investing in David’s DJLA2021 Token, Tom not only helped David to complete his dream, but also gained a certain amount of income. Because David has a high credit in the Contentos ecosystem, his DJLA2021 Token can be used to place DJLA2021:COS trading pairs on the COS-based C-Dex or Content Distributed-Exchange. Tom’s DJLA2021 is large enough to ensure that he can change his mind or hold it for a long time while investing.
Today we are working on:
(1) Dedicated, token-aware audience group. We are using daily sign-ins, treasure chests or other gamification elements to help ordinary users to build up daily engagement behaviors. This will be important once Contentos’ v3.0 content aggregation website goes live. We need to have a group of users who fully understand the value of COS tokens first, then they will be the “seed” to educate the bulk of users.
(2) The rewards system: We believe in the future, the revenue stream for a content creator will be composed by the following:
• Peer to peer (P2P) contribution. It will be the main part of micro transactions happening in the chain such as donation, content subscription, VIP content sharing or virtual gifting. These are all proven business models in the centralized world already. The major advantage of tokenization will be reducing the middle-man fee, such as the 30% revenue share from Apple or Google.
• Sponsorship from advertiser. As long as content can acquire meaningful attention from an audience, somewhere out there is an advertiser that will be interested in paying in exchange for the audience’s attention. Advertisers will be able to pay content creators to produce promotional content and acquire audience attention, allowing creators to monetize their content. It is similar to today’s Youtube or Instagram Ad, but can be fully controlled by smart contract technology and build a transparent, trustworthy influencer marketing ecosystem for both creators and advertisers.
• Content Reward system. Peer to Peer and contribution and sponsorship are available in today’s centralized content platforms, but Contentos’ reward system is very unique to content blockchain. We believe the only way to ensure content creators can really enjoy the true value of content creation is through the token distribution. That’s why total 35% COS can only be acquired by content creation (AKA “Content Creation as Mining”). Based on the positive feedback content has received, newly produced COS from each block will be proportionally distributed to content creators. Contentos also aims to resolve the issue suffered in the Steem ecosystem — those who’ve joined in the early phase and have massive SP may upvote to each other and acquire most of newly created STEEM, leaving good content creators nothing to obtain.
So in the current testing scope, you can see Contentos’ TestNet is testing both peer-to- peer contribution via PhotoGrid v7.07 virtual gifting system as well as the on-going content ecosystem reward testing (you can see the “vest” part in blockchain explorer, but the actual formula is subject to change from time to time). Contentos team will test more peer-to-peer micro transaction models in both PhotoGrid and on Contentos’ website in the near future.
On the other hand, those DApp developers and their DApp games are the first testing of “advertisers”, because their games are digital products that require user’s attention (viewership or download and play), which means content creators can help to promote their game hence the HyperSnake promotional videos on Contentos website.
Meanwhile, COS2048 is designed to test daily COS transaction on the Contentos TestNet, which is important to learn the daily COS TX. WalkCoin is, on the other hand, issuing their own token “ENC” on top of Contentos TestNet with Contentos Smart Contract, which will be very important to our next step: Creation Enabling Token. This is a token that every content creator can issue for their content, campaign or even for themselves, which in the end completes our ultimate dream — helping creators, no matter how large or small their fan base, to get funded and achieve their dream, to be the best part of themselves!
As of today, you can see the real time statistics and achievements from Contentos’ TestNet and four DApps at https://explorer.contentos.io/#/DApp as well as some highlights below:
1. The addresses created by four Dapps now reach: more than 53,000 since 3/27
2. 5/18–5/20, average on-chain DAU: 3,442
3. 5/18–5/20 average on-chain TX: 29,439 (includes content related action transactions, TestNet COS transactions and token created by Contentos Smart Contract)
4. Photogrid v7.07 officially release the COS gifting to all users on yesterday, every gifting transaction will be duplicated to the TestNet simultaneously.
We are heading toward realizing this vision, and Contentos needs your support more than ever. It will be hard and sometimes even seems impossible, especially in the next few months when we bring in global content creators, who are neither blockchain users or tech savvy, so we’ll need everyone’s help to realize this idea.
I have a dream for global content creators, now we are building and realizing it, but we cannot do it without your help.
Join us, become one of the few who witnesses the moment of change happening to the content creation industry.
Your Sincerely,
Mick
Co-founder of Contentos
2019/5/30
