What is GIFTO?

Gifto Official
Nov 3, 2017 · 6 min read

A Gifting Protocol to Decentralize Global Content Creation Networks on the Ethereum Blockchain (https://gifto.io)

Summary:

Asia Innovations Group (AIG) has been building a highly engaging and successful content creation platform, Uplive, for the past two years. And now the Uplive team brings their multimillion dollar ‘virtual gifting’ technology to a blockchain protocol to allow true monetization for global content creators on any content platform, including YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram

The Gifto team is led by serial entrepreneur, Andy, the creator of Uplive and the former head of Zynga Asia; Charles, an early blockchain adopter in a global financial institution and William, a veteran engineer, researcher and educator.

Virtual gifting not only generates significant revenue, but also greatly enhances the social relationship between creators and their fans. Since launching in June 2016, Uplive has grown to 20 million global users and is expected to achieve more than USD $100 million in revenue in 2017.

AIG has the ecosystem of users, the right product and a world-class team to bring blockchain benefits and cryptocurrency usage to the masses.

Giftos’ current advisors include Bo Shen from Fenbushi, Loi Luu from Kyber Network, Danny Yang from Blockseer, Chris Miess, formerly withTenX and Tom Duterme, ex-Google/Youtube.

The Pain Point for Content Creators

Global content and social platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook have allowed anyone to easily create content and build a fanbase. However, these content platforms mostly still rely on advertising to generate revenue. The key limitation of the advertising model places control of revenue generation with centralized companies, including content platforms, advertising networks, agencies and marketing firms. In addition, the need for advertisements to reach large viewer base greatly favors the top 1% of content creators who have the most traffic. These centralized companies determine how content creators are paid. As a result, the vast majority of the content creators globally cannot make a reliable living. This issue is also getting worse as advertisers have overwhelming power regarding content they deem appropriate to deploy their budget on.

New monetization model: Uplive

The flagship product of AIG, Uplive, has demonstrated that it is possible to generate significant, sustainable revenue for content creators via a sophisticated virtual gifting model. Uplive has been generating millions of dollars of income for 60,000 content creators every month directly from their fanbase, and the numbers continue to increase. This model has been used in gaming extensively and has proven to work for mainstream content creators. In fact, we have enabled what the South China Morning Post calls the “gig economy”, where a broadcaster can be self-sufficient based on just a few hours of broadcasting a day.

Examples of Uplive’s gifts below, actual videos of these virtual gifts in action can be seen at www.up.live.

Animated expressive and fun virtual gifts

This is a fun, sustainable revenue model that greatly enhances relationships between content creators and their fans.

There are however multiple challenges of opening up Uplive’s virtual gifting system to the rest of the virtual world:

  • Virtual gifts are digital assets that have significant economic value, therefore we must have a reliable way of keeping track of their value, properties, and transactions. These virtual-gift records must be immutable to alterations or interference of their values. Virtual gifts must also be defensible against damaging and self-serving actions by third parties and individuals, i.e., identity spoofing, simulating or duplicating a limited edition gift or falsifying a transaction, etc…
  • A number of participants are required to operate the workflow of virtual gifts to ensure that they are of high quality, properly categorized, and appropriately priced. There must be proper incentives and penalties for participants to contribute effectively and for content and virtual gifting ecosystem to grow.
  • A large number of these participants are needed to scale virtual gifts ecosystem to serve content creators and their fans globally.
  • Fluctuation of currency values in different countries makes it difficult to offer universal gifting with fair pricing to content creators around the world.

The Solution: Gifto Protocol powered by blockchain

Blockchain offers two capabilities that are critical for our needs:

  • Blockchain enables creation of a virtual asset that holds value across any platform and is immutable.
  • Blockchain enables rules to be built into a decentralized system with defined roles that can be utilized by community participants to drive a workflow. Their actions can be incentivized and enforced by the blockchain, creating a self-governing ecosystem.

Gifto Protocol is envisioned to be a self-governing and self-sustaining ecosystem for virtual gifts to be created, curated, tracked, bought, sent and exchanged across any content platform such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc.

For the protocol to truly be a self-sustaining ecosystem for all contributors, Gifto has the following components:

  • Gift, Gifto’s Virtual Smart Gift, self-executing virtual assets based on smart contracts that live on blockchain.
  • Gift Store, where a fan can buy a gift for a content creator. Gift Store will be displayed when a fan clicks on a gifting link for a content creator, and will show gifts customized by this content creator.
  • Gift Inventory holds gifts for a user who can be either a fan or a content creator
  • Gifto Tokens, an ERC20-compliant token used to buy/sell virtual gifts.
  • Gifto Wallet, a wallet to hold Gifto tokens for a user
  • Gift Portal, a management system for gifts to be created, curated, and managed by Gifto contributors.

Gifto Protocol contributors are:

Implementation and adoption

We have already begun implementation of Gifto Protocol, leveraging our substantial experience in building virtual-gift systems and mass-consumer products. The Alpha version of Gifto Protocol will be in testing by end of 2017, and the Beta version will start testing in Q1 2018.

We will leverage our existing user base of millions of content creators and fans to test, iterate, and jump start mass adoption and to execute our vision of empowering content creators to become a reality. They will be the first adopters and testers of the Alpha version of the Gifto Protocol.

The team behind Gifto Protocol

Asia Innovations Group (AIG) is a leading mobile interactive entertainment company based in Asia. It is our goal to bring blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies into the hands of millions of users who are new to the crypto world and to ensure a sustainable path to mainstream usage. AIG was cofounded by former General Manager of Zynga China and former Deputy Manager of Tencent’s Corporate Strategy. Each of our management team members has over 10 years experience in mobile products and operations across Western and Asian markets. AIG currently has over 300 employees across 8 offices, from Morocco to Taipei.

AIG’s portfolio of products include:

  • PengPeng, the first gamified social chat app in Asia, over 40 million downloads.
  • Uplive, the live streaming platform with highest international monetization, generating USD $10 million revenue in Aug 2017 on 20 million downloads since launching in June 2016.
  • BigCat, the #1 original YouTube Content maker in South East Asia, with 150 million views per month across 6 channels on YouTube, 11 million unique viewers per month.
  • Superfans, the #1 fans app that allows fans to follow their favorite stars’ social media activities, has over 10 million users since launching in 2016.
  • 50+ of the highest quality mobile HTML5 social games accumulating over 30 million users worldwide over the past two years.

AIG’s products have together over 100 million users and on track for USD $130 million in group revenue for 2017.

AIG is backed by first-tier institutional investors such as KPCB, Index Ventures, Wicklow Capital, Ventech, White Star, and MSA. Individual investors include founder of Palantir, founder of Qunar.com, co-founder of Zynga, VP of Oculus at Facebook, and other Internet industry leaders.

AIG has been widely reported in mainstream press such as CNN, WSJ, South China Morning Post. More information on AIG can be found at www.asiainnovations.com, and Uplive at www.up.live.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that this document is purely for general information and is not to be construed as an advertisement or advice. It is also not meant to be comprehensive.

Gifto

Decentralized Universal Gifting Protocol for Global Content Creators

Gifto Official

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The mass adoption crypto token and wallet for fun, fans, and content creators.

Gifto

Gifto

Decentralized Universal Gifting Protocol for Global Content Creators

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