AMA Session with Julian Chandra from LBRY Credits(LBC)

Guest: Julian Chandra, Chief Marketing Officer of LBRY Credits
Host: Iris of MXC Exchange

Introduction:

Iris: Today, we’re honored to have Julian Chandra, Chief Marketing Officer of LBRY Credits, to our community to give us a more intuitive introduction to their unique project.

Julian, welcome. Would you like to say hello and introduce yourself?

Julian: LBRY is the most widely used blockchain protocol for media in the world. In recent months, popularity for LBRY has increased exponentially, particularly since the launch of Odysee.

Odysee in simple terms is a platform similar to YouTube, it is the portal to access the media content on the LBRY blockchain and it incorporates the LBRY Credits token (LBC) within its economy. In the short time since Odysee’s launch, it’s grown to 20 million+ users.

I am one of the creators of Odysee and and the chief marketing officer for both Odysee and LBRY. I lived in China for 3 years and I’m excited about LBRY’s growth within the market.

I believe LBRY offers excellent utility to the APAC market and is a hallmark example of how a blockchain protocol can be practically adopted and used in a mainstream context, beyond speculative investing.

You can follow our twitter: @odyseeteam & @lbrycom

You can also hit me up on instagram @julianpc or linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/

Questions about the project

Q1

Iris: Why was LBRY created and how does it take advantage of blockchain technology?

Julian: The LBRY blockchain was initially conceived as an idea in early 2015 by founder Jeremy Kauffman when he wanted to marry blockchain technology with BitTorrent / file sharing. He drew inspiration from the capability Bitcoin enabled in terms of allowing anyone to send digital currency through the internet in a decentralized and censorship resistant manner. Because Bitcoin was limited in its utility and could not support other applications outside money transfer, a new blockchain would need to be designed to allow the allocation of metadata to transactions, as well as other features such as discovery and namespace, which eventually came to be the LBRY protocol.

Similar to HTTP which is used to route internet traffic, LBRY is a mechanism by which anyone can publish to and read information back about a static piece of data. This can be a video, document, or whatever stream of bits that applications can read from. This type of model gives power back to both users and content creators alike.

LBRY first launched as a Desktop application which required users to install software on their PC in order to take advantage of publishing and viewing content. As the need for easier access became apparent, it found its way into a web application called lbry.tv, which later inspired odysee.com, the most widely used web front end to interact with the network.

Users who are more advanced, such as those that want full control of their data or want to help share content on the data network, normally opt into using the LBRY Desktop application. More casual users will run odysee.com in their browser, or opt into using one of the mobile apps. Accounts and wallet data sync across so users are able to enjoy a homogeneous view regardless of what front end they are using.

Q2

Iris: What applications are available and built upon the LBRY protocol?

Julian: LBRY Desktop, LBRY for Android, Odysee.com, Odysee for IOS, Odysee for Android (alpha), Odysee for Roku, whatch.online (community run front end), hound.fm (community run music centric front end), Chainquery (ability to query any LBRY data via simple SQL and API).

Q3

Iris: Why is Odysee important?

Julian: To put it concisely, Odysee completely abandons the legacy model of how to operate a media platform and returns agency and independence back to the user, all the while, ensuring that the user has a greater earning potential then they would have on a legacy media platform.

What’s a legacy media platform? Think YouTube, Facebook, etc.

A specific example of one of the benefits of Odysee is in how a creator no longer needs to worry about tempering their art out of fears of displeasing an out of touch moderation team or advertising team. What’s more, is that when users receive the LBRY token, their earning potential is far greater on Odysee too — especially as more users join. Ultimately, unlike legacy media companies, Odysee doesn’t need Coca Cola or Nike to survive and pay its bills, it only needs the confidence and trust of its users. Legacy media platforms are essentially ad companies now, brokering the placement of ads over content is all they do — it’s a shame

Odysee is creator first and is focused on recapturing the spirit of organic content creation vs corporatist and contrived content creation.

Q4

Iris: How are LBRY Credits used?

Julian: The token is used to create channel identities (profiles, requires locking of Credits), publish content (requires locking of Credits), buy and sell media content, and boost media content/discovery. The LBRY Credit is used by everyone that is using LBRY apps or on Odysee.

The boosting feature is especially important since it allows for creators and fans to self advertise content and channels via search results and trending views throughout the app. This incentivizes them to want to acquire and stake more credits in order to get more exposure. It has also attracted the interest of investors looking to capitalize on the growth of Odysee.

Q5

Iris: How do users earn LBRY Credits?

Julian: We have a rewards program which incentivizes verified users (verified through phone number, social media, Youtube, etc) to use the platform on a daily basis. This includes rewards for watching content, subscribing to channels, and inviting their friends to the Odysee platform or LBRY desktop app. This is the first time many users are introduced to a token or blockchain project, so we try to make it as simple as possible to interact with the applications — to the point where the user is probably not even aware that they are using a blockchain application, the way it should be!

Creators who publish original and engaging content are also rewarded via this program by tracking the viewing data of the verified users and also through inviting their audience to the platform. These incentives mean creators are more likely to tell others about Odysee & LBRY and have their fans join them, which helps us grow.

Q6

Iris: How does Odysee & LBRY compare to other YouTube alternatives, both blockchain and traditional?

Julian: The alternatives to YouTube don’t offer a lot of diversity in terms of content and they typically only offer political content from only one side of the political dichotomy. That’s cool if you’re only into that one thing, but Odysee is a generalist platform, so being able to offer diverse content across every vertical is what we focus on.

Odysee also provides creators with real earnings (of which we don’t take a cut due to the nature of blockchain transactions which don’t require an intermediary) which the others do not — that’s a big point of difference. I could go on about differences in policy and general strategy, but I’ll leave it to those here to ask additional questions on this point if they’re interested.

In terms of blockchain, the utility of the Credit is built into the core of the protocol and all functions that users interact with. The protocol allows for the Credit system to maintain a ledger of all available content and identities behind it. This means that at the core, it’s fully a decentralized and censorship resistant layer that can be built on top of by anyone. Other projects simply use their tokens as a transfer or reward mechanism, but don’t take full advantage of the blockchain technology available.

Q7

Iris: What does growth look like for Odysee and the LBRY Blockchain network?

Julian: We have 25+ million users so far since we launched Odysee back in December 2020. In terms of creators, we see daily signups of channels of all sizes via our YouTube Sync program and increasingly, more creators adopting it as their primary publishing platform above YouTube!

Q8

Iris: How can people get started on Odysee or use LBRY in its pure form?

Julian: If you’re a content creator — we’ve made it super easy to join us and bring your entire library of content along with you without needing to manually upload everything. This is done through our YouTube sync tool. Their existing library and all future videos are automatically mirrored to Odysee within a couple of clicks.

This can be done through the signup process on Odysee or through the desktop app LBRY.

Joining as a regular user is just as easy — clicking signup via the Odysee iOS app or website, or through the LBRY desktop app will have you watching videos and earning LBRY Credits within minutes.

Q9

Iris: What are some new and upcoming features you can share?

Julian: Just over a month ago, we enabled the ability for creators to livestream on the platform, which includes the ability to send/receive super chats similar to YouTube. Currently this feature requires a publisher to have a certain number of subscribers, or they can lock up 50 Credits in order to enable the feature.

We are currently working on releasing an Odysee for Android app to go along with our iOS release from earlier this year. Currently users can use the LBRY Android app until that’s available — our estimate is another month or so.

Odysee.com will have a long awaited Playlist feature released later this week. This will allow users to mark content as Watch Later / Favorites, and even curate/share their favorite content via published playlists on the blockchain.

Later this year we will also be experimenting with Stripe integration to allow creators to receive funds in fiat, advertising / revenue sharing, and Patreon like features (i.e. paid subscriptions which unlock content/perks).

Q10

Iris: How can people get involved in the LBRY community?

Julian: Best way is to come visit our Discord at chat.lbry.com and see what all the fuss is about.

We have a community for Chinese speaking enthusiasts, English, Portuguese etc.

Our community online consists of creators, helpers, users, and fans. Word of mouth is the best way we can continue to grow — so sharing odysee.com with your favorite creators and friends/family goes a long way.

If you are a developer and want to help us build out the ecosystem, check out https://lbry.tech as a starting point. All our code is open source on Github and there are numerous issues and improvements which can be worked on.

We are also hiring for a few positions, check out https://lbry.com/join-us

Q11

Iris: If you were to summarize your project in ONE word, what would it be? Why?

Julian: Utility

We believe the LBRY blockchain and token offer REAL utility in terms of taking full advantage of what a censorship resistant and decentralized protocol enables. Many other protocols have value due to their speculative nature, but with our user and creator base, we’ve built something that will rival YouTube and other social networks.

Free-asking Session

Q1. Balancing free speech with preventing objectionable content, specifically harassment. How does LBRY Credits think about this issue?

Julian: This is a good question. Simply put, Content that is against our Community guidelines and TOS is not monetizable. https://odysee.com/@OdyseeHelp:b/Community-Guidelines:c

Q2. YouTube is really a monument in the world entertainment industry. How do you guys plan to compete fairly with them, even usurp them?

Julian: This is true — YouTube is a great repository of content. Where we have an advantage is in YouTube changing their strategy to be a platform that is more focused on the corporatist type of creator vs independent one. This means for example; if you want to be the next pewdiepie or idubbbz unless you’re already established there, you going to have a hard time scaling. On Odysee, we’re all about the indie creator — we extend better monetization policy, moderation policy, and customer support.

Q3. Currently attracting real users and mass Adoption is a problem for Blockchain projects. So how will LBRY solve this problem??

Julian: So true! A lot of these blockchain projects are like a house of cards. You know, for the overwhelming majority of people that use Odysee — it’s their first time interacting with the blockchain.

Also, because our product is one that’s exciting and one that people actually want to use — adopting our product is easy.

To attest to our real use case in the market, one just needs to look at our user stats.

Follow us:

Telegram: https://t.me/MEXCEnglish

MXC trading: https://www.mexc.io/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MEXC_Global , https://twitter.com/MEXC_Fans

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mexcglobal

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mexc.global/

Medium: https://medium.com/MXCExchange

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MXCexchange/

Discord: https://discord.gg/zu5drS8