Understanding the Goals of Numbers Authentic Media Network
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) blew up in early 2021 and with it came a wave of new adopters and NFT platforms claiming to be the next big innovation in the ever growing digital asset sphere. During this time, we also launched our own marketplace CaptureClub. With the OpenSea’s, the Rarible’s, the MintBase’s and the CaptureClub’s, it has become difficult to navigate the oversaturated NFT marketplace space. With this article titled Understanding the Goals of Numbers Authentic Media Network, we hope to share with you our ethos and how our current Capture product series fits into our larger goal of creating an Authentic Media Network.
Numbers Inception
Numbers was created in early 2019 as a response to growing distrust in news media and misinformation on the web. The problem, exacerbated by the internet and its many distribution channels, seemed futile as efforts to ensure authenticity were both time consuming and ineffective. At the heart of the disinformation dilemma is the authenticity of data itself. If there was a way to secure and trace data at the origin, then maybe the issue can be addressed.
The marriage of mobile phone sensors data collection capabilities and blockchain traceability resulted in the creation of our namesake: Numbers Protocol. It also represented our first step towards laying the foundation of an Authentic Media Network.
“Fake News”, Misinformation, Disinformation
Much of our early work focused on addressing the misinformation and disinformation dilemma. Numbers Protocol, our image traceability framework, gave previously untraceable media content data provenance. News Media saw the potential in our framework and employed it in a use case called 78 Days, a photojournalistic record that details America’s 2020 78 day presidential transition from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. This project was done in collaboration with Reuters and Adobe.
Despite the progress made in providing traceable and verifiable means of tracking information, adoption of such measures take time. As it stands today, people are aware of the data integrity issue but are unwillingly to make it an absolute priority due to mainstream news conflicting values (views at the cost of accuracy).
Expanding our reach: Creating Value with Digital Assets
Digital assets (photos, videos, etc.) are a big part of the internet that we consume daily. They also experience a lot of infringement due to the antiquated ways ownership and rights are established. There are many legal gray areas when it comes to digital asset ownership. Traceability is also an issue. Numbers solution to this problem is Capture.
Capture makes photos more than just raw images. Captures are information containers that are traceable even in the the event of sharing, download and infringement. This is made possible by Captures adoption of the latest in metadata standards (Content Authenticity Initiative) embedding key information like ownership and context. Ownership and context are collected the point of creation and made immutable with the blockchain via our protocol.
All of this is packaged up in a tool we call Capture App. With Capture App, everyday smart phone users have access to the blockchain and effectively secure their photos and make them into Captures.
Leveraging the NFT Boom
Today, when the topic of unique digital assets, we undoubtedly discuss things in terms of NFTs. The reality is, NFTs are not the only way to make digital assets unique. In fact Captures, by themselves are unique digital assets.
No two Captures are created with the exact same circumstances. Because of this, every Capture comes with a certificate of authenticity establishing its ownership and unique one-of-a-kind status.
So why did we decide to “jump on the NFT bandwagon”. The reality is, the early 2021 NFT boom opened up a lot of possibilities for digital assets however it highlighted critical issues, most notably data provenance. It’s fundamental that creators should get credit for their creations. This is why the ownership aspect of NFTs is so attractive. However as it stands today, tracking ownership is not enough. Currently, on many platforms, anyone can mint an NFT token. This means anyone can download an image and sell it as their own. As you can imagine, this behavior opens the door for fraudulent behavior and diminishes the trust NFTs are supposed to give. This issue goes back to the problem of assets themselves lacking data provenance.
Leveraging the NFT Boom allows us to further highlight Capture technology and demonstrates how Capture can comprehensively solve the authenticity / legitimacy issue in the digital asset sphere.
CaptureClub’s Identity
CaptureClub is more than just a NFT marketplace. We see it as a marketplace for Captures with a data stack that includes embedded CAI metadata for traceability, certificate of authenticity generated by Numbers Protocol and NFT technology to provide liquidity. Similar to existing platforms (ShutterStock and GettyImages) we hope to the primary destination for authentic digital assets and be the preferred platform for creators to the sell their creations.
CaptureClub offers creators with tools to create secure assets, create their own marketplace and set their own price, and most importantly be in control of their creations. As a platform that contains only authentic assets, CaptureClub is the first media platform apart of the Capture ecosystem.
Authentic Media Network. What is it?
As mentioned in the beginning, our goal at Numbers is to create an Authentic Media Network and everything we have done thus far has been to achieve this goal. As the name suggests, an Authentic Media Network is a network with only authentic media. As lofty as that sounds, we believe that it is attainable with Capture.
Capture is a movement that requires time to cultivate an ecosystem and a devoted community. In the future, we envision Captures to be the norm for photos as the success of an authentic media network hinges on the integrity of media that populate it. Starting with CaptureClub, the Capture ecosystem hopes to expend past just a marketplaces and into other impactful areas such as news media and be a destination for objectively trustworthy content.
Be apart of Numbers Authentic Media Renaissance
If interested in Numbers and the authentic media network considering checking out CaptureClub and downloading Capture App. To keep up with our progress follow us on Twitter and Telegram.
Additional Reading
Blog Post #5: Enhancing NFTs with Capture
Blog Post #7: Addressing the NFT Authenticity Problem with Capture App
CAI Series #1: How to inject JUMBF into JPEG
CaptureClub to issue first NFT Drop in collaboration with ThunderCore and DJ Kaku
