SingularDTV: 3 Airdrops and a DAO
SNGLS to SNGJ, SNGJ to SNGLS, SGT to SNGLS
It’s May 2020.
For seven years we’ve been building a decentralized entertainment industry.
Numerous blockchain companies have come and gone.
We’re still here.
We’re still building…
It’s bittersweet to say, especially in these troubling times, but SingularDTV has never been in a stronger and more inspired position. We’ve optimized on all fronts. Our team is the best we could have — I know, I’ve personally hired and fired over 100 people in the last few years in pursuit of achieving company-wide synergy. Our burn has never been so clean — a blue flame.
We’re rolling out several crucial pieces of infrastructure over the next 12 months. On deck is the SNGLS Media Distribution Protocol, the snglsDAO, EtherVision and the launch of the SNGJ and SGT tokenized ecosystems.
The SNGLS Tokenized Ecosystem
The SNGLS tokenized ecosystem is alive and well. We’re a community of over 8500 token holders — or 8500 wallet addresses. There’s more than 75,000 SNGLS transactions to date and somewhere in the world SNGLS are interacted with on an average of every 15 minutes. In the past, SNGLS experienced volumes up to $60m a day, and a high of $0.47 in value. Today, SNGLS is priced around $0.01. This is probably a more appropriate valuation, especially after the cryptoverse suffered from unsustainable hype and countless broken promises.
SingularDTV, on the other hand, is working on the same thing we always have been — the creation of a decentralized entertainment industry. It may take a generation to build, but one day we’ll achieve “critical mass”, and the impact will be felt in a meaningful way all around the world.
Thankfully, SingularDTV’s economic engine — the SNGLS token — is alive, well and prospering.
3 Years of Runway
Fortunately, we’ve never taken VC money or had to dilute SingularDTV’s interests in order to extend our runway. We also have no debt. This is an amazing accomplishment that was provided to us courtesy of being a crypto-company that launched in the right place at the right time.
We’ve witnessed several blockchain companies fail along the way, and now because of this pandemic we’ve seen several entertainment companies fail. It wasn’t because they didn’t have sustainable business models. Many of them did. They were in the black as long as the economy was in good condition. They didn’t have the reserves in place or the asset base to keep afloat if their revenue model failed for too long. While most Americans are living month to month, so are most companies, so are most countries. We are fortunate to have reserves to ensure our future and little enough revenue to not have fully depended on it.
Of course SingularDTV and Breaker have felt the pain over the years. We’ve been forced to adapt. As a company we were drunk from the rocket-ship ride up to $1,300 ETH. The hangover was a bitter dose of reality as we scaled down from 100 employees and made hard decisions. When the pandemic hit and the markets took a turn for the worse, we were forced to optimize again, but it was much less painful. We were already close to being the leanest, best version of ourselves.
VISUAL REMINDER
The graphic below is a visual reminder of SingularDTV and who/what we are. SingularDTV is launching a Media Distribution Protocol powered by SNGLS, a DAO governance system to manage the protocol, and service layers on top of the permissionless protocol, all for the benefit of the creation of a decentralized entertainment industry. Breaker is one of those service layers.
SNGLS <> SGT <> SNGJ : Becoming a Multi-Token Ecosystem
We’re entering Phase 4 of SingularDTV. This is a return to our decentralized roots, and the launch of the SNGJ and SGT tokenized ecosystems.
To celebrate this next phase, SingularDTV has an exciting summer planned. Today we unveil vrs. 4.0 of our new SingularDTV website, www.singulardtv.com and starting the first week of June we’ll be administering three airdrops (SNGLS to SNGJ, SNGJ to SNGLS and SGT to SNGLS).
PHASES 1–5
PHASE 1 was pre-TGE, from December 2013 — September 2016. The three years of frustrating conceptualization and research regarding how to programmatically embed intellectual property into data vessels on the blockchain.
PHASE 2 began October 2016, with the launch of our SNGLS token and the capitalization of SingularDTV. Meaningful and vigorous development began.
PHASE 3 was the launch of our decentralized distribution application, breaker.io. It’s Breaker, and also components of tokit.io, that led us to numerous discoveries. It’s these discoveries, in part, that fuel Phase 4.
PHASES 4 & 5 : The Return to our Decentralized Roots
SingularDTV was born from the belief that decentralization empowers individuals. The principle of decentralization has always been our North Star. These were the values that we espoused in Phases 1 and 2, the values that resonated with so much of our early community. Phase 3 was a little different, though. In Phase 3, we had to prove that blockchain technology could work to solve problems in the entertainment industry — an industry that has historically been slow to adapt to technological change. We had to prove that we could streamline rights management and royalty payments because if we couldn’t manage to get artists paid fairly, then we couldn’t create real, lasting change. With Breaker, we proved that we could.
In Phase 3, in building Breaker, we started to notice that members of our community couldn’t comprehend what we were building. Sure, they could rent movies and listen to music on Breaker, but the process of purchasing content didn’t feel any different on Breaker than on any other platform. Breaker’s use of blockchain technology didn’t tangibly improve the lives of the majority of our content consumers because it was built specifically to solve industry problems, not consumer problems.
We’ve heard you, and we understand that you want to use blockchain to solve problems that directly affect you on a daily basis. It’s why in Phases 4 and 5 we’re using blockchain to solve further reaching problems, with an emphasis on creating more opportunities for the token holders across our various tokenized ecosystems. Do you feel like your media is censored by platforms acting as gatekeepers? Become a content miner within the snglsDAO and do your part to keep speech free. Annoyed there aren’t affordable options for distribution and hosting content without handing over all the value of that content to centralized gatekeepers? Then vote on new proposals to improve the SNGLS Media Distribution Protocol. Frustrated you can’t get benefit from recommending your favorite new artists to your friends? Mint a subscription token on a bonding curve on Singular J and help that creator find new fans. In the coming phases, we’ll provide the tools, but it’s up to you to become the change you want to see in the entertainment and media industry.
A word of caution: this process will not be easy. It’s not a switch you can magically flip overnight. It’s taken us seven years to complete the first three phases of our mission, and it will take years more to complete the next two. Decentralization will not be easy. But it will be worth it.
By Zach LeBeau and G Thomas Esmay
