Introducing the ‘Red Light District’

Decentralizing the world’s adult content marketplaces

Published in

SpankChain

4 min readOct 5, 2017

Perhaps the biggest open secret of the tech world is the adult entertainment industry. It accounts for an astronomically large portion of all internet traffic, and has historically been a key driver in the adoption of various new technologies. At SpankChain, sitting at the intersection of two boundary pushing technologies, we are developing a novel economic value transfer platform. We aim to provide a digital currency wallet with an integrated payment channel hub targeted towards the adult entertainment industry.

By utilizing our platform, entertainers and business owners gain access to instant, secure, low-cost payments solutions that cannot be censored or tampered with by any intermediary. This is the first step on a long road of developing an entire ecosystem of interoperable services that will drive down the cost of launching and operating adult entertainment businesses, while also improving autonomy for performers. It’s our goal to make entrepreneurship within the adult entertainment so affordable and so easy that any individual entertainer can find a profitable home and audience for their content.

As we look forward toward SpankChain’s future post-token launch, we see a need to drive initial adoption of the underlying payments platform built on the SPANK token. We need a place for adult content creators to experiment with new business models, and host their content. We have committed to building our own live adult camsite, for live entertainers to interact with stream viewers via instant payments. But what about all other forms of pre-recorded content?

Enter the district0x Network

district0x is a cooperative of decentralized marketplaces powered by Ethereum, Aragon, and IPFS. Markets within the network, known as ‘districts’, are built upon a shared framework of Ethereum smart contracts and front-end libraries. These provide the functionality necessary to operate peer-to-peer communal marketplaces.

We’ve proposed a collaborative effort between district0x and SpankChain. The district0x platform will provide not only key marketplace infrastructure through their framework, but will also bring community-driven governance through its partnership with Aragon. By utilizing district0x, we can launch a marketplace district — The Red Light District — to allow performers to upload and sell their content to admiring fans through instant and near-zero cost payments provided by the SpankChain platform.

Marketplaces like ManyVids have become increasingly popular with today’s adult performers, but suffer from staggeringly high fees of up to 20% on all content sold. Furthermore, submissions to these centralized services are subject to censorship and takedowns based solely on the whims and tastes of the marketplace operators. We believe an inclusive, community owned and operated alternative can provide better service with significantly lower fees, and gain major market share in the process.

How will it work?

The Red Light District will have the following core features:

Performers will be able to upload and price their content (pics, videos, gifs)
The uploaded content will be displayed on the performer’s profile page
The marketplace will display listings of performers and their content
The marketplace will provide search/filtering/ranking tools for performers and their content. This is a core feature provided by the district0x infrastructure.
Users will be able to purchase content they wish to experience by sending an Ethereum transaction
Users will also be able to purchase content with payment channels using the Vynos wallet and the SpankChain hub.

The collaborative effort will go one step further. district0x by its very nature provides community governance options through the district0x Network Token (DNT). Both teams have agreed to allow the Red Light District to be jointly governed by both DNT and the SPANK token. As the total supply of either token is 1 billion each (2 billion total), they will be treated in equal accord. Either token can be staked to the voting contract to receive an equivalent amount of voting shares.

We anticipate a few key issues for the community of token holders to vote on:

the fee % on content sales (if any)
the development roadmap
content quality controls
content ranking algorithms

Should the DNT and SPANK holders collectively decide to institute fees in the Red Light District, we propose that these fees be divided equally between the communities.

The district0x Network holds huge potential for developing communal marketplace of all kinds that operate at the lowest cost to the end user. Community driven governance and the inherent censorship resistance in the platform make it a perfect match for marginalized industries like online adult entertainers. We foresee this network growing to accommodate many more platforms in addition to ours, and we could not be more excited!

To learn more about district0x, visit their website and follow their blog.