Bringing the benefits of DeFi and NFTs to emerging content creators on Theta blockchain
One of the most promising applications of blockchain technology is the potential to democratize and decentralize finance (“DeFi”) and crowdfunding in a wide variety of forms. For Theta, we’re excited about innovative ways that Theta blockchain could be used to more effectively seed streamers and content creators, by allowing fans and viewers to fund streamers in trustless and autonomous ways. This addresses one of the biggest challenges we see in the market today, namely, small and mid-size streamers and content creators on platforms like Twitch, YouTube and TikTok have to grind their way up to reasonable earnings. To make it worse, these creators often have to put up their own savings and potentially lose income by quitting their day jobs.
With EVM-compatible smart contract support coming soon to Theta mainnet, new use cases can be enabled on Theta via common DeFi tools like lending, stablecoins, and AMM DEXs (automated market maker decentralized exchanges). With these tools, users can create smart contracts that allow decentralized funding of content creators. Picture a mid-size streamer just getting started, with great content but a following that’s not sustainable yet. Early backers could seed this new streamer TFUEL to help them fund initial expenses, and in return receive a share of the TFUEL the streamer earns via THETA.tv or another Theta-enabled platform. This could be done entirely via smart contracts, so for example, if you and a streamer agreed to a certain amount of funding for 30% of their next year’s TFUEL earnings, this could be done in a fully trustless and transparent way since Theta blockchain natively supports TFUEL earning splits at the protocol level. A group of users and other stakeholders like Theta Labs could even make the process systematic by creating a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) that allows them to pool tokens for use in supporting content creators, with each stakeholder having the right to vote on which content creator gets funded via governance tokens that can be tradable on Uniswap-style DEXs. In fact, this funding could even be used as the initial incentive for top streamers to switch to a Theta-enabled platform in the first place — with community members making the call on which streamers to fund.
Content creators, and even larger scale entertainment properties can also use smart contract-based Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) to create special edition streamer emojis, virtual tickets to concerts, music festivals, sports events tournaments and more. If you’ve ever had a ticket stub collection, you are seeing how your old hobby digitized for a new era — where Travis Scott holds a concert in Fortnite, and next time it could be an NFT you save from the show! The NFTs wouldn’t just have to be for show though — these are real assets with value that could be traded via decentralized exchanges, or used as assets for collateral in DeFi lending protocols.
These functions will require the help of the Theta community, so as smart contracts go live on Theta mainnet, we’re calling on community devs to help build! We’ll be working on more community project grants, Theta Hackathons, and other ways to boost Theta adoption and functionality going forward into 2021.
