Video Publisher 2.0

The new Video Publisher contract removes barriers of entry to the view.ly video platform for the entire Ethereum community. It also allows for faucet automation and improved security models.

Support for ETH

VIEW Tokens are not easy to acquire, and as such represent a barrier of entry for new users. With VP2, it is now possible to publish videos by paying the publishing fee in ETH as well as VIEW.

Regular publishers will still want to acquire and use VIEW, since the VIEW publishing price offers a discount over ETH in USD terms. The discount ranges from 50% — 80% depending on market volatility.

Support for beneficiaries

It is now possible to publish videos on someone else’s behalf.

This allows for 2 things:

1. Faucet automation

The ability to publish on someone else’s behalf allows us to implement an automated faucet that pays the publishing fee for someone else, for example when the users verify ownership of a valuable wallet, or sign in with established social media account (ie. YouTube) or tweet their address.

2. Improved security

Publishers can now use a hot wallet to pay the publishing fee, and set the beneficiary for the rewards, purchases and donations to their cold wallet address.

But wait. Why do I need to pay to publish videos?

1.) At view.ly we strongly oppose ads and monetization models that infringe users privacy. Video storage, transcoding and distribution are expensive — and the publishing fee helps cover some of these costs.

2.) The pay to play model acts as an effective spam filter, making the worst offenses uneconomical.

3.) New videos on view.ly compete for a daily rewards pool, and having an “entry” fee solves the asymmetry of the nothing at stake problem (uploading of junk content could be profitable in lieu of a fee).