Topic: [ANN]🎥PARATII: Business models for video that can actually work.🎬[LIVE ALPHA] (Read 268 times)

Please let me know if there are any questions I can help answer

http://paratii.video/around-the-block/

A documentary miniseries about the minds behind the Blockchain will be released soon on Paratii!

We're discussing possibilities for an upcoming Bounty Program and should have more information soon. What do you find important in a Bounty Program?

Transcoding is the process of taking a raw video file and reprocessing it into several different, smaller streams. It's what allows you to watch a YouTube video in 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p or 1080p when the original upload was only in 1080p. Livepeer is a decentralized network of transcoders that allows its users to hire transcoders as needed, on demand. Paratii will use Livepeer as its transcoding solution as soon as their codebase supports a few features that are important to us - we've been working closely together to make sure that we're aligned with each other's needs.

Hopefully that made sense, let us know if there's any other questions we can help with!

You write. "Last month Livepeer aired on the highway with its innovative distributed network of transcoders." What are transcoders and how can they be purchased?

Here's an example of the player embedded on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/EuSouRye/status/1010022494101618688

It looks quite a bit nicer on Medium, but here is the Token Summary for those who don't wish to leave the forum:

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PTI: token summary
An overview of the token that incentivises the Paratii attribution and curation protocol.




I. PTI Token

The Paratii protocol relies on a native utility token ($PTI) that grants access to agents willing to provide value to the network and compete in earning its rewards.
The token is emitted according to the ruleset encoded in the main net versions of the ParatiiToken.sol and Curated Registry (TCR) contracts, and inseparable from the protocol. Network stakers who provide worthy curation services earn tokens via inflationary rewards. Tokens will be issued over an extended period of time.

II. The Protocol
Paratii is a protocol for attribution and curation. Its existence is justified by the lack of open registries and public monetisation tooling for the online video industry. To claim the ownership of a feature-length movie and go on to distribute and monetise it digitally, in Brazil, for example, a film studio undergoes a months-long, expensive process through a few public institutions. On the other extreme, YouTube allows one to self-publish a video and activate monetisation in a few seconds — the downside being the requirement to waive away 45% of future earnings by default, from the start. The “creative middle class” needs more alternatives in between — safe enough, easy enough, fair enough. We aim to offer video developers a next generation monetisation playground to build upon.
It all starts with attribution. For Paratii, an attribution is a claim, by any identity, that carries a unique resource identifier (URI), a proof of rights, and a stake. Claims are included in a token curated registry, from which applications can read semantic information to sort videos to their users and allow them to browse safe, curated content. For content owners or distributors, Paratii offers a unique entry point for monetising video beyond the limits of the currently dominant models. For app developers, a source of reliable media and semantic metadata, besides an open source streaming engine, if they come to build with Paratii.JS or any library that bundles disintermediated video service providers.



A “curation market with infinite staking” allows for curators to signal in favour or opposition to particular listings, according to their conformance to copyright and other preset rules; PLCR voting (similarly as in the canonical TCR design) is used to achieve objective outcomes and maintain or delist particular videos (read about the Foundation’s decreasing influence on section X.e.).

Videos in the registry can be challenged by token holders willing to put up an amount equivalent to the list’s minDeposit. The less popular a video is, the less costly it is to “question” it, but also the higher the rewards per stake for those who choose to “back” it. Staking early on towards a video which ends up becoming popular is more profitable than just sprinkling around riskless stakes.
Note that registry applications fit the structure of a listing in the standard TCR implementation (given as arguments, below, are what we call the URI, the stake, and the proof of rights, respectively):
function apply(bytes32_listingHash, uint_amount, string_data

The Paratii protocol combines a “mother” token curated registry with potentially infinite “children registries”. Individual entities (humans or machines) that presume the ability to outperform the curation output of the lists currently available — what should initially be straightforward, given the generic nature of the mother-TCR — can deploy a bonding curve market maker contract to spawn a new token, that will be used to govern a sub-list of the main curated registry. To kickstart a sub-list, one must stake an arbitrary amount of PTI tokens as a collateral. A channel is a type of sub-list. A publication with shared access (as in Medium) would be another.
The deployed market maker mints newly created tokens for whoever wants to acquire them with the mother token, and allows for these to be redeemed against the collateral held, at any point. Prices are algorithmically determined and get higher as demand for the token increases, with redeemed tokens being burned to maintain a desired reserve ratio between the amount escrowed in collateral and the supply of circulating tokens (i.e. a bonding curve). This can ideally be simplified, for curators, by a “bond / unbond” interface that translates such specific engagement with a list.

We call these “custom tokens”, once they can be programmed with built-in functionality besides the natively enabled feature of “fractional equity ownership”.

• One can deploy a channel with an access token, that floats in price according to popularity of the content listed or broadcast, translating the demand for the content into objective value.
  
• One can deploy a list of “common goods” and coordinate for their well use. For example, think of unused recorded footage, that film production companies sit on, and don’t ever have an incentive to share or recycle. By deploying a list of such content, and a token that gives both access to consumption (hold or pay to download without watermarks) and right of entry (stake to apply your footage too), one can kick start a grassroots Shutterstock-like membership club, with a “ticket” that reflects its value, and that can also be used to redistribute further revenue (e.g. proceedings from sales).
• One can deploy a segmented list that is referenced by media promoters or advertisers and drives earning to listees[/i], yielding returns to the creator of the category through appreciation or commissions.
  
• One can deploy a crowd sourced channel, selling out rights or distributing them selectively (think an online school with teams spread out and in need of external contributors).
• One can deploy a normal subscription service, through autonomously selling non-transferable access tokens.

Read more about the Paratii protocol in our upcoming™ new white paper. Subscribe to our newsletter and don’t miss out.

III. Utility

Media-related p2p applications need “meta-layers” in order to leverage the network effects of decentralisation while minimising exposure to liabilities through forms of self-regulation. For a listee, being in the Paratii registry holds the inherent benefits of ensuring proper attribution of work and potentially being exposed to audiences via distinct applications. Besides, it grants applicants access to the native monetisation features available. This is not a fixed offering: we begin with simple direct consumer-to-creator payment methods (e.g. tipping), and expect to broaden the range of options consistently, while fostering experiments and incorporating whichever developer contributions that turn out to be valuable to creators.
In a broader sense, Paratii is a protocol for shared ownership of media assets, not in the aspect of equity, but in that of stakes. How to measure the utility of being in such a registry? What’s the value it provides? The science to formalize such questions and the procedures to answer them are in the works. We outline four approaches to assess the value of token curated lists:

• Measuring the amount of value being captured by listees in comparison to equivalent assets which are not in the registry: the amount of VC capital driven to Messari listees, the amount of ad-revenue driven to domains whitelisted by AdChain, the monetisation surplus being captured by videos on Paratii. Requires empirical data.
  
• Finding a proxy for the amount of value the list secures: in the absence of empirical data, one can estimate, for a given industry or sector, the value in being compliant with a specific rule set, (transparence standards, in the case of Messari; fraud-preventing practices, in the case of AdChain; attribution rights, in the case of Paratii). Coordination tools can have inherent value: think what Content ID would be worth, if stripped off from YouTube and redistributing “faulty” monetised revenue to worthy contributors.
• Calculating the cost to permanently diverge the list from its focal point: if the value of the Bitcoin network is proportional to the cost of breaking its objective function (i.e. double-spend), a list’s value can be seen as that of “bringing its ruleset” down, through bribery or any other forms of attack. Ideally, as a result of effective design, this comes down to a natural equilibrium: the cost for attackers is equivalent to the price interested network participants are willing to pay to keep the registry secure (attacks costing a function of active stakes at any given time). How much would the collective of crypto projects pay to self regulate and avoid external regulatory interference? How much are domain owners and advertisers willing to put up to ultimately combat fraud? How much are creators and publishers willing to stake to earn more than they currently do, in legacy monetisation platforms?
• Ultimately, TCR-like tokens become the unit of account for a kind of specialised curatorship work. Assessing the value being paid to equivalent work by real-world businesses can yield good proxies. How much, on average, does a video platform pays for its team of content filterers (Paratii)? How much SSPs spend on verifying the domains they pull inventory from (AdChain)? How much is spent by investors on “crypto diligence” (Messari)?

IV. Categorisation
The PTI is a work-token, where “a service provider stakes (AKA bonding) a native token to earn the right to perform work for the network”. Work tokens address free-riding: holders with idle tokens that are not put to use forgo cash flows opportunities and end up having their ownership diluted. The work, in our case, is that of curatorship.



This is similar in nature to the designs of AdChain, Messari, Civil, Relevant and Ocean, when it comes to the usage of a tokenized registry for weeding out pieces of content that do not abide by an overarching rule set, through rewarding righteous curators and slashing misbehaving agents.
The PTI can also be seen as a proof-of-human work[/i] token. In this sense, it is akin to Numerai, Earn.com, Steem and other crypto-assets which reward work that’s not fully objective (or that has to arrive at objective outputs from partially subjective inputs). We believe curated registries will accrue value efficiently, once their token’s price derives directly from the value provided by the registry over which the token confers the power to govern.

V. Usage
We foresee two immediate forms of usage for the PTI token, and three to be developed further:

• Curators who find their way to earn reliably — by constantly helping surface good content — will use the token as a ticket to play the underlying crypto economic game.
• Mid-size creators or publishers interested in opening channels in a global registry that offers out-of-the box monetisation tooling will acquire tokens to stake and bootstrap their content/lists among others. They may also “feed lists or channels” with consumption incentives (paying watchers directly to watch, instead of going through ads).
• Custom tokens with flexible monetisation properties for playlists / channels can be issued using PTI as a collateral (applies to developers, and, depending on their products, to creators and curators too).
• Engaged network participants (end users) willing to take part in rewards may delegate PTI towards curators and contribute to the security of the Paratii registry.
• Weighted influence on broader governance decisions (e.g. altering the registry’s parameters; accepting new types of collateral).

It is important for widespread adoption that direct monetisation, in the eyes of content consumers, is agnostic when it comes to the underlying means of exchange. Users willing to pay for whichever content format shall be able to do so in ether, in dollars, in a stablecoin, or whichever option is more convenient for them. We’re constrained by the realm of ERC20s, initially, but can think of anything up to allowing seamless fiat on/off-ramping with an integration along the lines of a Coinbase widget. In the beginning, PTI can also be used for these purposes.
An exemplified interface for interacting with a video registry and staking tokens from a web browser follows:



VI. Value drivers
PTI will afford initial liquidity through the deployment of a bonding curve contract, collateralised in ether, for any Ethereum address to PTI tokens with ether, or redeem them for ether according to an algorithmically set buy/sell price curve. The same template shall be applied to custom tokens issued by creators or curators to monetise specific videos or playlists under dynamic priced access (e.g. where early fans can redeem their access tokens later on, back for the network’s native token, profiting if the content’s popularity has grown — or just keep the access rights for the increasingly valuable content).
Factors increasing demand:

• Creating channels has been “paying out”, and there’s increasingly more creators or publishers willing to stake to do it.
• Staking towards other videos and earning for being a trendspotter has been paying out, and there’s increasingly more curators willing to join the game.
• Deploying sublist begins to be profitable, such that “categorizers” or segmentators start to require more PTI to back new segmentations and compete for either audience or external revenue sources.
  
• There’s positive reception towards the token, communications are scaling and there’s demand from exceptionally engaged new users willing to become active network participants.

Factors reducing circulating supply:

• There’s a frequent flow of PTI getting collateralised for the issuance of custom tokens by creators or curators.
• Participation in staking gets and remains high.
• Outstanding PTI are being being frequently redeemed back for ether via its market maker contract.
  
  

VII. On monetary Policy

A total supply of 150 million PTI will be emitted by the network. Emissions of block rewards will follow a primarily linear curve, combined with a slow exponential one. The Paratii protocol will emit 75% of tokens in 8 years. More details are in our upcoming™ new paper.

VIII. Token supply allocation
The distribution of PTI Tokens is designed to incentivize network participants to support a thriving ecosystem for the creative middle class. Significant work is required to build the public tooling, software and integrations needed to serve all of Paratii stakeholders as the project evolves.
We follow an industry-wide, non-formalised convention of allocating at least 6/10 of issuance to the network’s native capital reallocation mechanism (minting block rewards). Also pretty conventional is the allocation of 12% of the supply to the non-profit Foundation backing the ecosystem.



IX. Token Generation
The Paratii Foundation aims to incentivise early adopters to use, criticize, build upon and experiment with the Paratii protocol and product suite. Dozens of approaches have been tried out in search of the fairest or more distributive token generation designs. On one extreme, are the most capital concentrating ones: ICOs, multiple pre-sale round-juggling, hyperflexible hype-riding hard caps. On the other, organic distributions on which a network’s issuance is simply kickstarted, and contributors begin to get rewarded (the most extreme case being bitcoin itself).
Staking protocols, particularly, require circulating tokens in order to function. There needs to be a mechanism to make tokens available to stakeholders so that there are tokens to be staked after all. Some projects go for airdrops, others allow users of a mother network to MerkleMine tokens (e.g. Livepeer), there’s even those who bootstrap a network with PoW and switch to PoS on the fly (e.g. Ethereum).
We aim to launch our first alpha applications on the Ethereum public test net first, in order to battle-test the curation machinery still without programmed economic incentives. When in Test Net, the Foundation aims to sponsor rewards to top performing content owners, in the eyes of curators / token holders, giving purpose for the crypto economic game to start functioning, even if with test tokens (more in our separate go-to-market document). Towards the end of 2018, we’ll launch the PTI token contract on the Ethereum Main Net. Extrinsic rewards may continue indefinitely, but creators and curators will be henceforth playing by the economic rules agreed upon. In the beginning of 2019, we aim to start allowing for the deployment of sub-registries and custom tokens, broadening the possibilities to videos in the Paratii registry.



X. Distribution Design
The guiding principle behind the PTI token distribution design is fairness. With a broad set of stakeholders (videomakers, editors, researchers, curators, archivists, studios, publishers, the crypto-community, the larger digital media ecosystem, the Foundation’s team, open source contributors), we aim for a smooth offering that respects each groups’ values.
X.a. High-Level Design Objectives

• Funding the ecosystem responsibly, at a maximum 6.8m dollars hardcap under a total supply of 150m tokens, and pushing for as much as two thirds of oustanding tokens to be in the hands of network users, to help ensure a decentralised community.
• Treat creators and curators as first-class citizens, and prioritise fairness in rewarding them, avoiding capital injection mechanisms that may favour one-time speculators (e.g. an ICO).
• Reward long-term acquirers, strategically influential entities, and believers in the value of the network.
• Ensure that the Paratii Foundation receives the required funds to support the network, activate the ecosystem and have a “cushion” to be able to meet any potential liabilities.
• Ensure that the distribution is transparent and inspires confidence towards large content providers and enterprises, so that they are comfortable in participating and transacting within the network.
• Respect and comply with applicable laws.

X.b. Previous Purchasers
The Paratii Foundation has committed to exchanging 15% of the total PTI supply with acquirers:

• Angel (3.45% tokens)
• Seed (5.10% tokens)
• Private (6.45% tokens)

X.c.Seed and Private Purchasers
We have flexible plans, the most expending one requiring no more than U$6,8M in total for the initial deployment of the protocol, network and ecosystem.
These phases are reserved for early acquirers and advisors that provide product, technical and business feedback leading up to our go-to-market plan execution and expansion. In return for early access, they will be subject to specific lock up. It is key that these contributors are strategically onboarded, as their share will constitute a relevant portion of the circulating supply in the early days of the network.

X.d. Network Launch Distribution
90 million tokens (60%) will be directly made available to network participants, ultimately. Instead of selling a large allocation of tokens to public unsophisticated investors (e.g. an ICO) before true users, we’ll bootstrap the emergence of the network by setting a “dilution rate” that assigns a share of issuance to on-boarding users (more details in our upcoming™ paper). This will begin at an abnormally high parameter and diminish in importance (can’t state the same as for nominal value) as more accounts start participating in the protocol. The decrease is designed not to be asymptotic but laddered, reaching “lower degrees” (not literally ½ halvings) as the amount of addresses interacting with the Paratii registry reaches exponentially distancing milestones.
These adjustments alter a share discounted from block rewards, but not inflation itself. In the first 7 days of its life on Main Net, the Paratii protocol will issue between 1% and 2% of the total supply of tokens. In the following week, that relative value is expected to drop by anything between 1.5 to 6 times, depending on network participation. The rhythm of issuance decrease is expected to remain sharp until normalisation - the curve is asymptotic and approximately 75% of all PTI will be issued within 8 years.

X.e. Foundation’s reserves
18 million tokens will be held in reserve for the Foundation to sustain further development of the technology and expansion of the ecosystem. A percentage of the liquid amount in reserve, in line with a participation target publicly stipulated, will at any given time be actively staked in curating the registry. This means the influence of the Foundation in curating the registry will be noteworthy in the network’s early days, allowing for agile coordination when necessary, but will diminish over time as the community of token holders and its culture mature.

X.f. Token distribution schedule
PTI will be released to network participants according to the following plan:



The reason why we aim to release a subset of previously acquired or earned tokens soon after launch is the requirement of circulating tokens for the stake-based curation machinery to work. The distribution prioritises agents who most likely will do good use of them, in line with the vision being put forth by the Paratii community (join it!).

XI. Use of Proceeds
The capital raised will be allocated mainly to expand the team and keep hiring world-class technical talent, fund the activation plan described in our separate go-to-market plan document, ensuring widespread liquidity and covering general expenses. An itemised table can be seen below.



🔎 XII. Factsheet



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Thank you for the comments! We do want to be as transparent and professional as possible in sharing our vision for the project and it's great to get good feedback in that respect.

Speaking of investor information, we just (literally minutes ago) released our token summary. It's super in-depth and goes into every aspect of the PTI token's use, distribution and development:
https://medium.com/paratii/pti-token-summary-edf048d36245

Please check it out if it interests you and let us know your thoughts here!

I also agree with your evaluation of the project. The design of the project attracts investors. Also, the content part is very important, the investor should see the prospects for making a profit.

Well organized project. Registration is very high quality, presentation of the team. Even if you do not delve deeply into the essence of the project, these indirect signs can be used to judge the team's respect for potential investors. For me personally - this is a big plus.

https://twitter.com/ParatiiVideo/status/1008732724138520576

This twitter thread goes into the potential of TCRs as tools for curation, which is quite relevant to Paratii - check it out if you're interested!

Looking at the other threads and projects we don't really fit the same profile, but we're also not dependent on ICO funding (in fact, we're not doing one). Having this thread works as a place to point people who want to get to know the proejct and to introduce those who are actually interested in learning more about how it works. Quality over quantity and all that.

nice! thanks for elaborating your side that much!  yeah, there are lots of fishes out there, no one is alone. you can find your own niche in that industry. but, seems that you need to promote your project as your thread is moving slow. you need to find loyal supporters here.

I don't see it on there, @GodSatoshl

Appreciate it!

Watching!

We're far from being the only fish in what is - thankfully - a very large pond. We're excited for other projects in this space because we believe that cooperative competition is the way forward for decentralized video and crypto in general. In fact, we work closely with other projects such as Livepeer and IPFS.

I need to do more reading on Buzzshow to be able to respond to that specifically, but from what I have seen their strategy has been to build a platform that is centralized and then convert it, while we're building a decentralized platform from the ground up. Right now, on Buzzshow.com, you're actually watching YouTube videos, while on portal.paratii.video they're hosted on IPFS, which is decentralized. In fact it may be that we have very different goals, though, and that they don't even plan on hosting content in a decentralized fashion, just the coin rewards, but I don't know enough about the project to tell.

It's also important to note that Paratii is far from being a closed protocol or platform. In fact, we welcome developers to build their own niche-specific applications on top of it, and services like Buzzshow could eventually pull their videos from Paratii instead of or in addition to YouTube if they so desired, expanding their scope (win-win!) It's also worth noting that we're the only project of our scope in the second largest video market in the world, Brazil, and our market activation is very focused here. In a country that has so many of its own wildly successful services (eg. 99Taxi for ridesharing, OLX for marketplace, Zap for real estate), we find that a big reason to believe in our potential.

In terms of competition, I have this to say: we're building what we're saying we're building. It's up to you to make a judgment call on whether you think that will bear fruit, but our team, advisors and investors are sure enough to put all of our effort behind it, and we believe that it brings something new and relevant to the table. Keep an eye on us and you just might be pleasantly surprised.  

haven't heard of buzzshow - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/annpre-ico-buzzshow-fully-developed-reward-based-video-social-network-2791514. they have already working platform. what's your main edge over them? can you confidently say to yourself that you will gonna surpass them?

why not
 good luck