What is Digital Content Crowdfunding in Blockchain?

Blockchain has drastically changed the operations in digital content industry, in terms of revenue sharing and storage of digital content. The quality of digital content is of paramount importance for readers, and readers are willing to pay for subscriptions to high quality content providers, which leads to the emergence of digital content crowdfunding. We are glad to interview Matej Michalko, Founder and CEO of DECENT, to share his views on blockchain’s impact on the digital content industry. He indicates that blockchain is not the one-for-all solution in digital content industry.

Part 1: Digital Content in DECENT 

Digital Content Crowdfunding is a very interesting campaign in DECENT blockchain. Can you share with us more on the main motivation for people raising funds to support the seeder/writer?

Our proprietary blockchain, DCore, is packed with advanced features such as the ability to create user issued assets (UIA) and revenue sharing, which is a process of splitting the proceeds of any project to any individuals or parties that the content creator specifies. These two components can be combined in a unique way to produce a crowdfunding system, created within DCore. The idea is for content creators to reach out to their fans and communities for their projects while incentivizing their fans to donate by offering each of them a part, or share, of the proceeds from the project. With DCore, the funds donated by fans immediately and directly support the content creator, and any revenue gained from the project will, in proportions set by the content creator, be distributed back to the fans who contributed, all the with speed, safety and security that only blockchain can provide.

We see that DECENT recently partnered with Fiction Riot for its Ficto platform to pay royalties via blockchain. It is quite similar to Youtuber get money from the subscriptions received, so how do you position yourself compared to other blockchain platforms like Steemit, or even a traditional internet giant such as Youtube?

What makes Ficto really stand out is that they are the first in Hollywood to reward artists in real-time. An integral part of our DCore blockchain technology is the ability to instantly process payments, even internationally. Ficto uses this technology to directly reward the artists using their platform and pays royalties automatically, based on how often episodes are viewed. The company only receives a commission based on the revenue the artists receive, on a 50/50 share basis. This way, artists can actually make more income on Ficto compared to any other platform on the market today.

What are the most interesting contents published on the DECENT blockchain?

One of the most interesting projects we have is ALAX, a Hong-Kong based mobile game store on blockchain. Many people around the world don’t own a bank account and are forced to pay for things via SMS, costing customers extra due to the huge commissions taken by telecommunication providers. With ALAX, consumers can pay for the games with basically zero commission, directly to the game developer, who receives the payment instantly instead of waiting until the middleman settles the payment, which often takes several months.

Part 2: DCore and its ecosystem development

How do you integrate IPFS (inter-planetary file system) into DCore? What is your outlook on decentralized file storage systems in general?

Our blockchain has special nodes called seeders who are rewarded for providing file storage using IPFS. We have API methods supporting content upload and purchase to IPFS space provided by seeders. To keep the content inaccessible for seeders we use Shamir's Secret Cryptographic System that divides keys into parts, giving each seeder a unique part. The key is restored once the content is purchased by the consumer. To ensure that the consumer gets the right keys, we use the El-Gamal Cryptographic System, which allows us to verify it with Zero-knowledge proof, meaning we can verify the key is right without knowing the key itself. IPFS is gaining popularity for how easy it is to use. It also shares the basic principles with blockchain, making it a perfect fit for the use with the technology.

Can you tell us more on the current state of the DECENT ecosystem?

DECENT’s initial aim was to disrupt the digital media industry. As we developed, we realized our blockchain can do a whole lot more. Now we’re working on the mass adoption of blockchain through allowing anyone to create decentralized applications on top of our proprietary blockchain, DCore. We provide tools like SDKs and API sets to make it easier for those who want to leverage blockchain technology for their businesses and we actively seek partnerships with such people. The projects running on DCore include ALAX(gaming), 3IPK(aviation), Fiction Riot(fast fiction), Humanity Token(charity), Filmzie(movies) and many more.

I notice there is a concept called “Proof-of-retrievability” for seeders. Can you elaborate more on this concept and how is it used to verify published content?

Seeders are rewarded for storing the content and making it available through IPFS. Proof-of-retrievability serves to verify cryptographically, that the seeder stores the content in a proper way, without any modifications. Blockchain nodes with a running a plugin for seeding automatically send a special kind of transaction as proof that the file is intact. Then, all of the blockchain nodes verify the proof, and the reward is automatically distributed to seeders, so there’s no need for the seeders to configure anything, nor for the publishers to check the proof themselves.