CREAting a CREAtive Economy [Interview with the Founders of Crea]

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Crypto

Creativity has always operated as a social currency. We see this most prominently in the use memes, emojis, snapshots, and the remaining flood of daily communication across the modern world. And we know now that some companies are really cashing in on that engagement with the network worth of Instagram, Snapchat, Imgur, Pinterest, and many more internet applications reaching sky-high valuations.

So the question is quite simple - If an Instagram upload or Pinterest sketch helps these companies rake in the millions, why aren't the creators being rewarded?

For the past few weeks, we at The Creative Crypto have been exploring the new beta testnet of the Crea blockchain and its first application Creary, both of which are laying the foundation for a crypto-integrated peer-to-peer (p2p) creative economy. With the rollout of a well-designed and promising creative platform, we simply had to speak with the core team at Crea and explore their motivations and ambitions for a wholly dedicated content-fueled blockchain.

The Creative Crypto: Thank you for joining us! Tell us about yourselves and how you entered the blockchain space.

The 3 of us co-founders of Crea - David Proto, Anna Ripollés, Oscar Parera - had previously worked on other projects in the design and marketing areas in startups related to art and new technologies applied to the creative and Fintech sector. It was then, in 2015, when we discovered Bitcoin and blockchain, and started to learn about its technology. The first thing that caught our attention was the solution that the blockchain offers to certify a transaction record in a reliable way and without centralized organizations. We thought it could be a revolutionary tool to certify copyright records of any type of digital creation.

Since that moment, we fully immersed ourselves in the universe of blockchain technology and smart contracts with the aim of building a new protocol for decentralized applications to promote a new economic, creative, and technological scenario that is fairer and more democratic.

Why did you decide to create Crea and Creary?

Since we knew the existence of Bitcoin, we were attracted by its solution to solve the problem of the trust in distributed networks and we thought of adapting it to any kind of relationship between people and things to eliminate the intermediaries that decide, control our data, and make our lives more expensive. And it was at that moment when we began to develop the idea of applying this technology to the sector of the distribution of digital content in a decentralized way.

This learning path has allowed us to adopt and create the optimal solutions so that the blockchain of Crea is designed totally according to our philosophy.

Crea's goal is to offer solutions for decentralized application developers (DAPPS), cultural institutions, artists, and professionals in the multimedia creation sector.

From a technological point of view, Crea is based on the development of a decentralized open source network. Crea is a network based on distributed technologies from which we are weaving our revolutionary proposal that promotes the emancipation from traditional banking, a public and transparent alternative to classic private copyright protection companies and a fair and democratic alternative that will replace the classic models of centralized social networks like Facebook or YouTube.

In the coming weeks, the blockchain of Crea will go to version 2.0 and with that, we will launch Creary.net, its first Dapp, where all the advantages offered by the blockchain of Crea for the creative sector will be put into practice.

Walk us through how the Creary beta works.

Creary.net is a decentralized social network where creatives can share their work completely p2p. In Creary, users will benefit from rewards that are issued automatically by the blockchain protocol thanks to the interactions they receive from the community through an advanced gamification system. Creary is also a marketplace for buying and selling content without intermediaries where users can manage their funds without the intermediation of traditional banks. In addition, they can certify their works with content distribution licenses such as Creative Commons and register them in the blockchain as a 'proof-of-creation'.

One of the main challenges in the evolution to our version 2.0 and the next release of Creary.net has been to get a blockchain project that is easy to use and is adapted for beginners to the ecosystem.

To do so, we have spent a lot of time designing a social network with a user-friendly interface, with a system rich in gamification that offers users a nice and entertaining navigation experience. We want to encourage collaboration and effective distribution of their creative works.

In practice and to make it easier, we could imagine someone without a technical knowledge defining Creary as a dynamic social network like Instagram with an interface inspired by digital art platforms or portfolios networks such as Behance or Dribbble and with the decentralized ecosystem of blockchain projects like Bitcoin.

Since we started our beta test, many users have participated by publishing on the platform and using all the features of its ecosystem. We are very grateful for all their opinions and suggestions that have helped us a lot to improve certain aspects of the social network.

What kind of creativity are you starting to see on the platform? Are there any unexpected ways users are utilizing the platform?

So far we see that many different types of content have been published, both in style and type of file formats. This is because we have spread the word to creatives of different art disciplines. We can see projects or works by 3D artists, creative coders, crypto artists, plastic artists, graphic designers, digital photographers, and many more.

In terms of formats, the platform connects to the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) that allows the support of all types of multimedia files - image, audio, video, texts, and even software. In the beta phase, we see that users are mainly publishing projects with image files but they are also using other formats such as streaming video and audio.

The Creative Crypto on Creary!

Creary.net is a very versatile platform and each user can use it in different ways: as a professional portfolio, as a creation diary where they show the progress of their projects while they are financed by the community, as a tool for the sale of digital goods (mockups, templates, logos, vectors, photo / stocks, etc.) or as a social network for creatives who want to share their knowledge and be inspired by the work of other artists.

Digital art can be presented in so many different ways and shapes and surely there are users who will use the platform for projects or ideas that will surprise us and therefore we will always be attentive to the needs demanded by the community. In version 1.0 we could see examples of this, like a user who used the platform to distribute images of his makeup designs on women's faces. That was great and hope to see him again on Creary!

How do you think your blockchain and applications will change the way creative professionals will operate?

On the Internet, most conventional social networks are centralized. That means only a few people participate in the control of the social network, its content, and its economy. In many cases, the business is about selling users' data to third parties that offer advertising. The beneficiaries, again, are only for a few.

We have built our own blockchain because we want to be free to adapt our ecosystem at any time in the future, when the creative community needs to make some changes in it that better suit their needs.

Creary’s main goals are:

• To eliminate intermediaries who take high commissions from authors in other centralized markets such as Shutterstock, Amazon, etc.
• To offer the community the possibility to distribute rewards to authors and curators.
• To eliminate the advertising business model of selling users' data to third parties.
• To offer a p2p content exchange marketplace for artists and creatives within the platform using the IPFS network where they can share any kind of digital work.
• To promote open distribution licenses as Creative Commons so users can choose freely the way they want to distribute their works.

Crea's global team invites to you participate in their growing creative network.

In terms of creative development and art, what are you most excited about in the blockchain space?

Living the evolution of the blockchain ecosystem and its developments from the inside is fascinating. We think that we are living in a milestone moment in the evolution of the Internet comparable to the very birth of the Internet and original social networks.

If the internet represents the connection, the blockchain represents the value and the veracity of those connections.

The possibilities offered by distributed technologies are endless and will forever change the way we understand our relationships with people and things. Art always operates from expression, freedom, communication, and value. Blockchain technology will enhance these concepts without any doubt. As the creative community grows around blockchain technology, there will be an explosion of liberating and emancipating ideas and tools that will surely affect the creative community and its way of expressing itself just as it did on the Internet. We hope that Creary will help to make this change.

For designers, artists, etc. that are still considering whether to engage with Creary, what would be your words of encouragement?

We encourage all creatives to discover another way of presenting themselves on the internet, to take real possession of their work, distribute their creations without intermediaries, and store their profits in a network without the control of traditional banking.

If you feel like a weirdo sharing your work in networks such as Behance, Instagram, or Facebook, it is time for you to make a jump to the technology that will revolutionize the way we understand social networks. In Creary, all users are shareholders and can participate actively in its code, contributing new developments or voting to decide how they want the network to evolve.

At CREA Network, we will continue to promote the creation of decentralized services and tools that provide solutions or improvements to the real needs of creative communities.

To do so, we hope that more users and developers will join this revolutionary paradigm shift that will create a new economic system for a fairer and more democratic future scenario in the digital artistic sector.

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Thank you Crea team for this extensive rundown of the new blockchain and first application!

Creary is currently operating on a beta testnet and is open for public use. You can even find The Creative Crypto's profile [here].

Website: https://creaproject.io/
Creary Beta: https://test.creary.net/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Crea_project
Telegram: https://telegram.me/creativechain

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://thecreativecrypto.com/creating-a-creative-economy-interview-with-the-founders-of-crea/

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