Current - The World of Multimedia Content at your Fingertips
The evolution of high-speed networks and superior smartphone technologies have progressively led to the rise in popularity of "Content Streaming" among the people. Multimedia content streaming that encompasses everything from Music, Podcasts, and Video, is being considered as one of the most important factors driving the growth of Internet adoption. This ecosystem has been bolstered by the emergence of high-quality services such as Youtube, Spotify, Vimeo, Pandora and Apple Music. In fact, this Forbes article says "streaming is bigger and more valuable, than ever before" and also highlights the rapid growth in retail revenues and paid subscriptions. To put things into perspective, let's have a look at the list of Top Grossing Apps of the Apple App Store. Content streaming apps such as Netflix, Pandora, Youtube come top, emphasizing the facts that I've mentioned above. Huge money is being poured into this segment. Now imagine if you are able to aggregate all these popular media networks and provide a single point of access to all the streaming services. Blockchain-based platform Current is doing exactly that- A one-stop shop for all multimedia content including Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcast that will incentivize users for watching and curating content.
The concept was first conceived in March 2017 as an iOS app in the Apple App Store, which to date, has managed to achieve an active user base of more than 200,000 people. This popular app sources content from YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud and many other sources and presents an all in one solution for listening to music, watching videos etc. I downloaded the app on my iPhone and the first impression was really good - App has got an elegant onboarding to get you started, an impressive feed UI, a nice "search" functionality to find Music and Video (Youtube & Facebook), a playlist function to add your favorite content, an intuitive playback interface and high speed, swift playback etc. I will have a detailed review of the iOS app in my next article, so watch out for that.
Nevertheless, the current version of the app is only a foundation for what the folks at Current are building - a comprehensive ecosystem that will leverage blockchain to reward the users for consumption and curation of content. This will be made possible by creating a protocol (Current Protocol) that will connect external networks (such as Youtube, Spotify etc) with the platform users - creators, curators and the consumers. This Current Protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain will make use of native CRNC tokens and smart contracts to document transactions that are indicators of the platform users' participation and engagement inside the platform. In other words, if you are a user of the Current platform who regularly creates your own content, listens to music and watches videos of others and engages with them, the blockchain based Current protocol will monitor your activity and will make sure that you're properly rewarded with CRNC tokens. To drive engagement, the platform will make use of an in-house algorithm to provide personalized content recommendations - these may be songs, videos, viral content, reviews, audiobooks, TV shows.
In the platform, tokens are "mined" through media consumption based on certain rules and these mined tokens are split between the different stakeholders within the network. The primary stakeholders within the network, just like any other multimedia content service, are Creators and Consumers. Creators create content, while Consumers consume them. Normally with most services, you would have only the creators rewarded during this transaction, but it's different as far as Current is concerned. Consumers who listen/watch media on Current from any of the content integrations will be compensated with CRNC tokens and the token pool for consumers is 55% of the total mined. Creators will have their fair share as well (20% of the total mined token pool).
Yet, the real highlight of the platform is this idea of "Incentivized Curation". This is somewhat similar to what Steemit has through its Curation Reward Mechanism. Curation on the Current platform will be users who organize various content into playlists or channels- And the trick here that the platform will reward those who curate channels that become popular (based on user time-spent metrics), so there is added incentive for curators to spot good and interesting content. If you ask me, the benefits of this are huge - It will ensure content quality, increase engagement and generate value for the external networks.
To learn more about the Current Platform visit the website
More
Telegram — https://t.me/currentofficial
White Paper-https://cdn.current.us/whitepaper.pdf
BitcoinTalk ANN — https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2829644.0
BitcoinTalk Bounty —https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2831598.0
My BitcoinTalk Profile — https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1404731
