Introduction

Hi guys, it is cryptoguru1 back with another ICO review. I am personally writing about this project because it is yet another example of how blockchain is revolutionizing the world. As a content creator myself this platform really excites me. As always with my work, I will be going through their whitepaper in detail in this article so this is my source for most of this information.

Media protocol creates a direct economy (2-way dimensional flow) between publishers and consumers for the exchange of data. It is indeed true that in today’s world content is mediated through social platforms and search engines, as claimed in their whitepaper. Why should we stand for this? Why should we get such little return for our efforts? This platform will allow mutual benefits for each party. This platform will allow content creators like myself direct channels for promotion by using balanced consumption incentives for consumers, who can pay for this content and then reward their favoured creators.

Publishers will be able to directly incentivise consumption of content via the Media ERC-20 token, consumers are awarded these tokens by providing preference data. It is the readers that get the word out about a project, this platform rewards whereas traditional systems don’t. This ecosystem essentially allows one to earn while reading, watching and sharing content. This is done via smart URLs, Publishers/Brands will load these with tokens and this facilitates the payment mechanism.

Essentially this will be an innovation to the norm, today large corporations control media and have monopolies over it. Media protocol aim to change this norm. I urge you to read on if you are interested as much as I am.

The pain points

As a content creator myself, I love writing articles for my community, however it can be expensive and sometimes I need to go through a 3rd part company to get my work published, not with media Protocol, in their own words this platform will give me a direct line with my readers as I will be part of the economy alongside them allowing feedback .
Media protocol tell us themselves that the centralised media owners and content distribution platforms that control this industry are inefficient, with the advancement of blockchain tech we don’t need such gatekeepers.

Solution

As per their whitepaper, this platform will allow for direct interactions via an economic structure of incentives allowing promotion of content. There will be consumption incentives which will allow consumers to pay directly for paywalled content; Favoured creators/publishes will be awarded Media tokens for this. This gives more control back to the individual. I am personally so excited about what this project has to offer as it is giving more power back to the individual.

What I find fascinating is that one simply adds the content to the URL, and then this URL becomes a smart URL which acts as a wallet allowing for the distribution of tokens. Viewers will like and share and receive apportioned amounts of the tokens pledged by the content creator, and everyone can view and see it all in real time.

Example of how it will be used

Mediaprotocol.org. (2018) give a great example in their whitepaper. Usually, readers get no benefit from reading/watching content that interests them, apart from the knowledge they learn. So, if I switch to a platform that has Media protocol, I will be given consumption rewards for my work (reading/watching content), I can then in turn use these to tip creators or pay for subscriptions to their content.

Then on the other side as a content creator, I would typically write my article/ create my video and publish it on a content distribution platform/social media (paying fees etc for wider audiences), with media protocol I can simply paste my URL to their channel which in turn will incentives consumers to read. All readers content is recorded on the blockchain and provides me with useful data about my work, whilst the consumer is getting paid tokens for doing so. This is fascinating and a great use for blockchain in my opinion. I will be using this platform myself going forward.

Their ecosystem

As per their whitepaper, they hope to attract industries such as marketing, content and advertising to buy into this ecosystem. They even state they are setting up a multi-disciplinary industry working group to drive this change. They are using blockchain because of the decentralised nature of it, essentially to remove the middle man, transparency of blockchain is also a key factor which should cut down on fraud as it would be advertised publicly. It is also on blockchain to drastically cut fees.

Furthermore, according to Mediaprotocol.org. (2018) they are fully open to allowing 3rd party apps to broaden the use of media protocol. It should be a very simple platform to use and will provide analytics for publishers. This will be open source so app developers can implement media protocol.

Also, as mentioned in their whitepaper they will offer ready made SDKs for IOS and Android to publishers, which can be added to their apps to give the benefits of the CryptoCatnip ecosystem talked about below.

Their App

Mediaprotocol.org. (2018). State that Crypto Catnip is the first dApp to incorporate MEDIA Protocol.

Source: Mediaprotocol.org. (2018)

From what I can understand in their whitepaper it is a news and media aggregator for the crypto space. Interestingly it connects to the blockchain and taps into machine learning algorithms (topic analyses and collaborative filtering) that will personalise the content for each user. They will also incentives adoption for other app developers via their affiliate model (based on volume and consumption of their work). This will allow the consumption of data to become decentralised. Media protocol provides the infrastructure needed for this.

According to Mediaprotocol.org. (2018) their CryptoCatnip app uses “react native” to ease cross platform compatibility. To keep this short It will be a very seamless interface; the app creates an Ethereum wallet address for users or they can link to their own address. Publishers are allowed to request users of the app verify identity via social media when viewing their content.

Source: Mediaprotocol.org. (2018)

In my expert opinion, Cryptocatnip is just the tip of the iceberg that will start this revolution giving people wider avenues for finding content. In my view content is far too centralised these days, this app makes it decentralised and filters down to the content you wish to see via machine learning. This is essential a disruptor to the norm.

Their token economics

Media protocol is an ERC-20 tokens as it is smart contracts which will provide the accounting on the ecosystem; according to the whitepaper. As we all know Etherium is the most popular standard for contracts out there today. They have decided to create their own token, because doing so allows them to write the rules of how it will be used. This utility token will be core to their ecosystem.

Furthermore, on this ecosystem one simply registers their content on a URL and proves it is theirs by linking it to their ETH wallet address. They further state that publishers can then advertise these URLs which require Media tokens and this is recorded on the smart contract for the period stipulated. Please note small amounts of Ethereum will be needed for Gas costs also. Media protocol records interactions via address and this is how it all works. It will also allow trading on exchanges to improve the value of the tokens. The image below from their whitepaper shows how the tokens are used on the ecosystem.

Source: Mediaprotocol.org. (2018)

As can be seen, this token is essential for the working of this ecosystem. It shows all the 2-way interactions between creators and consumers, interestingly the affiliate app capability allows them to take a share of the tokens as means of payment. It is like a well-oiled machine in my view. A simple breakdown of how it works is as follows:

1. Publishers incentivise consumers via tokens and post content on smart URLs linked to their wallet.
2. Distribution of tokens as rewards for interactions across various apps takes place.
3. Consumers can use these rewards within the ecosystem for purchases of paywall content, subscriptions, tips and trade for other cryptocurrencies on exchanges.
4. Promoters differ that they can issue rewards similar to publishers but they can’t receive tips from consumers or receive paywall payments, they are there to reward content creation. A use case would be brands paying content creators to write for them. They receive valuable data from the platform for optimisations of their brand in return.

According to Mediaprotocol.org. (2018) in their whitepaper ,the whole purpose the token is required is for this ecosystem to work, from publishing to rewarding. They further suggest that users will be enticed to build up token balances to use on the platform and receive awards etc…-hoping that it should give some element of stable price action. As an example, paywalls cost between 1-20 dollars per month and as such consumers would hold balances to buy these.

Some technicalities of the ecosystem

What I really like about this project is that they will combat maniplulation by setting benchmark times for interactions (prevent bots), use weighting techniques to prevent bots, request verifification of accounts and use machine learning to find bad actors.

Source: Mediaprotocol.org. (2018)

According to Mediaprotocol.org. (2018) and as per the image above the URL is simply registered against the Etherium address, media tokens are then used to incentive use. Various % of tokens can be assigned for different uses by the publishers and they even allow publishers allocate by time based (Non-uniform) distribution equations. Once all of this is set up then consumers can like, read/watch and share the content for rewards.

As this uses blockchain, Media protocol records all of this information on the blockchain. What I found very interesting is the equation they use for rewards for consumers is based on the type of integration, the time, number of similar cases to yours and the number of articles you consumed already that day. This leads to a very fair distribution system and I feel the team have gone the extra mile to ensure fair play.

From reading their whitepaper I believe they plan to set 30 second intervals for recording of these equations and use weighting calculations (records of activity interactions across the platform) to prevent misuse of the platform; so, in simple terms the rewards will decrease with the time the content is available. This is in my opinion will provide a great incentive to consumers.

The ecosystem will record identities to reduce malicious attacks, this will be a reputation-based thing, affiliates can take shares of revenue for promotional work done via their smart contract.

Finally, according to their whitepaper, they hope to scale with Ethereum. Ethereum is earmarked to move their consensus from POW to POS and implement sharding down the line. This would indeed be great for projects using the ERC-20 platform. This would improve the performance of media protocol in the future. Also, as smart contracts are mainly open source security issues can be invested easily and media protocol have given assurances that they will police this themselves and may even implement a bug bounty programme.

Conclusion

As you all know I am trying my hardest to filter through all these new projects to bring the best to you, I believe Media Protocol is another of these great projects which has a really great use case for blockchain. It is projects like this that will be at the forefront when mass adoption takes over with blockchain.

I believe content creators have the right to take control back and make a fairer environment for consumers of their work, after all our consumers generate a lot of data and they deserve to be rewarded for it. The team seem amazing and I believe this will be a successfully project. They are advertising this project around the world, most recently at the token summit in NYC, they were also at consensus this year.

Please don’t consider this investment advice but I would urge you to read up on it yourself and form your own conclusions. I hope you enjoyed this article and urge you to vote it up and share it amongst your friends. I am also happy to answer any questions you may have.

Additional reading

• Link to their website: https://www.mediaprotocol.org
• Link to their whitepaper: https://www.mediaprotocol.org/papers/whitepaper.pdf
• Link to their business paper: https://www.mediaprotocol.org/papers/businesspaper.pdf
• Link to GitHUb: https://github.com/MediaProtocol/MediaProtocol
• Link to Bitcointalk ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3396313.new#new
• Link to Bitcointalk bounty: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3397199.0
• Link to facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MEDIAProtocol
• Link to telegram: https://t.me/Media_Protocol_Community
• Link to their Linked in: https://bit.ly/2IkMalQ
• Link to their Medium: https://medium.com/@mediaprotocolsm
• Link to their YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MEDIAProtocol

• My Bitcoin talk Name: CryptoGuro1
• My bitcoin talk Url: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2093060;sa=account
• My eth address: 0x6A8bc0FDA5fd647e137B4f85F4821B444e5CA7BB

References

• Mediaprotocol.org. (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.mediaprotocol.org/papers/whitepaper.pdf [Accessed 22 Jun. 2018].
• Medium. (2018). MEDIA Protocol’s Tokenisation Of URLs – MEDIA Protocol – Medium. [online] Available at: https://medium.com/@mediaprotocolsm/media-protocols-tokenisation-of-urls-4f04685a13b0 [Accessed 23 Jun. 2018].