Contentos

Introduction

Contentos is a blockchain protocol that aims to form the foundation for a decentralized digital content ecosystem that empowers all members, including creators, consumers, and advertisers, to earn fair compensation for their contributions. Contentos also intends to establish itself as the future Ethereum of digital content, accepting content DApps of all kinds.

Social media offers the opportunity for every user to have a platform dedicated to the promotion of their individual visions of the world at large. The current content ecosystem is run by centralized platforms that depend on advertising for revenue. Content creators are, therefore, pressured to produce content that is approved by advertisers instead of following their creative muses and expressing themselves freely. The constraints inherent to ad-driven content platforms begs the question of just how much freedom of expression is actually allowable. Are these individual influencer world views being traded in for carefully-crafted sponsored content for the masses? Furthermore, when looking at the bottom line, it’s imperative to ask the question, where is the majority of the money going? In the current content system, corporate platforms reap the lion’s share of rewards generated by ad dollars, leaving mere pennies to the influencers whose content the platforms depend on. These tech giants tempt content creators with promises of viable income while exploiting their creations for their own gain. In this model, creators and users lose while the tech platforms flourish at their expense.

At Contentos, we believe all members of the content ecosystem should benefit from their contributions. By utilizing the tokenization enabled by blockchain technology, Contentos aims to bring to life the dream of a more fair and democratic content environment. Content creation, curation, distribution, storage, and verification are all rewarded in COS tokens, the unique cryptocurrency powering the Contentos ecosystem.

Digital Content Industry: Present & Future

With the development of the global mobile internet and widespread use of smart devices, a huge amount of digital content is now being produced in the context of text, image, video and audio. Global advertising revenue in 2017 reached USD $530 billion, while the content industry generated significant revenue of $77.4 billion in China. This content and traffic generated by billions of global internet users have led to the rise of internet giants such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. These corporations control the access and distribution of digital content, as well as revenue allocation.

Mobile video has experienced rapid growth in recent years with trends toward increasingly fragmented, mobile-centric, and long-tail content. In 2017, video traffic accounted for 55% of global mobile internet traffic. It is expected to reach 79% in 2020. Mobile data traffic will increase by seven-fold between 2015 and 2020. Mobile video will become the mainstream information carrier in the near future.

In 2016, total mobile video advertising revenue was approximately $8.3 billion USD. With the increase in user penetration rate, it is expected to increase by 49% in 2018, reaching nearly $18 billion USD. In addition, according to Blue Lotus Capital Advisors Limited, short video will become one of the dominant forms of content on mobile internet, expected to generate $10 billion USD in ad revenue in 2020.

Statistics issued by CNNIC indicated that, as of December 2016, among 730 million internet users in China, 344 million of them were live streaming app users, with penetration rate reaching 47.1% and the market cap exceeding USD $10 billion. We can infer that, among 3.8 billion internet users worldwide, 1.7 billion of them may be global live video viewers. In addition to the revenue earned by the megacap internet companies that provide live streaming services, such as Facebook, YouTube, YY, and 5 MOMO, broadcasters themselves also earn a considerable amount. According to the Top-Earning YouTube Stars published by Forbes, the annual income of broadcasters listed exceed USD $10 million; some can earn up to USD $16.5 million.

Though enormous advertising earnings can be generated and highly centralized content platforms can be accessed in the digital content industry, it has long suffered from unequal revenue distribution and a lack of copyright protection. The digital creative community needs a more open and transparent distribution model to protect user interests. The aim of Contentos is to penetrate the mobile video sector, including but not limited to live streaming and short videos, in order to develop a novel digital content ecosystem that empowers all members of the global digital content ecosystem.

What is Contentos?

The vision of Contentos is to build a decentralized, global digital content community that allows content to be freely produced, distributed, rewarded, and traded, while protecting author rights. Contentos will incentivize content creation and global diversity and return the rights and value of content to its users. Contentos will be a public content protocol that not only carries content and advertising value but is also a memory chain recording each user’s contributions.

The Contentos protocol aims to build a globally-distributed content incentive and distribution system through utilizing blockchain technology distributed storage capabilities. The protocol will enable content creators to earn revenue without depending on centralized platforms; instead, digital content can be freely produced, stored, and distributed to reach consumers and advertisers directly. This results in a situation where value is fairly measured, and prices are open and transparent. The Contentos ecosystem will include systems for content distribution, copyright registration, creator certification, along with social features such as likes, shares, and comments.

COS will be the Contentos in-ecosystem cryptocurrency used to reward positive contributions and to pay for services within the network. Smart contracts will automatically execute transaction payments and the distribution of rewards without the participation of a third-party intermediary.

The Contentos system abides by the following core values:

• Open and transparent pricing that benefits all parties

• Content creators maintain ownership of their content

• Content creators hold preferential revenue rights

• All forms of contribution can be quantified and rewarded

Contentos is run by a nonprofit foundation and its fundamental objective is to serve the public. This maximizes the value of content creators and system participants and allows all participants to benefit from the prosperity and growth of the ecosystem.

Unique, Blockchain-based Content Creation Business Model

Intelligent content advertising: Smart contracts are used to facilitate advertiser payments to creators. Rewards are automatically distributed to the creator based on viewership and interaction data. A creator and advertiser can make agreements for additional compensation, or bonus incentives, if work exceeds expected results.

Direct value exchange: Users can pay creators directly through subscriptions, donations or virtual gifts, all executed automatically utilizing smart contracts. For example, creators can create exclusive content that can only be viewed a fixed number of times for subscribers. Through this type of empowerment, creators can more easily grow their viewer base, develop loyal followings, and increase their revenue.

Content selling: Contentos enables the sale of content within the platform between creators. For instance, a video creator may publish a soundtrack request and allow music creators to bid for involvement, just as a music producer may publish a 15-second soundtrack for purchase and use by a video creator. Profit sharing may also be achieved through smart contracts. Since all transactions are transparent, every creator understands his/her unique value within the ecosystem.

How Does Contentos Solve The Problems In The Inustry?

Unverifiable digital assets

Problem: In the current digital content ecosystem, it is difficult to validate the copyright of digital assets, as it is not easy to trace the flow of copyright information across multiple independent platforms. Unfortunately, these challenges lead to frequent copyright disputes, especially for derivative works.

Contentos’ solution: Verification, trade, and storage of non-physical property rights through the Contentos protocol will enable quick and comprehensive access to copyright information. Trade flows and derivative works will be recorded permanently on the blockchain. Content creators will register their copyright and provide original content statements, authenticated, and traced with time stamps.

Non-transparent Industry Pricing and Uneven Revenue Distribution

Problem: On centralized platforms, creators are pushed to the industry sideline and cannot reach consumers and advertisers directly. What’s more, the content and advertising pricing is not publicly disclosed, resulting in a lack of transparency that disempowers creators. Payment channels and platforms take a huge portion of users’ income, while advertising revenue is centrally-controlled by platforms, with only a small portion of it going back to content creators.

Contentos’ solution: Decentralized distribution of revenue

In the Contentos ecosystem, pricing is transparent with the value of any contribution determined by artificial intelligence-based algorithms and recorded on the blockchain as public record.

User's True Interest Cannot Be Satisfied With Current Social Platfrom Algorithm

Problem: Centralized platforms distribute traffic based on revenue drivers, a system which fails to offer a full picture of the value of content created by influencers. Because centralized platforms depend on ad revenue for survival, the creators that contribute most to advertising ROI are rewarded handsomely while emerging creators are ignored. Such a system leads to homogenization and lower quality content.

Contentos’ solution: Decentralized traffic distribution

The Contentos protocol decentralizes the distribution of traffic, thereby forming the foundation for a more democratic content ecosystem that supports emerging creators in finding and building an audience.

Beyond rewarding influencers for creating great content, the Contentos ecosystem also rewards any participant who positively contributes to the health of the network. These participants include professional distributors, community operators, and ordinary user distributors.

Operators can categorize, label, and review content. Larger numbers of operators will eventually produce more objective and accurate descriptions and reviews of content. At this point Contentos will use artificial intelligence to personalize matches between content and users.

Professional distributors will also match and distribute content to target audiences. By liking, commenting, sharing, and engaging in other social behaviors in the ecosystem, distributors can earn rewards for driving traffic to content.

Flawed Credit System

Problem: User engagement data in centralized ecosystems are not transparent. Users are not held accountable for fake comments causing the credibility of the rating system to gradually decline. Violations and poor behaviors are often not tracked across platforms, and errant users are rarely penalized for their actions.

Contentos’ solution: Immutable credit system

In the Contentos system, the interaction log cannot be tampered with, and so each user is held responsible for his or her own behavior. User credit will be based upon the quality of content, trustworthiness of user selections, and other relevant records. All revenue calculation algorithms in the ecosystem will incorporate this credit score. Users can improve their credit scores through demonstrating positive and honest behaviors, thereby earning more revenue and increasing their credibility. In this way, users collectively build a reliable, self-sustaining review system.

The Main Token of Contentos: COS

COS is the native token of the Contentos system. COS has more than 100 million potential cold-start users worldwide (refer to Investors and Strategic Partners). 10 billion COS tokens will be issued, which are ERC-20 Token Standard tokens based on the Ethereum protocol. After the release of the native COS token, the exchange rate will be 1:1 (ERC-20 COS token: native COS token). The ecological reward, which constitutes 35% of the total COS token supply, will gradually be released across 12 years. The total COS token supply will remain constant during this 12-year period. Only after the ecological reward has been released completely can BP vote to issue extra tokens, if required by ecosystem development needs then.

Issuance

Private sales rounds will account for 30%, which will be distributed among investors and consultants. The fund reserve is designated at 10%, and the founding team at 15%. 40% will be allocated for ecosystem operations and user rewards, and the remaining 5% will go toward the community’s cooperative activities.

*Token mining: In terms of the circulation of COS tokens, the 4 billion tokens for ecosystem operations do not participate in any type of circulation in the early stage but are allocated as rewards to content creators and miners. According to the number of users, these rewards are divided into 12 years and gradually released. (For details on the release of tokens for ecosystem operations, please refer to the “Ecological operation reward model” and the “Kick-start reward strategy”)

Tokens for ecosystem operations

To quickly establish the ecosystem during the initial stage and encourage early user adoption, COS tokens will be used to kickstart the ecosystem and reward the contributions made by content creators and users. Users engaging in malicious behaviors will be disqualified from earning rewards. Additionally, in order to promote a certain level of positive engagement, users will need to achieve a minimum credit rating in order to claim their rewards (See “Contentos credit system”). The number of COS tokens users hold determines the final share of rewards distributed to their accounts. Once a sizable user-base is established, users will be able to provide services to earn tokens.

Ecological operation Reward model

The 4 billion tokens (i.e. 40% of the total supply) that are allocated for ecosystem operations can be divided into two parts: 3.5 billion is the regular reward to encourage users to participate in the Contentos content ecosystem. 500 million is the kick-start reward, providing the certified DApp developers with rewards for calling users to join Contentos ecosystem.

The total number of regular reward tokens is 3.5 billion (i.e. 35% of the total supply), which will be released in 12 years. The annual release amount will increase based on the total number of Contentos users. In the first year, 0.448% of all tokens will be released, and the amount will increase linearly year by year until the release of 5.432% in the 12th year. The gradual release of tokens with reference to user growth will help to stabilize the price of tokens and grant appropriate rewards to early participants. Later participants can still benefit from the distribution of eco-rewards.

The Contentos system produces a new block every 3 seconds. When the block is produced, it also releases reward tokens. Taking the first year as an example, when each block is produced, about 4.26 tokens will be released into the reward pool. 60% of the regular reward tokens will be used to motivate users to create content and participate in ecosystem operations. Another 30% will be the incentive for block producers. Finally, 10% of the regular reward tokens will be used to reward DApp developers for creating a better user experience and thus attracting more users to join the Contentos ecosystem through the DApp. The reward structure is shown in the figure below.

Rewards will be distributed in accordance with the quality of content produced, which is determined by the community members. Developers that have created DApps that facilitate the creation of quantity and quality content will earn ecological rewards.

COS Wallet

Contentos will develop a digital asset wallet which will be used to store COS. The user’s wallet will be automatically created and synchronized between devices with an encrypted cloud backup.

Contentos' credit system

All reward income is directly correlated with user credit to encourage users to provide high-quality, honestly-selected content and to limit malicious, dishonest behavior.

The amount of COS tokens and time tokens have been held will be factored into user credit rating to encourage invested, long-term participation in the content community.

Contentos incentive system

In order to encourage good behavior in the ecosystem, token rewards will be distributed to all users who contribute positively. Rewards are allocated after each billing cycle using Contentos’ credit calculation mechanism. Any violation confirmed by the community will disqualify users from collecting rewards. The amount users are eligible to receive will be correlated to popularity of their contents.

All rewards earned for content will be positively correlated to users’ real-time credit scores and the number of COS held by them. The rewards will also be correlated to current production frequency and the number of videos currently on the ecosystem. The fewer videos in the ecosystem in total, the larger the rewards distributed to each content creator. Therefore, early content creators will earn more token rewards, incentivizing involvement by early adopters. As the ecosystem grows, the rewards earned from producing content will decrease and even drop to zero. By then, creators will be able to earn healthy revenues from subscriptions, gifts, and advertising and thus no longer need to rely solely on rewards from the ecosystem.

Activity rewards incentivize those leaving comments, which not only play a role in promoting content but can also provide suggestions for creators on how to improve content or inspire new content.

If the number of "thumbs up" is larger than the number of "thumbs down" for a particular comment, the user will earn a reward. However, if the “thumbs down" are larger than the "thumbs up,” the comment reward will be zero, and at the same time, the corresponding credit score will be negatively affected.

The users who help to moderate community development and flag inappropriate content earn 20 community operating rewards in accordance with their contributions.

Tokenomics Continued

Distributed Storage

Users earn tokens by publishing content in the Contentos ecosystem; however, the Contentos network does not store the actual content, but rather its hashed value. For users who want to store decentralized content, Contentos will provide synchronization/backup services from different backup platforms. To host content, users can place content in multiple backup platforms by burning COS, and 21 these backup platforms can also place the content in other decentralized content storage blockchain networks for backup (for example, by linking IPFS to the Contentos content chain). Moreover, individuals or communities that provide storage of Contentos content can earn COS as rewards. As the hashed value of content has been stored in the Contentos network, the content cannot be tampered with.

Content bid ranking

After the Contentos user and traffic base have been established, advertising spaces can be appropriately released. Creators, users, and advertisers can issue content and advertisements by spending COS. The revenue generated will enter the bonus pool to reward users in the system.

Delay mechanism

In the case of copyright infringement, all income shall be frozen in the perpetrator’s account for a period of time after the content has been uploaded. The user can view the income, but the COS earned cannot be spent. In the absence of any reports of infringement during this period, all income shall be transferred to the user’s account.

Guarantee mechanism

A specified quantity of the payer’s tokens will be frozen as a deposit to protect the interests of the content creator and the copyright owner when trading. If the deposit is insufficient, any late payments or non-payments will be permanently written into the blockchain, regardless of whether it is a microbill or a one-time bill.

Token withdrawal controls

A good-faith guarantee will be provided for all users, and the limit of withdrawal to exchanges or wallets will be determined according to the user’s credit score. Users with low credit scores will have low withdrawal limits and may even be banned from withdrawal to prevent them from acting maliciously and encourage them to improve their credit scores.

Potential risk content controls

Users are empowered to examine and report content containing pornographic or violent words, or that violates the copyrights of others. Arbitrators are needed to ensure the healthy development of community culture. The initial attributors will be selected by the founding team. To avoid attributors being stuck in benefit conflicts, they are not allowed to conduct any other performances like posting content, giving comments and likes, or receive any rewards (including but not limited to rewards from the bonus pool, virtual gifts, COS).

As communities develop, Contentos will gradually implement the community autonomy system under the council’s decision. Users can begin a poll for content they believe to be pornographic or dangerous in any way. Those who successfully report any inappropriate content will gain improved credit ratings and may also split rewards (if any rewards in the bonus pool related to the reported content are to be distributed) with the attributors on the side of the majority.

The system will incentivize users to examine content, and COS will be rewarded to contributing users. Once any content has been labeled as inappropriate through a voting mechanism, it cannot be displayed on the front end, and the individual’s credit score will be greatly decreased.