The Technology Headlines DEMAND FORCASTING & AI | Page 41

ECH
ALK
THE TECHNOLOGY HEADLINES
money anymore,” Esola said. “Streaming was phenomenal for
consumers and increased capital spend, but it led to a ‘lottery
ticket’ system, where you’d need a few hits to make up for a
lot of losses.”
A solution? A technology platform that brings together three
groups of people: the subscribers, who pay for the service;
the content producers, who earn royalties; and curators, who
make money by reviewing and rating content.
An essential characteristic – and an important differentiator
– is the transparency built into the system. “We want to avoid
the padding and corruption of traditional business models by
rolling out a transparent royalty revenue share,” Esola, CEO
of Fiction Riot explained. “I can’t tell you how disincentivized
people in the business have become.”
The Path to Blockchain
This need for a royalty platform that delivered transparency
to all parties led Esola to DECENT, a blockchain platform
vendor that centered its DCore platform on delivering
streaming content via a decentralized royalty model. “By
recording transactions over blockchain’s secure platform,
Ficto pays royalties, in near real-time, directly to the artists,
based on the views of their content,” explained DECENT
CEO Matej Michalko. “Because compensation is agreed upon
upfront, everyone involved in the production is paid in a fair,
AUGUST 2019
consistent and timely manner.”
Until it signs up enough subscribers, Fiction Riot isn’t out
of the woods. However, Esola is willing to bet big on Fiction
Riot’s success. The company will award the first content
producer whose video reaches one million views a cool
million dollars.
If this promotion drives sufficient interest from paying
customers to become a viable business, then its ability to
compensate content producers for the work that they do
might very well disrupt how the Netflixes of the world obtain
their content.
As for the role that blockchain plays in the Fiction Riot story:
it provides the transparency and decentralization that the
company will need in order to scale its ambitious plans.
“Just like with any rising technology, we shall see a number
of innovators, such as Fiction Riot, join the early adopters
and help shape future industry standards,” Michalko added.
“These projects are not only vital for the establishment of the
industry, but also in changing how consumers perceive and
view content.”
Without DECENT, Fiction Riot would be unlikely to compete
with better funded competitors, million-dollar prize or no.
Its business is thus not only a test of the emerging fast fiction
marketplace, but of blockchain-based business models as well.
DECENT is an Intellyx customer
41