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