All internet-savvy people these days are talking about the emergence of Web 3.0 and the power of decentralized technology to revolutionize cyberspace. As users become increasingly frustrated with their role as digital slaves in a monopolistic system, they are searching for alternatives that will free them from the Big Tech slavery.
Today, creators who want to expose their work to a large audience and monetize it have little alternatives but to post it with Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) or Meta. This means creators must essentially turn ownership of their content over to these corporate giants and hope that they will receive a little of the proceeds from advertising views generated by their work. This is because, in today’s Web 2.0 system, all data is stored on the central servers of social media giants and accessed via a web address (URL) to its specific location. Consequently, the company that owns the servers has complete control over the content stored in them and can determine who will see it and how, or if, it will be monetized.
Web 3.0 turns this formula on its head by harnessing decentralized P2P (peer-to-peer) networks to distribute content with the help of blockchain technology. With this arrangement, videos, audio files, blogs, etc. are stored on not one, but many different computers that serve as nodes in a network, thus returning ownership of content to its creators. Web 3.0 not only technologically eliminates the monopoly of Web 2.0 platforms, but also provides more complete services for content creators at the financial level, giving them the freedom to reap maximum value from it.
While Web 3.0 is still in its infancy, there are some projects that have already made great strides in implementing decentralized technology for consumer-grade applications. Let’s get under the hood and take a look at some of the most promising ones, taking video-streaming platforms as an example.
Web 3.0 Video-Streaming Platforms to Watch
There are currently a fair number of Web 3.0 video-related applications in the industry, each with its own vision and degree of success in technically implementing full decentralization.
Here are a few of them:
DTube: DTube is a video content sharing platform based on the Steemit platform, where Steemit is used in the database, and video file data is stored in IPFS (InterPlanetary File System). This scheme is not a reliable decentralized solution because IPFS does not have a security system for data storage, and uploaders cannot receive revenue after transferring content to DTube due to the lack of a decentralized payment feature. At the same time, since IPFS itself is not available on the mobile internet, Dtube currently appears to simply imitate some of YouTube’s functionality – the video data on IPFS is delivered to browsers via an HTTP gateway. Because of these issues, DTube does not fully realize the vision or reap the advantages of Web 3.0. Consequently, it hasn’t received a strong response from the industry.
LBRY: A platform for decentralized content creation founded in 2016, which has two core ideas. First, files are stored in P2P networks. Currently, BT (LON:BT) networks are used, and file data is stored on the blockchain. In this project, a Bitcoin fork is used to reduce block generation time to 2.5 minutes and increase TPS (transaction-per-second) performance from 7 to around 30. The script has been modified to meet the project’s requirements. However, LBRY doesn’t incentivize storage or traffic and, at present, appears to be just a decentralized concept or showcase platform due to the mobile-unfriendly design of BT networks.
Theta: A leading video delivery network powered by blockchain technology that allows users to share bandwidth and computing resources on a peer-to-peer basis. Theta uses the traditional CDN (Content Delivery Network) method for streaming distribution and searches for the node nearest to the client for downloading via the client’s IP (Internet Protocol). Traffic and storage costs are paid for with Theta tokens. Due to the chain’s poor performance, it uses an off-chain payment method for traffic and storage accounting. However, Theta’s management process is centralized, which can be regarded as an implementation of P2P CDN, as well as a low-cost complement to centralized CDN.
LivePeer: This is not so much a decentralized content creation system, as a video transcoding system based on Ethereum. Computing devices with GPUs join the LivePeer network after they stake LPT. A person pays LPT for transcoding, which is received as revenue by the owner of the GPU device that performs it. In the future, LivePeer may become a component in multi-rate generation of decentralized videos and real-time transcoding of decentralized live broadcasts.
FavorTube: Compared to all the other video streaming projects currently in the industry, FavorTube is the first to implement complete decentralization on a mobile-friendly platform. The project uses its own protocol stack, dubbed FavorX, as an underlayer for fully decentralized file storage, content distribution, data retrieval, and purchase transactions. It is capable of streaming HD video in real-time, while supporting mobile internet directly connected to the blockchain. It is also the only decentralized project that can support high concurrency – simultaneously supporting hundreds of thousands of clients while providing a consumer-grade user experience.
At present, FavorTube is the first project to develop a fully decentralized platform providing a consumer-grade video streaming experience close to that of Web 2.0 applications.
Its out-of-the-box desktop and mobile applications are directly connected to the blockchain on mobile terminals via P2P networks whose performance increase as the scale of the network expands. FavorTube is also the first fully decentralized application project to support the use of mobile terminals directly connected without gateways on an anti-censorship and globally accessible streaming platform.
On the business side, FavorTube connects content creators, consumers, and fans on one decentralized platform that is transparent, fair, and anti-censorship, where all community members benefit. Content creators can produce and upload videos and receive income when consumers subscribe. Revenue from ad views is divided between creators, the platform, and consumers, with the owner of the content getting the lion’s share. Creators can also crowdfund by issuing multiple forms of NFTs with one click. All revenue is automatically distributed via smart contracts on the blockchain, eliminating intermediaries. This scheme allows creators to retain ownership of their content while earning maximum returns on their work.
As can be seen, considerable progress is being made in implementing consumer applications for Web 3.0. As this trend continues, there is no doubt that platforms like FavorTube will be leaving their competitors in the dust, as creators and consumers alike seek to exploit the benefits and value offered by decentralized platforms.
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