This is Part 2 of the introduction to my blockchain project. If you have not checked out part one you can do so here. Thank you for your interest it means a lot!
SO IS THIS REALLY LIKE STEEM?
In some important $enses yes in most $enses no. Understand that although this project's Sollars and Sense/Sollywood TV is similar to Steem/SteemIt in principles, it is very different when it comes to industry wants and needs. Social Network/Blogging content is not the same as visual content creation and each industry has a very different set of problems. They also have very different solutions to those problems for their creators. In short is our selling point going to be trying to make everyone Hollywood rich over night? Will this platform succeed trying to make everyone Hollywood rich? Or a Hollywood star? No. Absolutely not. As a matter of fact most artists who make professional visual content (if you talk to them), just want a chance to be able to make a living doing what they love 24/7. As a matter of fact most would probably be turned off by a message of "come quick we can make you filthy rich". That's what film school promised...
In reality most content creators just want to be able to wake up everyday and not have to double as a full-time starbucks barista. Or any other occupation they didn't spend close to $100,000 on school loans to be doing. They want to be artists with audiences. They want to be content creators. And they want to build real audiences that find meaning in their creation. Our new way of looking at this age old problem is at the core about building meaningful relationships that start at a smart price point. We believe none of that audience building is possible without first starting at the right price. This is where you win with consumers. This is where we replicated what they already know and love in their everyday experience on to our marketplace. When they walk into grocery stores, an airport, a super market or barbershop items are priced according to their real value. We are finally here to do the same with visual content. That is the pain point problem we are solving "visual content and content services at the right price".
SO WHERE DOES THE BLOCKCHAIN COME IN? AND WHY DO YOU NEED ANOTHER ONE?
That is a great question and there are several reasons but lets stick with the main one. "Rewarding economics for Adoption".
As an original Bitshares delegate who lived through much of the ups and downs of Bitshares and into the rise of Steem and its naysayers I can tell you the same question was posed to no end for them. Why not just build Steem/SteemIt on top of Bitshares? Or Ethereum? And I knew then what has clearly played out now. Tailor made Crypto-Economics and the ability to code specific incentives for adoption. The freedom to explore this can be the make or break of your systems adoption.
So when it comes to our system let's do a thought experiment... Imagine this is 20 years ago and knowing about a little company called Netflix. And every time you rented a DVD from them they rewarded you with company stock. That's right company stock. How cool would that be? But they did not stop there. Every time you referred someone who joined and started paying a subscription you made some Netflix stock too and so did they.
As a matter of fact these actions caused a up coming competitor called YouTube to start doing the unthinkable. They started to pay their content creators with subscriber bases stock too. It was no longer just a shitty cut from ad revenue. It made $ense too. Since the content creators built the audiences that allowed them to monetize in the first place, they should be part owners in the company's value.
Finally imagine being a content creator for Vimeo and every time you got a subscriber to watch your film Vimeo gave you extra stock in addition to what you earned from that consumer. How awesome would that be? Of course that is not their business model and can never be with the traditional financial system but doesn't it sound like something that would make a lot of $ense? Isn't that something that would entice you just a little to want to try out their product? And stay loyal especially if you thought they would succeed in the future at providing more than just rentals of DVDs (which Netflix eventually did). Remember this is 20 years ago Vimeo, YouTube and Netflix not today.
These examples are the essence of our decentralized blockchain reward structure in which anyone can participate in. And its only possible with a blockchain. For our main action of buying Sollars and paying for content then receiving an amount of our Steem/SP-like token, it is similar to paying a subscription for Netflix and Netflix rewarded you with their stock. And it is just one of many actions that can be taken by individuals that get rewarded by the blockchain. Not whales or up-votes. The blockchain.
COMMERCIAL BREAK: SPEAKING OF WHALES...
IMAGE CREDIT
Our model simply would not work with Steem's whale culture or any type of whale culture deciding who and what content creators can get paid. Or what their price can be. That is similar (with an overly complicated twist) to what YouTube and Netflix is doing now which is a model content creators are rebelling against. We are not against whales. Whales are actually good and necessary for any monetary system. They are essentially rich people and rich people deserve their private property (monies/tokens) to be respected too.
What we are against is a blockchain business model that allows whales to decide who is a valuable content creator in OUR system. That task FOR VISUAL CONTENT should solely be decided by your customer base and the pricing unit you are using to reach them. NO ONE ELSE. I cannot speak on the long-term success of Steem's whale culture business model. Social networks and the business model of the blogging industry is not my expertise and I wont act like it is. Plus it seems like there are solid work arounds that look like they can work and are working on Steem.
But I know Hollywood like the back of my hand. Whales in our system will have no defined value beyond holding monetary units which themselves contain value (the tokens). That is all. This is a merit system where your success is based on your price and the audience you reach it with. That is the traditional relationship between business and customer replicated for us. And if it aint broke, dont fix it.
IMAGE FROM SOLLYWOOD TV's DESKTOP WEB APP
NOW BACK TO OUR REGULAR SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING...
To reiterate the main goal of this project. Our soul purpose of existence is the mainstream adoption of the token Sollars and $ense by the world. We are starting in Hollywood. That is not where we end. We eventually want to be the next Dollar if possible. And any and all who perform actions that achieve that goal will and should get rewarded by the blockchain. Simply put you invest your time efforts and money into the adoption of its digital token and the blockchain rewards you with the main value of its system.
So if you are a Witness maintaining the blockchain you are rewarded. If you are a consumer purchasing Sollars and Sense: Smart Money you get rewarded. If you are anyone who pays for content that goes viral or has others paying for it (referral) you get rewarded. If you are a content creator who is earning Sollars and Sense or has content that is going viral even you can get rewarded and you should. This is because it means you are pricing your content in a way where people are paying you or want to pay you. This is what we want to encourage. Finally anyone who earns Sollars and cashes out to our other tokens instead of FIATs could also potentially be rewarded for keeping value in the system.
All these actions and potentially more can be triggers for gaining the token in our system that is similar to Steem/SP. For our system its called the Sollar Bond. Or SBOND or SB. It represents a future Sollar that is to be paid out by the blockchain at a future date. That's the basics. We will touch on it more in another post.
This type of reward system built to compensate these types of actions AND SCALE is only possible with our own chain. Its new and no one is doing it because no one really can. Right now we could not explore this type of rewards system properly on any other chain with the freedom to experiment and quickly pivot if necessary. Many complain and still complain about that with Bitcoin, we experienced it with Bitshares and now we are seeing some elements of this inability to pivot with Steem. The process of pivoting which I know Dan and Ned want to do with a lot of elements of the system is just not possible when too many hands control the wrong aspects of a blockchain project in its early days. No one will get it absolutely right the first time that is what iterations and beta phases are for.
CONCLUSIONS
To bring this blog to a close understand that many of the elements expressed here in the rewards structure are still being fleshed out. But the essence is there. We are rewarding individuals who complete actions that achieve our main goal of mainstream adoption. The economic incentives to adopt Sollars and Sense will be built right into the blockchain and will reap rewards for those who participate, if of course the general public does adopt the chain.
In the coming posts I will be talking a little bit more about myself, our platform, the current team, the blockchain that's being built, our token structure, the problems we are solving for visual content creators, our similarities and differences to the Steem project, DECENT project and other media content based projects (ie SteemQ/SingularDTV). And of course much much more.
CURRENT STATE...
Due to raising funds earlier this year we were able to begin developing a working prototype of the Sollywood TV marketplace for desktop with an iOS mobile app. And we are now devising the strategy of adding our unique blockchain reward economics into the fold. We are in the process of building a full fledged crypto-team to take on this exciting direction and if this sounds like a project you want to get involved in you can reach me at solomon@sollars.com. At this point we are all ears for anyone who wants to contribute. Community managers, technical and business advisors, blockchain consultants, crytpo-economists, ambassadors, film industry folks, really anyone who thinks they can contribute to making our system a much better play for mainstream adoption.
We will be looking to hold a crowd-sale in Q1 of next year and it will be for people who want to see more mainstream examples of blockchain success. That is where the multi-billion dollar market caps lie. REAL UTILITY. Its time to stop building excess features and platforms that promise the world with no real utility plan beyond "build it and they will come". That was and still is the beauty of Steem/SteemIt. Its simple. Dead simple. Get paid to blog. Steem is light weight and can be understood in terms of how it returns value to those who use its main marketplace. And its time to focus on blockchains that bring that kind of real world utility today. Its time to take another stab at the mainstream. Whatdaya say? Time to Make $ense?
Thank you all for checking this out! Means a lot! Let me know below if there are any questions or comments. Would love feedback on the project. We are here doing it for the people who need it the most. I hope that is clear. Peace