Overturn Industrial Situation, Blockchain will Become Innovator of Short Clips Industry

Recently, along with the widespread of mobile Internet, intelligent terminal and development of video techniques and 5G, live streaming videos and short clips have become the “New Blue Ocean” of Internet in the second half phase. According to data research, short clips users in China win the absolute “C position” among all video users with total 648 million of people, meanwhile pan-entertainment leisure time of users also starts to shift to short clips. Short clips do not distinguish people in terms of age, region and identity, hence it has become an important part in human recreation via its unique way of communication.

Short clips’ popularity also directly shortens the route of business liquidity, produces new business model and causes fundamental change in consumption structure upgrade. However, differ from the thriving industry portrayed, many industrial chaos has hindered further development of short clips, thus reconstruction of healthy ecological pattern is urgently needed.

Emergence of Short Clips Industrial Chaos

Being as a new form of Internet culture, short clips platforms such as TikTok, Kwai, Bilibili have sprung up massive “micro IP” of Internet celebrities and streamers. They have produced many creative and high-quality contents which not only guide many people’s lifestyle, mindset and working life, but also bring influences in all aspects. For instance, in year 2019, number of TikTok creators having knowledge contents with more than ten thousand fans has exceeded 74 thousand people, and at the same time 19.85 million of high-quality short clips have been created. However, problems have occurred under the booming of industry.

• Monopolization of Discourse Power in Platform

As short clips platform controls all users’ data, once being hacked, blocked or information being sold, users do not have the ability to protect themselves totally, hence they face difficulties in protecting their rights. At the same time, as platform controls rules and formulates discourse power, most of the incomes earned through original works have been shared by third-party agencies such as platform, MCN agency and so on. Therefore, despite that contents which contribute many visits are located at the top of industry value chain, content creator is at the bottom layer of “food chain”.

• Netizens Being "Whacked"

Netizens’ attention has brought success to many Internet companies such as Weibo, TikTok, TouTiao and so on, but when these platforms are relying on massive user data to earn huge amount of advertisement fee, it has no relation to netizens.

Netizens either contribute to content and purchasing power, or forward and share social resources with others, hence they can be said as the “digital labour” of short clips industry.

• Advertisement Data Counterfeiting

When browsing the Internet, various advertisements have been interrupting people who already carry fragmented time in daily life. However, users do not have the power to decide what and how many advertisements they wish to watch, instead they have been dominated by many different data recommendations.

Moreover, advertisement data counterfeiting also triggers “unexpected operation”, which is a batch of industry practitioners buy and sell fans to increase visits and likes. This phenomenon is well-known among new media marketing sector.

• Worried About Content Quality

For one thing, in short clips industry, everyone can be the information carrier because short clips can be easily plagiarized and “transported”. This has increased the difficulty to protect the right of original works, hence content quality of video needs to be standardized and improved. On the other hand, as time rapidly changes, short clips have to mix and develop continuously with other industries to create positive interaction, so that market scale can be constantly expanded and standardized.

Blockchain Ends “Congenital Defect” of Short Clips

Blockchain’s application in short clips industry can solve these pain points and help the industry to develop prosperously in a healthy and sustainable way.

Blockchain is a chain data structure which combines data block orderly according to time sequence. It solves trust, identity and value issues respectively via anti-tampering mechanism, distributed ledger mechanism and token mechanism. In terms of underlying logic, operating blockchain in short clips sector will redefine industry rules in content consumption, such as copyright reserved, transaction and income distribution mode.

Firstly, blockchain’s unique anti-tampering mechanism can bind video creator, content and time together in order to achieve “creating is authentic right, transacting is authorization, discovering is right protection”. This will make up some congenital problems existing in short clips copyright such as “virtuality, vulnerability, invisibility, easy tampering” fundamentally. Furthermore, creators can also master their works better.

Submergence of user and content will definitely facilitate transformation of content. In future, short clips not only will have entertainment lifestyle content, but also can deliver content that are wise, sophisticated and can convey positive thinking to the society. Eventually, this industry will develop towards comprehensive and regularized way.

Secondly, smart contract can preset income distribution and make video content directly circulating between various types of users in order to achieve real value transfer. This has effectively avoided “unexpected operation” and over intervention of third-party agencies such as short clips platform, MCN agency and so on, because capable new blogger can “self issue” to achieve IP incubation.

Thirdly, token mechanism can monetize “user contribution” as user will receive respective rewards for watching, giving likes, writing comments, and also sharing or rewarding videos. This indicates that fans who being “whacked” originally can obtain rights from creator’s income, vision of “everybody is shareholder” will also highly attract participation of normal netizens.

Therefore, we can easily notice that, blockchain is like the “modifier” of short clips gene, because it can amend the “congenital defect” originally existed in industry and provide a brand new mutual beneficial and distributed business structure. In this structure, short clips creator which located at the center of ecology not only has discourse power, but also brings maximized value for intellectual property, thus fans can obtain interactive value of its “concentration”. Eventually, ecology of short clips content industry will be restructured.

Blockchain + Short Clips: New Blue Ocean of Industry

• Ban Piracy

Blockchain + short clips, which mean applying blockchain technology in short clips platform. Currently, in PGC platform such as long clips platform and article reading, all contents uploaded by author have original copyright protection, hence punishment will be received by person who plagiarizes. However, in short clips industry, works can be “transported” publicly, fans and visits of the original author of some works are also even lower than “pirate”. Thus, plagiarism and “transportation” issues of short clips industry need to be solved immediately.

Emergence of blockchain technology brings a brand new of copyright protection mechanism for short clips content industry. For instance, blockchain mindset can be used to establish a decentralized short clips platform where contents such as image and video can be registered automatically via blockchain technology. Furthermore, every content can obtain its special code respectively, while authorization of works is still on the hands of original author so that copyright tracing and protection can be easily done.

In addition, anti-tampering characteristics of blockchain can issue copyright notice for works’ content and complete digital asset transaction through smart contract.

• Diversified Transaction

As copyright issue of short clips has been solved with the help of blockchain technology, this has made the whole industrial environment to become healthier. Suppliers who provide many video templates and materials can upload “original contents” to blockchain short clips platform for transaction, hence more diversified methods of asset realization can be achieved for blockchain short clips.

Current short clips platform has higher discourse power and stronger control, distribution and recommendation of content are also led by platform instead of users’ will. Once blockchain technology has been implemented and applied, users can get their favorite contents more directly, while platform will be like an “agent” for provider and requester of short clips to get what they need.

• Content Review

Content broadcasting agency issues review application to content review agency, then reviewed content will be awarded with a review certificate once review completed. Based on consortium mechanism of consortium chain, review certificate will synchronize to nodes of all agencies in the consortium. Once issued on chain, certificate information cannot be tampered.

If content broadcasting agency accepts the result of review agency, content of short clips and review certificate on chain will be compared. Same content indicates that the content is correct and can be aired; if not the same, this indicates that the content is incorrect, thus it will be returned to agency that provides the content or provider and they will be requested to transfer the correct file. Content broadcasting agency also can choose to review the key content itself to further confirm the review quality. After review, content will be synchronized to blockchain.

Conclusion

Recently, as modern technology has been developing continuously, interconnection and fusion of any two new things may collide to produce an unprecedented new species, and among them combination of blockchain and short clips is the representative. Blockchain technology which brings disruptive changes to human society will produce brand new business model and ecological structure to short clips industry that goes viral currently and solve industry pain points gradually.

As the leader and practitioner of blockchain technology, Vonechain Technology firmly believes that short clips industry will become one of the biggest markets in implementation and application of blockchain technology. Vonechain Technology will further promote the establishment of blockchain underlying layer infrastructure, apply blockchain in various scenarios set up by short clips industrial ecology and facilitate integrated development of blockchain and economic society actively.