INTRODUCING VIEWLY: A Decentralized Video Platform

Project Introduction and ICO Review

When the words “video sharing platform” is said together in a sentence, it by default brings to mind the world’s largest video sharing and advertisement platform “YouTube”. This simply highlights the power of YouTube as the “Top Dog” company in this business.
YouTube like many other web content platforms, as a platform and a business is driven by the community of people using it; from the content creators to the viewers and the advertisers. Digital content creation and distribution is one of the most important ways of cultural expression. This however is achieved by creators through the investment of talent, time and money.
What is VIEWLY?
Viewly is a decentralized social video platform with a smart contract-based monetization system, enabling the transcending of the advertising-based model. This model is designed to better provide sustainable revenue for all creators, not just mainstream content producers.
Official Website: https://view.ly/
The Existing Problem
The problem however is that, majority of the web content platforms are using an advertising-based revenue model, which makes creators dependent on advertising dollars controlled by a few large corporations.
A few of the problem with these centralized platforms are highlighted here:
  1. Demonetization and creator exploitation: Most content creators are being exploited by these web platforms as firstly they struggle to build and sustain sufficient ad revenue, but are only paid a small portion of the value they create.
  2. Pesky ads: Ads based platforms are focused solely on maximizing their revenue with the privacy and experience of the viewers compromised in the process.
  3. Expensive content delivery: Decentralized and networked content delivery platforms are increasing in demand with platforms like “Steemit” for decentralized blogging among others which protects creators from paying hosting and storage fees for all their content, including content not creating value.
  4. Poor engagement between creators and fans: Current commenting systems do not provide an easy or consistent way of building a community for creators. This makes it difficult to identify genuine and active fans.
  5. Mass‐market preference: Too many creators produce highly valued work, yet fall foul of the present system and miss out. because presents platforms are only a viable solution for creators who target a mass-consumer market, equating to only the most popular 5‐10% of YouTube creators making a living.
  6. Flawed advertising based model: Incentives in the advertising model are inherently misaligned, when a platform optimizes for ad revenues, all other stakeholders lose:
    • viewers are bombarded with ads, 
    • quality of content suffers,
    • creators receive only a fraction of revenue from the value they create,
    • advertisers lose due to inefficiencies in reach and ad fraud.
The Innovative Solution
The innovative decentralized solution to these stated problems and more is Viewly.
Viewly is an entirely decentralized platform enabled by peer-to-peer hosting network, and a smart contract-based transactions on the blockchain. Viewly employs peer-to-peer video sharing technologies to establish a truly decentralized platform befitting the dawning of the blockchain era.
The emergence and success of decentralized platforms like Steemit which is a blogging platform has increased the anticipation for Viewly since 2017.
Benefits of Viewly as compared to YouTube 
  • Viewly takes only a symbolic cut from creator earnings and does not demonetize.
  • Viewly doesn’t serve ads. Viewly aims to be ad free, removing incentives to track users and manipulate attention. Instead, meaningful engagement and community building between creators and fans is facilitated.
  • Viewly not only reduces cost of video delivery by using a peer-to-peer content delivery network, but also enables users to earn VIEW tokens by leveraging their redundant resources and hosting videos.
  • Viewly monetizes without advertising, in a way synchronized with the interests of content creators and their viewers - however diverse, for audiences of any size.
  • With Viewly, every creator has a platform to build their community. The Viewly economic model thrives with positive community building.
  • Viewly’s video monetization models are especially suited to niche and quality content creators with medium to small sized audiences, which otherwise lose out on ad-based legacy platforms.
Viewly also intends to make it easy for existing YouTube content of a creator, to be imported to its platform. 
This I know is a crucial step to developing the network effect that will be required.
Cons: For any new project that hopes to unseat or compete with an existing company of YouTube’s size, there are going to be some challenges which it will face and I would like to see how they overcome these challenges. Some of them are:
  • Competing directly with YouTube in video search results.
  • There are likely barriers to entry not even evident at this stage, and anything which slows the growth of the platform will be a negative on the token value.
  • The length YouTube will be willing to go to trump the decentralized competitor, which brings the question of Partnerships that I must say Viewly hasn’t done so well so far.
  • The content delivery network doesn’t launch until the end of 2018. This is a long time to wait, and many, many competitors can come out in the meantime.
Why Would I invest in Viewly? (Personal Evaluation)
For personal evaluation of ICOs, I reference four major aspects of any project namely; the project, the team, the road map and the Token/ICO structure.
The Project:
The Project has explained above is revolutionary and has been long overdue, there has been a need for a decentralized platform that genuinely helps the creators of digital contents and brings meaningful competition to the monopoly that YouTube enjoys. I think Viewly ha what it takes to be a success.
The Team:
The team has a total of ten members but with no clear CEO or CTO it’s comprised mainly of business, legal and tech experts of whom have good track records in their fields but clear leaders would go a long way to instill confidence in the mind of investors.
Although I was excited to see Furion as a team member, he was a community developer who contributed to Steem's ecosystem and Steemit platform.
On the advisors side I think they have done good with advisors like Charlie Shrem, Shaishav Todi and Bob Chandra.
There is a detailed bio of the team members and advisors on the website https://view.ly/ the team is a solid one in my opinion but I recommend you carry out your own research.
The Roadmap:
The key point I always take from any project is a working prototype. Viewly’s Alpha prototype, which is essentially a "Proof of Technology”, was delivered as far back as August 2017. Viewly Alpha is based on Steem blockchain and IPFS technology. I personally use steemit for my blogging and I am optimistic about what Viewly offers.
A Demo platform release in February 2018 will enable viewers to use tokens to reward their favorite content creators and allow early creators community to begin earning VIEW tokens for their content.
The Token/ICO Structure:
VIEW token will be used as a payment mechanism. Stakeholders will need to hold certain amounts of tokens to ensure access to certain platform functionalities. The maximum supply of 100 million tokens is to be distributed over the lifetime of the project.
Token sale starts 22nd of February 
Token type: ERC20
ICO Token Price: 1 = 0.45 USD
Fundraising Goal: 12,000,000 USD
Total Tokens: 100,000,000
Available for Token Sale: 30%
Min/Max Personal Cap: 1 ETH / TBA
Token Issue: AFTER THE TOKEN SALE
Accepts: ETH, BTC, EOS
Conclusion:
From my personal evaluation, the rating for Viewly ICO is a very high one and by my standards, it represents an awesome ICO. Although I have a few doubts but this is almost always the case with new projects and I will like to see how the team handles the challenges that will come their way.
This is a project I am bullish about and it has the potentials of “mooning” in terms of value after a few months and I am personally going to HODL the tokens for higher rewards, and I am also looking forward to its full implementation.
Official:
Official website: https://view.ly/
Telegram: https://t.me/viewly 
Disclaimer:
I am not a business adviser and this piece is not meant to be an investment advice. This is my personal opinion about a project I am really excited about. I recommend that you “DYOR” do your own research, join their Telegram channel, read the Official Whitepaper and consult your legal adviser before investing in any ICO as they all carry a level of risk. I shall not be deemed liable for any profit or loss on funds invested. Thank you.

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