Introducing Photochain, A Dapp for freelance photographers that aims to revolutionize the Stock photography industry

in #photography7 years ago (edited)

Meet Photochain! Blockchains solution to all stock photography problems, entry barriers, hickups and obstacles that are keeping you from making a living by selling your photos.

The current stock photography industry is taking advantage of it's users by drowning them in fees and slowing them down with various obstacles. They claim to offer a way to monetize your work, when in fact they are the ones taking most of the profits, while providing a questionable service. Some of the popular stock photography markets will take anything from 50% to 75% leaving the photographers only a small portion of the revenue of their sold pictures.

So not only do they take a big piece of the pie but it can take weeks to actually collect the funds. If that wasn't enough to turn you off, they won't even let you price your own work, but rather make up their own prices. Making it close to impossible to make a living with selling your pictures. I've seen professional photographers that are getting insultingly low payouts for the content they are producing. This has to change!

Let's face it. The stock photography industry is broken and favors the selected few, while most aren't making enough to make ends meet. All while the service providers are cashing in big. This inequality has to end. As blockchain based business models appear, with Photochain being by far the best example of this, they will soon dethrone its current centralized competitors.

A glimpse of what's to come


Intro


Photochain is able to put an end to the inequality and bring the power back to the photographers; let them take control over their work, give them the ability to set their own price, license types and terms of sale. By turning to blockchain technology to cut out the middleman, machine learning to automate most of the processes and Photochain’s own user community to cut down the costs of governance; it is able to offer something that was never before seen in the stock photography industry, fairness.

It solves all above mentioned flaws and give the photographers an opportunity to simply and easily start monetizing their passion in a fair, trustless way. With 95% of the revenue generated by their work going to the photohraphers themselves, who are the driving force behind the value. This is the first project of it's kind that will demonopolize the industry and fairly reward its users. The potential of the project has been highly recognized within the photography industry with hundreds of photographers currently testing the Dapp and eagerly waiting for its release.

Further recognition was gained when the project took 3rd place in the ICO Pitch Competition at the Blockchain Leadership Summit in Zurich. The project is also partnered with some high profile players in the blockchain world, including advisory services Swisscom Blockchain and some of Blockchain’s biggest technical personalities, Roberto Capodieci and his Blockchain Zoo, and Lee Willson the President of World Blockchain Foundation.

What is Photochain?

Photochain is the next level stock photography marketplace Dapp built on top of the Ethereum blockchain that allows photographers to monetize their content in a fair, decentralized and transparent way. By cutting out the middleman that takes the largest portion of revenue and automating most of the processes, Photochain gives you 95% of the profits earned from selling your pictures, while taking as little as possible to cover expenses of running the Dapp. Photochain was the vision of CEO Stanislav Stolberg, who states that:

“As a hobby photographer, I found the incumbent photo stocks just far too difficult to navigate. Too many rules and restrictions made me not want to use them, as I felt I was not able to share my photos how I wanted to. As a keen technologist, blockchain immediately jumped out to me as the answer.”

Photochain is able to cut down their costs to a bare minimum and offer a service that empowers it's users by giving them what they deserve (the biggest part of the generated revenue or 95% while charging a small fee to cover their expenses). Needles to say, this wouldn't have been possible without utilizing blockchain technology to reduce costs of running the Dapp and Photochain's community that will help with governance, further decreasing the costs.

The best thing about Photochain is that you don't need to understand anything about blockchain technology or cryptocurrency to be able to use it. Its interface is elegant and easy to use giving you a seamless and enjoyable experience every time. The blockchain aspect is totally hidden (as seen in the demo product - demo.photochain.io) and there will be an internal fiat-to-token exchange for both the buying and selling, so you don’t need to understand anything about cryptocurrency to use the platform.

Why I see great potential in Photochain


Low fees and literally no entry barrier, combined with the simplicity of use is what should be most appealing to content creators, while the buyers also enjoy that, they get an added benefit of lower prices and the ability to negotiate prices.


Photochain's fee consists of:

  • 0.02% for the Ethereum network fee paid to miners and for interaction with the Photochain smart contract
  • 0.98% for data storage costs, because pictures and digital works require ample storage space
  • 2% for the Photochain Governance Team for ongoing development and moderation
  • 2% for the Photochain decentralized app (DApp) reserve

Photochain'sVision


  • Simple and easy to use
  • Suitable for large number of transactions
  • Trustless buying and selling of digital art
  • Buyers pay less, while content creators earn more
  • Secure and decentralized storage on the IPFS protocol
  • Personal and novel Digital Copyright Chain to determine rights and ownership
  • Utilizing Smart Contracts and Machine learning most of the processes are automated
  • Fair reward distribution
  • Community oriented

How it works? Explained in less than 2 minutes

In the words of CMO, Haris Rana:

“Photochain has been designed and developed completely with the users in mind. The platform has rebuilt the entire concept of a photostock from the ground up, leveraging the power of blockchain technology in every step of the process. This leads to a seamless buying and selling experience to all users, where they can feel comfortable that their best interests are put first.”

Photochain is the first platform that wants to fairly reward you for your work. They feel confident to take 10% of the $4 billion annual revenue of the stock photography industry - $400 million - and give this money to the photographers.

Main Features

P2P Marketplace

Buyers and sellers can determine their own terms of sale, so they are allowed to trade directly with one another. Using blockchain technology to remove the need for cost of processing, Photochain guarantees photographers to receive 95% of the earnings from their works.



Easy Onboarding

A simple identity verification for all photographers. Unlike with traditional photostocks which require lots of prerequisites, a user can be actively selling work in minutes. The removal of prerequisites further allows the platform to be fully accessible and profitable to hobby, amateur and professional photographers alike.



Digital Copyright Chain

Photochains decentralized database ensures each uploaded photo to be hashed into the blockchain and permanently linked to its owner. Because of blockchains immutability this link is impossible to be changed, removed or manipulated in any way. Any further uploaded image is hashed and compared to the existing DCC for copyright fraud. Additionally due to the permanent link, any misuse of the image outside of paid licenses is easily detectable.

Crypto Economy

Photochain is helping to build a crypto economy, where we have more control over our data. A fairer economy where you are rewarded for your work. We believe photographers deserve fair compensation for their efforts and their creativity.



Photons

Are the fuel behind that allows simple and fast, secure, peer to peer transactions between content creators and buyers. They are also used as a mean of motivation and are given out to moderators and users when they reach 100 points in the ranking system. Meaning that Photons can not only be bought, but they can also be earned through various actions that help project grow.

Reputation & reward system

The system is put in place to motivate it's users and ensure self-sustainable development. Allowing it's users to earn Photons, build a reputation for themselves and instill more trust with the buyers and the Dapp.

  • The moderator gets one point for their contribution to solving one claim (+1)

  • For each sold image, the seller receives one point (+1)

  • The pictures of sellers are placed according to their ranks in the search results

  • An increase in ranking by one point (+1) corresponds to 0.1 PHT. Once the rank of the moderator has grown to 100 points, a payout from the reserve will take place, and the amount in PHT will be transferred to their wallet address

Conclusion

With its realistic use of blockchain technology, Photochain is solving stock photographies biggest issues and offers a straightforward, easy to use Dapp that has potential of reshaping the whole industry. And the best part about it is that you don't have to know anything abut blockchain technology or cryptocurrencies to participate and there is no entry barrier to get started.

Photochain has all the predispositions and momentum needed to distrupt the industry. The solution it offers is revolutionary and if photographers and buyers don't fail to recognize this opportunity I wouldn't be surprised to see Photochain being one of the top selling stock photography marketplaces of the future. The Dapp is currenty in beta phase but a demo is available for testing. When it goes live, mainstream acceptance will quickly follow as photographers will seek better ways of monetizing their content.

Photochain community on Steemit


Steemit is packed full of talented, professional and hobby photographers, some of whom earn a decent amount here, while others struggle and fail to get recognized. Making their posts quickly get lost in the crowd and covered up by the vast amount of new content published each second. Some of them might even stop producing content, forcing them to leave Steemit because of getting so discouraged and undervalued.

Together we will create the largest, photography community on Steemit of dedicated content creators and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. My vision is to help you get established as an photographer on Photochain and reward you for your efforts. This "support group" will strive to help photographers get recognized, not only by the Steemit community, but by potential buyers as well. Allowing them to monetize their content in a simpler, faster and fairer way.

Be amongst the first to join the and start earning Photons

In the upcoming week's, probably even as soon as next week I'll start two contests aimed to help build and support Steemit's Photochain community, where everyone will be able to contribute their work and earn some Photons for doing so. I also plan to get a community care bot to, just as Photochain does, fairly and equally reward all contributions to the challenge. A levelling system will be put in place to distinguish power users from those who just came in and made their first contribution, but everyone will get the same amount of Photons per contribution. Amount of contributions is directly correlated to the amount of Photons received, meaning that the more you are active in the community, the more Photons you will get.

To get a feel of the quality I'm hoping you can achieve, take a look at the pictures at
demo.photochain.io

I'm looking forward to sharing this journey with you and seeing how it evolves into something that could literally change your life. Because, if you can consistently put out quality work, you will be able to make a living on Photochain. I'm here to let you know about it and help you on your way of achieving financial freedom by doing something that you love.

Sounds interesting? Then don't miss out and follow up on my future updates on Steemit's
#photochaincommunity

Token Sale

Even though the ICO has already started, you can still be one of the first to get your hands on some Photons. Before investing you must understand that the Dapp is still in the development phase and needs your support to get to the finish line. By investing in the ICO you are putting your trust in Photochain and believe that they are on to something here, that they will deliver a working product ready to cause an earthquake in the photography industry and change it from the bottom up. Once and for all bringing equality and fairness for its users and profits to its investors.

Photochain Dapp is expected to go be released in 4-6 months after ICO completion and unlike most other projects, with their fairly simple use of the blockchain, this should be easily achievable. The next step of making this dream come to life is you, the community behind it. You are the driving force behind this project and only you can provide real value. Photochain acknowledges that and rewards you with something no other platform will give, 95% of the profits and a simple, easy to get into and use Dapp.

More info on can be found at Photochain.io

Read the Whitepaper!

Important Photochain ICO Main Sale Update: Are you a Faithful Community Backer, Braveheart or Remnants Buyer?

Join Photochain's official discord channel: https://discord.gg/prwPd2F

Are you ready to be a part of the change?

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Hi @runicar!

Your post was just upvoted by @utopian-io. We invite you to join our developer community on the Steem blockchain to crowdsource your project development and promotion with Utopian.

Contributing on Utopian

Learn how to contribute on our website or by watching this tutorial on Youtube.

Want to chat? Join us on Discord https://discord.gg/h52nFrV

Very impressive idea to crowdsource and allow many to provide funding while original developers of the idea maintain control.

excelente reportaje, mis tíos también estudian el mundo de la fotografía.. Sera de ayuda para ellos leer este articulo! felicidades

I will! Congrats good job

Interesante, esa es una muy buena propuesta

Awesome guys! We will be in touch!

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The headline "Photochain Presentation, a Draft for Freelance Photographer" aims to revolutionize the stock photography industry. Fill the presentation and fill the aggregate, photo chayon, solve your photographic problems, your photos, all of the stock photography industry, the problem is that the photography industry is more interested in their industry. While giving it suspicious service, the pictures are divided into several parts

Can't agree whit you more. (Y)

we can help each other to success..
please upvote and follow me..
I am new here...

This comment has received a 0.60 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @isabella69.

i think we can help each other to upgrade our own value and contribute all

can't wait for the platform launching at Q4 2018

counting days :D

Me neither. It will be very exciting, but too bad it's so long to wait.

Same here, just got my first camera and started learning photgraphy. Think I'll be good enough to start contributing when it goes live.

Small point.. You mis-spelled some words in your text and video. For example, the word 'losing' is spelled 'loosing' in the first video. ;)

Good eye, thanks for pointing that out, I would have never noticed that but it wasn't me who made the video :)

Beautiful .. I liked your vision
Well done .. for more creativity
Great post..

This looks amazing so far. Will have to read the whitepaper. As an artist i think this is huge

Thanks! Hope to see you join photochain's photography community contest then :)

really nice idea! good luck whit that :D

I wasn't aware that stockphotography platforms have so many issues and take such a big cut. Knowing that, photographers should opt out of centralized rivals and opt into Photochain.

Very excited about the project. It has a very bright future ahead of itself. Can't wait to see how it develops in the future.

I wasn’t aware either. I assumed photographers had control over their images and decent profits. But centralization usually makes the few rich and the rest get scraps.

hi dear /@ggirl
good & nice article

this one will be big if they can pull it all off! Thanks for bringing this to my attention this is the second time I've heard this platform mentioned by a reputable user.

Looks like I will be delving into the Photochain rabbithole this weekend!

It surely will! I got big expectations for Photochain and I know they will deliver.

Great to have your support! Join us on Discord for any questions: https://discord.gg/prwPd2F

I am sold! I enjoy earning a passive income with stock photography, but the high agency fees are ridiculous, especially when agencies like istock take fees as high as 85%.. I actually had the idea of a stockphoto dApp in mind for over a year and now there are a few dApps that already do something similar, but Photochain looks the most promising so far. Excited for your photo contests!

I'm not surprised to find out that you are into stock photography and yes, the fees are bad. You should have done something about your idea back then.

Me too, really looking foward to building a photography community here.

I have given it some thoughts, a Stockphoto platform as an SMT on the Steem blockchain could have some potential. Photographers would get a reward just for uploading their photos in form of votes like on Steemit and on top of that the reward from each sale minus a small fee that would go to the curators as a kind of eternal curation reward. I actually had a flash of genius a few weeks ago how to call this platform and wanted to register the Steemit account @dstock in case I decided to go ahead with this idea at some point - only to find out that it had been registered three (!) days before already!

Hahaha that was me, as several months ago I started a stock photography project, but realized there were bigger projects already in existence, and bailed on it.
You would have run into several problems, and part of the reason I discontinued it. Steem block chain has no framework for Tier or automatic payouts, as well as a commission concept. That's why all these other startups aren't using steem as their blockchain of choice, it just isn't versatile enough to run a market place.

Also, the harsh reality of selling stock specifically in steem; steem users don't give a damn about copyright infringement and it's why so many like the blockchain. They can steal and post work with no repercussions. As of now, you would be lucky to make any profit or even sustain it.
I pump almost a grand into Dstock, and it opened my eyes, and realized on Steem, it just isn't feasible, you would need a better backing with developers on a more utilized versatile blockchain.
That, and if you notice, these startups are using this as a slight ruse to pump their own 'coin' which they call 'tokens.' It's why they claim to take such a little fee.
Also, there is a lot of protections and markets that the bigger fiat companies are working with, which is why it seems they are taking so much reward.

Sites like these start off the same as any fiat "hey we are on the photographers side!" photo sites. 500px for instance.

I'll sell you the account Dstock and the Domain Dstock.io for 1k USD lol.

At this point I am holding on to the domain for profit, until I get an offer.

If you have ideas, I would recommend investing in .io domains, you might strike gold.

*Or hell if you had some ideas, maybe we can get something going. I, as a one man team, found it wasn't possible, as my limitations were mostly backend development. Site Design marketing, etc... I am capable of, but I am not a coder lol.

Haha, that's funny, great to find out who is behind @dstock! I am studying computer science and have developed some python scripts interacting with the Steem blockchain, but a project like dstock would be a different level.
I think it wouldn't make sense to develop it now when SMTs will change everything in a few months, but when they launch, we could talk about realising dstock together if you like.
My idea would be to create something like a decentralised version of 500px as a SMT including a market place. The problem with transactions could be solved by creating a subscription system such as the one that Shuttterstock and many other microstock agencies have and distribute the payments to the creators at the end of the month minus the fees.

Cool I give ya a follow

Now that's unfortunate, but not a dealbreaker. You should definitely keep working on it and see where it goes. Who knows, maybe @ned hits you with a 1M delegate as a kickstarter :)

True :) We should probably think of rebranding @travelfeed as @dravelfeed or @dtravel as well, it seems like @ned loves D's!

hahahahahahahahahahhaha man this is gold!

Not if they keep it on ETH instead of steem.

I'm not talking about Photochain here. But let me just note that no one would be happier to see them move to Steem/SMTs but as said so many times before who knows when SMTs will finally go live.

in my previous comment I mention why steem won't work for this type of project, at least not yet.

Oh you you mean this completely off base remark?

Steem block chain has no framework for Tier or automatic payouts, as well as a commission concept. That's why all these other startups aren't using steem as their blockchain of choice, it just isn't versatile enough to run a market place.

I'm a 35 year career software development veteran and presently an executive in an enterprise scale international software company, a creator of tools, broadcasting networks and a worldwide charity on steem, a steem witness, and here to tell you, it's not up to steem to handle your payment schemes, it's up to you to know how to program. I can instantly see methods to code tiers and payments systems for any kind of app in the world, and many methods of handling the payout seem immediately obvious to me. Your inability to do so, doesn't make it steem's fault, sorry.

Also, the harsh reality of selling stock specifically in steem; steem users don't give a damn about copyright infringement and it's why so many like the blockchain. They can steal and post work with no repercussions. As of now, you would be lucky to make any profit or even sustain it.

This incorrect generalization is just flat asinine too.

Your inability to program a solution to your issues, and your broad sweeping inaccuracies, make you incapable, not steem.

But your last sentence actually proves that.

I am not a coder lol.

Well, that's clearly obvious by your total inaccuracy and inability to achieve some incredible simple things.

It's not steem that has to do "automatic payouts and tiers" - which it can do, btw, it's up to your app code, your inability to understand and do it, aside... Both happen every single day here.

Please stop spreading misinformation about things you are self described as unable to do, as something else's fault.

Yeah you are just being confrontational at this point, just going to block your account. You are just a troll looking for fights.

Which is clear by all your other comments.

Ouch, that's unfortunate! If you still want to attempt the project you could still try with another name. In my humble opinion, Steem SMTs or EOS would be a better fit for a stock photo-project than Ethereum, since they both have no fees and fast block times. Especially since as you say, we could potentially also pay with upvotes here on Steem :)

Agreed, it would be better to go with SMTs if they existed. The fact that the development is taking so long has already driven a lot of businesses away. So lets hope they come soon.

That's completely understandable at this point. It's been forever since Steemit Inc. said that SMTs were right around the corner, but it has been little news since then.

Do you even remember when they first talked about hf 20? It must be like 8 months now..... I just hope EOS doesn't beat us in the race.

I believe EOS is ready to go in less than a month, so it seems unlikely that they won't beat Steem. Unless Steemit Inc. has it ready-ish and wants to push it right before EOS goes live.

This is the main reason I bailed on Dstock.

Steem doesn't have the features within it's structure to run a "marketplace" like stock photography. It's why you see these other stock sites creating their own tokens.

Among other things that steem is very limited to...

When all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail. Though steem can be manipulated to do a lot of things, it's not a swiss army knife and "other" solutions can be much more elegant on their own.

I agree. :)

Storing the images of millions of photographers on a blockchain, just doesn't seem like a great idea to me. shrug Even steemit, completely depending on services like amazon aws, doesn't sit completely well with me.

What do I know though, eh? lol

You lack vision and skill and capability, not steem....

LOL. Yeah, that's it, attack my character personally.
Should I attack your intelligence, because you obviously have 0 reading comprehension.
If you're looking to just be an ass or start and internet fight with someone, please do it with someone else.

I remarked on your lack of skills, mostly just quoting you.

What does it miss to have been able to create a marketplace such as a stock photo marketplace?

Like I mentioned, as of now, there is not way to incorporate/facilitate payouts automatically. Sites like Dtube take a commission off total upvote revenue, but with stock.. you are selling at a set steem price IE: wallet transfers. As of now there isn't a way to have the host (company) receive a payout for the set price, then auto facility the % back to the original owners wallet. It would have to be done manually by had with each transaction. The reason why other cryptos can handle this, is because they allow for smart tokens, where the site creates their own trading currency, within the system.

Alright, thanks for educating me. Hopefully this will be something that will be solved with SMTs in the future, when that is ready.

Totally! The issue is, that at the moment neither EOS nor Steem have tokens, EOS does not even have a blockchain yet and is an ETH20 token itself. I could imagine that Photochain and many other ETH20 tokens will switch to a different blockchain like EOS in a year if Ethereum does not manage to solve its scaling problems until then.

hi dear /@runicar
you are very great man
your article is very favorite to me
promise i read your article everyday

I am quite excited !!! :)

Very good article
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Nice!

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please look at me kindly