Challenge & Opportunity

The fee and proceeds structures are typical problems with the content ecosystem.

Due to the content platform centered on large companies and the complex distribution structure led by certain companies, it was difficult for content creators to create appropriate proceeds. When the news that Psy's Gangnam Style, which drew attention from the world, earned only KRW36 million in royalties from online music sales in Korea, it was pointed out that there was a lot of bubble in content prices.

In the blockchain-based content service ecosystem, proceeds are not created through transaction fees. Content creators are paid as much as the content they produce. Rewards are received as cryptos and coins that can be used on the blockchain's platform where the content is stored. If they post articles or videos on the platform, they will receive ‘platform coins’ as a reward. Not only content creators but also co-owners will receive these platform coins.

It's a reward for spreading the content and making it known to others. As more users purchase or watch shared content, both creators and co-owners of the content receive higher rewards. In fact, attempts to combine various digital contents such as texts, music, movies, webtoons, and photos with blockchain are emerging.

Lack of copyright protection measures for contents and opportunity

The digital content industry is a technology and knowledge-intensive industry based on intangible factors such as advanced information and communication technology and creativity and knowledge information and can be said to be a core industry in the information age of the 21st century. However, with the development of digital technology, mass copying of content is possible, and large amounts of content distribution are possible without any restrictions due to the expansion of networks, raising the issue of copyright protection and eradication of illegal distribution. As the digital environment makes it easier to reproduce and distribute content, it seriously infringes on the rights of creators and leads to a crisis of existence of the content industry, a new era demands to reach an appropriate balance between the ownership of intellectual property and the sharing of users has been claimed. Blockchain technology makes it easier to protect content copyrights. Forgery is impossible when content is stored on the blockchain. If content information is produced and managed in blocks, its ownership and use can be proved. Since the records of piracy and sharing are also stored on the blockchain, they can be easily tracked if content piracy occurs.

Problems of indiscriminate NFT Market and opportunity

Artist Beeple's digital artwork was sold for $69.34 million in 2021 at Christie's, an American art auction house. Meanwhile, four NFT covers of Time magazine were auctioned for $446,000, and the New York Times' NFT column was also sold for $560,000. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's first tweet NFT was sold for $2.9 million. NFT, which refers to the non-fungible tokens, has recently become a new trend in digital asset investment.

The NFT technology ensures that no one can copy or transfer the NFT without the permission of the owner. However, it is uncontrollable who was the first person to work on the artwork as an NFT. Swedish illustrator Simon Stålenhag has never published an NFT artwork himself and has never given authority to anyone but found one of his artworks to be a kind of NFT, Marble Card. Current NFTs lack regulation or supervision. This also suggests that the number of cases in which creators' copyrights are not protected may increase.

In addition, indiscriminate meaningless pictures, photos, and sound sources are derived, adding to the market pain. And in fact, they do not have the basis for NFT's market revitalization. This is because, if you look at only Korea's NFT Markets, the products and activities traded except for Upbit are quite low. The reason can be seen as poor product quality and a gradual decline in investment attractiveness.

Problems with the central payment system

Currently, online payment services are the only systems that have moved the form of offline payment systems from the past to online. The scope of online payment transactions is gradually becoming global, and the volume of transactions is huge enough to reach nearly $600 billion a year, but the payment structure itself has not changed significantly. In particular, brokerage fees are widely incurred as they are processed through at least eight procedures from payment to settlement, resulting in high fees for customers using the payment system. Fees received by intermediate operators in the payment process are up to 2-3% of credit cards, 2% of debit cards, and 25% of prepaid cards compared to the transaction amount. In particular, in areas where payment services are not active, such as Southeast Asia and South America, up to 50% of very high fees are required. In addition, the settlement cycle takes a long time, so it takes a long time for the business operator who uses it to receive the settlement. This is a typical problem with the centralized payment system. The source of this problem is that digital currency managed by the central system can cause data trust problems such as hacking, manipulation, and modulation, making it difficult to change the inefficient online payment system structure as intermediate participants at each stage recognize and approve the transaction.