Marc Serafino
Sharing photos online is big business for Snapchat, Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram, as well as some influencers. Other than that, most people use these services to connect and keep up with their friends and perhaps few celebrities.
A startup called Selfllery wants to change that with a decentralized, blockchain-based solution.
“From the rock art to modern ads, humans have placed value on art,” said Vadim Onishchenko, founder and CEO of Selfllery. “We have just tipped over to 2018, but according to statistics about 1.2 tln digital photos were taken last year. Today’s social networks have mechanisms in place for users to make money from their online activity.”
The (current) system is broken
Because it works only for big companies…
Whenever you like something or give it a “heart,” the software in the background takes note of that so next time you get more of such content, along with related ads. This system works like a charm for the likes of Instagram and Facebook, turning their users into, well, products. As they say it, if something is free online – you are the product.
In contrast, Selfllery wants to provide its users with the opportunity to get paid for each “like” their photo receives. The system would still be appealing to celebrities and everyone else with huge following, who in turn would get a bigger portion of profits.
Also, the service would double as a stock photo market, enabling those with fewer followers — but with better photo taking skills — to make money by selling their photos to interested parties. This part of the service would be “handled” by a smart contract, and the technology that will make sure one’s photos aren’t used around the web without permission.
Finally, ads would be in place as well, but again – Selfllery wants to offer a more fair deal to its users on which pages these ads will appear.
This mix of addon services, the company believes, will help the platform get customers and make it popular in short amount of time, all while creating a system that works for everyone.
Selfllery has its coin – YOU
Like most blockchain-based projects, Selfllery has its own coin/token – marked as “YOU.” Built on the Ethereum network, this token will be offered as a reward to everyone using the platform whether to share photos or to participate in the community by liking and commenting on stuff.
Also, those with a number of followers will get to benefit from what Selfllery calls “token multipliers” which would determine how many YOU coins they would earn for each interaction. In turn, every like, comment and participation in photo contests would boost their multiplying rate and thus, the tokens they earn.
Once earned, YOU tokens can be exchanged for goods and services on Selfllery’s internal marketplace for buying photos from other users. Also, there would be an option to donate a certain percentage of one’s income to good causes. And finally, users will be able to withdraw YOU tokens at the rate of 0.001 ETH for 1 YOU token.
Selfllery’s ICO is set to start on March 5th and the company has already raised over $1 million in its presale. Whether you’re sharing photos often or not, this looks like a service worth watching…
