Hectango

A video streaming platform that allows content creators to monetize their content not with ads, but using real time streaming payments (SuperFluid). Viewers pay for the content they consume not by watching adds, but streaming micro-payments by the second. The payments cover the platform costs and the rest goes to the creator, who sets the rates. The motivation is to offer an alternative to the ad-driven and privacy harmful model of monetization. Instead of giving "free" content that under the hood is monetized by selling our data and attention as a product, we offer the alternative to directly fund and pay the content you consume. Nowadays people expect the internet to be "free" and asking for payment usually encounters lots of resistance from users. However we believe that the streaming nature of the payments, plus the very small amounts involved per-second will be enough to overcome this barrier.

We leveraged the SuperFluid protocol to handle streaming payments. The frontend allows a user to connect their metamask wallet. Once connected they can start to view or upload content. If viewing, the frontend starts a payment stream. The rate at which the payment is streamed is set by the video creator. Once the stream starts the backend hands over a unique url valid for a limited amount, renewable, that serves the video content to the frontend. The payment stream contract then splits the incoming stream into two: One goes directly to the content creator, the other goes to our platform to fund its operations. Content creators once they connect their metamask wallet can upload content to our platform. The platform provedes a video_id hash that the creator can use to specify the payment rate they require to watch this content. The rates and the payments are managed directly by the creator interacting with the payment streaming contract, without having to contact our platform at all. On the backend we leverage the Cloudflare Stream product to host and serve the video content. As a future extension to the platform we'll consider to have video cold-storage on FileCoin, such that content that's not often watched can be offloaded there to minimize platform costs. The's a backend coordinator service that verifies that the stream payments are flowing for viewers, hands over the signed, unique URLs to stream the videos.