Season's greetings to everyone out there, I would love to join Prof. @wahyunahrul to welcome each and everyone to the first week of this season. This week's topic is Verasity - Advertising Services On Blockchain and I'll try my best to give detailed answers to the test questions listed. If you reach the requirements, you could join me to do same by reading up the lesson on this link.
1.)
What is Verasity? What do you think about the performance of this platform broadly?
Decentralization is slowly taking over the traditional or centralised nature of tools and services in the world. We can see that dApps have been created to solve a particular problem that is observed in the apps we use everyday. The likes of Audius which does a great deal to produce enough revenue for musicians. There are a lot more of these dApps and the Professor has done well to introduce Verasity to us.
What is Verasity?
Verasity is an online application that was invented to perfect and solve the problems of the likes YouTube and Twitch. YouTube and Twitch are centralised projects that provides platforms for video sharing, hosting of live streams to aid communication to a large group of people and so on.
These two apps have a wonderful use case, creating a platform for video sharing but they suffer a very serious problem which makes them lose some percentages of their revenue every year. A lot of content creators on these platforms indulge themselves into fraudulent activities. They hire video promotion services or softwares which increase the amount of views they have for each video they make. These content creators do this to earn more money from YouTube but this is bad for the advertising brands. This is why Verasity was created, to ensure all these problems are put to an end.
Verasity is an online decentralised platform which uses its proof of view algorithm to screen and filter out all manner of fake viewers from video sharing platforms like the ones we can see in the image above. With this solution, more brands are likely going to be introduced into making their advertisements because there is now assurance that it is going to be seen by real humans since fake viewing has been countered. This will increase revenue for video publishers like YouTube and its content creators.
Another cool thing about Verasity is that it also offers opportunities for viewers to be rewarded for taking their time to watch and appreciate the videos. This is a very special and productive feature because you can never see this on traditional apps. Instead viewers even pay to use video softwares like iTunes. All rewards are issued with the platforms native token, VRA.
What I think about the Performance of Verasity
Well, I would say Verasity has been performing greatly since launch. Of course it has a great use case to all video makers in the world and even brands who plan on making advertisements. It has really catchy advantages which I believed are loved by its users but we all know that decentralised projects suffer one major issue and that is the fact that they can be so unpopular. A lot of people haven't really heard about them and the ones who have are sometimes ignorant about cryptocurrencies as a whole.
If you look at the image above you will see how much users have been lured into the platform because of how good its performance is. As at March 2021 when this post was made, Verasity had over 2.5 million page views for its esfightclub esport channel and also had over 157 thousand users who had enrolled on the Vera Wallet. Well, 2.5 million is a large amount for a decentralised project and we can see that a lot of people have adapted to the platform which means Verasity is doing well.
Technically, we can also analyse the performance of the Verasity through the growth of its native token VRA. The increase in value of a native token of a platform means people have found the platform useful. From the image above we can see that VRA is currently ranked 350 in the world and has a marketcap of 160,495,831. Looking at its all time low and high, we can see that VRA has had a massive growth from $0.000217 in May, 3 years ago to $0.08683 in November of this year.
With the current price in the market today, which is $0.0359, from the all time low of $0.000217, Verasity has grown by 16465.09% in the past 3 years. I must say, this is really impressing.
Verasity also has some accomplishments, aside the partnership it had with axie infinity which the Professor mentioned in its lesson, Verasity has also partnered with Valorant champions tour 2021.
For those that do not know valorant, it's a video game that has a huge gaming community. On twitch, it has up to 2.2 million followers and it is currently viewed by 58.7k people. For valorant to partner, it means Verasity is of good performance and can take up the task. Also, this is a huge promotion for Verasity because a lot of people from the valorant community will be introduced to the platform.
2.)
How does the Proof of View system used by Verasity validate real viewers?
The Proof of View algorithm was designed to ensure all viewers counted in for an advertisement or video is authentic. Since launch, it has tried to eliminate fake viewers.
On the Verasity platform, all videos are watched with the VeraPlayer. This player was built with powerful artificial intelligence tools which helps the platform detect when a viewer is not available. The Veraplayer can detect when the user has scrolled the video out of the screen. When this happens for a while, the view will not be counted and the user will not receive rewards from Verasity.
Also, the Veraplayer has the capability to detect when series of random videos are watched on a browser. What I mean here is, if there are other videos played on different tabs, the other videos will not be counted as a view and this results the fraudulent viewer to not receive any rewards from Verasity.
A user may pass all Verasity's test and defenses like the ones I listed above but the platform goes a far length to detect when a user has watched a particular video so many times. This is what the system marks as "Unsual Viewer behaviour". When a user views a particular video for an unusual amount of times in a set period. Verasity highlights the account as suspicious and then a reCAPTCHA test is sent to the user to check mate if this user is actually authentic. If this act is done by a bot, the bot will fail the test and all views from that user will be terminated and removed.
Verasity tries to access views to ensure that it is authentic and done by a real human. After this process, the view is scored and the stats are sent to a primary AI tool to give a final score. If the view is valid, it is hashed and connected to other hashes until there is finally a top hash. Data is then stored in a block for third party to access. All these activities happen in a short space of time.
3.)
Why is "fake viewers" so detrimental to all parties related to videos and advertisements that are shown?
Fake viewers are bots used to increase the amount of views on a video content. There are a lot of these programs today, in the case of a live stream, when a fake viewing software program is ran, thousands of tabs on a powerful system will be opened in a web browser. These tabs will all be playing the stream without any persons watching.
This is very detrimental to brands and companies who try to advertise their products because they are charged a substantial amount on every viewer that watches their advertisement. At the end of the day, the company ends up making a loss because their message didn't get across to real human beings. You can imagine paying a whole lot of money to talk to nobody.
From the image above, it is clear that fake viewers are not only detrimental to the brand who make advertisements but also to the video sharing service. There are a lot of ad fraud companies which checkmate and detect these fraudulent activities on video sharing services like YouTube. Once detected, YouTube will have to make returns back to these brands and that's a great loss to YouTube.
Also, anything that affects YouTube will also affect its content creators because they will not be paid as much. The same things applies here on the steem platform, there is a current dip and the marketcap of steemit native coin, STEEM has fallen. This has made us the content creators to not receive as much rewards as we used to before.
4.)
Mention and explain ways so that we can get VRA Token rewards
Like I said above, Verasity simply rewards its native token, VRA to individuals who utilise the platform. Well, this is its incentive to lure more users. I will list out and explain the various means of earning VRA on the Verasity platform.
- Watching Videos
- Watching Ads
- Staking
1.) Watching Videos: In the image above, we can see the "watch and earn" button. The Verasity platform provides and opportunity for its users to earn some funds in VRA for watching videos using its platform.
Like we have seen above, for each video a user watches, he gets a reward of 1 VRA. This is really huge but if we analyse this, there could be a serious problem for the token in the long term. Let's take an example, If Verasity has a total of 50,000 daily users and 20% of that which is 10,000 users decide to watch 500 videos a day so that they can receive 500 VRA. Imagine more than five million VRA tokens being issued daily. This is bad for the token because according to the law of demand and supply, a spike in the increase of the circulating supply of a token will lead to inflation hereby causing that token to lose value.
Well, the developers were smart about this and that's why we can see the daily limit in the image above, which is capped at 5 VRA. This means no matter how much videos these users watch the cap on rewards is 5 VRA.
From these we can see that VRA can be earned by simply watching videos on the platform without a risk of inflation.
2.) Watching Ads: From the image above, on the Verawallet, there is another means of earning VRA which is by watching ads. Here, you will be redirected to another website where you can watch some videos containing some of these ads.
When the ad starts playing, you will be given the option to skip the video at the top right corner but rewards will only be allocated to those that watched to the end. Users still receive a sum of 1 VRA and rewards are still capped at 5 VRA for ad viewing.
3.) Staking: Users can make some more VRA by staking on the network, the same way it is done on any other decentralize platform. Staking of VRA helps to secure the network . While staking, investors are also granted the opportunity to withdraw his funds at any time.
From what we've seen above, the minimum amount to stake is 10,000 VRA and the maximum is 200,000,000 VRA. After staking the investor will receive a daily percentage of 0.07 of what he staked everyday. Yielding the investor to earn a total of 25.5% APY a year.
5.)
What is VRA Virtuous Cycle?
Above is a diagram of the VRA Virtuous cycle. From an economically point of view, a Virtuous Cycle, also called a Vicious cycle is a chain of occurences which must happen in order to promote the growth of the economy of a token. One occurence promotes the next in the economy.
On the Verasity platform, these occurences that must happen to promote the value of VRA have been listed out. I will do my best to explain each and everyone of them. They are listed in the diagram above.
1.) Buyers buy VRA: Publishers like youtube and twitch, game developers who will like to promote their games and brand companies will have to buy VRA from exchanges or with bank cards which is used to incentivize users to watch their ads or videos. These VRA tokens will be stored in a campaign pool and released to viewers until the VRA tokens for a particular ad in the pool finishes. The more VRA in the pools, the more users get to know their product. In the image below, you can see some influencers or brands who have kept VRA token in their campaign pools.
2.) Veracity Earns: From all promotions, Verasity owns a percentage of the revenue produced. Part of these funds are used to buy back VRA from exchanges and make the coin available for users on the platform.
3.) Earns "VRA": Users of the verasity platform earn VRA for watching videos and ads. This is verasity's method of increasing viewer engagement on the platform.
4.) User Benefits: Verasity creates opportunity for players to register for game tournaments to win huge prizes. This registration is done with VRA and at the end of the day, Game developers and video publishers also make some revenue from these tournaments.
5.) Use "VRA" to: There are a lot of use case of VRA which I'll try to explain in question seven. Users can use VRA to access Esport competitions, stake or even exchange to other crypto currencies of their choice.
6.) Cycle Repeats: VRA is kept in campaign pools for users and as VRA is rewarded to users and exchanged on various exchanges, Verasity uses the revenue generated from video publishers and brands to buy back the token from these exchange in order to keep rewarding its users and the never ending cycle continues hereby growing Verasity into a larger platform.
6.)
Create a VeraWallet account and show the complete steps
From the home page of verasity.io, click on the "Sign Up", displayed at the top of the page.
From the next page, enter your email address and password the click the check box highlighted in the image above to confirm you have agreed with the platforms TaC and Privacy Policy. After clicking, details will be processed automatically.
Verify you are human by passes the test
A verification will be sent to your email address, copy and paste in the field on the next page, then click on submit. If you haven't received the code, check your spam folder or click on "Resend the code".
On the next page, you will need to scan the QR code with the google authenticator on your phone to the set up a factor authentication. This is to increase the security of your account.
I will show how to perform this in the next imageFrom the next page, copy the authenticator code you can see on your phone into the empty field and click "done".
From your google authenticator, click the "+" on the lower right of the page to add a new account.
Select the "Scan a QR code" option.
Click ok to give the application access to your camera then scan the QR code displayed on the Verasity platform.
You will see a code on the home page, this code will be changed every 30 secs.
On the next page, a key will be given to you, click on "Save the code". This code can be used to restore your account if log in details are lost.
From the next page, fill in all the details and click "Submit".
Finally, your Verawallet has be set up, you can now log in into your account.
7.)
Explain what use cases the VRA Token has in the Verasity ecosystem
VRA is the native token of Verasity, this makes VRA very important because all economic and financial activities on the platform will be done with VRA.
1.) Staking: Staking is a normal process that is done on almost all decentralised platforms. Most of the time, it helps users to make decisions in on chain governance because the more the stake, the higher the voting power. Staking also increases the security of the network. On the Verasity platform, users can stake VRA to help secure the platform and also earn 25.5% of their stake back as profit.
2.) Earnings: Individuals who utilise the platform to watch videos and ads can earn VRA for promoting the platform. This is Verasity method of luring more users to the platform, the same way I've been lured. This is good for Verasity because, the more users on the platform, the more the revenue and this will end up increasing the value of VRA.
3.) Medium of exchange: VRA is a cryptocurrency just like any other and this means it can be exchanged to another or used to purchase properties in the real and virtual world (metaverses). Users who earn VRA can use it to trade on different exchange platforms.
4.) Demand due to Campaign pools: Influencers, brands and video publishers who want to promote the products on Verasity through advertisement will have to purchase VRA from exchanges and fill them in Campaign pools for users to make earnings. This will increase demand for VRA in exchange because these brands will buy in large quantities.
5.) Transaction Fees: All transaction fees on the network will be charged in VRA.
8.)
Explain the steps on how to Staking VRA tokens
From the official Verawallet website homepage, after logging in, you will see "instant buy VRA & stake" for those who would love to do so with their credit or debit card. For those that have VRA in the wallet, click on "Stake VRA" above.
From the next page, while reading all the details, we will see a minimum and maximum amount of VRA that can be staked. Also we will see the APY which can be made of staking. Click on "Stake now" to proceed.
In case you are not signed in, fill your log in details then click on "sign in"
From the popup, pass the puzzle to verify that you are human.
With the authenticator code from your mobile phone, fill the field and click on "Verify"
From the next page, click on "Staking"
From the next page, details will be display to view if the program is currently active, you can also see the amount of VRA in the staking pool and rewards to be gotten. Click on "Stake VRA"
Fill in the amount you want to stake and click on continue. As you can see, I only have 1 VRA in my balance so we can not proceed. After this step, we should expect and confirmation page and that will be all.
9.)
Watch one of the videos on the Verasity Website and show how we can get rewards from watching the video
- From the homepage of veracity.tv, scroll doen, then click on the "Watch and earn now" button.
- You have to find a video you will be interested in to watch, you will be prompted to create a "Verasity rewards program account". Fill in your details, select a country residence the click the check box to confirm you have read and accepted the TaC and Privacy policies. The details will be automatically processed.
Copy the verification code sent by Verasity to your email address, paste it in the field and click on "Submit". If you didn't receive the code, check your spam folders or click on "Resend".
On the next page, we will see the amount of VRA to be earned for each video watched using the platform.
- After setting up your account, sit back and watch the video to the end, a prompt will appear on the screen telling you that you have receiving some rewards in your wallet. The image above is a confirmation of the VRA I received. All you need do is "watch a video" and you'll be paid.
Conclusion
Verasity yields series of benefits for everyone who utilizes the platform. It creates an avenue of zero fake viewers on YouTube and other video publishing companies. This will increase the number of brands interested in advertising using this publishing companies, hereby spiking up their revenue.
Verasity also those a good job or rewarding its users for viewing videos and ads, which is a great means to incentivise more individuals to join the platform. I believe that the Verasity platform will become something huge in the near future and even get up to the top 50 cryptocurrency projects in the world.
I'm grateful to our dear Prof. @wahyunahrul for introducing this wonderful platform to us. Thank you!