ICO Review: VIDEOCOIN

What does the company/project do?

VideoCoin is developing a decentralised video encoding, storage, and content distribution network (CDN), powered by the blockchain.

Issues

Forecasts predict that internet video will account for 79% of global internet traffic by 2020 – up from 63% in 2015. It is estimated that the world will reach three trillion internet video minutes per month by 2020, with HD and Ultra HD video making up 82% of internet video traffic by then. As the market has grown, current centralised solutions have struggled to perform and scale at the same rate.

Current high-end cloud CPU instances provide 1-2 FPS of video processing power but, in order to match current growth, up to 30 FPS will be needed to support 4k VR video in the near future. Though GPU advancements have provided some relief to this problem, the cost and limited encoder configuration has restricted adoption. These costs are then passed on to clients, which create “market oligarchs” and high-priced intermediaries.

VideoCoin solution

VideoCoin aims to develop a decentralized video encoding, storage and CDN, enabling the creation of a new generation of video infrastructure application via open APIs and open source based development. By splitting a video encoding task into several sub tasks and processing them in parallel, VideoCoin’s Distributed Video Processing platform can produce much higher frame rates on nonspecialised hardware. Not only utilizing data center servers but household desktop computers or even mobile phones. This reduces costs by 50% to 80% by deploying unused computing resources which is estimated to be up to 30% which remain in “comatose” (not delivered information or computing services in six months or more).

VideoCoin’s Distributed Video Storage and Content Distribution Network work in unison, enabling large video files to be stored throughout a distributed network supported by miners and accessed efficiently via a bespoke algorithm. As these are powered by VideoCoin’s own block chain, end-to-end encryption is ensured, promoting privacy and blocking “market oligarchs” from forming.

Token Use

Network Application/Payment

• Clients: Spend VideoCoins to rent video infrastructure services and develop new applications (Youtube / Netflix)
• Consumers: Creators earning tokens or customers paying subscriptions

Network Mining/Support

• Storage Miners: Earn tokens by storing videos. More storage pledged, better rewards
• Distribution Miners: Earn tokens by delivering videos (like a content distribution network), more bandwidth, better rewards
• Compute Miners: Earn tokens by providing CPU time (for transcoding). More compute, better rewards
• Relay Miners: Earn tokens by relaying storage on third party servers. More storage bandwidth, better rewards

Rating

1. Team: 5/5
2. Advisors: 5/5
3. Product - Proof of concept: 5/5
4. Product - MVP: 2/5
5. Token Economics - Token utility: 5/5
6. Business Evaluation - Market potential: 5/5
7. Hype and media presence: 3/5

concerns:

• Token metrics and roadmap information is yet to be made public, so caution to those looking to invest into the private/
  pre-sale
• Current issues with blockchain scalability has seen a host of attempted solutions which have yet to be fully tested.
  VideoCoin will be no exception and will need to prove scalability before large organisation look to build applications on their protocol
• Though a peer-to-peer network removes the risk of censorship and regulation, it does bring the risk of illegal content being distributed within the network which could tarnish VideoCoin’s brand

OPPORTUNITIES:

• VideoCoin will be a full stack video infrastructure protocol layer, taking advantage of the eventual value created from the applications built on top
• Outstanding team and advisors from a range of global organisations who have direct experience and have seen the
  problem first hand (Live Plant – End-to-end 4k VR streaming)
• The project’s focus on video will help differentiate them from similar competitors focused on the space (Filecoin, Storj,
  Bluzelle)
• Very responsive team in telegram, with technical and business questions answered in detail by the CTO and other team
  members
• Raised money from the biggest names in cryptocurrency investment (Mike Novogratz at Galaxy Investment Partners and Alphabit Fund)

Verdict

As video quality has increased, so has the file size; virtual reality and augmented reality traffic alone will increase 20-fold between 2016 and 2021. Almost every big broadcaster and news outlet are looking to produce immersive experiences, like concerts and sports events. From 2k, 4k and soon 8k, every resolution increase squares in data amount. Meaning, the 4K correlation of a 10Gb file in 2K is 100Gb and moving that much data efficiently is where current solutions have started to struggle.

VideoCoin’s full stack video infrastructure protocol layer takes advantage of the blockchain to implement efficient encoding, storage and content distribution to provide video application clients with faster and cheaper services than its centralised cloud counterpart. There are several other similar competitors in the blockchain data storage space eg Storj and Filecoin, both who are within the top 100 cryptocurrency market cap. It is clear that investors have a favourable view on the space as a whole. This, combined with the backing from the biggest cryptocurrency funds in the space, places VideoCoin as a promising opportunity.

We’ll be placing a medium bet short term and very bullish for longterm