Contentos is building a blockchain-based decentralized content ecosystem. The vision of Contentos is to build a "decentralized digital content community that allows content to be freely produced, distributed, rewarded, and traded, while protecting author rights". Contentos strives to incentivize content creation and global diversity and return the rights and value of content to users. Contentos aims to be a public content protocol that not only carries content and advertising value but is also a memory chain recording each user's contributions.
Contentos features:
Some of its key highlights include:
Since Contentos launched its testnet in March 2019, 4 dApps have been integrated to the Contentos Platform: PhotoGrid, COS2048, WalkCoin, and COS.TV.
Current statistics of all dApps running on Contentos can be found here.
PhotoGrid is a popular photo editing App with a community similar to that of Instagram. PhotoGrid is powered by Contentos testnet and actual COS tokens. PhotoGrid is available on both iOS and Android.
COS2048 is an Android game App derived from the original 2048 game. Users are able to earn COS through single-player games and use them as bet in double-player games.
WalkCoin is an Android App that keeps track of users' walking record. WalkCoin issues Energy Coins (ENC) on Contentos testnet as an incentive to motivate users to achieve their exercise goals. Users can earn Energy Coins by completing walking tasks.
COS.TV shares project information and serves as a blockchain explorer. The platform is also a wallet for COS holders. Within the wallet, users are able to bind COS-enabled App accounts and withdraw COS to their BNB wallets. The website also displays selective video content and live streams from LiveMe. The interactions between users and content such as posts, likes and comments are recorded on the Contentos testnet.
Every Contentos user has 2 IDs, one is her elliptic curve public key and the other is her unique account name. Account names are essentially readable aliases of public keys. All user properties such as IDs, balances and credits are grouped and maintained as on-chain account records that are freely accessible to the public.
Transactions and blocks must be signed by their originators. Contentos only accept transactions which have passed signature verification. The elliptic curve digital signature algorithm ensures everything on-chain is both unfraudable and undeniable.
Contentos Copyright Management is a system smart contract. Block producers can use the contract to elect a copyright moderator, who then has access by calling the contract to mark any content as genuine or pirated. Pirated content will be ignored by the reward distribution system and brings no benefits to their creators.
In practice, a copyright moderator is an account owned by a professional entity who has a strong ability on copyright authentication and are trusted by majority of block producers.
The Credibility Management contract is very similar to that of Copyright Management. Once a moderator is elected by block producers, she can then call the contract to set anyone's credit.
Contentos supports smart contracts in WebAssembly bytecodes. Any programming language can be used for contract development as long as its compiler supports WebAssembly. For maximum efficiency and convenience, the Contentos team recommends C++, and provides both a C++ SDK and an online IDE.
Developers can implement arbitrary logic in a contract since the programming language is Turing complete. Under the help of SDK, a contract also has access to rich on-chain data and permanent storage.
Currently, only links of contents are stored on chain. Contents are stored by each dApp mostly in centralized cloud storages like Amazon S3, since decentralized storage systems like IPFS and FileCoin are still in their infancy.
The following chart is a visualization of Contentos' technical architecture layers.
The protocol layer implements fundamental infrastructures such as gossip network, general-purpose consensus protocol, distributed ledger, cryptographic math and smart contract virtual machine. It defines the technical possibility of Contentos.
API layer defines the basic business model of Contentos. As of writing, Contentos has implemented sub-systems of account management, credibility management, block producer election, asset trading, copyright management, content publishing, tipping and reward distribution. More rules could be added in the future.
Contentos provides various kinds of contract templates and online contract generator with one-click deployment feature. The team notes that the Application Layer is still in its early stage of developmemt.
Below shows a high-level description of the saBFT Consensus.
Contentos deploys a BFT+DPoS-based consensus protocol called saBFT ("self-adaptive Byzantine Fault Tolerance"). In saBFT, the BFT voting process is separated from the block-producing process. Unlike other BFT family protocols, the Contentos network runs BFT and block-producing asynchronously so that blocks can be committed in batches. This is aimed to overcome network jitters and achieve finality more quickly without compromising safety and liveness.
Block producers are elected in a standard DPoS way, i.e., users vote for candidates and the more tokens staked, the more voting power. Producers create new blocks in turns and are replaced by new producers periodically.
A Tendermint-like 3-step voting BFT process runs in parallel to mark the finality of blocks. Block producers are also BFT validators, who always propose their local head block and vote for blocks on their local chain. When a block is proposed and agreed by 2/3+ majority in 2 rounds of voting, it reaches finality. Block finality also helps a validator switch forks when she finds her head block and the finalized block branches off.
Token Name | COS |
---|---|
Token Type | BEP-2, ERC-20 |
Strategic Sale Allocation | 9.5% of total supply (950,000,000 COS) |
Strategic Sale Price | $0.015 |
Strategic Sale Date | March 2018 |
Amount Raised in Strategic Sale | $14.25 MM |
Seed Sale Allocation | 11.32% of total supply (1,131,726,517 COS) |
Seed Sale Price | $0.015 |
Seed Sale Date | April to June 2018 |
Amount Raised in Seed Sale | $16,975,898 |
Circulating Supply | 1,310,656,724 (13.1%) |
Total Supply | 10,000,000,000 COS |
The token supply distribution is as follows:
As of July 2019, the Contentos team has used 6.22 million USD, or 20% of its funds according to the allocations below:
Contentos holds 96% of its crypto funds in several cold wallets with multi-sig protection. Only multiple C-level management's joint authorization can move funds stored in the cold wallets. 4% of crypto funds are stored in multiple hot wallets and require different levels of authorization before making any payment.
The following chart represents the number and breakdown of all COS tokens that are to be released into circulation on a monthly basis. Note that the Ecosystem Reward will be fully distributed over a 12-year period.
COS is the native utility token in the Contentos ecosystem. Its usage includes the following:
PLANNED DATE | MILESTONE | ACTUAL DATE | TIMING | COMMENTS |
---|---|---|---|---|
2018: Q3 | Early token reward system development on Liveme and Cheez | 2018: Q3 | On time | Liveme App Cheez App |
2018: Q3 | Open Source | 2018: Q3 | On time | Github |
2018: Q3 | Bringing top tier YouTubers to Contentos | 2018: Q3 | On time | Youtube |
2018: Q3 | Photogrid integration with COS | 2018: Q4 | Late | Photogrid App |
2019: Q1 | Contentos testnet v0.1 launch | 2019: Q1 | On time | Github |
2019: Q1 | Open Platform Initiative launch | 2019: Q1 | On time | Cointelegraph Article |
2019: Q2 | Contentos testnet v0.2, v0.3 launch | 2019: Q2 | On time | Github |
2019: Q3 | Android Wallet SDK and Proxy system open sourced | 2019: Q3 | On time | Wallet SDK Proxy Server |
2019: Q3 | Contentos testnet v0.4 launch | 2019: Q3 | On time | Github |
PhotoGrid was planned to be integrated onto the Contentos platform by Q3 2018. However, the PhotoGrid integration was delayed to Q4 2018 due to changes in PhotoGrid's development plan.
Q3 2019
Q4 2019
Contentos strives to build a global decentralized content ecosystem, with an initial concentration in the Asia-Pacific region (China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea).
Contentos primarily collaborates with:
Online community building strategies
Offline community building strategies
Contentos has been active in many blockchain and crypto related events. Upcoming events include ChinaJoy in Shanghai, and Taipei International Comics & Animation Festival in Taiwan.
Technical community building strategies
Ecological operation reward
3.5 billion COS tokens (i.e., 35% of total token supply) will be used as ecosystem rewards, which will be released over 12 years. The annual release amount will increase based on the total number of Contentos users. In the first year, 0.448% of all tokens will be released, and the amount will increase linearly every year until the release of 5.432% in the 12th year.
Contentos hopes that the gradual release of tokens with reference to user growth will help to stabilize the price of tokens and grant appropriate rewards to early participants.
75% of the regular reward tokens will be used to motivate users to create content and participate in ecosystem operations. Another 10% will be used to reward dApp developers for creating a better user experience and thus attracting more users to join the Contentos ecosystem through the dApp. Finally, 15% of the regular reward tokens will be the incentive for block producers.
DApp kick-start reward
To attract more users to participate in the early stages of Contentos, 500 million tokens (i.e., 5% of the total supply) will be offered to the dApp developers recognized by the Foundation to design relevant functions and reward methods to encourage users to join the Contentos ecosystem.
These kick-start reward tokens are released yearly over 5 years.
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