Quick presentation of Wings.ai

I decided to use Steemit for my forecasts on Wings.ai. If you haven't already heard of Wings.ai, a crypto project (on top of Ethereum), it's a DAO specifically dedicated to help the launch of crypto project - before the ICO, the team may publish the project & ICO parameters which in return will be forecast and evaluated by the wings community. For more information on the wings platform and the forecasting mechanism, see the Wings blog. Some steemians have already presented this project and you can find old interesting post by @ether19 ; by @kanoptx ; by @generation.easy or by @jwiz168. As you can check with the numerous article on steem it, wings.ai community is present already here

Why using Steemit? Just cause when we made the forecast, we have to put a tiny review in 160 characters and we can, for more deep explanation, put a INTERNET link to a more long review! So, Steemit looks like the good place: as i made a more precise forecasting, steemians will be able to review my forecast just on their preferred platform: hitting two targets with one bullet. so today, we will give our opinion on the...

Flixxo project: A Community based video distribution

Introduction

The Flixxo project have on the basis that existent video streaming platform are centralized and that can explain some inefficiencies. Content creators, like viewers and adds-providers have to met them on a hub content platform (as YouTube) which in return, by his middle-man status, monopolize the great part of the revenue streams which are generated. Furthermore, on YouTube, Facebook, Instragram, etc. the recognition of quality of the content passed by the filter of unlimited "like", which are incentive for content creators which can push to a decrease of quality contents relatively to their infinite supply.

Thereby, Flixxo platform aims to merged BitTorrent protocol with blockchain technologies in order to create a dedicated decentralized video distribution network, where users will be the owners and beneficiaries of their content relatively to their quality. The core features of the project is to built their platform around a specific and scares token which will serve to share and monetize the network resources (content creation; attention of viewers) between all the stakeholders. For more information, you can found a abstract of the project on the wings.ai site, on their dedicated web site and by reading their white paper.

As explain on their white paper:

Flixxo combines BitTorrents and smart contracts to create the first legal, decentralized content distribution network.

Flixxo creates a P2P network where authors can distribute and monetize their own content. They incentivize the distribution of their media and remove unnecessary intermediate parties by sharing their revenues with the “seeders” – a term coined in the torrents environment that refers to those who have downloaded content, keep it in their computer and share it. Flixxo allows true end users to pay a fair price for watching licensed content in a friendly and safe environment.

Flixxo is an open network, a friendly and intuitive platform, a BitTorrent client, a token and a wallet. As the network grows, so does its bandwidth and its storage space, making it more efficient and able to handle more users. The more content is being shared, the better bandwidth it will have for being distributed and streamed.

The content spreads across the network, and a final user gets it from many seeders at the time. However, the payment channel is decentralized and the consumer is able to pay right to the producer, without any intermediary party being involved. The content producer chooses whether he/she wants to share its earnings with the network or not, and in which conditions he/she would do that.

The team behind are skilled and have already developed their alpha product. This project have establish numerous and important partnership for later development, with some preeminent actors in the crypto sphere:

PopcornTime (Federico Abad, who are in their team, is the UX / UI Creator of PopCorn Time) which have already numerous users and strong reputation
Streamio; which have already numerous users and strong reputation .
AdEx; which aims to establish ad market with blochchain tech (see my post on Snip ICO)
ICOFUNDING
FAV!
CoinFabric
Wings
RSK Labs (Adrián Garelik who are in their team is Co-Founder at RSK Labs. He Develops solutions for OTT since 1998 and he is Film producer.
Forklog
Bancor network, which is focus to offer liquidity to small/medium scall network, see here or here; post by @paulcoman

Numerous steeminans have already speak of the Flixxo project on steemit; don't hesitate to look at for more informations. Old posts writing on by@danizaharie; by@cryptoportfolio; by@kishanshah; by@captinevil; by@icomagazine; and by@albertdstone.

The Flixx Token

Flixx Token is an standard ERC20 ethereum token (see this post by @raggs2rich) which are on the nexus of all the project. The supply will be fixed at the beginning and no more will be issued after the Token Generation Events. The real economic value of Flixx token will derive from its central function and it's uses within the platform for:

users to watch videos,
by producers to monetize their work and incentivize the network, and
by advertisers to pay for your attention.

It's creates a full, closed and organic token economy where advertisers need to buy Flixx from content producers which in return can "like" other content creation...

Interestingly, multi-ownership of content creation will be possible by the use of specific smart-contract which will enable sharing revenue inbetween numerous creators at a predefined conditions (shares and timing). They have planned to established filters and dispute process for inappropriate content (NSFW) or in case of ownership/legal dispute (see the dedicated part of the white paper on this topics)

The ICO:

The ICO will be held on 24/10/2017.

The minimum goal to start the project is 5 000 Ether and the team have defined a 75000 Ether Hard Cap.

As described on their white paper they have scheduled discounts for early adopters are offered to incentive participation in the token sale.

Purchases made over the first 24 hours of the sale will get a 30% discount (1ETH = 5200 Flixx)

From day 2 to 7 — 25% discount
(1 ETH = 5000 Flixx)

From day 7 to day 14—20% discount (1 ETH = 4800 Flixx)

From day 14 today 21— 15% discount (1 ETH= 4600 Flixx)

From day 21 to day 30—10% discount (1ETH=4400 Flixx)

the distribution of token will be:

My forecasting:

the wings.ai question is:

Forecast Question: You are forecasting the total amount of ether (ETH) that the project will raise in it's upcoming token sale

Pro

The idea tho create a decentralized streaming platform seems to me great especially by merging BitTorrent protocol (which have already huge users base) with the blockchain tech which in return enable payment, monetization and ownership on the torrent space - which is totally new!
For investor, the Flixx token seems to be designed to have be scarce and valuable within the platform, which if it succeed in attracting many users have to push the rise of it's value.
In the same idea, the ICO have an Hardcap, and if only 30% of all Flixx token will be dedicated to TGE/ICO investors, the great majority (50%) will be reserved not for the team (Only 10% which will be vested for 2 years ie good practice) but for the future 10 years of community development (incentivization of the community). Demonstrating that the growing user base IS a great part of the success and that the team will work for that
The project is carried by a skilled team which have already developed a product and concluded some important partnership in his field (existing torrent platform; ad providers; infrastructural features through Bancor and RSK lab)

Con

Big platform already exist which benefit of their image. It may will be difficult to increase the Flixxo marketshare on the first period: network effect need a inflexion point in the number of users but the real challenge is to reach this critical mass (for user, ad provider and content creator). And we have in the same field Megaupload 2.0 which want to create some equivalent platform...
They seems to have in mind, as writes in the WP, the numerous issue which could be appears with copy righted contents. We know all that Torrent are more usefull for pirated film than for our own creation... Curious to see this in practice
Not really on the project himself but... They use wings.ai for price discovery rather than to established more precise ICO parameters. Thus losing the most important use case of wings: improve ICO by discussing/reshaping proposed parameters.

Conclusion

Big platforms already exist which benefit of their image. It may will be difficult to increase the Flixxo market share on the first period: network effect need a inflexion point in the number of users but the real challenge is to reach this critical mass (for user, ad provider and content creator). And we have in the same field Megaupload 2.0 which want to create some equivalent platform. In any way, this kind of project have some rooms to grow and have the power to transform numerous streaming/torrents users into crypto-currencies users. It's, in my view -as Megaupload 2.0 - this kind of project which could be brings crypto to mass adoption.

Ps: I'm a native French speaker, so be indulgent on my english ;-)! I'll made all to improve it!