Videocoin ICO Review: A comprehensive review and analysis on Videocoin ICO, which is set to revolutionize the video industry.
This represents the writer’s personal opinions and does not – in any way- constitute a recommendation of an investment or financial advice. Please assume caution when investing in cryptocurrencies and do so at your own risk, as it is extremely volatile and you can lose your money.
Overview
VideoCoin plans to disrupt the video market by creating a decentralized video infrastructure network that will provide end-to-end cloud-video services. This includes video encoding, storage and a content delivery network (CDN) via a peer-to-peer (P2P) algorithmic market.
VideoCoin aims to solve 2 major challenges in the traditional video market:
- 60-80% Reduction of Video Costs: Utilizing idle computing servers through its cloud-based blockchain platform to process, store and distribute video much more cheaply as compared to Google and Amazon. They’ve estimated that the cost of streaming can be reduced by up to 60%-80% or more.
- Next-Generation Video Innovation: A unique proposition of blockchain-based solutions is the innovation of next-generation applications that can be built on VideoCoin’s platform. This allows the creation of a wide-range of services that wasn’t possible through traditional mechanisms due to obvious infrastructural and costs constraints.
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Applications
VideoCoin implements decentralized versions of the core components pertaining to the video infrastructure process, thereby creating a competitive environment for a new breed of video miners that’ll compete to earn rewards by providing computing power.
These video miners can run on data centre servers, household desktop computers or even mobile phones, creating a powerful network of computers which would otherwise go unutilized. VideoCoin incentivizes miners to use such unused resources and provide as much computation power, storage and bandwidth available.
There are 3 main components of the VideoCoin network as follows:
- Distributed Video Encoding: VideoCoin implements a Distributed Video Processing platform that splits a video encoding task into several subtasks and processes them in parallel, thus effectively producing much higher frame rates on commodity hardware.
- Distributed Video Storage Network: VideoCoin will implement Sonata, a distributed file system on top of commodity hardware provided by storage miners. Sonata is a scalable, fault-tolerant, distributed storage system that works closely with a wide variety of concurrent data access applications. Sonata splits videos into playable segments and distributes them across the storage network created on top of disk space provided by storage miners.
- Content Distribution Network: In VideoCoin, distribution miners act as paid proxy servers for storage miners that will store data. An algorithmic market will be inbuilt to the network for clients to negotiate contracts directly with distribution miners and storage miners, in a bid to deliver high-quality video to the end-user via a proxy server that is in close geographical proximity.
Here’s a breakdown of the participants within the VideoCoin network:
- Storage Miners: Those who provide their computing hardware for video storage will receive rewards in the form of VID tokens. Their role is similar to origin servers.
- Distribution Miners: Paid proxy servers that earn VID tokens by delivering videos to users, acting as the gateway between the VideoCoin network and the Internet.
- Compute Miners: Execute video functions -mainly transcoding – by providing CPU time; the more computation, the higher the rewards.
- Relay Miners: Miners that relay storage transparently to third-party cloud storage servers (e.g. unused capacity on AWS).
Unique Differentiator
Here are several unique selling points of VideoCoin:
- Video Cost Reduction: The utilization of computing power – with VID tokens as an incentive – from those who possess additional disk space and excessive bandwidth allows VideoCoin to tremendously lower the data costs by up to 60%-80%. VideoCoin is the first decentralized project to solve this issue through an end-to-end infrastructure network that can compete with the big boys. (See also: Evolution of Cryptocurrency: Replacing Modern Cash)
- End-To-End Video Infrastructure: VideoCoin’s focus on being a full stack video infrastructure protocol layer easily differentiates it from similar projects in the space, including Filecoin and Storj which are focused only on decentralized data storage. This is just one focus of VideoCoin’s infrastructure plans.
- Limited Barriers to Entry: Anyone with a computer – and more importantly, servers and data centres – can load VideoCoin’s software and start encoding video since modern computers are an equipped encoder. No additional hardware is required. This allows for greater participation from anyone looking to earn rewards in the form of VID tokens.
- Savvy, Prescient Veterans: No stranger to the trappings of start-up challenges, while many ICOs have squandered their escrow treasuries in this bear crypto market, (unnamed publicly closed ICOs of $40MM now have less than $17MM in escrow due to ETH drop) VideoCoin has smartly converted $36MM+ smartly to fiat during the raise. They have a healthy war chest and have not gambled on crypto volatility with contributor funds.
Team
Founder/CEO
Halsey Minor is a proven tech visionary who has founded some of the most successful companies with a cumulative value of over $100 billion. The organizations he founded includes crypto service Uphold, CNET Networks, Google Voice and Salesforce.
CTO
Devadutta Ghat was the founder and Chief Architect of the Intel Video Transcode Service, the basis for Facebook’s video platform. He was also a Senior Product Manager previously at Cloudera after completing his MBA in Berkeley.
Head of Strategy
Seth Shapiro is a two-time Emmy Award winner and a leading advisor in business innovation and media. His impressive accolades include being the Governor of The Television Academy and Professor at USC. Seth has launched over 25 services at DIRECTTV, including NFL Sunday Ticket Interactive and TiVo, the world’s first major DVR platform.
Engineering Team
VideoCoin has a healthy line-up of experienced engineers that are well-versed in cloud systems, video processing applications and frontend development.
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Advisors & Investors
Videcoin is backed by a powerful list of advisors and investors. Prominent advisors include Hanno Basse (CTO of 20th Century Fox Film), Ted Schilowitz (Futurist in Residence at Paramount Pictures), Michael Terpin (Co-founder of BitAngels) and John Ward, (Senior VP of Content Operations at DIRECTV).
In addition, Videcoin has raised early-stage investments from the big institutional names in the cryptocurrency sphere such as Michael Novogratz of Galaxy Investment Partners. Other prominent institutional investors include notable funds such as Alphabit, BaseTwo Capital, Arcadia Crypto and Binary Financial, which was a seed investor in Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter. The partners have committed to datacenter mining orchestrating, smart advisory, and pr/marketing in global communities around the globe
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Traction
VideoCoin has been developing its infrastructure over the past 2 years, with over 200,000 lines of codes and 10,000 hours of videos processed. The video infrastructure layer, which does distributed encoding and distribution, is already in production, running on as many as 250 nodes at a time. Look for updates soon on its gitHub repository.
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Roadmap
VideoCoin’s roadmap is pretty rudimentary, only showcasing the token generation event and the scheduled dates of the alpha and beta launch.
Token Economics
Even though the hardcap looks relatively high compared to other ICOs at USD $50 million, FileCoin raised $250M going after only the storage component representing 6% of internet traffic. By limiting supply to $50MM, VideoCoin should create great economic value for their community. The nature of VideCoin’s project of creating an end-to-end video infrastructure, as well as its huge potential in disrupting the video space warrants a sizeable valuation. A majority of the tokens (70%) will be allocated towards the mining process.
The ERC20 tokens that will initially be released in the middle of 2018 time frame are useable immediately on the network. In fact, several large-scale alpha node players have already acquired their stake. (See also: Guide to Ethereum: What is Gas, Gas Limit and Gas Price?)
Network Supply & Release Schedule
VID currency supply will halve its block rewards approximately every 4 years, with 93% of all mineable tokens being distributed by the tenth year. With the passage of time, block rewards will become scarce and will only affect the Verifier Pool. Miners will not be impacted as payment to miners through microtransactions is independent of block rewards in the VideoCoin Network. The Verifier Pool will remain incentivized through wattage and transaction fees.
Strengths
- High-Profile ICO: VideoCoin has cancelled its public ICO ahead of schedule due to high demand from private investors. There is unmet demand from the retail side of the market, which will tend to push price upwards when trading starts.
- Massive Market Opportunity: Given that video represents the internet’s largest ecosystem (82% of internet traffic), VideoCoin is well-positioned to compete in this oligopoly market with the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Even taking a small chunk out of this pie would mean billions of dollars of market share.
- Solving a Real Need: Reducing video streaming costs by up to 80% or more would undoubtedly disrupt the video market. If realized, traditional video giants would need to competitively slash prices to effectively compete.
- Natural Blockchain Use-Case: The commoditization of computational power – under the structure of a sharing economy – has the potential to make the system much more efficient as it allows the sharing of computer resources globally.
- Strong Team/Advisors/Investors: Highly experienced top-level management, a powerful line-up of advisors and investors makes this project a strong contender against traditional data services providers such as Amazon and Google.
- Pragmatic Go-To-Market Strategy: VideoCoin will employ a phased approach to entering the industry by focusing initially on acting as a bridge between existing CDN systems and cloud providers such as AWS, Google and MSFT. This ensures that quality, speed and proven adoption are constantly improved to attract market share.
Weaknesses
- Lack of Marketing Spend: Minor has a history of building world-class companies that solve real-world problems but does not spend big on Marketing in the process. This ICO is not widely known and has not been widely publicized. Want to see published announcements and prototype development from their partners, including Paramount, ATT/Uverse, and Fox.
- Long Roadmap Ahead: While LivePlanet VR will be the use case proving the viability of VideoCoin, VideoCoin’s Alpha for media partners is expected to be ready only in the first quarter of 2019, and its beta will be scheduled for release during July 2019. In this high-paced market, this is a complicated and complex build and will be a relatively long wait for early investors to start getting excited about the developments.
- Rudimentary Roadmap & Token Metrics: A more detailed roadmap, token metrics and go-to-market strategy are yet to be made public as of this moment.
Summary
VideoCoin is poised to be a full stack video infrastructure protocol layer solution that has the potential to match the likes of big players in the space, including Amazon and Google. Given the potential of significant cost advantages and innovation for video industry, speed and efficiency, many are looking towards VideoCoin favourably, betting on Mr Minor to strike gold again. Combined with an all-star team and powerful backing, VideoCoin looks set to be a promising investment.
Verdict: Excellent Project
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Beneficial Resources To Get You Started
If you're starting your journey into the complex world of cryptocurrencies, here's a list of useful resources and guides that will get you on your way:
Trading & Exchange
- Crypto Guide 101: Choosing The Best Cryptocurrency Exchange
- Guide to Bittrex Exchange: How to Trade on Bittrex
- Guide to Binance Exchange: How to Open Binance Account and What You Should Know
- Guide to Etherdelta Exchange: How to Trade on Etherdelta
- Guide To Cryptocurrency Trading Basics: Introduction to Crypto Technical Analysis
- Cryptocurrency Trading: Understanding Cryptocurrency Trading Pairs & How it Works
- Crypto Trading Guide: 4 Common Pitfalls Every Crypto Trader Will Experience
Wallets
- Guide to Cryptocurrency Wallets: Why Do You Need Wallets?
- Guide to Cryptocurrency Wallets: Opening a Bitcoin Wallet
- Guide to Cryptocurrency Wallets: Opening a MyEtherWallet (MEW)
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This represents the writer’s personal opinions and does not – in any way- constitute a recommendation of an investment or financial advice. Please assume caution when investing in cryptocurrencies and do so at your own risk, as it is extremely volatile and you can lose your money.
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I'm Aziz, a seasoned cryptocurrency trader who's really passionate about 2 things; #1) the awesome-revolutionary blockchain technology underlying crypto and #2) helping make bitcoin great ‘again'!
