ICO Analysis: Vuulr ICO Review

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Vuulr ICO Review: A comprehensive review and analysis on Vuulr ICO, which is set to disrupt the media broadcasting 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

Vuulr is a decentralized global content platform that democratizes access to media content. Vuulr aims to connect content buyers and sellers, media brands and producers in an integrated ecosystem. Vuulr represents an innovative, end-to-end solution to the broadcast content industry that will eliminate inefficiencies and enhance value in the media supply chain. Through Vuulr’s solution, consumers can have better access to quality content at a more competitive price point.

Current Industry Problem

The television industry is still stuck in the past, with various inefficiencies that struggle to keep up with changing customers preference and technology itself. The issues include:

Time-Consuming: Content acquisition from content producers and distributes can take months to finalize, due to the ‘back-and-forth’ nature of offline content negotiations
Expensive: Overall, the industry spends more than USD $240 billion on content, with an average rising cost of 10% per year. Additionally, middleman that facilitates negotiations with individual broadcasters represents 35% – 40% of total costs. This excessive cost is then passed on to consumers.
Redundancies: The entire content acquisition process must be repeated across other countries and jurisdictions globally, chalking up redundant legal and operational costs.

Applications

Vuulr’s solution consist of 2 major components:

Vuulr Marketplace

A web-based application that supports commercial transactions, bringing together brand sponsors, content owners, distributors and buyers in a digital marketplace. These stakeholders can transact globally and accelerate the content acquisition and sponsorship process exponentially. The only fees charged by Vuulr is on successful deals transacted.

The marketplace will support the following functionalities:

Stakeholder Interaction: Stakeholders will be able to hold real-time text or video chat to facilitate direct negotiations through the marketplace. The capability of appending notes to the negotiation module is also available.
Reputation Management: There is a rating system for stakeholders to evaluate one another, designed to nurture self-regulation and a transparent ecosystem.
Private Branded Marketplace: The Vuulr marketplace is also offered as a white-label service and an embeddable module for content sellers (production houses, film studios etc.)on their websites, allowing for exhibition and transaction of their content on their websites.
Supply Chain Integration: Stakeholders would have direct access to Vuulr’s supply chain protocol and its functionalities, which is described below.

Vuulr Supply Chain

An open-source, supply-chain protocol for the media broadcast industry that will manage avails (content rights), metadata (description of content titles) and unique identification (ID) of the content. Vuulr will utilize the MovieLabs Digital Distribution Framework (MDDF) for the supply chain solutions, an industry-backed standard for the digital automation of workflows and supply chain efficiencies.

The supply chain protocol consists of the following elements:

Content Industry Supply Chain Protocol (CISP): A full-stack implementation of the MDDF, defining the schemas and interfaces that implement industry-accepted specifications
Data Management: Management of data structured according to industry-accepted specifications
Industry-Specific Tools: Availability of tools that facilitate Rights Management, Avails and MetaData for content sellers who wish to manage their data directly
MetaData Refinery: A crowd-sourced MetaData curation platform for the creation, translation, and curation of MetaData

Technology Breakdown

Here is the network architecture of Vuulr’s marketplace and supply chain structure:

The supply chain protocol is open source and will be built of the Ethereum blockchain. (See more: Guide to Ethereum Sharding: Ethereum’s Scalability Solution)

Unique Differentiator

Industry Standard: Utilizing the MDDF framework, Vuulr is trying to create an open source protocol for the entire media broadcast industry. This paves the way for innovation that enhances efficiency throughout the supply chain, saving huge amounts of resources and time. Given that MDDF is backed by most major media brands, Vuulr is well-positioned to be the infrastructural solution that the industry needs to reinvent itself.
Disrupting the Media Broadcast Industry: The current industry is still utilizing legacy systems and processes that can be easily enhanced and redefined using Vuulr’s solution. In fact, the blockchain is a natural use case for the industry to significantly reduce costs and the content-negotiating process, enabling stakeholders to redirect the value to proliferating quality content.

Token Utility & Economics

Token Allocation

Token Utility

Vuulr’s token (VUU) is a utility token that is ERC-20. VUU tokens will be used for the following use cases:

Payment of Fees & Subscriptions: VUU can be used as the medium of exchange looking to pay for transactions fees and subscription charges for Vuulr’s supply-chain and value-added services.
Transaction Settlement and Denomination: The buying and selling of content through the Vuulr marketplace can be denominated and settled in VUU currency. It is important to note that fiat currency will also be accepted
Rewards Program Incentive: Vuulr’s generated profit from operations will be used to buy VUU tokens from the open market to fund the Rewards Program, aimed towards rewarding participants that contribute to the ecosystem. Participants will be rewarded with Reward points (based on the time, value and complexity of users’ actions) that are redeemable from the Vuulr Rewards Token Pool .

VUU has a strong token utility since its use case is strongly linked with the demand for the services offered by Vuulr. More importantly, the Rewards Program Incentive ensures that there is constant buying pressure of VUU from Vuulr themselves, using the profits from operations to incentivize community building and participation from users. The integration of Vuulr’s token utility with its marketing/branding efforts is a great way to align the incentives of all participants in the ecosystem. (See more: Coins, Tokens & Altcoins: What’s the Difference?)

ICO Details

Vuulr will offer 35% of its total supply for the ICO, which is relatively less than most projects. The hardcap looks good at $18.5 million, which is at the lower end of the hardcap range for ICO projects. We opine that Vuulr would have no problem attracting the full hardcap amount.

Team

The founders of Vuulr all hold leadership roles, led by CEO Ian Mckee, COO Ben Flint and CTO Chris Drumgoole. Ian held major roles in tech companies and founded his own social media agency that was later acquired. He pioneered enterprise-scale social media solutions that became the standard in the industry. Ben is highly experienced in the sponsorship and branded content industry, founding 2 data companies in Singapore. Chris possesses extensive experience in leading the engineering and technical front and has a working relationship with Ian. The rest of the team is divided into marketing, business development and software engineers.

This is a great mix of individuals as it shows the depth of experience that Vuulr possesses to disrupt the industry.

Advisors

There are a number of notable industry heavyweight within the media broadcast industry in Vuulr’s advisory board, including Rob Gilby (Managing Director of Walt Disney), Natasha Malhotra (Vice President of Walt Disney in India & S.E. Asia) and Iris Wee (Chief Content & Commercial Officer of MNC Vision Networks). The adviser list also include veterans from the blockchain and data sciences side, making Vuulr’s advisory board exemplary.

Roadmap

Here is Vuulr’s Roadmap:

Traction

Collaborations

Vuulr will be working closely with Entertainment Identifier Registry Association (EIDR), MovieLabs and Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA), an international body for the entertainment industry funded by Hollywood which is currently pushing standards for the TV and film industry.

Github

Vuuler’s Github repository can be found here. It seems that there is only one contributor to all 4 of Vuulr’s repository, attributed to Chris Drumgoole who is the CTO of the project. The most active repo was for the private chain testnet, which has 28 commits.The development of Vuulr’s codes and technical implementation of its protocol seems to be progressing slowly due to a lack of technical team members.

Accolades

Vuulr came in 4^th place (out of 40) in the ICO pitching competition organised by d10e, a leading conference on decentralization. This a good indicator of the soundness of Vuulr’s project and vision.

(Read also: Guide on Identifying Scam Coins)

Strengths

First Mover Advantage: Vuulr is the first project that is looking to integrate blockchain technology into the media broadcast space, giving it ample first-mover advantages in the short to medium term.
Top Notch Backing: The MDDF framework already has backing from major Hollywood studios like Disney and Fox, and major digital platforms like Amazon, Google Play and Microsoft Movies & TV.
Strong Advisory List: Vuulr has an extensive list of experts across the broadcast industry, media sectors and even machine learning experts that are well-recognised and established in the industry.
Dual-Currency Acceptance: Transactions on the Vuulr platform can be denominated and settled in VUU tokens and fiat. Fiat acceptance is crucial at this stage where cryptocurrency usage hasn’t reached mainstream adoption, and the utility of VUU isn’t compromised as those who use VUU tokens will enjoy pricing discounts and premium access. This dual system ensures that there are low barriers to participation for major corporations, especially when Vuulr’s solution aims to be an industry standard.
Strong Token Utility & Dynamics: Vuulr’s token dynamics has a real use case for the ecosystem, incentivising usage through discounts and premium access while powering internal demand through its token buyback mechanics. In addition, the rewards program would enhance the adoption of VUU tokens.
Detailed Roadmap: Vuulr’s roadmap is extensive and details the milestones across all 3 verticals which is the marketplace, the supply chain and the CISP protocol.

Weaknesses

Lack of Code Progress: The coding and implementation of Vuulr’s protocol are managed by only Chris, who is the CTO of Vuulr. It would be great to have additional members on board to work on the actual code and protocol implementation to expedite the developmental process.
Slow Market Innovation: The media broadcast industry is dominated by large players that are slow to pick up the latest innovation. Moving away from legacy systems require a huge push, and the integrations of Vuulr’s solution must be seamless and efficient for Vuulr to establish itself as the industry standard.

Summary

Vuulr’s vision to be the industry standard is an ambitious, but much-needed solution for the media broadcasting industry. The use of blockchain technology to streamline the content acquisition process would enhance value across all stakeholders in the supply chain, and Vuulr is well-positioned to tackle this huge barrier.

Verdict: Good Project

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