ROYEX

Inspiration

The inspiration for our project, Royex, came from a deep-rooted understanding of the challenges artists and creators face in managing their intellectual property. We were inspired by the countless stories of talented individuals struggling with bureaucratic hurdles, intermediaries, and complicated processes in protecting and monetizing their creative works. We saw the need for a solution to empower artists, simplify the copyright management process, and offer new investment opportunities. This vision drove us to embark on the journey of creating Royex.

What it does

Royex is a platform that seamlessly blends art and copyright through blockchain technology. It provides artists and investors with a streamlined, secure, and user-friendly system to manage copyrights without the red tape. With Royex, copyright operations are simplified, allowing for the tokenization of royalties. This approach opens up countless of possibilities for copyright distribution and collective agreements for artists and investors, which transcend the limitations of the music industry by committing to encompassing all forms of art.

How we built it

Stage 0. We started by researching the market and competitors to pinpoint our project's unique angle and the problems it solves. Identifying the need for our project, we explored smart contract solutions suitable for our royalty distribution system and selected one that met our immediate needs.

Stage 1. Defined the set of features our MVP should have by the end of the hackathon. The choice was made according to how much hacking time we would have during the hackathon and how hard these features would be to implement.

Stage 2. Next, we began coding, starting with the smart contracts. We implemented the royalty tokens and voting system based on OpenZeppelin’s Stakeholder Collective standard, as well as Royalty Payment Pool and Over-the-Counter Market.

Stage 3. After developing and testing the necessary smart contracts, we began to implement the backend. It is focused on tracking smart contract events and displaying real-time royalty data efficiently.

Stage 4. We also decided to implement the Initial Royalty Offering and Royalty Exchange smart contracts. Besides that, we covered core smart contracts with tests.

Stage 5. We finished coding the smart contract listener.

Stage 6. Our last step was the frontend, which was designed for easy demonstration of the project’s functionality.

Stage 7. After all the necessary features were implemented, we started to fix the bugs and enhance the code, which led to the first presentation-ready MVP of Royex.

Challenges we ran into

One of the challenges we ran into was exploring the legal field. As we all have a scientific background, it was an initial challenge to comprehensively understand the legal problems that artists have. However, after discussing with various artists and lawyers, we understood the necessities of the market. Afterward, we used our highly developed scientific and analytic background to architect and implement our project Royex, which solves the issues artists are facing.

While we envisioned a project with numerous functionalities, we were constrained by limited time, which allowed us to implement only a select few. Our post-hackathon plans entail an expansive development phase, as initially projected.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are especially proud that our team made the initial idea a reality. From the outset, we faced complex challenges but successfully navigated them. Each accomplishment and milestone has brought us closer to our goal of enhancing the music industry by simplifying the bureaucracy of artists, allowing them to focus their work on the creations rather than the paperwork.

We're proud to have launched the innovative Initial Royalty Offering, empowering artists with a novel way to monetize their work and investors with a fresh avenue for investment.
Our team developed a service that has transformed the speed and efficiency of royalty transactions, and we take pride in the positive impact it will have.
By merging multiple services into one cohesive platform, we've significantly cut down on the complexity and time typically associated with copyright management.
We have actively interviewed artists to understand their demand and provide for it, therefore hindering the exact gaps that the industry has.
We are proud of having an adventure in a newly emerging field of digital law by making substantial strides in understanding and outlining the legal framework for asset tokenization across different jurisdictions.
We have developed a working prototype of our platform, visualizing the concept of our asset tokenization approach.
Meeting project deadlines was our primary focus (and we did it!), ensuring each stage received the required attention.
We are proud of the high-level organization shown by our team, as we left no stone unturned in understanding and harnessing the potential of creating a Royalties Market on the NEAR Protocol.

What we learned

While developing Royex, our journey has been as enriching as it has been challenging, allowing us to deepen our expertise across music, legal frameworks, and cutting-edge technology. Our exploration into the capabilities of blockchain led us to choose Aurora, a powerful layer-2 solution built on the NEAR Protocol, as the backbone of our platform. Aurora's flexibility, scalability, and efficiency have been instrumental in realizing our vision. The unity and resilience of our team have enabled us to navigate and overcome the complexities of project development, ensuring that every milestone was not just met but surpassed with success.