Wantu

Main Page
STO based Investment
Cheaper content delivery using Theta network
For famous youtubers
Main page
Project Detail Page - Teaser
Project Detail Page - Photos and details
Social Features
Invest amount
Invest completed
Check token based on smart contract address
Transfer token details

I. Inspiration

Background

As a YouTube creator, I experienced firsthand the difficulty of raising capital to produce quality contents and the unreasonable revenue share from the platform. As a blockchain developer, I wanted to solve this problem in a decentralized way.

Problem (Creators)

Youtube Creator Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7ZMM_1Kbo8

We've seen a lot of creators who are passionate about creating quality contents shut down due to financial concerns or only focus on making commercials.

The current YouTube service policy forces creators to upload every day in order to get more exposure from the algorithm, and this has led to an environment where it is more important for creators to post trending, sniping, and sensationalized videos than to create quality content, and this is only getting worse.

Through interviews with 30 professional creators, we found: 1. unfair revenue distribution system; 2. algorithms and sudden account suspensions that make it difficult to produce quality content; and 3. disadvantages in financial services.

Problem (Fans)

Fans want creators to create more quality content. So, sponsorships are often used to help keep content creators going, but 30% of that money is taken by the platform.

The quality content that fans want to see is often sponsored by advertisers, so fans end up seeing ads instead of the content they really want to see.

Fans are also contributors to the ecosystem as consumers of content, but they are not rewarded at all. So even if they do support creators, there is no particular reward for them, which makes it hard for them to feel the need to support. If fans want to invest in or own content themselves, there is currently no way for them to do so.

II. What it does - Solution

With Wantu, content creators upload a teaser video of the video they want to produce, and their fans decide on the value and make a piece investment. The entire investment process is transparently managed on the blockchain.

Once the funding is complete and the content is produced and monetized, the content creator and the investor share the profits, which is how Wantu works.

On our platform, content creators can produce better quality contents with more stable income. Fans participate in the creation of content and build new relationships with creators.

III. How we built it

Current progress

Creators issue Security Tokens (ST) to fans to fund content creation / Beta completed
Theta-based OTT platform improves profitability, distributing revenue to creators and ST holders / Building with Theta

Frontend Used Flutter to support cross platform. We are plan to support web using react near future.

Backend Build with python Django framework. Used AWS EC-2, RDS to provide our server. Used S3 & Cloudfront for uploading thumbnail and images. Used Theta Video API to upload our teaser and full content video upload. Built NodeJS Server to deploy and transfer TNT-20 tokens.

IV. Challenges and Accomplishments

As our project was based on python, and theta network don't have python based SDK yet, we had to wrap our REST API Endpoints with NodeJS based server to use Theta-JS-SDK. We are really satisfied for forgetting about high cost of content distribution thanks to the Theta Video API. And we expect huge amount of traffic once we launched, as our contents are made by famous Youtubers in Korea, and we want to see how Theta Network can handle high traffic and compare the actual cost for the traffic between traditional CDNs.

V. What we learned

Developement

When we were planning our decentralized service, it was difficult to find a mainnet that would work with our service. Theta is a blockchain optimized for the decentralized creator economy. In particular, the low cost of storage and streaming is a powerful tool.

The API documentation and developer community helped us build our product, as we could find repositories from the projects presented in the previous hackathons.

Business

When we originally planned to build our product on AWS, we only considered launching an OTT service, excluding a live streaming service due to cost, but when we discovered Theta, we got the idea for a live streaming service. Basically, we are pursuing an OTT platform, but we can also hold live premiere screening events for fans who are invested. We plan to utilize the live streaming service in various ways for fans.

VI. What's next for Wantu

Token gated system for NFT Holders and Token Holders to access exclusive contents.
Onboarding of WEB2 Creators to Wantu : We have already gathered more than 30 Youtube Creators
Listing Security Token on exchange using APIs not using theta explorer.
Next global OTT platform backed by fans → WEB3 Mass Adoption

VII. What we can contribute to Theta Network?

Mass Adoption by creating Theta wallets for users. As we are targeting high-quality contents that delivered free, many viewers would move to ‘Wantu’.

Team

Our team members are Blockchain & Content creator experts.

Yoonseok Choi - Technical Lead

Serial Entrepreneur with AI, Blockchain Startups (Co-founder and CTO of NFT based Wine Investment Platform that raised Pre-A Series) Youtube Creator with 50K Subscribers.