Zesha

Zesha viewer chrome extension (daily videos recommendation)
Creators Landing Page
Viewers Landing Page
Zesha Sign up Web3 Auth
Zesha Creator Dashboard
Zesha Creator Videos - 1
Zesha Creator Videos - 2
View Recommendation In Web App
Zesha Payout
Zesha Overlay Picture in Picture mode

Background

One of the core values of blockchain is how it's helping to decentralize authority and instead empower everyone to benefit and earn from the internet economy.


Empower synonyms: enable
Zesha (Zulu word), meaning enable

And that's what we set out to do with Zesha, backed by Theta blockchain technology.

Inspiration

Dosia is a 27-year-old content creator living in Mauritius. She started creating YouTube videos in Jan. 2019. Since then, she has posted over 130 videos, many centered around helpful tips for navigating life as a student & then expatriate living on the tiny Indian Ocean island.

Despite her enormous value to the network - over 155,000 views, and frequent appreciative messages from hundreds of people who've found her videos helpful, Dosia didn't earn her first dollar from YouTube until September 2021, more than two years after publishing her first video. Since then, she has made less than $100 from YouTube… While YouTubing doesn't benefit her financially, she keeps creating content due to her love for the craft…

Millions of creators on YouTube and other popular platforms have a similar story. They usually can't monetize until they've acquired a large following, and only a handful of creators can earn a good income from their passion. Additionally, these platforms don’t provide monetization tools for creators to earn directly from their followers.

For viewers alike, a famous saying goes, "If something is free, then you're the product." This statement hits home for most of us - we spend hours each day watching content from our favorite content creators on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc... Beyond the value we get from creators on these platforms, the platforms themselves provide little value to us directly, despite making massive advertising revenues from mining our attention and tracking our online activities even outside their platforms.

Zesha aims to solve these problems by providing a level playing field that empowers both content creators and viewers to earn from the value they provide to online platforms.

User Personas

content creator dosia

content viewer Bose

What it does

Zesha is a platform that empowers content creators to earn from creating content they love, and viewers alike make from engaging with the content they love. We are building a more inclusive web where everyone benefits – from the creator to the viewer to the platform.

For content creators

With Zesha, content creators can upload their original videos and start earning from the first view. To support this, ads are embedded in the video, and earnings from these ads are split between the creator (70%), Zesha (20%), and viewers (10%).

Zesha also provides monetization tools for content creators to earn directly from their loyal fans and followers.

Benefits for content creators

Earn from your first view or listen
Get a more significant share of revenues. After all, you're the one doing the hard work ;)
Monetization tools, including the ability to accept tips, provide premium gated content, and subscriptions
Video & channel analytics.

For viewers

Zesha provides a browser extension (and in the future, a mobile app) that allows viewers to earn rewards when they engage with ads on videos they watch. These rewards can be redeemed for gift cards, exclusive offers, charity donations, or even withdrawn directly as TFUEL.

The extension recommends videos based on the user’s interests and frequency preferences. Each recommendation contains a list of videos, which they can choose to watch either in full mode, which opens the video on a new page, or in distraction-free mode, which overlays the video player in a floating window. At the same time, they continue their work in other tabs.

While watching videos, viewers can engage with ads unobtrusively embedded into the video. For each ad they engage with, the user earns some rewards.

Zesha also empowers viewers to support their favorite content creators through tips, subscriptions, and premium content.

Benefits for viewers

Real-life rewards which you can redeem instantly.
AI-powered recommendation engine that only shows you what you love.
Control your content consumption "diet" by setting recommendation limits.
Reduce distractions with overlay mode.
Support your favorite content creators through tips & subscriptions.

How we built it

We built Zesha using the following technologies;

Theta P2P Javascript SDK
Theta Video API
Theta Edge Network: For storage and content delivery, NFT DRM
React / NextJS: Wr built the web app user interface with React.
HTML/CSS, ReactJS, Webpack, Chrome Extensions API: We built the viewer's Chrome extension using these technologies.
NodeJS/MongoDB: The backend server was built with NodeJS, with a MongoDB database.
Google Recommendations API: We are currently integrating Google's AI recommendation engine to deliver videos that match users' interests, preferences, and viewing habits.
Web3Auth: For creating non-custodial wallets on Zesha via social sign-in.

Architecture

Zesha Architecture

Challenges we ran into

Accessing the reward pool video API: The documentation wasn't sufficient to understand how to set up the TFUEL reward pool. We ended up setting up our own reward pool for this hackathon. We hope the Theta team will be able to support us for this post-hackathon.
Recruiting & onboarding content creators: As an early project, the creators we reached out to want some social proof, which is understandable. In our experience, this situation can be handled by paying revenue upfront to attract high-quality creators, as leading VOIP platforms use this strategy already.
Publishing to the Chrome Web Store: We are still heavily in dev and need a fast release cycle during the Hackathon so that viewers can test our Chrome extension. We currently zipped the application for download, and post-hackathon, we will officially release it on the Chrome extension store
Uploading 4K Video

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Onboarding three content creators with a combined following of more than 20,000 fans to Zesha in just 2 weeks.
Designing the landing page, creator/viewer dashboard, as well as viewer extension in only a week.
Providing a seamless onboarding experience for viewers and creators, by integrating Web3Auth to create wallets for them using their social accounts.
Usage of the Theta Video API.
Building the Zesha Chrome Extension for Viewers.
Integrating pre-roll and mid-roll ads on videos.
Building the Zesha Creator and Viewer web app.
Setting up our TFuel Pool for payment setup for viewers and Creators.

What we learned

From a business & user perspective

We researched several existing watch-to-earn platforms and models such as Imagine Replay, Ta Ta Tu, Rewarded TV, etc. We also interviewed several content creators and viewers, in order to identify the main problems we needed to focus on solving with Zesha.

From our research, we realized the importance of vetting content creators, and not directly opening up the platform to just any form of user-generated content, especially in the early days. This helps us ensure interesting and high-quality content and prevents the platform from being overwhelmed by video spammers who want to make money and might end up creating copyright problems for Zesha.

We also realized through our user research that the typical Web3 onboarding flow used on other platforms (setting and backing up seed phrases) made it very difficult to onboard users onto Zesha. This is why we opted for Web3Auth, which takes care of wallet & private key generation, and allows the user to sign up using their existing social accounts without having to set up seed phrases.

We also learned that apart from crypto earnings, users want to be able to redeem rewards instantly without having to go through an exchange. This is why we are building other reward systems on Zesha, including gift cards, exclusive offers and donations to charity.

From a technical perspective

We are software engineers and product managers with 20 years of combined experience building products.

However, building a Chrome extension wasn't something we had in mind initially. From our research, we learned that because users already open so many apps/websites daily, it was important for us to keep the effort required to use Zesha on a daily basis very low. With a Chrome extension, we can easily send notifications and viewers can easily access Zesha without having to open yet another tab.

To build the extension, we extensively read Google's docs, and also learned how to build and bundle extensions using ReactJs & Webpack, as this helped us launch faster. Most online resources on these topics are fairly outdated, especially due to the recent migration of the Chrome Extensions API from V2 to V3 manifest.

What's next for Zesha.io

Company Incorporation and setup
Publishing Zesha extension to the Chrome Web store
Onboard high-quality content creators
Get exclusive Live streaming deals such as Local sports events, concerts

Furthermore, post-hackathon, here is how we plan on scaling Zesha to onboard the subsequent billion users:

Zesha Mobile app
Original content (videos, documentaries, and animated videos)
Support for native ads embedded as videos within Zesha
AI-based recommendations
Faster uploads and streaming without consuming too much bandwidth.
Support for additional (and automated) payout methods (local currencies, gift cards & charity donation options)
Monthly subscriptions & Tips to creators
Livestream feature
Gated audience and content. feature