Halsey Minor, co-founder of Live Planet, CNET, and Salesforce.com announced, last month, the launch of his newest venture: VideoCoin, a network to leverage unused computing power for decentralized video encoding, storage, and distribution. Other high-profile, internet video industry veterans working on the project include Chief Architect of the Intel Video Transcode Service, Devadutta Ghat; two-time Emmy Award winner and Governor of Interactive Media at the Television Academy, Seth Shapiro and SVP of Digital Video Initiatives at Paramount Pictures and Technicolor, Seth Skolnik. The project has USD 25 million in funding committed and the crowdsale will be held in early 2018.
VideoCoin aims to usher in ‘the new cloud’ on a secure, public blockchain, by marshalling low-cost computing resources from around the world to revolutionize video. The video encoding, storage, and content distribution system turns all cloud-based video services into an algorithmic market, running on a new blockchain with a native protocol token, the VideoCoin (VID), says the company’s statement.
VideoCoin says it will seek to address the issues of rising costs, centralization and privacy in the online video marketplace, which makes up over 80 percent of all internet traffic. The VideoCoin blockchain will be designed for fast transactions, with combined Proof of Work and Proof of Stake systems to support complex storage and computation needs, said the company, in a statement. VideoCoin aims to enable a new generation of video applications by developing open APIs and using peer to peer encrypted distribution,
The first application to use VideoCoin’s blockchain enabled video infrastructure will be Live Planet. Founded by Minor, it allows the easy capture and distribution of live VR and 360° video.
“VideoCoin borrows much from what the blockchain has already proven, namely that people will connect computers to a network to get paid to do work, and as demand scales so too does supply,” stated Minor. “VideoCoin creates a new class of miners who do real work, not just accounting. Blockchain is the breakthrough innovation that lets us create a better infrastructure for the future of online video.”
To learn more about VideoCoin, visit www.VideoCoin.io.