Security Tokens Change the Game for eStores and Agencies

by Chris Abraham

Blockchain can offer true egalitarianism when it comes to the fair compensation of talent. Instead of all for one, it’s one for all and all for one. What security tokens and the blockchain can offer is a talent agency, publishing house, streaming music service, or app store that can help help an entrepreneur go from crowdfunding a project to hosting and selling a product to marketing and collecting money to getting feedback and updating and improving that product–all for a nominal fee of only a couple percent in lieu of the industry standard of 20%-50%.

Smart Contracts

What’s more: a smart contract can be written so that each app receives 99% of all revenue generated by the product until that time when most apps decline in revenue; at that point–six months or a year later–the contract ends and any further revenue goes to the entire agency, distributed to everyone involved, both producers and investors. All for one and one for all.

DAO PlayMarket 2.0

The Android app store, for example, is the first of its kind to follow the all for one, one for all ethos by taking the Security Token and leveraging its unique characteristics, and that of the Blockchain, to create an Android app store that acts as the perfect, most efficient, most fair, most generous, and least censorable app factory.

Instead of 30%, DAO PlayMarket 2.0 charges only 1%. Since it’s a Decentralised Autonomous Organization (DAO) under the hood, it’s impossible for any one country–or anyone–to delist or deplatform (censor) your app. And, after the contract is up, all investors and producers receive dividends using a compensation method that’s a lot like an index fund: once your app is released after your smart contract is fulfilled, it becomes part of the index–one of the assets that DAO PlayMarket 2.0 maintains. As your app–and all the other apps and the platform itself–becomes more popular, everyone’s dividends increase; ergo, it’s in everyone who is part of the family of creators, developers, and investors to promote and share not only their own apps and properties but any and all apps on the PlayMarket Android App platform. The more successful any and all apps are in the store benefits everyone. It’s ingenious, actually.

From crowdfunding to marketing, from hosting to selling, from profit-taking to profit-making, all the way to earning residuals from the growth and success of the entire library, this innovative suite of offerings rewards everyone for promoting the health, quality, decentralizing, and financial success of both the market and also each and every app in that market.

E Pluribus Unum

Every sale, ultimately, finds its way to everyone involved, from creators to investors, from programmers to node hosts. The model might not “be fair” to the apps that are the real stars; however, very, very, very few apps, dank memes, videos, actors, TV shows, or music become hits or go viral.

In the real world, aphorisms like “many hands make light work” and “e pluribus unum–out of many, one” and “a rising tide lifts all boats” and “unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno; un pour tous, tous pour un; one for all, and all for one” all make the most sense to the most people. is the people’s app store (Apple App Store and Google Play are so bourgeois).

Pure Capitalism or Anti-Capitalism

This model feels a little anti-capitalistic on its surface; however, is far more fair and egalitarian, allowing more producers, creators, and investors to prosper over the longest amount of time. A rising tide lifts all boats may be an aphorism but it reflects the disruptive and powerful effects that an agency or app store based on a Security Token-based blockchain will have on everyone involved, either as part of a larger Security Token project or even as its own Security Token Offering (STO).

While there is surely an incentive to put marketing dollars and sweat and time into promoting your own apps or songs or photos during the smart contract, the incentive to promote your app and for you to promote the apps of other developers and the other content by other creators come to fruition when the royalties and residuals fill the shared pot after the contract is fulfilled and all of your creations make money for everyone involved with the entire agency or publishing platform like an app store.

Traditional publishing platforms that offer books, movies, music, clip art, images, photos and apps are all for one than one for all. You put all your money in and hopefully you’ll make enough revenue to get all your money back plus profit. The (publishing) house always wins, but all the creatives, developers, entrepreneurs, investors, artists, designers, writers, actors, musicians, and coders are solo mio.

‘O Sole Mio

Until now, app developers generally need to bankroll their own app, at their own risk on spec. The need to develop, test, debug, and then submit their app to Google Play and the Apple App Store. If they accept the app, they take 30% and the developer gets 70%. If the app ever becomes controversial, it can be summarily de-platormed with extreme prejudice. In general, an  Android app makes around “$2,735 a month, according to Vision Mobile,” via CCN, and “popular apps such as Angry Birds make substantially more than “USD 70,000 in monthly revenue.” When all is said and done,

If you’re a musician and people play our music, you’ll hopefully receive royalties every time it’s on the radio. Same thing with authors and books. If you’re an actor, you want your TV show to go into syndication. If you create content, you’ll receive royalties every time it’s licensed for use. You’ll maybe make most of your money right away, when the property is hot and receives a lot of marketing and PR push; however, as popularity wanes, there are diminishing returns. That’s why actors and musicians speak laughingly of their 3¢-5¢ residual cheques.

My Own Personal Royalties and Residuals Experience

Photo by Bob Abraham, father of the Author

Photo by Bob Abraham, father of the Author

In one of my previous lives, I was a stock photographer. I started out as a shooter for The Stock Market, which was bought by Corbis, then it became Getty Images. I started out having my images licensed using rights management; later, as the market grew with the Internet, my images became royalty free.

Either way, I would pay my own money to buy my own equipment, film (yeah, slide film), and pay for any travel, models, or for specialized equipment or studio time that I needed to get the images that my agency editors and I predicted that the market would be most interested in the next 3-6-9 months (depending on how quickly you could get physical slides shot, developed, labeled, organized, mailed to NYC, and then whatever time it took the editors to get to your work, go through them, choose the ones they like, categorize, file it, and then eventually get it in front of a commercial or editorial client who happens to want my photo instead of anyone else’s. And I received residuals and royalties.

All the money that I invested into the photography would come back to me, over time, from the library of images that I put in there. Making money was always a balance between getting the best photos in there, getting the trendiest photos in there, getting archetypal “evergreen” images in there, and also making sure there were lots in there.

Some people would become specialists and become known for one type of topic–models, architecture, office interactions, beach scenics–while other photographers would become known for commercial-ready or editorial images. Receiving royalties–residuals–are extremely front-loaded and then they trail off the moment a stock photographer lays off from producing full-throttle content quality and quantity.

The Viral Video and Smash Hit are Unicorns

35mm Nikon L35 Action Touch with a 2.8/35mm lens

Nikon L35 Action Touch with a 2.8/35mm lens

Viral hits in stock photography are as rare as they are when it comes to dank memes and viral videos. My dad was a stock photographer and shot indefatigably–compulsively. Even he only landed one really globally-adored photograph.

“The Canoe shot,” as it was called, wasn’t even shot with a high-end Nikon F5 with a Nikkor ED lens–it was shot with a Nikon L35 Action Touch point and shoot “snappy.” He used to say that the secret to photography was “f8 and be there” and “shoot lots then edit down.”

Dad’s Earthworm Theory

Even so, it all came down to my dad’s earthworm theory of photography: since viral stars like The Outrigger were effectively Unicorns, it was also essential to do the photography equivalent of “SEO optimization.” In gambling, I guess, in roulette, it’s like betting black or red, or even putting a little bet on as many numbers as possible before the wheel spins.

Not just carrying your camera in your large format, unwieldy, 8X10 camera, in the bag, all the way to the top of the mountain just to take one photo of a majestic bull mountain goat but to have the goal of shooting the noble bighorn sheep, and only the sheep, but to always assume that you might not get the perfectly-lit, perfectly-posed image, in the perfect weather; or, you might have a film or camera failure. It’s always better to hedge your bets and shoot a thousand photos all the way up to the peak and all the way back down again.

If you get the shot, great, but why not also get some amazing photos of earthworms along the way. Ergo, the earthworm theory. His NYC editor renamed it the “toilet and urinal theory” because there were always photos of public restrooms in every stock submission they received.

You’re Neither Jaakko Iisalo Nor Angry Birds (Probably)

Most entrepreneurs are not Jaakko Iisalo and most products are not Angry Birds. Instead of a potential steep front-end profit and possibly a long tail of diminishing returns–maybe not even covering expenses and investments–once the smart contract is fulfilled, each creator then receives compensation from the success of all the products in the store and not just their own products.

Related Posts