Wheels are Turning
When I first started exploring various cryptocurrencies, one that caught my eye was Creativecoin that had launched earlier this year. This was before the ICO rocket and being an artist/designer myself, I knew that this would be something aimed to disrupt some part of the bubble that is the art market. I did an initial look here and with their recent developments, wanted to revisit the tech.
To give you a bit of background on the use-case of Creativecoin (CREA), the currency is essentially trying to overthrow monetized image systems such as Shutterstock that buy images at low costs from contributors and sell them individually or by subscription fees to consumers. These companies are the middlemen between makers and users of images. This artificial link is the money maker, bolstering an industry worth billions worldwide and has become a necessary evil of creators since its so difficult to distribute personal work at a global scale.
CREA’s current status
Well as we all know, blockchain and DAOs are here to change all that. I signed up to be able to beta test their platform and I’ll be going through some of my initial reactions and experiences.
Exploring a New Resource of Creativity
The beta is a pseudo-test of what the platform’s potential features will be. Users are given 100CREA - not the actual token but ‘play’ tokens that mimic the core currency - to use amongst other members and earn through your own licensing. The idea is to spend and earn depending on how you share your content as well as compensate other users.
First things first, the platform is very buggy and not immediately responsive at times. Images are slow to load on occasion and buttons can lag before enacting the desired effect. Eh. whatever. What we have here is a great leap forward for the token system and a first step towards a functioning and disruptive technology.
The layout seems very straightforward and effective in its goal. Upon loading, you’ll be met with an almost desktop-Instagram layout. Images of others under the ‘Discover’ tab are lined up in a grid and can be clicked on to reveal a higher quality sample and all the important details.
As you can see above, clicking on an image will go more in-depth with the image, its author, and everything you need to know in order to possibly make use of it. You can ‘Like’ images and follow the creatives, just like Instagram. Tags help sort the content and you are able to download and free use the image if it’s free or you paid the necessary micro-fee (in this case 0.12 CREA).
You sign up with basic details so you can begin sharing your own body of work.
Very important is the unique “Blockchain Certificate” at the bottom which locks in the chosen Creative Commons certificate and its share date. This is creative proof of work and should provide immutable proof of when an original work was shared.
And to no surprise, Creativechain has become a haven of crypto-related creativity with interesting and enthusiastic submissions by designers with token holdings.
Next Steps
I’ll be doing a bit more exploring of Creativechain’s current beta the next few days, including uploading my own images and seeing what happens when I begin engaging other users. I’ll be sure to report back to y’all soon!
Let me know your thoughts below. Do you think you would use this kind of platform?
