The new AirTime distribution structure.
The AirTime model was launched for the first time in August last year replacing web mining by viewers on the BitTube video platform. It’s been a great success and AirTime has brought thousands of new users, expanded the community greatly and we’ve gotten more feedback than we could have ever hoped for. Later the same year, AirTime stepped forward into the wider web via the BitTube browser extension.
After this initial testing period, the monetization model will now undergo a maturing change. AirTime rewards are distributed in real time between all active concurrent users. This means, as the user base grows, competition for TUBEs increases. As AirTime is the primary component giving value to the ecosystem and to TUBE, we have decided to increase the AirTime share from the block reward in the next hard fork.
Two consecutive forks will change the AirTime distribution structure.
The next fork will happen at block height 268000 on 7th of February at 13:14:36.00 UTC. There will be a second fork 720 blocks (1 day) later, as unfortunately we can’t do all of the upgrades with a single fork. The users will only need to update once to the new wallets that will be released before that date.
The AirTime block reward share will increase from 30% to 45%. Content creators and publishers can expect increase in rewards of 1,6 times the current rate and viewers 1,88 times the current rate. Additionally, what will change is the devfee from 3% to 10% for platform and marketing. The original 3% was much too low to cover expenses and 2019 will need a sharp increase for marketing efforts. The mining reward drops from 70% to 40% and the remaining 5% ‘community’ pool comprises referral rewards, payouts for the upcoming decentralized moderation system of the platform, and a project fund to support other devs integrate BitTube into their apps.
A hint to the upcoming BitTube social network staking options.
As we move into 2019, staking for AirTime and platform features will become a dominant theme for the ecosystem. Staking unlocks a web of new possibilities for both users, publishers and investors.One of the possibilities is stakers being able to lend their TUBEs to borrowers (users and publishers) who would like to unlock higher AirTime levels and features. In return, the borrowers will share a percentage of their AirTime revenue based on the amount. As the ‘ROI’ for lenders (mostly investors) will depend on the AirTime performance of their borrowers, all parties will be incentivized to maximize the exposure of the content that they support. How exactly users and creators will find lenders is yet to be determined, but of course it should be as easy as possible, or it would be too much hassle for newcomers.
Another possibility is p2p rewards. A big part of the infrastructure this year will be user-operated storage nodes and being rewarded for it. Through the AirTime extension, you’ll be able to set a persistent cache folder to store the videos on BitTube you want to host. Since it will be practically impossible for any node to host petabytes of BitTube videos, you will be able to choose which channels to host by subscribing to them first. A percentage (we are thinking 20–30%) of the AirTime generated by a video will be shared among its seeds. This would mean that popular videos with more traffic generate more income for seeds, who therefore have a direct incentive to promote the content they are supporting. Staking some TUBEs will be required for a minimum period to participate in this system (to prevent leeching).
Furthermore, we are currently exploring a reputation system (like reddit karma) that help to unlock (or lock) certain BitTube features, where staking more coin accelerates this process, but does not prevent non-stakers from achieving the same status on a longer time frame. We should be able to tie it to both borrowing/lending and p2p rewards to encourage good behavior. We do not wish to make it ‘pay2play’ like Steemit or others, so we welcome the community to discuss these topics with us.
Keep in mind, all of this is planned for the new BitTube social video platform. After we have migrated successfully in the next quarter, we will be able to start rolling out these features.
- Mining pools will need to update to avoid mining the old (worthless) chain
- Miners themselves don’t necessarily need to update their software.
- Regular users will need to update their offline wallet if they are using one, otherwise we will take care of updating the web wallets.
The foxy browser now features the latest version of our extension. Get it here, and please leave us a review.
Have a great day,
Your BitTube team.
Originally published at blog.bittubeapp.com.
