Technology of StreamSpace

WHAT IS STREAMSPACE?

StreamSpace incorporates cutting edge technologies like decentralized storage systems and blockchains, which make it the most progressive streaming marketplace in the world. Filmmakers set a price for their work and are paid immediately by consumers, disrupting the traditional industry model.

STREAMSPACE are truly in a golden age for films. IMDb, an Amazon company, currently lists more than 373K feature films, 477K shorts, and 167K documentaries in its database, going back to the dawn of film in the late 1800s. The number of feature films released per year in the IMDb grew from 84 titles in 1910 to 2,530 films in 1921, then declined through the Great Depression and World War II to a low of 1,053 films introduced in 1945. From 1945 to 2002, the number of films produced climbed steadily to 4,032 films but accelerated in the past 15 years to a high of 12,871 films produced in 2017 YTD (source accessed September 8, 2017).

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Furthermore, there is an even larger number of independent films that go unrecognized by IMDb or other film databases because of limited distribution / awareness or unwillingness to provide the meta-content that the database requires. Festival Genius, software for independent film festivals, has tracked over 6.4M people watching almost 70K films. The total number of films created each year could be as high as 50,000, according to Chris Hyams, founder of B-Side Entertainment and the creator of Festival Genius.

StreamSpace aims to introduce a novel distribution platform and an ecosystem community that will give consumers an opportunity to enjoy quality film content unavailable from conventional distribution channels, with a secure monetization engine that places more than 90% of payments directly into the hands of the filmmakers. Furthermore, StreamSpace intends to launch a novel financing service that will help filmmakers raise the funds they need to create and produce film projects.

Our goal is to become the world’s leading destination for innovative film content, with a deep catalog that will enable personalized viewing experiences and that will be rewarding for our two core customers, independent filmmakers and indie film aficionados.

Digital Wallet & Smart Contracts

One of the great design advantages of Ethereum is the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that can execute smart contracts submitted to run on the Ethereum chain. These contracts are self-enforcing and cannot be manipulated or censored, which allows programmers to automate many processes that traditionally require an oversight board.

This yields advantages in terms of content security and transparency of the transactions along with the transaction history. Examples of applications include e-commerce, real estate transactions, legal contracts, and financial trading. The smart contract acts as an escrow system, whereby the payment is not released until the “product” has been delivered and acknowledged. A digital wallet holds the funds in the form of a specific number or fraction of StreamShares tokens, represented by the token symbol SSH, assigned to a unique account identifier with a private and public key.

As an example, a film enthusiast logs into his account, adds US$5.00 in value to his digital wallet (either by electronic funds transfer directly or through a service like Paypal, an online credit / debit card transfer authorization, or by exchange of a fraction of a bitcoin or other cryptocurrency through an exchange), and then clicks to watch a film. That last click initiates an immediate token transfer from his digital wallet to a smart contract, in which a small portion of the fee is sent to StreamSpace and the balance is transferred to the copyright licensee or owner for the film. In a basic example, one filmmaker would own 100% rights to the viewed film, and all revenues other than payment fees and StreamSpace’s hosting fee would transfer to the filmmaker’s wallet.

The copyright owner for a film may be a single individual, but more commonly may be a group of individuals with differing percentages of ownership rights. StreamSpace will track the payment transfers from each viewer to the respective copyright holders according to whatever terms are appropriate for each film project; there may be tax consequences for payments, which would represent business revenue or income to the copyright holders

Each of the copyright owners has the ability to accept revenue payments in some fraction of StreamShares (SSH) and fiat currency. StreamSpace will use a private exchange and convert SSH tokens into fiat currency at any time for the wallet holders, with the exchange rate determined by an average of current day exchange rates across all public exchanges that accept SSH tokens. In order to encourage copyright owners and other investors who hold SSH tokens to retain them, StreamShares wallet holders will accumulate a 2% maximum interest rate compounded daily on tokens that are at least 8 hours old, based on a secure Proof of Stake Time (PoST) protocol. In addition, StreamSpace will charge a minimal exchange fee for all transactions from SSH into fiat currencies.

Binary-Chain Blockchain Protocol

As discussed by Vericoin’s Douglas Pike, creator of the Binary-Chain system, current cryptocurrencies face a challenge in attempting to be both a rapid currency for enabling transactions and a secure store of value.

To resolve this challenge, StreamSpace uses two separate coin systems with different staking or mining rewards, one for each of the two key processes performed across the blockchain. The most visible process involves processing transactions associated with purchasing or renting the content: downloading the video stream and processing the payment transfer associated with each viewing experience. The second, less visible process, involves maintaining the distributed storage of the video stream content, with rewards based on the amount of allocated storage, the length of time supported, and the popularity of the content.

Like Vericoin / Verium, StreamSpace secures and accelerates transactions by leveraging two complementary protocol technologies, Proof of Stake Time (PoST) for the SSH tokens and Proof of Work Time fragment (PoWTf) for the SPC tokens, into a cutting edge blockchain ecosystem.

Distributed Storage Network

On the StreamSpace network, a “Curator” is someone who offers storage capacity for file fragments. The StreamSpace network and distributed file system will be built upon thousands of Curator nodes that store and distribute file fragments. The file and distribution system is modeled after systems such as BitTorrent, Storj, and Protocol Labs’ InterPlanetary File System (IPFS).

All are peer-to-peer distributed storage systems which leverage a computing device’s extra hard disk space to store and share file fragments. StreamSpace nodes hold StreamSpace objects in local storage on their devices. StreamSpace nodes connect to each other and share StreamSpace objects with each other across the network. These objects represent video files, cryptographic information, and other data. Nodes are identified by a Node ID which is a cryptographic hash of a public key. This is modeled after IPFS and utilizes similar algorithms. StreamSpace nodes communicate regularly with hundreds and even thousands of other nodes on the network.

The StreamSpace network stack is modeled after the IPFS network stacks to ensure performance and security of the streaming system. StreamSpace nodes also utilize a routing system that is similar to IPFS to enable nodes to find other peers’ network addresses and other peers’ specific objects. Therefore, StreamSpace is utilizing Distributed Sloppy Hash Tables based on S/Kademlia and Coral in the same way that IPFS implements them to keep track of this information.

In StreamSpace, data is distributed by exchanging fragments of data with peers throughout the network using a BitTorrent inspired protocol for distributing and sharing files. The fragment sharing protocol is superior to BitTorrent in that it is not limited to the fragments in one torrent. It acts as a persistent marketplace where specific nodes can acquire the fragments they need regardless of what file those fragments are part of. This creates a digital market in which nodes trade file fragments with each other. The distributed hash tables (DHTs) used by IPFS protocols enable StreamSpace to create a massive peer-to-peer system for storing and distributing fragments of data rapidly and efficiently.

To add another layer of performance, StreamSpace will utilize Directed Acyclic Graphs (Merkle DAGs) in a similar way that Git utilizes them to create graphs where links between objects are cryptographic hashes of the targets embedded in the sources. These Merkle DAGs provide StreamSpace with three core benefits:
+ Content Addressing
+ Tamper Resistance
+ Deduplication
The principal difference between IPFS and the StreamSpace file storage system involves the ability to delete files from the distributed, peer-to-peer network. This enhancement enables the StreamSpace network to scale without having excess junk files clog up available storage space and provides filmmaker / copyright owners with more control and security of their property. One feature where this enhancement will be of vital importance is live streaming of video content, where the content is not intended to have any permanence.

As mentioned above, StreamSpace selected Proof of Stake Time (PoST) as the reward algorithm for StreamShares (SSH), the transactional token used for payment and access rights on the StreamSpace platform. PoST allows a poorer member with a smaller stake to have more strength if they are active and challenge a richer stakeholder who is less active in supporting the service. Granting more rewards to a committed underdog is akin to giving a weak team in American professional football the right to go first in the draft pick; proper choices will elevate a weak team against a dominant team that rests on its laurels and fails to keep developing new talent. This system still rewards large stakeholders, and an active major stakeholder can achieve dominance over time.

StreamSpace also created a modified Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm called Proof of Work Time fragment (PoWTf) as the reward algorithm for StreamSpace Coins (SPC), the incentive token that enables our distributed cloud storage network. We needed an algorithm that would encourage “Curators” to allocate a liberal amount of storage to the StreamSpace cloud network and leave it active for as long as possible. Similar to the PoWT algorithm used for Verium to accelerate the Vericoin transaction network, the StreamSpace PoWTf algorithm “is a novel approach to forming a consensus by introducing a variable blocktime that scales with mining power, where the blockchain speeds up with power increases. This better scales the blockchain, increases transaction speed with power and allows for auto-adjusting more profitable mining.”

Curator nodes cannot perform work without holding fragments. Fragments are only valid for work if they have been verified by their hash on the network. Fragments must be held by the Curator node for a minimum period of time (T) before they are eligible for work.

One fragment will be pegged to the value (V) of some quantity of SPC. For purposes of discussion, we’ll use 1 f = 0.00000001 SPC (one fragment is valued at one-hundredmillionth of 1 SPC). Fragment weight (W) will be calculated by the age of the fragment since it was last worked and the “popularity” index (P) of the fragment as reported by the DHT on the blockchain.

+ Reward Rate: I = 0.02 (based on block time and difficulty)
+ Fees: F = 0.0001 - 0.1 SPC per transaction
+ Fragment Weight: W = T * V * P
+ PoWTf Reward: R = W * I * 33 / (365 * 33 + 8 ) + F

The goal of the PoWTf algorithm is to encourage more nodes holding the most popular content. One SPC coin or any fraction of one SPC coin may be converted at any time into SSH tokens, which may then be held in a digital wallet for staking or converted to fiat currency via a cryptocurrency exchange.

Quality of Streaming Video Content

StreamSpace uses Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), which ensures high quality streams over the internet. The original video file is split up into many smaller video file segments of many bitrates and resolution. The fact that DASH content is just “a bunch of files” makes it a good choice for blockchain storage protocols such as IPFS and StreamSpace’s extensions of IPFS. An MPEG-DASH Media Presentation Description (MPD) file will be created for each video file containing the link and video metadata used for streaming.

Crowdfunding Service for New Films

There have been a few examples of token sales expressly designed to support the funding for new film or video projects; further information about some of these projects is provided in the Competition Section. In its early conversations with independent filmmakers, one of the most critical needs expressed was to raise funds to make their film, and a lack of funds is the greatest impediment to a filmmaker’s success.

StreamSpace will leverage its experience in conducting its own ICO plus the contacts made across the film and blockchain industries to identify a pool of potential investors who might be interested in supporting novel film or other video projects. We intend to dedicate resources to underwrite token sales to support a small number of marketable projects. One potential method might involve sponsoring a filmmaker with a custom crowdfunding website, in which potential viewers and other investors would offer fiat or tokens in return for a percentage of the revenue stream from the StreamSpace or other SVOD portal. Another, somewhat more complex financial arrangement might involve a smart contract in which the investor funds would be repaid from SVOD revenues up to a certain level, such as 120% of funds raised over a 1 year period, with a 20% or similar royalty rate paid for all revenues beyond the target threshold. A filmmaker might reserve a certain fraction of the tokens allocated to the project, thereby retaining more of the financial return, but this could have an adverse impact on the marketability of the film project.

Content Player and DRM

The film enthusiast may prefer to watch on a large fixed viewing screen, such as a 4K+ UHD TV, a standard 720i or 1080p HDTV, a laptop or desktop, with a wide range of screen resolutions, or even a mobile phone or tablet, today commonly with FHD 1920 x 1080 or QHD 2560 x 1440 resolution. StreamSpace will provide a downloadable app with its custom player or run its player inside any of the common internet browsers, but with an initial focus on PCs running mainstream browsers, followed by smartphones and SVOD clients connected to HDTVs.

For the initial release, we will deploy a browser-based player optimized for Microsoft Windows and Apple OS. We will develop and deploy mobile apps that will run on both Android and iOS, and we will target several of the major internet TV SVOD client systems, including Google Chromecast, Roku, Microsoft Xbox, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, etc. to allow consumers to add the StreamSpace channel into the viewer home screen.

The player includes identity language and format preference with buttons to access and control the user account information, as well as play / pause / rewind / fast forward buttons for the viewer to control the experience.

Initially, StreamSpace intends to use Google Widevine, an industrial-grade DRM solution, to support encryption and decryption of video content. The content is encrypted and distributed to the curators. A license will be created for each file and saved to the Widevine license server. On the user end, the license info is fetched from the license server, and the decryption happens on the trusted layer of the system. Decrypted data is directly sent to the user’s video and audio device.

Hence there is no chance for anyone other than the end user to decrypt or view the decrypted content data. Each end user will agree to the StreamSpace Service Terms and Conditions, which prohibit unlawful copying or redistribution of the content.

Recommendation Engine

StreamSpace believes that the recommendation engine is a core differentiator from conventional SVOD services. Today, it is nearly impossible for an independent film viewer to find an attractive, highly rated film without specifying the exact name in a search window.

The core of the viewing experience starts with a recommendation or search engine: how the film viewer selects a new title and chooses to launch a stream of the content to the personal viewing screen. The StreamSpace recommendation engine is based on three core elements that are coded as eigenvector matrices:

1. Customer preference matrix. Consumers will group into clusters based on their preferences for different types of movies; someone that loves Japanese anime may feel very differently about American Western action movies or sci-fi thrillers. The cluster map will be the principal driver for the recommendation engine, since people with similar tastes are likely to feel the same way about a given set of films. An individual will not necessarily be defined by a single cluster; rather, that individual will be scored by his similarity to the preferences of different clusters.

2. Customer preference cluster – movie attribute cluster matrix. This matrix shows the scores assigned to the intersection of cluster preferences of like users and cluster attributes of like movies.

3. Movie attribute matrix. Movies will be scored according to key attribute clusters, so that similar movies will be recommended to people that rate one type of movie higher than others. The movie cluster map will be defined based in part on IMDB-style characteristics and in part on reviews and ratings. Since movies tend to have a short shelf-life of popular appeal, weight will be added for “new” and “trending” content.

The three eigenvector matrices will be multiplied together to give exact recommendations for any individual customer:

Initially, customers will be asked to rate several movies in order to make preliminary recommendations. Over time, the recommendation engine will consider observations about download and viewing history, including whether the customer watched part or all of a film, along with his comments and ratings and participation on filmmaker social media pages.

Frequent viewers will be rewarded with more accurate recommendations toward their viewing preferences, and they may also receive extra incentives in terms of bonus film viewing opportunities, extra content (such as “behind the scenes” footage or other opportunities to engage with favorite filmmakers. StreamSpace also plans to offer bonuses for larger or more frequent deposits into the user’s online wallet to encourage more use of the StreamSpace SVOD network.

By optimizing the recommendation engine around peer reviews and personal viewing history, StreamSpace believes that we can provide a more compelling end user experience, which will only improve further with the network effect.

Stream ICO

TOKEN PRICE IS $0.23 USD
Token sale progress: 69,135,875.45 SSH sold
TIMING ICO: January 15, 2018 to February 27, 2018
OFFERING SIZE ICO: 250 million StreamShares (SSH)
PRICE ICO: Price increases by $0.01 per day
Funds held in Multi-Signature Wallet

The minimum purchase in ETH & BTC is $25. The minimum for all USD payments is $1,000. There is no maximum. You can buy SSH with Bitcoin, Ethereum and US Dollars. StreamSpace, LLC will withhold 600 million tokens for basic operation of the platform.

Roadmap

The StreamSpace solution in its first iteration will feature basic functionality of the first eight technical components noted above. The ninth element of the solution, ICO/Token crowdfund campaign support, will be offered on an as-needed basis, based on the level of interest from filmmaker customers along with availability of StreamSpace technical support resources. Subsequent iterations of the StreamSpace solution may continue to expand and refine the functionality for both filmmakers and for consumer film aficionados

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