Getting to 2022, more and more people in the world now believe that “Bitcoin”, “crypto currencies”, or in more generic term “blockchain technology”, is no longer a money speculators’ game. We start seeing them in daily life in many aspect. Recently, the emergence of the NFT artwork markets has brought the blockchain technology back to the spotlight.
What could we imagine for the impact of blockchain technology on the OTT streaming world? Before that, let’s get aligned for the understanding on them first.
NFT marketplace “Opensea”
Blockchain and NFT in a bit
I am not going to give a deep dive here on what is blockchain and NFT. There are so many explanation out on the internet. Instead, I would like to highlight some key points before we further drill down to our topics.
Blockchain has several key features:
- Decentralised. There is no single hosting of the system.
- Immutability. Once a record /transaction is made and confirmed. It cannot be altered
- Security. Hacker couldn’t simply hack one or two device to corrupt the whole system or steal all users’ data
- Openness. Different parties could create application and perform integration with a standardised approach.
NFT, in full name the Non-fungible Token, is a digital “artefact” that is created by Blockchain technology. It can be uniquely identified and cannot be cloned.
With these special properties possessed by Blockchain and NFT, let’s look into how they could bring about the changes in the future OTT streaming.
Live Event ticket
In the not long future, when hosting a live event, whether it is online or offline, the organiser could issue the live event tickets in the form of NFT. Each ticket, like a digital contract, has its own unique information such as the seat number and the hashed info of the owner. It could be restricted from transferring to other wallet. Or, the ticket could only be transferred with a fixed price and limited transactions allowed.
With the help of this blockchain technology, the event organiser could tackle the “Scalper ticket” problem and maximise the revenue captured.
The live event ticket could also act as an digital souvenir itself, while it could also be the “e-coupon” to grant the audience further access to the peripheral products and services. Other service providers (or fan club), though they may not have a working relationship with the event organiser, could also give an add-on offer to the NFT-ticket holders for marketing purpose.
It is common to see operators team up with OTT big labels. Would blockchain help with a easier integrations?
Simplify Entitlement / Single Sign-on
As blockchain technology could be used to identify a user and his/her ownership of subscriptions and TVOD contents, user could enjoy more than simply a flexibility to transfer the ownership of their remaining subscription package or their digital video titles purchased. With reference to the blockchain applications in logistics industry, here are some future imaginations.
Video service providers could have a new business model to sell digital copies with the concept of NFT. The NFT digital copies itself is DRM-protected, the owner has to use their private key to prove their ownership and get the content decrypted with the service provider’s DRM server (and I thought this part could also be decentralised in not long future). Therefore, video service providers are no longer doing the hosting and distribution. The streaming bandwidth could be much reduced as the users store the digital copies on their own.
On the other hand, imagine that the Operators and Telcos were using the blockchain technology for user identity, a user could has all their streaming subscription info in their blockchain wallet. The single sign-on collaboration between operators and video streaming service providers could make simple by checking the mobile subscription status or access right inside user’s blockchain wallet. It opens up a lot of cross-selling opportunities and speed up the service integrations.
Many TV stations tried to do audience interaction. Not many of them succeeded.
Audience participation
Video Service providers are all trying so hard to grow a loyalty customer base by encouraging audience participation. Audience are invited to make comment, do polling, and participate interactive activities with the TV shows / Live events. However, participation without a fair-use mechanisms will always bring about spam, repeated voting, and therefore a poor user experience.
Taking reference to those recent hot NFT games, with the blockchain technology, each user could use various fungible token issued by the service provider to participate in different user activities. The limited usage of token could give a fair environment for participation (e.g. only one vote is allowed per voting topic). In reward, audience could be given with tokens as a recognition for a valuable participation. With these “fan coins” circulated among service provider and audience, the audience could use the token to redeem live event tickets, physical souvenirs or other NFTs.
Technical Obstacles
Before all those fancy ideas to come true, there are still some obstacles which our industry has to overcome.
Firstly, the general public is still not familiar with the use of crypto-wallet and the blockchain technology. There is still a long learning curve to climb and the UIUX for the use of blockchain service has to be drastically improved.
Second, the transaction fee for the relatively popular blockchain technology (e.g. Ethereum, ETH) is quite high and the processing time is slow compared to centralised technology. There are some new blockchain technology like Solana, which claimed to be able to achieve similar transaction processing power as credit card company, growing in the market. It is expected that more blockchain breakthrough will be rolled-out and there will no longer be a big hurdle for us.
Last but not least, the blockchain technology is quite fragmented nowadays and there are several new technologies or standards competing with one another. There are new smart chain technologies come out every week and it would not be easy for one to select the right path to dive in. While evaluating and waiting for the “Mr. Right” blockchain technology to come out may take forever, it is suggested to dip a toe in the water and have some little proof-of-concepts to try out the use of blockchain technology.
Featured Photo Credit: Morthy Jameson – Unplash.com
Comments by Cheung Chun Ho