Video content creation has grown into a massive industry following the popularity of leading platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, which has made it easier than ever for anyone to create and share videos with a global audience. However, there have been some concerns in the video content creation space.
As the industry gets bigger, it becomes more difficult for smaller creators to break out. There is, then, the big elephant in the room, which is the imbalance in reward between the creators and their viewers or community.
Whether on YouTube or elsewhere, viewers watch the videos, like them, comment on them, and subscribe to channels. So, they are essentially the ones who generate the engagement that creators need to make money. However, they often receive very little in return for their support.
While viewers/fans may derive value by watching the videos, they usually don’t receive any more incentive (financial reward, and so on.) for doing so. This imbalance makes it difficult for creators to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with their viewers.
Over the recent months, we have seen new Web3 platforms like Friend.tech try to change that, especially in the social media ecosystem. For instance, Friend.tech enables users to monetize their engagement with creators through a new concept dubbed “SocialFi,” which combines social media and decentralised finance.
However, SocialFi is not without some challenges. Although SocialFi platforms have seen decent traction over the past months, the complexity of the platforms still poses a limitation. Also, there are still questions about the scalability and resilience of the economic models through several market cycles.
XCAD Network plugs these holes. Launched in May 2021, the project has been around long before the trend came along. XCAD simplifies the whole process of SocialFI, creating a more equitable and sustainable ecosystem for creators and their fans. And now XCAD is launching a new feature that will allow users to directly engage or meet creators and a lot more things that they’re going to unveil.
Cryptopolitan recently conducted an interview questionnaire with XCAD, where the team explained the inspiration behind the XCAD Network, its approach to instilling the creator-viewer balance through tokenization, and the success, challenges, and future goals of the platform.
XCAD Network is a tokenization platform specifically for YouTubers, allowing content creators to have their own cryptocurrency fan token.
Viewers can earn creator tokens by watching a minimum of 80% of the content, according to XCAD Network. The tokens give the holders voting power to decide what content their favourite creators can make. Also, these tokens can be traded and used in purchasing NFTs, merchandise and special access perks on the XCAD Network.
“Through viewer token holders voting rights, creators can better engage with their audience and gain a clear understanding of which type of content viewers are wanting. Additionally, as a direct effect of the tokenomics system, these creators can benefit from the sale of merchandise through the XCAD platform too,” XCAD said.
XCAD Network primarily supports YouTube at the moment. It has been able to attract some of the biggest creators on the platform, like KSI, Mr. Beast, and other creators, with a combined reach of over 500 million subscribers. But why primarily YouTube?
The inspiration to start XCAD Network emanated from the creator-viewer gap, which seems prevalent on YouTube, according to the team.
“We have taken a great interest in the already saturated YouTube space and have spent a lot of time digging deeper into how the algorithm works, which will help us in the infiltration of the Socialfi trend. We believe that there is a lot of value that can still be added in the YouTube space, benefiting both viewers and creators,” XCAD noted.
With a platform as extensive as YouTube, XCAD noted some of the technical hurdles it faced were with YouTube’s application programming interface (or API) due to constant changes. “We had an internal version where the API was continuously changing, which was not sustainable at all. Through numerous technological upgrades, we have successfully bypassed this issue,” XCAD noted.
XCAD Network further noted that it ultimately seeks to optimise and build levels of engagement among fans and creators. With its tokenization method, not only are the viewers empowered, but the creators are also equipped to build Web3 ecosystems around their audience. The XCAD team believes Web3 could shape the future of online content consumption and expects an influx of content creators on its network going forward.
