John loves cooking. So he learned Italian and Indian cuisine. After months of hard work, he excelled in both the cuisines and started innovating with exotic flavors. Eventually, John's cooking skills made him popular in his social circle. He wanted to start a new restaurant, but he didn't have financial support. Suddenly he met a landlord and they made a business deal. According to the deal, any profit from the restaurant would be split into two unequal shares: 80% for the landlord and the other 20% is for John. Because there is no need to pay rent, John was quite happy and signed the deal. Soon after the restaurant was opened, it became quite famous in the region. Profit increased exponentially and the landlord is currently earning approx. 10 times the standard rent. Now John is unhappy with the current, understandably unfair profit sharing agreement.

Digital content creators are almost in the same or worse condition as John. Even in this digitalized economy, it is impossible to pay online if the transaction value in the order of cents (micropayments). At this point in time, the online transaction fee is much higher than transaction value itself in case of micropayments. As a result of this, digital content creators are being pushed to monetize through either direct advertisements (mostly through google ads / similar services) or indirectly by uploading in social platforms like youtube. In both the cases, there is no way of getting a fair share of profits. Nobody likes advertisements, even the content creators. But there is no other choice! To solve this issue, payments should be either built-in within the platform or through plug-ins that has no centralized third-parties.

Blockchain over a peer-to-peer network could be an elixir for content monetization. While researching over this, I found three such interesting blockchain-based platforms for monetizing contents: Steem(STEEM), Reddcoin(RDD) and Synereo(AMP). Let's discuss what each of these has in store.

Steem(STEEM) is a proof-of-stake based blockchain which has a plethora of use cases in social media. It has its own cryptocurrency STEEM to transact with. Steem is, in fact, a platform where even Ethereum Virtual Machine could be run. There are many advantages includes zero transaction fee, multiple spam prevention mechanisms, proof of stake, etc. One of its popular applications is a blogging platform called Steemit. All member activities from posting, upvoting and promoting are rewarded. The reward value depends on many factors including the type of activity, voting power of parties involved, etc. The system is quite complex to understand but interesting. Many applications over Steem blockchain are currently under development. Since cryptocurrency values are volatile, the reward will be pegged at Steem dollars (always equal to approx. 1 US Dollar).

Reddcoin(RDD) is a social cryptocurrency so to say. Currently, it is impossible to monetize facebook videos, Instagram pictures or similar social content. But it won't be the case when Reddcoin is plugged in. Reddcoin provides a google chrome plugin (more plugins to come), which will create a "Tip" button in all posts. If you like a video, you can tip the person who shared or who created the video. You can even tip stories, pictures, etc. Reddcoin automatically creates a wallet for doing so. The Reddcoin blockchain is based on proof-of-stake-velocity (considers both wallet balance and social activity). Transactions are verified by minting process and it doesn't require costly hardware, just an android mobile is enough. And most importantly, there are no transaction fees.

Synereo(AMP) follows a similar approach as Steem but it doesn't provide a blockchain. Instead, it is just an attention layer where anyone can reward a content creator. According to their blog, there are searching a perfect blockchain that suits their layer. But they released Wildspark, a new platform for content monetization. There is again a google chrome plugin that has to be installed. If you like a video, you can send AMPs to the content creator. In return, a shareable link will be generated which you can share it with your social circle. If anyone sends AMPs to the content creator using your link, you will receive a part of the reward for introducing it to them. So it is like a chain reaction that started from the content creator.

All three platforms are different in their own ways. Future of these platforms depends on every decision taken by the stakeholders and the volume of adaptation. Afterall, Whatsapp or Facebook is still surviving because of huge adaptation.

Thanks for reading :-)