VideoCoin might be one of those altcoins that is "flying under the radar" for you. This post will discuss its benefits and drawbacks. This is my first in-depth look at any specific coin for Publish0x, hope you enjoy it.

VideoCoin (VID) Summary

According to their website, "the VideoCoin Network uses the Blockchain to completely revamp the way you create, store, encode and distribute your content." With advances in streaming video services, the increasing demand for 4k video, as well as Virtual Reality services, there are challenges involved. Modern video infrastructure requires videos to be encoded for many devices and formats, stored on a data server, and distributed via a Content Delivery Network (CDN). All of these things come with a computing cost, which could be alleviated on a decentralized network, where miners are paid to offset the required processing power.

"We need at least 30 FPS of processing power to deliver real-time streaming of videos and the most scalable and cost effective way of achieving this is by using a distributed encoder...Fixed function encoders have limited encoder configurations available and it is significantly more expensive than renting CPUs. VideoCoin addresses this problem by implementing a Distributed Video Processing platform, which splits a video encoding task into several sub tasks and processes them in parallel, thus effectively producing much higher frame rates." (Source: white paper)

VideoCoin Blockchain Network Apps

There are already several apps on the VCBN which look promising. Here are a few:

Orbital

PowerTube

Smart Ads

FreeCast

Live Planet

These are being used for streaming video, video ad targeting, and from the description of Live Planet (link above), "capture and distribute stunning live and recorded 4k VR and 360 video utilizing the nimble VideoCoin Blockchain Network." Sounds interesting. Although VR is still in its infancy, I can imagine its utility is going to expand incredibly over the next several years, to include business applications, education, social/online dating, and many more fields than just the gaming industry. All of these apps will be enabled by miners on the network, helping to encode and distribute the content quickly and cheaply, in return for VID tokens.

BVRN (Blockchain VR Network)

You can already catch podcasts and videos in 360 VR from many crypto "influencers" on the Blockchain VR Network, or BVRN. Here are just a few of these "Blockchain Video Personalities" on the network:

BAD CRYPTO PODCAST's Joel Comm & Travis Wright

CRYPTO TRADER's Ran Neuner

COINCENTRAL's Alex Moskov

BLOCKTV's Noa Tamir & Ron Friedman

VideoCoin (VID) Mining

The VideoCoin Network uses Storage Miners, Relay Miners, Compute Miners, and Distribution Miners. From the White Paper:

"VideoCoin implements a distributed file system, called Sonata, on top of commodity hardware provided by storage miners. Sonata is a scalable, fault-tolerant, distributed storage system that works closely with a wide variety of concurrent data access applications. Videos are traditionally stored as large monolithic files making them susceptible to failure and hard to transport. To remedy this, Sonata splits videos into playable segments and distributes them across the storage network created on top of disk space provided by storage miners....In VideoCoin, distribution miners act as paid proxy servers for storage miners who store data. Decentralized networks by nature are geographically distributed as miners across the globe participate in the network. However, not all miners have access to the same Internet bandwidth which is essential for good quality video streaming. VideoCoin builds an algorithmic market for clients to negotiate contracts directly with distribution miners and storage miners to deliver high quality video to the end-user via a proxy server that is in close geographical proximity."

So far, the VC website only has a waiting list for those who are interested in mining. Once it becomes available, you will be able to earn VID on your PC by helping to process the tasks required by the network. It will likely be easy to install and run, to allow for maximum adoption. If you are interested in mining VID using your PC or servers, throw your name and email on their list, and they will contact you once it is ready.

How and why did VideoCoin get started?

VideoCoin Network Launched on August 27, 2019, with fanfare and support from a lot of enthusiasts in the crypto space. It was developed by the Live Planet company, to take on the "Tyranny of Centralization by Presenting a Major Blockchain Challenger to Amazon Web Services" (Market Watch). According to VideoCoin's Chief Visionary, Halsey Minor, in the recent AMA on Medium:

"In 2017, the Live Planet team had built the world’s most advanced VR cloud streaming platform but was shocked by the cost of VR processing, storage, and delivery charged by the existing legacy cloud providers. For example, one VR camera, streaming content for 24/7 costs $28,000 for one month to transcode for all 360 and VR platforms (Oculus, Daydream, Samsung VR, etc.)."

To solve this problem, the VCN was created. But the main function of the network is not to provide a payment token, like Bitcoin and so many other altcoins. It is an ETH-20 utility token, used to process and distribute video on a decentralized network of participants. According to Market Watch:

"The VideoCoin Network is the first blockchain project to integrate a third party fiat payment processor, underpinned by a consortium of banks. The model is optimized to enhance the utility of the VID as a reputational staking token that powers the network and ensures the most qualified network operators are serving customer needs. In order to put VideoCoin contributors in an advantageous position and ensure tokenomics optimize the mechanism and the reward for stakers, the team burnt 66 percent of its total token supply. The unprecedented move allows VideoCoin to focus on the staking component of the network, where miners are paid in fiat for performing work and the balance of the functions will be driven by the remaining tokens."

(Source)

Because of the tendency of many corporations to shy away from investing large sums of capital into extremely volatile crypto currencies, VideoCoin decided that a mixed economic approach (both VID and fiat) would be needed to expedite adoption of their streaming technology. Stakers and miners who are more friendly to the crypto sphere can earn both VID and fiat, while businesses who partner with the network would primarily be able to pay for storage, transcoding, and distribution services in fiat, allowing for easier adoption.



Competing with media giants like Amazon might not seem like an easy task, but being able to offer companies these services at a better price, in a sector that is growing roughly 25% annually in size, makes for a very opportune moment, as 360 and VR are set to explode in popularity over the next 10 years.

If you haven't heard of Halsey Minor already, you might have heard of some of the companies he has helped to start. His VideoCoin website bio calls him an "Internet visionary who has to date founded or co-founded technology companies that have created over $100 Billion in cumulative value, including: CNET, Uphold, Live Planet, Salesforce, NBC, Google Voice, OpenDNS."

The rest of the team also has their pictures on the site, with a link to their Linked In profiles here.

Roadmap, Trading & Investing in VID Coin

VideoCoin (VID) can be purchased at KuCoin, as well as the Beaxy Exchange. KuCoin offers the higher liquidity of the two, and offers both VID/BTC and VID/USDT pairs for trading. According to CoinGecko, the market cap is about 1.8 million USD, with 43 million coins in circulation (maximum will be 265 million).



Volume seems to have subsided substantially (along with price) so far in 2020, since the bump that was recently seen in October-November of 2019. In January, we saw the price dip a bit and at the time of this writing, VID has traded up approximately 8% over the last 24 hours, but is down 20% over the last 14 days.

I have been picking up VID when I see dips, because I believe in the long-term potential of this coin and the network. There have been plenty of entry points over this bear market, as VID has traded down from an ATH of about 21 cents about 3 months ago. This price was right around the time of their latest roadmap update, Kilimanjaro. The price has fallen steadily since November's pump, but the next update is less than a month away, so this could change quickly. Each of the major updates in the roadmap to improve network features is named after a mountain, as shown:

Fuji - August 27, 2019

Kilimanjaro - November 27, 2019

K2 - Coming February 27, 2020

Everest - Coming May 27, 2020

(image source & Kiliminjaro highlights here)

The last update brought these, and other improvements:

Orbital — First Open Source Reference Application: Orbital will be a fully open-source application available for Android, iOS and as a web application. See the Medium post through the link above for details and timing on source code release.

Rest API & Developer Documentation

New Block Explorer: See the latest blocks and transactions on the network in an all-new user interface.

Scaling up zkSNARKS with Intel SGX, a breakthrough to improve proof-of-transcoding with an integrated zkSNARKS and Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) solution.

Wallet Support for some of the biggest wallets on the market: Ledger, MyEtherWallet, TrustWallet, MyCrypto, Ledger Live, Trezor (coming soon)

With the next update, K2, coming at the end of February, we COULD see another jump in price to coincide with that milestone. Of course, any coin can be unpredictable and volatile. My personal belief is that the coin will increase in value again once K2 is released. At a current price of around 4 cents, the return to the price from the last update in November would mean an increase of 800-1000%.

The price is much cheaper than we've seen over recent months, and now would possibly be a good time to get in.

The risk here is that the price seems to have fallen steadily since November. It might not bounce up to ATH, so again, do your own research, don't trade what you can't afford to lose, and keep in mind, I am not able to predict the future. But I do like this project, and I think it is one worth looking at. My main concern personally, has been that I should be trading it with the VID/USDT pair instead of the VID/BTC pair, because I would like to see both my BTC and VID holdings go up, rather than see one rise when the other falls. But either way, buying the dips is a good way to stack over time, or just by using good old DCA, if the dirt cheap prices stop coming around.

Find out more about VideoCoin Network, and VID on their social media channels:

Twitter

Medium

Reddit

Telegram

Github

Discord

Conclusion

With advances in 360 video and VR, along with the need to scale video services at a cost that is beneficial to businesses and content providers, VideoCoin Network is poised to make some big moves. With their innovative solutions for encryption, file storage, and distribution, the network aims to bring a new decentralized streaming architecture that will disrupt the market, while maintaining fiat payments for businesses that would otherwise shy away from anything associated with crypto-currencies. Apps will allow anyone to stream easily, share 4k video to users of any device type, create subscription-based video streaming services to compete with Youtube and Netflix, and allow for a more widespread adoption of VR-based apps that branch out from gaming to include many other widespread uses.



Staking and mining will allow crypto enthusiasts to take part in the decentralized services, earning both fiat and crypto payments for lending their computing power. Data centers and servers, or even home user PCs will allow for fast video transmission at high quality frame rates and minimal buffering. Content providers will be able to reach their audiences in innovative ways, while customers will save money in fees that would otherwise have to be paid to large companies like Amazon for their AWS hosting and CDN.

The price is low right now, with VID currently having traded around the 4-6 cent range for 2020. But with 2 major milestone updates scheduled to be released by the VideoCoin team this year, this price might not last. As with any coin, VID is a risk and you should do your research if this is a project that you are interested in.

Thanks for reading!

Crypto Noob