Starwire

By Jeremy

Elastos ecosystem partner WeFilmchain has partnered up with Matrix Blockchain and Blockmason in efforts to build an exciting new revenue sharing dApp called Starwire. Starwire provides a cutting edge revenue splitting mechanism and smart contract infrastructure that helps content creators get paid appropriately.

CR Press contributor Amos Thomas did a brief video recap of all the features Starwire provides.

This article will focus on how the Starwire dApp will impact the film and music industry for aspiring artists in each respective field.

The Starwire dApp will include a consumer friendly wallet. Each party contributing to the project will be compensated in fiat which goes into a collection account on the Starwire dApp. The fiat will then be converted into an ETH stable coin such as Dai, PAX, or TUSD. The fiat to stable coin conversion will be performed through the fiat on/off ramp VirgoCX INTERAC module. Users can then withdraw their stable coins from the wallet and cash out whenever they please.

Starwire also provides advanced smart contract functionality for the end user. Blockmason will provide their proprietary microservices development application “Link” in the smart contract feature on Starwire.

Link is a developer tool with an interface that provides the ability to create a smart contract template along with the option to modify those templates for a specific film project. Link can also be utilized to deploy a smart contract on to the Elastos ETH side chain. Smart contracts will be completed with a small ELA gas transaction fee.

The Starwire ETH dApp will be built from scratch using some existing ETH dApps as guidance. Other features of the dApp include adding authorized stakeholders, KYC registration module, and storing/analyzing project metadata. Elastos Hive will play a key role in organization and storage of all this information. The team plans to have Starwire run on the Trinity Browser which utilizes the safe and protected Elastos Runtime environment for the user’s protection. Elastos Carrier also is planned to be added in order to provide additional security and trust for users on the Starwire platform.

The team was motivated to start the Starwire concept based on a need in the film and music industries. For example, an existing centralized service named Fintage House has a huge barrier of entry for content creators based on expensive legal and accounting fees. Many smaller teams in the film/music field don’t have the financial resources to start their own projects. The Starwire team believes their dApp is a much needed solution in an industry that’s geared towards serving larger and better funded organizations.

The team projects the project’s completion in two stages. The first stage will be to build the MVP* of the Starwire dApp by December 2019. The MVP will then be tested by a variety of users. Users will be asked about the dApps’ UI/UX design, general functionality, reporting and revenue monitoring, revenue tiers, and split creation. The Starwire team wants to receive feedback from traditional Indie producers, micro-budget producers, Youtube/Twitch streamer teams and larger sales agencies. Once the feedback is accumulated, the Starwire dApp will migrate into the final stage of completion.

* What is an MVP?

The Starwire team is composed of three members who are well established in a variety of industries.

Harish Raisinghani is seasoned professional with experience in several fields. He has worked as a systems engineer, software developer, project manager, and other roles. Now, he serves as the COO at Blockmason and is involved with building relationships, educational content development, and mining operations. Harish’s main responsibility on the team is working on technical aspects of the Starwire dApp and applying Elastos technology on to the platform (Runtime, Carrier, ETH sidechain).

Garnet Campbell, co-founder of WeFilmchain, has 25 years of experience in media production, business development, project management, marketing strategies, and teambuilding. He will work directly with Harish to provide direction on how the dApp should function and how users will interact with Starwire. Garnet will also be the point man in weekly outreach to future clients and event planning.

Colin Wiebe is the founder of Matrix Blockchain Technology Corp. He is credited for the creation of the Starwire concept and brand. Colin has experience as a graphic designer, creative director and copywriter. His responsibilities include overseeing all areas of the UI/UX and graphical design on the Starwire dApp.

There are a plethora of parties Starwire is targeting for their platform:

ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Television and Radio Artists) is a union comprised of 23,000 professional artists working in English-language recorded media. ACTRA currently uses a manual contract system that allows producers to hire union actors for free or at a low cost and in return collects a percentage of the film’s gross profits and redistributes them to the actors. Starwire would help in better automating and streamlining the payment process to all artists involved. Mandy.com is the largest creative community of artists in the film, television, dance, music, and modeling industries. Mandy empowers artists in finding work in all the aforementioned fields. Any jobs posted on Mandy could use Starwire smart contracts in order to pay for their hires. YouTubers are primary targets of the Starwire platform. There are approximately 80,000 Youtube accounts with 100,000 or more subscribers who would greatly benefit by using the Starwire platform. Emerging filmmakers and film school students are a huge potential user base for the Starwire dApp. The team plans to submit their educational series on how to use blockchain and smart contracts to Filmskills.com, a platform used by over 70 top universities and film school programs in North America. American Film Market is attended by 7000 industry professionals, 2000 new film and projects, 1000 production companies and 400 global distributors. Starwire will look to be a major presence at this event.

The Starwire team has proposed a budget of 17,264 ELA ($38,500 USD) which covers:

-Revenue Sharing Smart Contract (7.5k USD)

-Mobile dApp and Wallet (7.5k USD)

-KYC Registration Module (5k USD)

-VirgoCX INTERAC Module (5k USD)

-Project Coordinator (5k USD)

-Marketing Budget (8.5k USD)

Please like Starwire’s Cyber Republic Suggestion if you would like to see it move to the Proposal stage.

Starwire’s slogan is “When money moves…you get paid. ” Millions of artists in many industries could benefit and be better compensated in the process by using the Starwire dApp.