PUBLISHprotocol’s ecosystem and key participants

In our previous post, we looked at the the problems that characterize the newspaper industry. In this two-part article series, we look at how PUBLISHprotocol hopes to solve these problems. In part one of the series, we examine PUBLISHprotocol’s ecosystem and key participants, while in part two, we take a closer look at the technology powering our platform.

PUBLISHprotocol’s ecosystem

The PUBLISHprotocol ecosystem consists of five main participants:

Publishers

Editors

News Content Producers

News Content Consumers

Advertisers

Publishers

PUBLISHprotocol does not aim to support a decentralized media platform that aggregates every ideology and voice into a single publication. Instead, it aims to cultivate diversity and counteract consolidation. Newspaper newsrooms leveraging a PUBLISHprotocol-based token will be independently owned news organizations with distinctive governance and operational structures in deciding how contents are produced, validated, financed and disseminated to the public.

Editors

Editors comprise Community Editors and Deputy Editors. Community Editors are tasked with reviewing submitted news content following a set of editorial standards as agreed upon by the publisher. This may include anything from marking grammatical errors and pointing out logical incoherence to flagging questionable statements and mistruths. Community Editors serve to expedite the editing process and assist in the deputy editor’s ability to make better editorial decisions. The final say as to whether a news item is approved for publication rests solely with the deputy editor and the publisher.

News Content Producers

A News Content Producer, or writer, can be any individual with a level of expertise and insight deemed acceptable by the publisher. Once approved as an producer, he or she may submit news items to be reviewed by the editorial committee for the purpose of publication, upon which producers will be compensated in tokens.

News Content Consumers

News Content Consumers, or readers, form an essential component of the PUBLISHprotocol ecosystem. Without consumers, the bilateral trade between the publisher and the advertiser cannot be established. Consumers signing up for an account with an onboarding publisher can be compensated in tokens for things like reading, upvoting, commenting on, and flagging content.

Advertisers

PUBLISHprotocol offers advertisers a high-quality platform on which to spread awareness about the products and services they offer. Any marketing-related activities (e.g., banner ads, sponsored content) requires advertisers to purchase a publisher-issued token as utilized within its PUBLISHprotocol-based ecosystem. Revenue generated from advertisements will be distributed in the form of tokens to relevant community participants.

How PUBLISHprotocol differs from other blockchain media projects

A number of other blockchain media projects exist at different stages of development. These include, but are not limited to, Civil, Steemit and DNN. PUBLISHprotocol came about as a reaction to these projects, which generally seek to create a community-operated decentralized network of community participants.

Publishers

PUBLISHprotocol incentivizes distributed news production and consumption without removing independent publishers’ capacity to disseminate voices distinctive of their respective identities. In the PUBLISH ecosystem, publishers have the final say as to whether or not an article is published and made available to the general public. Other blockchain protocols assign this role to lower-level editors (e.g., DNN) or do away with publishers altogether (e.g., Steemit).

Editors

Community editors in the PUBLISHprotocol ecosystem are qualified individuals who have been carefully selected by deputy editors and in turn publishers. In the case of DNN, however, a group of “reviewers” staking the most DNN tokens is selected to categorically accept or reject — as determined by a majority vote — an article submitted for publication. Other protocols have opted out of a formal editing process altogether. Steemit, for instance, allows any writer to publish content to its platform, regardless of the article’s quality.

News Content Consumers

Once a news item has been drafted, edited and published, consumers who have signed up for an account with an onboarding publisher can be compensated in tokens for things like reading, upvoting, commenting on, and flagging content.

Advertisers

Within the PUBLISHprotocol ecosystem, advertisers are seen as performing the necessary function of disseminating information to the public about products and services that would otherwise go unnoticed. Unlike CIVIL, Steemit and DNN that seek to play down or altogether do away with advertising, PUBLISHprotocol does not seek to exclude advertisers from its token economy. For publishers opting to integrate a PUBLISHprotocol-based token reward system into their business, they can require advertisers to purchase their tokens in order to pay for marketing-related activities, thereby creating additional demand for tokens. For example, to purchase a banner on the TokenPost website, an advertiser would have to purchase NEWS tokens, the official token used within TokenPost’s ecosystem. Moreover, digital advertising revenue generated by advertisements can be distributed among all participants in the ecosystem, thereby further incentivizing good behavior. In doing so, we recognize the reality that financial viability forms the basis of any meaningful for-profit projects.