From its inception, Po.et was created to unify content creators, curators, and publishers around a set of shared ideals:

Permanent attribution of content ownership

Well-curated and unbiased content discovery

Freedom to create clearly defined monetization opportunities

Simplified value exchange with fewer intermediaries

Po.et’s utility will derive from allowing creators to prove content ownership, cryptographically generate licenses, and define economic incentives around the value of a given digital media asset. This will allow them to set economic incentives based on the market value of a given digital media asset. Once asset ownership is proved within the Po.et Network, creators can enter into curated marketplaces where they can connect directly with publishers and end users to have their content seen, heard and viewed. Our intention is to create a trusted network open to any platform and partner, not a walled garden.

Since I joined Po.et as CEO in February, we have succeeded in creating new ways to interface with the Po.et Network and extended our reach through new partnerships.

I am proud to announce that Po.et has officially completed building all the infrastructure in the first phase of its roadmap. Now, we move to the next phase of construction: The Gutenberg Era. In the Gutenberg Era, our focus is to deliver features that increase the number of registered assets on the Po.et Network. In short, we will begin building on top of the foundation — Po.et’s time-stamping functionality and the multitude of integrations that allow creators to network accessibility across the internet.

Widespread adoption and understanding of Po.et rests on both our technical superiority and consumer cognition. In order to fulfill the promises of what Po.et can become, we need to bring in experienced builders who have constructed technology companies at scale and emphatically believe in our ideals. This technology must also be comprehensible for all to leverage. With that said, I’m excited to announce that we’ve found two key leadership hires: Eric Elliott and David Turner!

Eric Elliott joins as VP of Engineering. Eric is the author of “Programming JavaScript Applications” (O’Reilly). He has contributed to software experiences for Adobe Systems, Zumba Fitness, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, BBC, and top recording artists including Usher, Frank Ocean, Metallica, and many more.

Eric has scaled multiple engineering teams to tens of millions of users and helped build Adobe Creative Cloud, enabling the successful transition from boxed software to the SaaS model. He built features that delivered music content for 500 thousand bands (acquired by YouTube), and has trained development teams for high growth startups and fortune 500 companies.

David Turner joins as Head of Product. David has been in publishing and adtech leadership roles for the past 8 years. He is an advisor to multiple early stage startups and is a former YCombinator-backed founder (PageLever S11, acquired by Unified Social).

Before joining Po.et, David led the development of the platform for managing one of the world’s largest influencer networks and was responsible for programmatic operations and revenue at Guff Media. At Unified, David assembled a globally distributed product and engineering team that built the Unified Social Operating Platform, an award-winning social advertising buying, optimization and analytics platform used by Honda, Spotify, AB InBev, and Starbucks.

Filling these key roles with such strong leaders is a significant achievement that multiplies our ability to deliver exponentially on the promise of the Po.et platform. I’m beyond thrilled to have them on board and eager to get them up to speed.

Over the next month (and months and months after), there will be a lot of activity on the Po.et roadmap to build more opportunities for creators to own and leverage their ideas at scale. Eric and David will be taking over the reigns to unlock the value of Po.et from a token perspective and find new ways to leverage the Po.et Network. We will be releasing updated documentation on the network token’s use and road map in the coming weeks.

In the spirit of being a part of the open source community, we welcome collaboration with all people and projects, blockchain related or not. If you’re wanting to be part of our community, come introduce yourself in our Telegram channel, check out our repos on Github, or shoot us a tweet on Twitter.

It’s clear that creators need a turnkey solution to help them protect and manage their assets in the digital age. Po.et aims to become the ubiquitous media protocol for Web 3.0. What we’re building is a decentralized future in which creators get to own the value they create.