Q&A 2

Alan:

OK. I agree with Yi Lu on the issues concerning content which we need to solve. Since I am an experienced internet user, I do feel that during internet era, the information overload leads to continuous distractions to user’s attention. Under such circumstances it seems there’s a lack of sound mechanism for us to determine suitable content for individuals or what kind of content is worth reading. Due to these, I feel U Network’s product might solve one of the issues Yi Lu mentioned just now: discovery of quality content. I am interested in the exact mechanism for discovery of valuable, useful and truly great content.

This leads to my next question, how does your product work in order to discover quality content, and how does it help content creators to monetize their work? Besides that, how does U Network differ from Steemit or Reddit? What are the advantages and selling points of U Network, in other words how is the economic model outstanding?

Yi Lu:

Your questions are very sharp! To answer the first question, how we can discover quality content. The core idea is that we construct a free market for content, where all users cast votes to upvote or like good content. However a cost is incurred during the voting progress: for example, a user needs to spend a token to upvote an article he likes. In this case, the value of that particular article would keep risking. However, in this situation we consider the act of voting also an act of investment. As long as there are additional users who upvote that article, the earlier voters stand to gain some of the tokens.

This means if one can discover good content early and vote for it before majority of users do, it would be similar to the seed round investment in terms of option investment. Number of upvotes help to indicate quality content and reward early investors. This helps us to select good quality content: it’s voting at a cost, which is similar to investment behavior.

This is the general thought for us to select quality content. Of course, besides a strategy to consider each piece of article or video or audio clip, we would also include votes and publishing time in our mechanism. This sums up my answer to your first question.

The second question is on the monetization of content for creators. Put simply, when other users vote for the author’s work, part of the tokens used for voting would be given to the author. At the same time there is a reward pool for top content each day during a specific time under certain topics. If you are able to write content outstanding enough to be selected for the reward pool, you would be able to receive huge rewards. These rewards go to not only the content creators but also the voters for quality content, this how we tackle the monetization issue.

The third question is on our advantage as compared to products like Steemit. As compared to Steemit, we position ourselves quite differently. We target content industry and aim to become like Ethereum network within content industry, which means any other content communities can partner with us. For example, if you already have a mature community which requires blockchain, you can join U Network and launch your own tokens.

On a product level, besides building U Network as a public chain, we also work on DApps, which can be called U赞. This product is within blockchain industry and also positioned differently from Steemit. Our team has always worked in content industry and have deeper understanding of the sector. On the other hand we also have an overseas foundation which help us obtain overseas content better.

However, many other projects have unique underlying architecture for their public chains. We would discuss such differences later. However the main difference lies in the way we construct our content market, the cost involved in upvoting is also a main difference from other products

This sums up my answers to your three questions: U Network constructs a prediction market for content value, allow viewers to invest in content and discover quality content like how investors discover outstanding startups. U Network can be considered the Ethereum within content industry, it is positioned differently from Steemit. Voting requires cost on U Network.