In 2018 there has been a lot of discussion in the media regarding Facebook and the privacy of it’s users. There has also been a movement towards Blockchain technology and Cryptocurrencies being adopted by the masses. Most of the participants are early adopters jumping on the bandwagon so to speak. Billions of dollars have been pumped into the space and similar to the great .com boom of the late 1990’s, we are seeing similarities with the Blockchain ecosystem. Some of these companies are pioneers and innovators, others are chasing the large returns trading speculative Tokens. Phantasma, which is one of these privacy pioneers, is looking to create a privacy oriented ecosystem for mixed media content creators.

“For the artists that make amazing videos, games, music and other copyrighted content, giving up a large percentage of your revenue can be very discouraging. Plus content creators usually become locked-in to those centralized platforms with the overhanging danger of arbitrary rule changes cutting their revenues.” – Phantasma Protocol

Use Cases

Built on the NEO Blockchain, Phantasma is a privacy oriented ecosystem focusing on:

Decentralized E-Mail – giving control to inbox owners with a single account with a wide array of features like autoresponders and newsletters. Not only this, it will be able to bridge existing, centralized e-mail providers using SMTP/IMAP. They will also apply PGP.

Oracles – Onchain for low data, on the NEO Blockchain. Onchain with backend storage, Endpoint with Phantasma Relays, for high data flows.

Digital Commerce – products, videos, videogames and other types of files.

Video Streaming – giving full control to the content creators with various toggles.

Incentivized Data Economy – for producers, consumers and operators.

The “Soul” Token and Uses

Phantasma Protocol’s Soul Token will be used to fuel the economy of this decentralized ecosystem. Data will not be necessarily free, and the Token will be used as a sort of network toll for participating. They will also be used for storage and network fees. Node operators will receive them as rewards for supporting the network. As of now, the Tokens will be issued as NEP-5’s which is the NEO standard. Similar to other storage protocols, sharing of the network is a major incentive for participating and gaining adoption.

Team

The team consist of multiple talented developers like Sergio Flores, City of Zion developer since October 2017. He’s also the founder of a startups called Lunar Labs in Portugal, and was a Blockchain developer in early 2016. He’s fluent in C++, C, C#, Objective-C, Java programming languages. Miguel Ferreira, who has been proclaimed a “Blockchain Expert” and an experienced developer, Bruno Freitas who has been a software developer and Crypto enthusiast since early 2017.

While it’s hard to predict the future of Phantasma Protocol, I think it’s an interesting idea and once these decentralized ecosystems really kick off in the next few years, we will see quite a few of these Blockchain startups becoming a presence around the globe.