The terms of use ensure a secure, easy to use and fair trading process for both parties. Artists will receive up to 95% of the final selling price of their digital works.

Photochain is a peer to peer platform, releasing new concepts for a next generation stock photography platform. Photochain will be a vehicle for fair trading of digital works between artists and buyers.

Using Ethereum blockchain Smart Contracts, people are able to make digital agreements circumventing the need for a third party. Both parties must comply with the conditions of the contract which can be easily verified on the blockchain. Being decentralized, tampering is prevented.

Today blockchain technology is enabling a global network of people to perform transactions of various kinds, peer to peer, without the need for a central governing authority. These new innovations allow people to verify these transactions safely and securely at any time.

Unfavorable Sales Conditions for Artists

Currently there aren’t many options available to photographers or designers who want to earn money in a fair way, selling their digital work. This is particularly concerning for amateur photographers and hobby artists who have not yet attained a high level of name recognition, which would enable them to sell their works at higher prices. For this group of artists, there are stock photography microstocks such as Shutterstock and Adobe Stock available.

Although artists can reach lots of potential buyers by putting their digital works on these platforms, they only receive a tiny percentage of the sales price. Current centralized photo stocks can receive up to 90% of the profit margin. Also, the platforms have stringent requirements for the sellers. Due to these challenging conditions, the artist is obliged to publish a substantial number of images in hopes of being able to compete against high levels of competition.

Other problems include sellers being unable to set their own pricing, long waiting times for verification of the content, a large number of rejections of the work by the photo stock platforms, as well as long time intervals between payments.

Photochain DApp as a Solution to the Artist’s Problems

By developing the Photochain platform, we present the possibility for artists to sell their works directly to their customers, on their own terms. Mediated by Smart Contracts, when a sale is made, the seller is paid, and the buyer receives the purchased picture immediately. Thus, Photochain doesn’t require a centralised authority to ensure the correctness of transactions. This reliability is inherently contained in the blockchain technology.

The Photochain platform has been engineered from the ground up, to solve the problems of traditional stock photography platforms. For ongoing development, the wisdom of the community oversees the platform and machine learning is employed to find solutions for other problems

Photochain’s Mission

Photochain has clear advantages for contributors and customers. Contributors at Photochain benefit from an extremely low fee – only 5% of the selling price. Keeping 95% of the final sale price allows contributors to offer their work cheaper. Consequently the market becomes more affordable for customers. This type of fair market not only benefits the users, but should benefit the photography industry as a whole, as the possibility of increased income incentivizes contributors to perform better.

These profound market changes are only made possible by using blockchain technology, Smart Contracts, machine learning and Photochain’s own user community. Most of the processes become automated and decentralized, significantly reducing costs of platform governance. It’s unavoidable that more and more stock photography contributors and customers will prefer to use Photochain.

The development of the Photochain platform is an ambitious and organically growing process. Our main aims for the project come under three significant prongs:

P2P Marketplace

It’s very important to us that only the artists themselves can determine the value of their work and they’re given the opportunity to offer their work to many potential buyers.

Crypto Economy

Photochain appeals to a broad audience of people that aren’t yet adopters of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies. The relatable use case of “Photochain” will appeal to this audience. The easy-to-use GUI and the trading process facilitates the onboarding process and supports the Crypto Economy in becoming mainstream.

Photochain Digital Copyright Chain: DCC

Over the course of the project, more and more artists will be able to strengthen their copyright using the Photochain platform, since their works will be linked to their name. This link is manifested as a transaction in the Ethereum blockchain and is therefore visible to all users at all times. This means that the artist’s ownership of the image can be accounted for. The database with all manifested links has been constructed in a decentralised way, (for further details, see chapter 2 ). We call this database a DCC.

Photochain is created around 4 key pillars.

P2P Marketplace

We want buyers and sellers determine their own terms of sale, so we allow them to trade directly with one another. Using blockchain to remove the need for costly processing, we guarantee photographers to receive 95% of the earnings from their works.

Easy Onboarding

A simple identity verification for all photographers. Unlike with traditional photostocks which require lots of prerequisites, a user can be actively selling work in minutes. The removal of prerequisites further allows the platform to be fully accessible and profitable to hobby, amateur and professional photographers alike.

Digital Copyright Chain

Our decentralized database ensures each uploaded photo is hashed into the blockchain and permanently linked to its owner. This link cannot be changed removed or manipulated in any way. Any further uploaded image is also hashed and compared to the existing DCC for copyright fraud. Additionally due to the permanent link, any misuse of the image outside of paid licenses is easily detectable.

Crypto Economy

We are helping to build a crypto economy, where we have more control over our data. A fairer economy where you are rewarded for your work. We believe photographers deserve fair compensation for their efforts and their creativity.

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Team

Stanislav Stolberg Co-Founder, CEO Arthur Ishmetev Blockchain Developer Haris Rana CMO Ralf Gerteis Business Development Jakub Stefański CTO Jeannette Heinert Communications Alexander Sverdlov Security Adviser Brian Colwell Blockchain Evangelist Dylan Sharkey Sales and Investment Relations Samuel Manzanera Technology and Software Architecture Analyst Peter Lai Blockchain Developer Fredi Lienhardt Photographer Relationships Officer Artur Gugelew Financial Strategy Manager

Photochain Advisors

Sven Moeller ICO Strategy Adviser Paulo Renato Dallagnol Legal Adviser Charles Becquet Strategy Chang Liu Assoc. Prof. at Ohio University Alex Fedosseev Adviser Jared Polites Strategy and PR Adviser Ilya Anikin ICO, Investment and Strategy Advisor Roberto Capodieci Blockchain and Investor Relations Advisor Audrey Baverel Crypto Tax & Accounting Adviser Marcus Schmitt ICO Advisor / CEO Copytrack

Milestones

April 2017 Idea, business case and market research.

June 2017 Project evaluation. Development of the DApp prototype.

September 2017 Strategy & Design. Go-Live of the DApp prototype.

October-November 2017 Preparation for crowdsale. Communication and marketing activities. Commitment of the Blockchain Community. Commitment of the photography community. Legal form. Advisers and new team members.

December 2017 Pre-Sale preparations. Private Pre-Sale at special discounts for eraly supporters.

January 2018 Private Pre-Sale preparations. Private Pre-Sale at special discounts for early supporters. Enhanced documentation and planning. New team members. Community growing. New partnerships.

February 2018 Transition. Preparation for Main Sale Event . Compliance and regulations. Developing a more comprehensive Photochain DAPP version.

Q1 2018 Main Sale event (ICO). Publishing of new collaboration partners. Regulatory compliance for our Main Sale Event.

Q2 2018 Operation. Photochain DApp Version 1.0 on the Ethereum. Mainnet. Trading of the PHT Tokens at Crypto Exchanges.

Q3 2018 Continual improvement. Photochain DApp as standalone client on all common operating systems.