Tel-Aviv, Israel-based blockchain startup Synereo announced in a press release CoinReport received its first “Attention Economy toolkit” component, Synereo Qrator.

Qrator, which will be released as Beta in June, is a tool that lets users monetize original content, get rewarded for sharing quality with others and discover the best content on the Internet.

The app will lead towards a decentralized “Attention Economy Layer” in the months following its release, including a distributed content delivery network (CDN), enabling users to directly upload content to the Synereo CDN.

With Qrator’s operation, the company looks to create a cross-platform social graph, laying the groundwork for the network effects required to assist a completely occupied decentralized social content app based on blockchain and distributed storage technologies, which will be built on the Qrator foundation later this year.

In a blogpost, Synereo said Qrator’s closest touchpoint to the Internet is a browser extension that follows the user while they browse through content hosting platforms such as YouTube, Soundcloud, etc., and empowers them to “amplify” content pieces like articles, music clips or videos, using AMPs, the native digital currency of Synereo.

Explaining “amplification,” Synereo said it means the user is able to stake a customizable number of AMPs on a certain piece of content, distribute it via several social networks and get rewarded with an AMP dividend if that piece of content proves itself to be accepted and reposted by their audience. At the same time, the content’s creator receives a share of every Amplification fee paid.

This way, said Synereo, content creators can derive revenue from their work, while curators are incentivized to discover great content and share it with audiences interested in it. Moreover, content creators are able to stake a bounty on their content to attract curators, and in essence, amplifying their work in a traditional sense, breaking their organic reach’s boundaries.

Professional creators and curators, or power users, can view their statistics on the Qrator Dashboard and evaluate the additional value they have developed in terms of traffic and reach, and comprehend how their curation activity affects their AMP dividends.

Synereo CEO Dor Konforty explained Qrator and its place in Synereo’s roadmap towards a decentralized social network, saying, “Our main goal at this stage is giving users a taste of how a network in which they are compensated for content creation and curation feels like. Additionally, Qrator will allow us to build a cross-platform social graph and bootstrap network effects on top of existing services. With this information and user base, Synereo will be able to hit the ground running with its decentralized social networking app – already populated with users, their social environments, identities and histories – all securely stored on the blockchain, privately owned, accessible and controlled by them only.”

Konforty is a graduate of the Israeli Air Force IT unit and has a master’s degree in neurobiology. His work on neural networks inspired him to develop a new type of decentralized economy.

Following the closed beta release in June, Qrator will be connected to a decentralized CDN, enabling users to directly upload content to a distributed hosting service, getting around current centralized networks like YouTube wholly. With content hosted on the Synereo CDN and user identities and social graphs stored on a blockchain secured system, Synereo’s subsequent step will be an independent social network with Attention Economy implementations.

Images via PR firm Taurus Vision