Refine Medium: The Decentralized Media Platform

Featured – The market volume of the entertainment and media industry is expected to surpass the staggering $2.2 trillion by 2021. Yet, production houses, as well as studios which used to be subjugated in the industry are looking over their shoulders at the ambitious, aggressive, and adamant online streaming service providers like Prime Video, YouTube, Netflix, and others.

Yet, it’s questionable whether or not this transition from oligopolistic studios and production houses to fairly like-minded video platforms is a sustainable option. With the rise of blockchain-based technology, there might as well be an actual alternative. That’s the exact purpose of Refine Medium – a decentralized media platform which renders authentic, as well as high-quality video content.

What is Refine Medium?

Refine Medium brings forward a decentralized media platform which renders authentic video content. It’s built on top of Ethereum’s blockchain and it intends to enable viewers, as well as creators and innovators to connect via smart contracts.

The platform aims to incentivize all participants and all stakeholders for their contribution. Refine Medium intents to compete with all of the abovementioned online streaming service providers. However, it also aims to leverage the power of blockchain-based technology in order to introduce transparency and to make comprehensive use of emerging technologies.

The team behind the project believes that trust is a vital determinant when it comes to the ability to attract high-quality content creators as well as to sustain revenues in the future.

Refine Medium aims to tackle the following challenges which are pressing for the E&M industry as of today:

Immaterial content discovery and suggestion
No decentralized content moderation
Manipulation and illegal monetization of user data
Initial ambivalence in the engagement with nascent blockchain-based platforms
Unnecessary intermediaries
No revenue proceeds for the viewer
Delayed payments
Lack of trust

Instead of just providing monetary hikes for the creators, Refine Medium will also reward its viewers. It provides a platform for real and original videos. The advertisement revenues generated through the uploaded videos will be shared with content creators and viewers.

The team has already rolled out its Minimum Viable Product (MVP) which could be found here. It contains three main functionalities:

User Accounts
Video Upload and Streaming onto an IPFS storage
Transactions of Refine BETA tokens on the blockchain to user’s wallets.

The main medium of exchange on the platform will be the native Refine token called XRM.

Main Features of Refine Medium

The platform offers a broad range of different features geared at improving user experience and at facilitating the overall distribution of high-quality content. These include:

Video Uploading Mechanism: The platform brings a P2P network which eliminates intermediaries and attempts to make video uploading a lot quicker.

Secured User Data: The security of the user’s data is guaranteed by the distributed nature of blockchain-based technology, as well as its immutability and transparency.

User-Friendly Infrastructure: This part focuses on a broad collection of videos, a well-made user dashboard, regularity of payments thanks to the fact that they are based on smart contracts, and so forth.

Improved Accessibility: Through an improved content discovery and suggestion model, Refine Medium aims to make the right content available for the right user.

Equitable Power and Monetary Distribution: This is perhaps one of the most important traits of the platform as it strives to ensure equal revenue distribution among all of its stakeholders and participants.

Decentralized Content Moderation: The moderators are elected democratically from the user base of the platform. This guarantees the fairness of the process.

Copyright Management: Thanks to its robust copyright query, the platform also aims to make sure that the rights of the creators are kept under close consideration.

ICO And Token Allocation

Refine Medium’s ICO is going to go through three different phases as seen on the picture below.

refine-min

In terms of token allocation, the distribution is as it follows:

50% for the Main ICO
10% for the Pre-Sale
5% for the Private Sale
5% for the Team & Advisors
15% for the Community Development
5% for Airdrop & Bounties
5% Retained
5% Frozen for the Team

Additionally, Refine Medium is also having an Initial Exchange Offering on the cryptocurrency exchange Probit. The dates which are picked are between July 10th – 12th, 2019. The top three buyers in the IEO will receive 15,000, 10,000, and 5,000 XRM tokens respectively as a bonus. Additionally, the first 50 investors will get 1,200 XRM bonus, while the next 50 will get 600 XRM tokens as a bonus.

Fund Distribution

It’s also important to see how are the funds raised through the ICO going to be used. The team behind Refine Medium has come up with the following fund distribution plan:

Marketing & Business Development – 25%
Project & Community Development – 30%
Security – 5%
Core Activities Reserve – 5%
Operational Expenses – 10%
Legal Contingency Fund – 5%
Misc & Unexpected – 5%
IT Hardware & Production Overhead – 5%

Conclusion

In summary, the project does look like something promising. The concept behind it is innovative and the fact that it has an MVP already created brings additional trust to the potential investor. The platform intends to provide a broad range of different features which intend to elevate the user experience for both content creators and viewers.

The Pros: