Project Name: Fabstir Web3 Media Player
Fabstir Web3 Media Player: A video and audio streaming Web3 media player to provide smooth playback of media NFTs straight out of the MetaMask wallet from Sia storage via S5 and Skynet .
Organisation: Fabstir, led by Jules Lai (founder, CEO and CTO)
https://fabstir.com
Short Bio
Jules Lai holds degree level and MSc in computing and in mathematics. Based in London, he worked as senior software developer designing and implementing financial modelling software used by corporations such as Lloyd’s of London and the Bank of England. In his spare time, he runs some of the largest filmmaking and film business communities (Non-Multiplex Cinema and Film Means Business) in the UK, for over a decade.
Since summer 2021, he has been devoted to developing Fabstir; a start-up that has built a one-stop platform for video and music streaming, e-commerce, social media and fundraising for content creators to enable creative freedom, greater diversity of content, censorship resistance and fairer income for creators.
Purpose
To build a Web3 media player extension to MetaMask that will allow video, music and art NFTs to stream their content from SIA storage.
This is a dapp extension for lovers of media who wish the freedom to consume NFT media content that they own in their digital wallet account, whenever they like.
Summary of Fabstir Web3 Media Player features
- Play NFT media (video, music, art & metaverse 3d) direct from MetaMask wallet account.
- Intention is to work cross-chain from any EVM compatible blockchain that supports ERC-721 and ERC-1155 NFTs.
- Stream directly from Sia via s5 and Skynet v2 (when available)
- Provide caching service for other data storage solutions like IPFS and Arweave onto Sia to provide better playback higher quality streaming.
- Provide transcoding features onto Sia for multiple bitrates and formats to HLS and MPEG-DASH.
- Provide payment solution from ERC-20 tokens to Sia straight from users’ MetaMask wallet.
- Integrate with NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea, Rarible, Fabstir etc.
- Provide indexing of content from media NFTs on other platforms such as Fabstir.
- Provide gallery and other presentation customisation for NFT collections owned in wallet account.
- Set an EIP standard for media NFTs to help with future compatibility.
The Problem
For professional content, a handful of big players in the industry offer subscription models to their content. Meaning that the consumer has no say as to what content is available and the subscription platforms wield sole power to add and remove content.
Because of the monopoly between a few big tech and brand players such as Netflix and Disney, content creators are required to give too much of their rights and are the bottom of the food chain when it comes to earning revenue from their content. For example, Spotify take out 30% and the major music labels take their cut of 40% which is why only £0.003 per click is paid to the content creators. YouTube, even less at £0.0005 per click. This, despite the content being the final product.
Video streaming platforms such as Netflix are opaque about how much they earn and filmmakers have to sign deals heavily weighed against them where income is often reported to come in dribs and drabs over long periods.
The Solution
Having a Web3 media player on the most popular digital wallet, MetaMask (with over 21 million monthly active users), allows an escape route from centralised subscription models. This enables media lovers to buy NFT media content directly from creators to keep and to enjoy streaming straight out of their wallet account. Hence it cannot be taken away and is resistant to censorship. This also allows content creators to receive the majority of the income and keep their content rights too, as there would be no intermediaries. Content creators would be now top of the food chain!
NFT marketplaces and Web3 streaming platforms fees are usually much lower than their Web2 counterparts. Everything is much more open and transparent as one can use a tool like ethercan.io or equivalent to look up transaction history on the blockchain. Thus, breaking down the walled gardens prevalent in the media industry that place too much distance between content creators and what fans want.
Instead, community driven content can thrive allowing for much more diverse and exciting content from around the world. There is the potential for much greater income to creators to sustain new and exciting talent to thrive! Plus, creators can produce content true to their vision rather than have to fit into mega brand categories.
Why SIA for streaming?
SIA has the potential to be the go to storage solution for streaming high quality decentralised content. IPFS is not designed for this as it has no CDN qualities, nor Arweave’s permaweb as this is for the use case of permanent storage archiving. Indeed, the Web3 media player I am proposing will be designed to offer a caching solution to these slower storage architectures that will help onboard more users to SIA and utilise the advantages of Sia v2 when available.
Fabstir Web3 media player will perform transcoding in browser for smaller sized media and use decentralised servers (from Akash) to transcode higher quality bitrate material. The process will output multiple formats and bitrates in HLS and MPEG-DASH onto Sia storage on a par with Youtube. Users will pay for the cost in ERC20 tokens straight from their MetaMask wallet to Sia, plus there will be a fee to go to Fabstir and any slippage cost in currency conversion.
The plan is to work with and support both @redsolver and Derrick from LumeWeb who are both extremely talented individuals, with the Web3 interface to SIA storage. Whether that be via S5 or a new rejuvenated Skynet or both.
Fabstir platform already uses SIA storage for all its streaming and metadata via the existing version of Skynet. When live, it will bring further onboarding of users to SIA. Plus, the media players integration with other major NFT marketplaces will help SIA gain brand recognition as an alternative to IPFS.
Budget
The project is requesting $70,000 for one year.
The planned expenditure is:
- $45,000 to the part-time salary of Jules Lai. Who will develop the
desktop MetaMask Snaps version.
- $25,000 to any other cost that may incur; such as marketing/brand design, a
laptop, testing, audit, oracle service (currency prices) and associated fees for
Akash server network.
Part of the process will be to ensure compatibility with the major NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea and Rarible as well as upcoming Web3 streaming platforms, such as my own; Fabstir.
It is planned that the project will develop beyond the first year to extend to game assets and the metaverse where whole world content can be streamed from SIA storage and rendered in 3D. Plus to be cross-chain and format agnostic.
Further future development to be considered is integration with other Web3 wallets such as Tally Ho.
Any additional funding will go to speeding up the roadmap and expanding the team or to additional outsourcing.
Current development
Some of the media and Web3 features have already been done whilst developing Fabstir’s Web3 streaming platform and will be simply copied across.
Presently, both video and music NFTs streaming from SIA via Skynet is supported by Fabstir. Fabstir streaming platform is not yet live but is fully functional. The platform runs on EVM compatible blockchains with initial release planned on Polygon next spring/summer.
The plan is that Fabstir’s Web3 media player for MetaMask to be a separate product from Fabstir the platform and will support many video and audio NFT metadata formats for both ERC-721 and ERC-1155, on multiple EVM compatible blockchains. Quite how many is unknown given budgetary, time and manpower constraints.
Currently, HLS video protocol is supported that allows for content encryption and file chunking; meaning video is split into chunks to allow content to be played without first downloading the entire media content. There will be support for MPEG-DASH format.
For users who have content in non-streaming codec containers (on IPFS or Arweave) then Fabstir’s MetaMask extension will offer in browser transcoding via WASM and subsequent storage to SIA for file sizes up to 2GB (current WASM limit). File sizes larger are transcoded via decentralised servers such as Akash for higher quality bit-rate content.
Future development
There are many integrations to explore that can bolster the movement for Web3 content creation such as integration with Lens Protocol (planned within the year) for social and Fabstir for social, e-commerce and fundraising.
Indexing service for NFT content discovery across multiple platforms, not just from Fabstir platform. So, users only have to open MetaMask to gain access to a world of content and be directed to various marketplaces to buy or sell.
Also, original content authentication is to be explored. To allow for example, a green tick next to legitimate content in the MetMask extension front end, to highlight that it is not a copy. There are third party companies that specialise in this use case that could deliver a ready-made solution to integrate with.
For mobile platforms, the Web3 media player will be written in JavaScript with React Native when MetaMask enables Snaps for mobile.
Proposed timeline
- Start Fabstir Web3 video and music player for MetaMask Snaps
(extension)
- Support for NFT video and audio streaming in HLS format from SIA for
Fabstir NFTs on Polygon.
- Support for other video streaming protocol MPEG-DASH.
- Support for subtitles and song lyrics.
- Allow for transcoding and uploading of video and audio to Sia and wrap as NFTs.
- Allow for content caching of NFTs from other storage solutions such as
IPFS and Arweave onto SIA.
- NFT metadata compatibility with various NFT marketplaces such as
OpenSea and Rarible.
- EIP proposal for standardisation of video and audio NFT
specifications.
- Searchable indexing of content available from Fabstir.
- Support for other EVM compatible layer 2 solutions.
- First foray into metaverse with 3d graphics rendering of assets in
.obj, Alembic or FBX formats.
- Authentication system that will show with a green tick NFTs that
are the original and not copies (probably a large development and
won’t be done in time unless integration with a 3rd party service).
Revenue model
For users caching their NFT content from other Web3 storage solutions onto SIA, they would be charged an upload/download cost to go to S5/Skynet/Sia with an additional fee (10%) going to Fabstir.
For casual users who just want to consume their own NFTs then free download with a quota limit. A fee for heavier usage e.g. multicasting, to be determined.
Media player operational features
- The Fabstir Web3 media player will have the usual play, stop/pause,
rewind, fast forward, skip to position locator.
- For songs, support for the use of .lrc lyric format to sync lyrics
with current song position.
- Support various subtitles formats.
- Multi-channel audio support for different languages.
- Rudimentary 3D asset rendering (at first).
- Galleries/folders to display collections with some customisation of
layout.
- Favourite lists and history of content played.
- Content lists from Fabstir, searchable via tags and filters. Includes
reviews and ratings.
- Various transcoding options, with a choice of output qualities.
- Code to embed player to websites.
- Easy creation of media NFTs to OpenSea, Fabstir etc.
- Re-skin the player with options from default templates and user
generated skins.
Will be branded as a Fabstir Media Player powered by SIA backend.
Technology
- The main Fabstir Web3 media player for desktop will be written in
JavaScript with React.
- The transcoder will utilise ffmpeg (C++) compiled to WASM and C++ transcoder for off-line from Akash decentralised servers.
- The Web3 interface to SIA storage will use S5 (from @redsolver) and
Skynet v2 (from Derrick Hammer of LumeWeb).
Risks
Part of the risks lays on S5 and Skynet v2 development as both are or would be new software stacks in production. The latter might require some help from Skynet’s core developer(s).
MetaMask Snaps market is new and development is ongoing.
Given the scope and number of features of this proposal, the main ones are to be tackled first, followed by nice to haves within a timebox.
Open Source
This project is to be open source under the MIT license.
Conclusion
From my trips this year to the Cannes Film Festival and the American Film Market, after talking to 100s of film producers, directors and productions houses, the situation is getting worse for content creators as Web2 subscription platforms further shore up their dominance as gatekeepers with absolute power to choose to buy up rights and content or make content, for their own agendas and profits.
I believe Fabstir Web3 media player will give creative freedom to content creators, where they get to keep their digital rights, stream directly to their fans and receive the lion’s share of the revenue. And the community can once again own content to view/listen to, straight from their digital wallets where no subscription platform can remove it, and champion their favourite creators by supporting future content. Thus enabling the flood gates to open for new exciting material from across the world.