Video platform enters Web3, brings a decade of experience

cointelegraph.com:

The controversial topic of how social media platforms distribute ad revenue generated from user content came into the spotlight when Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, announced revenue-sharing plans with creators. In a tweet, Musk specified that the micro-blogging platform plans to share ad revenue with creators “for ads that appear in their reply threads.” However, no further updates followed the initial announcement, adding to the centralized social media giant’s infamy for being stingy when it comes to revenue sharing with people who create content on its platform.

Thanks to the inherent capabilities of blockchain, such as decentralization, faster settlement speeds and better security, revenue sharing has become much more reliable in the Web3 era. Users have found new ways to interact with platforms and get a share of the revenue generated from a wide range of activities on Web3 platforms — giving birth to the action-to-earn trend. The gaming world quickly embraced play-to-earn (P2E), where players earn from the overall revenue of an online video game by participating in in-game activities and trading game-specific nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

Watch-to-earn (W2E), a relatively new concept, aims to bring the same earning opportunities to a much wider audience — people who enjoy engaging with video content. Users can create and watch videos on a W2E service, receiving rewards for each like, view, comment or share. Coub, a video platform preceding TikTok and Instagram Reels, added a new type of video NFTs to the mix as part of its venture into the Web3 era.

As a video-sharing platform launched in 2012, Coub’s first foray into the Web3 space involves turning the video content on the platform into NFTs. Users can create looped,