As they say on their website, Crea is a «platform for creating hypermedia apps based on the blockchain». It rewards creative and curators of digital content with their own cryptocurrency capable of carrying out a thousand transactions per second. On this occasion we interview Ridjal Diallo, one of its founders, who explains the peculiarities of this platform for artists and creators.
How did Crea come about?
In 2015 we began to devise the development of what today is the social network Creary.net and Crea Network. Since we knew about the existence of Bitcoin we were attracted by its solution to solve the problem of trust in distributed networks. So we came up with the idea of adapting it to any kind of relationship between people and things in order to eliminate from the equation the intermediaries who decide, control our data and make all kinds of cultural production more expensive.
And that was when we began to develop the idea of applying this technology to the digital content distribution sector in a decentralized way. The first thing that caught our attention was the solution offered by the blockchain to certify a record of transactions reliably and without centralized agencies. We thought: it could be a revolutionary tool to certify copyright registrations of any type of digital creation.
Since then, we have been completely immersed in the universe of this technology with the goal of building a new protocol for decentralized applications. The purpose was and still is to promote a new economic, creative and technological scenario that is fairer and more democratic in all that concerns the arts sector and the creation of digital content on the Internet.
«Detail of my picture» (Zsolt Vidak).
What protocols or technologies is the Crea platform based on?
Crea is a distributed network that operates under the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus protocol. At Crea, block production takes place in rounds. In each round 25 witnesses (nodes) are selected by direct democracy thanks to the vote of the network users. The main purpose of the tokens is to create and sign transaction blocks. Twenty-four of these witnesses are elected by vote and the number 25 is selected from all those witnesses who were not placed among the first 24.
The 25 active witnesses are shuffled in each round to prevent any witness from constantly ignoring the blocks produced by the same witness placed in a previous position. The protocol distributes to the witnesses 15% of the total rewards issued by the protocol. Crea is an open source project that at the same time draws from other libraries and projects of the cryptographic ecosystem, such as Bitcoin, Graphene, Steem, Bitshare or IPFS, among others.
In the cryptographic universe there are many different blockchains. Actually a blockchain is only the distributed database, but a project like Bitcoin, Ethereum or Crea contains many more elements, which are included in what is known as a core. In our case, one of the main reasons to develop our own core was to be able to develop an ecosystem that would adapt to the needs of the development of distributed social networks in the digital creation sector and not depend on the evolution or congestion that other blockchains could suffer.
What innovation does Crea's blockchain bring to the content creation ecosystem?
Crea is the hypermedia application creation platform that rewards creators and curators of digital content. The goal is to offer solutions for developers of decentralized applications (dApps), cultural institutions, artists and professionals in the multimedia creation sector. Crea is a network based on distributed technologies that promotes the emancipation of traditional banking, a public and transparent alternative to private copyright protection companies and a fair and democratic alternative that will replace conventional models of centralized social networks such as Pinterest, Youtube, Instagram, etc.
What is the dApp Creary? What are the benefits for creators?
Creary.net is a decentralized social network where creatives can share their work in a completely p2p environment. At Creary, users benefit from the rewards that are automatically emitted through the Crea network protocol, thanks to the votes and interactions they receive from the community through an advanced gamification system that constantly distributes tokens.
Creary is also a marketplace for buying and selling content without intermediaries, where users can manage their funds without the intermediation of traditional banks. In addition, they can certify their works with content distribution licenses such as Creative Commons and register them in the blockchain as a proof of their creation.
One of Creary.net's main challenges has been to materialize a blockchain project that is easy to use and adapts not only to those users with more advanced technical knowledge, but also to newcomers to the crypto universe. To do this, we have spent a lot of time designing a social network with an easy-to-use interface, with a gamma-rich system that offers users a pleasant and entertaining browsing experience. At the same time, it functions as an effective platform for displaying and promoting work in a digital portfolio format.
In practice, and to make it easier to understand, we could imagine someone without a technical knowledge that defines Creary as a dynamic social network like Instagram, with an interface inspired by digital art platforms or portfolio networks like Behance or Dribbble, and with the decentralized ecosystem of blockchain projects like Bitcoin.
Creary, the decentralized social network for creators.
What role do content curators play in the platform?
Their role is very important, as they are in charge of finding and evaluating the highest quality content. The projects, when they receive likes, go up in the list, and the most voted ones reach the first positions in the main page, also known as «popular». All users can cure content at the same time they can be content creators. In the end, curating is nothing more than giving a like to the projects you like best.
How could museums, galleries and art promoters or other means of cultural dissemination benefit from Crea?
In many ways: after all, they can use it to disseminate and promote their works, sell them or register their authenticity. However, the business model of this type of institutions (intermediaries) will really have to be reinvented, as platforms such as Creary precisely avoid the need to use this time of classic intermediation windows to promote, sell or distribute their works.
What kind of files can be included in your blockchain?
At the moment, Creary supports all types of multimedia files for direct download, such as images, audios, videos, e-books, software, etc. At Creary, artists can create their own distribution channel or marketplace and sell their digital goods in exchange for tokens, whether they are stock photos, vectors, audio tracks, electronic books or any type of digital content imaginable.
How is the authenticity or ownership of this blockchain certified?
All interactions, metadata and distribution licenses associated with any content are recorded in the blockchain in a transaction whose author has signed with a private key. This generates a time stamp that is indelible and functions as a notarial certification, in this case based on a distributed consensus network made up of thousands of people from all over the world. Larger files cannot be saved in the blockchain to confirm their authenticity: for them a unique hash is saved that identifies the file uploaded to the network. All this, together with the digital identity generated by the user who uploads the contents, generates an indisputable proof of authorship.
What uses can the CREA token have?
CREA is the main unit of Crea Network. The rest of the tokens will get their value from this main asset. CREA is a liquid currency, so it can be traded at exchanges, sent to other users or directly used as a payment method on the Creary platform. It can also be activated in CREA Energy or exchanged for CREA Dollars. It works like Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.
Wallet with account balances in the Creary application.
Will CREA be kept out of speculation to maintain its value?
Keeping a distributed currency out of the supply and demand market goes against the very nature of any cryptocurrency. In order to keep the price more stable, the CBD, or "CREA Based on the Dollar", has been created, whose objective is to try to have a price correlation with the dollar. It can be withdrawn at any time by users. The conversion ratio is calculated using the market price. If the value of one CREA is 10 cents, a Crea Dollar could be exchanged for 10 CREA. This is why its price always tries to stay stable and close to the value of 1 dollar. Beyond being a value reserve token, it can also be used within the platform, for example to buy promoted spaces or acquire content.
How do you manage content that is inappropriate or does not follow network usage rules?
The protocol features a complex reputation system called BUZZ. This system gives a score to each user account according to the quality of its activity. Some elements that improve reputation are the likes it receives from other users with good reputation, the followers it has or the level of rewards it receives, among other indicators of the network.
Mainly, if the community sees that some content is inappropriate, infringes some intellectual property crime or the like, it can report the content. When a content has a low BUZZ level and is reported by a user with a higher BUZZ level, that publication lowers the reward you may receive for that publication. At the same time, reports of content made by users with a good BUZZ level cause reported users to lower their BUZZ level. At Creary, if a user has a very low level (the result of the number of complaints accumulated), they stop showing their content on the platform. In this way, users who have more interests in the network will take care to ensure that inappropriate content does not have visibility on the platform.
How is the emergence of network witnesses encouraged?
Witnesses earn 15% of the rewards issued by the network annually. This is already a great incentive to want to be a witness on the net. As a crowdfunding, witnesses can also ask for a community vote in order to fund some development that has a collective return. For example, a dApp or any open source initiative or tool that brings an improvement to the CREA ecosystem. To do this, it is convenient to provide a link to a post explaining the project so that the community can evaluate the initiative before voting for the witness who promotes it. This method encourages the continuous and collective creation of the community.
What is the difference between Crea and competitors of portfolios, such as Behance or Dribbble? What is the difference between Crea and other webs with blockchain registration and sale of works, such as SuperRare or KnownOrigin?
The main difference with platforms such as Behance or Dribbble is that they are centralized and do not operate with distributed technologies. They do not provide any type of blockchain certification to register the authorship, the users do not have control of their keys and data and do not incorporate any type of marketplace for the sale of contents neither in fiat nor in crypto currencies. Creary is a technological leap in relation to what these social networks 2.0 provide.
On the other hand, SuperRare or KnownOrigin are platforms based on ERC-721 tokens, connected to the ETH network. This means that they are non fungible or indivisible tokens. This goes very well for creating CryptoKitties type collectibles, aimed at a public of digital collectors. The tokens in CREA are liquid and are used as an acquisition of power in the network or as a currency that allows you to buy content. In the CREA network you can also add this type of tokens if someone wants to create a limited edition of their work. On the other hand, in SuperRare or KnownOrigin users only earn tokens if someone buys their work, they are basically ERC-721 token markets. In Creary.net, apart from being able to buy content, there is a complex social network with a system of daily rewards where users earn tokens constantly if their content has many interactions and likes.
Zsolt Vidak's portfolio in Creary.
What are the plans to open Crea to the development of dApps and with what tools?
There is an API for developers or entrepreneurs who want to create a dApp or tool connected to the Crea Network protocol. At the same time, we are working on a development that will allow developers to issue their own tokens for their dApps and be connected to the network reward system.
How is Crea being received by artists?
Currently there are more than 8,500 users.
Does it make sense to create your own blockchain? Wouldn't it have been easier to use other consolidated blockchains?
There are many reasons to make your own blockchain. I will mention just a few important ones. For example, one difference between Creary and an Ethereum dApp is that Creary records absolutely all the actions of the social network in the blockchain: following a user, giving likes, downloading content, publishing content, recommending projects, sending and receiving CREA, and many other actions, which in the end are transactions.
This is possible thanks to the fact that the Crea network allows to issue more than 1000 transactions per second (TPS). Ethereum only supports 14 TPS and a social network created on Ethereum right now could easily saturate the network. Many of Ethereum's dApps only use the ETH network to execute timely actions on a contract, as well as send and receive tokens. The rest of the actions performed on these dApps are usually performed offchain. Therefore, they centralize much of the data.
On the other hand, most blockchains or consensus protocols charge a fee for each transaction. This is fine for some types of dApps but not for creating a decentralized social network. Can you imagine Instagram charging every time you give a like or make a comment? In Crea Network transactions have no commission. To avoid spam and other problems, we apply a system called FLOW, which is a type of resource or token that is automatically recharged only (20% daily).
In short, Crea Network has been developed with the needs of the creative communities of the future in mind. And using your own blockchain will give you more freedom of movement.
What is the roadmap for next year?
We have not yet published the roadmap for 2020, but we can mention some things to come. New features to improve Creary's social network: content filters, more types of notifications, collections, bookmarks, collective profiles and much more. The idea is to be able to get out of the beta version and launch the platform to reach a wider audience.
In relation to Crea Network, drive new projects connected to the network, implement improvements to the performance of the nodes and add the ability to create tokens connected to the main algorithm of rewards. These Creative Tokens (CT) can be applied to other platforms or dApps.
Finally, any first news for our readers?
In the coming weeks we will launch a system to easily purchase CREA with a credit or debit card. It will be a very effective tool for users with little knowledge in the crypto industry to buy cryptocurrencies without having to register on an exchange and learn how a trading interface works.