Qravity is a multi-functional tool for decentralized premium content creation with its own ecosystem, project management tools, and digital storefront.
Bitcoinist recently sat down with Qravity cofounder and CEO David Brandstaetter to discuss his project, the benefits it provides the community, and the state of the cryptocurrency market as a whole.
Bitcoinist: Qravity is a digital entertainment production and distribution platform where decentralized creative teams get royalties for making movies, games, music, and more. Explain to our readers a bit about how the platform works.
Brandstaetter: The platform covers a lot of different aspects, Qravity is a multi-functional tool for decentralized premium content creation; it also has its own ecosystem, project management tools, and digital storefront.
Creatives working in the content creation industry don’t usually receive their fair share of the revenue their work helps generate. In some respects, the industry operates in a way that discourages or even actively prevents new talent from entering it. At the same time, producers of larger projects like feature-length films need to find and hire creative team members; they also need to have distribution and marketing plans for their finished products in place. Qravity covers all these aspects and more.
Producers, or project founders, will be able to submit their content proposals to Qravity, where curators and, in the near future, community votes, will decide if and when a project will go into production on, and get distributed through, the platform. Once their project has been approved, a founder can set up the tasks required to complete their movie, video game, application, or other digital media. Task setup includes the allocation of project stakes in the form of QPT, the platform’s internal token, which tracks task progress and determines the revenue share that creators receive for task completion.
Content creators who have registered with Qravity can then offer to complete tasks for projects that interest them; alternatively, project founders can search the platform to assemble creative teams and assign tasks to each member. In this respect, Qravity functions like a job board.
The platform offers team communication tools, as well as the ability to upload, track, review, and revise task results. When a content creator completes a task, they immediately receive the QPT allocated to it. Based on the amount of QPT they hold, team members receive micropayments in the form of our external token, QCO, every time the content they helped produce is purchased.
Bitcoinist: What sets Qravity apart from the competition?
Brandstaetter: The platform’s extensive feature set, and the Qravity business model, make us truly unique in the blockchain and creative industry spaces. First of all, we’re focusing exclusively on premium content, including feature-length films, video games, and other digital content that consumers are willing to pay for. Second, we’re combining decentralized with centralized processes in a way that enables us to connect with traditional media organizations and their distribution models.
We’re like a traditional film or game studio, the differences being that Qravity creative teams are 100% decentralized, and every producer and content creator earns immutable project stakes, meaning they continuously receive royalties as long as the content they helped produce is monetized and commercially relevant.
On top of all that, Qravity includes a suite of project management tools to help project founders and their creative teams complete content, and the platform’s storefront makes it unique and revolutionary – Qravity is about to provide the creative industry with a wealth of new opportunities.
Bitcoinist: With a fairly large percentage of ICOs being labeled as ‘scams’ these days by various analysts and figures in the industry, what assurances can you provide readers that Qravity’s ICO is legitimate?
Brandstaetter: We are still in a sort of “Wild West” with ICOs, but there is already far more regulation in many countries than there was a year ago. Qravity is based in Austria, where regulation for ICOs is fairly complex, but the regulations we need to follow make both the process and the company transparent, and ensures security for our token sale participants. We have also dedicated much of our efforts and budget into legal consultations and website security, as well as smart contract auditing, which RIAT handled. Last but not least, the Qravity team is standing behind the project every step of the way, putting our faces and business reputations out there for all to see. Our main intention to truly change the way creatives work together and profit from their contributions.
Ultimately, we hope that people will put their trust in us and see the potential of Qravity as clearly as we do.
Bitcoinist: What’s next for Qravity after its token sale?
Brandstaetter: We will continue developing the platform until it is ready for its commercial launch, which should take place by the end of this year. We will also promote the platform through content markets and trade fairs, starting with MIPCOM in Cannes in October. The first project that will be produced on the platform is a feature-length 3D animated film called Lizzard Maddoxx; this will also demand a lot of attention, as we will use this project to beta test the platform’s functionality before we open it to project submissions early next year.
Bitcoinist: What can you tell us about the QCO token? What value does it provide investors?
Brandstaetter: QCO fuels the economy of the Qravity platform. It is distributed as payment for creatives, and is required to licence, purchase, or rent content on the platform. QCO creates transparency in purchases for all the stakeholders. As a blockchain technology, the token ensures that every content creator and project founder, and Qravity, is paid their allotted share of the profits. QCO smart contracts make tampering with profit-sharing impossible, and automatically create and protect a complete, immutable history of activities and transactions.
Bitcoinist: Where do you see the value of QCO in the medium to long-term and the ultimate benefit for token holders?
Brandstaetter: The value of the QCO token depends not only on factors like speculative trading, but above all on the number of projects that are completed and consumed on the platform.
QCO token holders will benefit from a unique feature set, including QCO Boost, which will give Qravity community members the opportunity to contribute to promising projects at an early stage, helping drive these projects to completion and provide content creators with advance payments against their royalties. The low entry barrier for both creators and consumers will eventually lead to a paradigm shift in the digital entertainment industry.
The continual addition of new projects and content consumers supports and reinforces QCO: As more people consume the digital content curated and distributed on the platform, and more content is created on the platform, the demand for QCO will increase.
Bitcoinist: There already are similar tokens in the space, does Qravity really need its own tokens?
Brandstaetter: Qravity is aware of the competition from blockchain-backed companies with similar approaches. However, all competitors cover only specific aspects of what Qravity does. As a result, Qravity is able to provide content creators and content consumers with more extensive benefits than all the current competition combined.
Qravity’s biggest advantage over all its competitors is the platform’s all-in-one project development suite, which features an extensive set of professional project management tools. Qravity also actively supports its projects with an adequate marketing budget to ensure that Qravity content will be positioned prominently on the market and attract global awareness.
Bitcoinist: How does the Community Rewards program work?
Brandstaetter: We designed Qravity to continuously incentivize people. Consequently, the Community Rewards program has allocated a set quantity of QCO to distribute to community members who actively support the platform. Members can receive a portion of these tokens according to their level of activity, and there are plenty of opportunities for them to participate. They can earn QCO by, for example, tweeting about the project, or participating in and translating our ANN and bounty threads at BitcoinTalk, which contain information and instructions for participating in the Community Rewards program. We’re also available to provide further details and answer questions in the Qravity Telegram channel.
Bitcoinist: Can you share further details about the team, and how they are complimenting the project?
Brandstaetter: Christian Sascha Dennedst, our CFO, is a prolific entrepreneur and angel investor who operates across a wide range of industries, including biotechnology and medical diagnostics. He has set up several successful global biotech startups, and co-founded Tectonic Slide Entertainment and Qravity. With knowledge gained through his studies in the University of Nicosia’s MSc course in Digital Currency, Christian initiated, and is overseeing, the integration of smart contracts and digital currency into the Qravity platform.
Capacity and its team of highly experienced blockchain developers and cryptoeconomics specialists are committed to designing the best possible incentive-based token ecosystem for the Qravity platform. Their Managing Director, Andreas Petersson, is providing Qravity with his expertise in smart contracts to ensure transparency, fairness, and security for Qravity project founders, content creators, distributors, and consumers.
Franz Eigel is a cryptoeconomics expert and project manager, who helps Qravity with the design of the tokenomics as well as its business operations during and beyond its token sale.
Our Chief Product Officer, Chris Barber, is an accomplished project manager, blockchain consultant, and business analyst with 10 years’ experience managing large engineering projects. With his deep understanding of blockchain’s evolution and emerging market opportunities, Chris is framing the real-world application of smart contracts as they relate to Qravity’s goals and mission.
Sergey Shevchenko, our lead UI/UX designer, has over five years of practical experience. Over this time, Sergey has delivered incredible results for several fascinating and challenging projects. Sergey created Qravity’s stunning look, and made it logical and user-friendly.
Dr. Oliver Völkel heads up our Legal Department. He has extensive experience in structuring new types of financing such as initial coin offerings and initial token offerings.
Our team is, in many ways, a model of a typical Qravity creative team – decentralized and all contributing to the completion of a unique and transformative digital product.
Bitcoinist: What is your opinion on the current state of the cryptocurrency market?
Brandstaetter: As of this writing, crypto is in a bear market, with ETH at its lowest point since January; the situation is similar for most other tokens. We’ve seen this type of bear market several times in recent years, and we strongly believe there will be a recovery period, which may not get going as quickly as token holders would like; however, in the long run, crypto will prevail.
Many ICOs are building companies that require payments to be made in fiat currency, resulting in large amounts of ETH being traded for fiat, and negatively influencing exchange rates. However, the use cases for smart contracts, and blockchain in general are still as good as they’ve ever been, despite the bear markets, and this is what counts at the end of the day.
Bitcoinist: Where do you see the cryptocurrency industry in five years?
Brandstaetter: Cryptocurrencies will be a part of everyday life for a continuously growing number of people – we can already see their adoption and use cases increasing as entry barriers are gradually being lowered. I believe that consumers will be able to use crypto to pay for anything, and the average person will find it easier to manage and use cryptocurrencies. Adoption comes with the lowering of entry barriers.
Unfortunately, the media has been covering crypto in a rather negative light, which is influencing public perception of it, scaring many people off the thought of trading in it. This year’s extreme volatility hasn’t helped – it is going to take some time and reliable functioning use cases for crypto to win back the public’s trust.
Bitcoinist: And the blockchain industry?
Brandstaetter: Disruptive technologies will continue to emerge out of the blockchain industry. The question is when the tech will go mainstream and take over legacy industries. At which point did the Internet become an everyday tool, a network so powerful its absence from everyday life is practically unthinkable?
As many have said, blockchain is currently in its infancy, at a stage that is analogous to the Internet’s Dot-Com Era of 1997. Both then and now, we’ve got lots of start-ups and innovative ideas, enormous growth potential, and potential for bubbles.
Decentralization is actually a different approach to social constructs and society as a whole; it is a response to often worrying emergence of monopolies and their impact on business, politics, and society. The counter-technology truly is blockchain decentralization and we are most likely living in a critical time where some fundamental principles will shift through this technology.
Bitcoinist: What is the most exciting part about working on Qravity?
Brandstaetter: Being part of an emerging industry is very exciting, and building a new company from the ground up from comes with endless challenges – every day brings new and different ones. I am mostly looking forward to the projects we’ll see being made on the platform, and providing people with the tools and empowerment they need to bring their creative ideas to life will be a great experience.
What do you think about Qravity? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.