What Is Musicoin?

Musicoin is a cryptocurrency and a platform created to help link musicians to listeners and fans without using third party companies.

The music industry has been reeling with undertones of unsatisfied and cheated musicians looking for better ways to earn more from their work. The answer is the blockchain technology.

The Musicoin platform was created in early 2017 by Isaac Mao who wanted to change how things were working out in the music industry. Mao has a background in software engineering with a lot of experience in social media research.

The Musicoin system seeks to meet the needs of both the listeners and artists by allowing them to meet on a peer2peer basis. This implies that the artist will easily know how his followers are taking the new songs and even get improvement ideas without involving third parties. Think of that song you cherish so much; it will be possible to interact with the artist directly on Musicoin.

• The performance of Musicoin in the market

When the Musicoin token was released into the market in March 2017, the value was $0.0009. Then, it grew significantly to reach $0.008 by the close of the March before rising further to $0.02 in May and $0.03 in early June.

The value dropped slightly to reach $0.01 in August before increasing to reach a peak of $0.1 in early January 2018. But the good price did not last.

The value dropped sharply to reach $0.015 in early February. After gaining marginally in February, the value continued with the downward trend that culminated to $0.003 by the close of October 2018.

Because of the unique features, the community is optimistic that the value of Musicoin will take an upward trend and deliver good returns on investment. Note that the negative price growth as affected other coins in the market including Bitcoin. The drop is a correction to the sudden growth that most coins reported in December 2017 and January 2018.

What is the problem that Musicoin Solves?

The music industry has been held hostage by the big multinationals. Now, Musicoin targets to restore the power of music to the musicians. Here are the main issues that Musicoin addresses to help achieve the target of empowering the musicians.

• Musicians do not have control over their music in streaming services

In the world of music, the most notable entities are Spotify, YouTube, and ITunes because they stock a lot of tracks from musicians and listeners can listen with ease. However, the giant companies have usurped the power of musicians by acting as third parties between them and listeners.

One issue is that most listeners interact with the music streaming services and not the musician. This means that getting direct feedback about the songs on the market is not easy. The danger is that the musician might miss an important component that could have helped him improve the future albums. This could even result in the loss of fans in the industry.

• The profit that trickles to the musicians is very small

Most of the big companies that stream artists’ songs are driven by profits. However, the profits only end up in the respective company’s accounts while very little reaches the singer. These companies have been accused of impoverishing musicians and making it impossible for them to advance their careers.  This is the reason why a decentralized platform such as Musicoin has become an important stepping stone for both musicians and listeners.

• The uptake of the blockchain technology has been poor in niches such as music

As the blockchain technology continues growing at a fast pace, some niches are underserved. The main focus of many crypto networks has been the financial sector. Many cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ripple are targeted at the facilitating faster transfer of value on a peer2peer basis.

The music industry has lagged behind as other sectors such as video gaming and medical records management take to blockchain technology. Musicoin targets to bridge this gap by creating a decentralized system that gives musician greater control over his music and listeners more options to enjoy entertainment.

• The centralization of payment services

The problem of centralized payment services remains a major challenge in the community. Though other networks such as Litecoin and Bitcoin have helped to introduce some changes, the traditional centralized systems still persist.

The main issue of the centralized services is high inefficiency. When you initiate a transaction, it is picked by the management that has to counter-check and verify all the details. The management must also ensure that the sender and recipient are not associated to money laundering or terrorism.

These checks make the transactions very slow. In some cases, wire transfers can take up to four days. Musicoin targets to address the issue to ensure that payments are cleared immediately.

How Does Musicoin Solve The Problem?

To address the outlined issues, the Musicoin founder designed the platform to make it easy to share music and get bulk of the benefits. Here are some of the main methods used to address the problem:

• The Musicoin smart contracts

One of the important components of the Musicoin system that facilitates direct interaction between musicians and listeners is the use of smart contracts. The smart contracts operate like the standard contracts but they are automated and implemented in the blockchain networks.

At Musicoin platform, the smart contracts allow the musician to set the conditions for fans to listen to his music. For example, a smart contract can be customized to allow a visitor access to a   specific song or album after paying a specified amount of money.

The contract can even specify the bonus and execute them when the listener reached a specific viewership limit. The contract also allows the listener a chance to communicate directly with the artist. The automation makes it easy to sell music, meet with fans, and create communities around specific songs or brands.

• $MUSIC payment platform

This is a music tipping feature that allows listeners to tip their musicians directly using the MUSIC coin. To promote accountability, the tipping system was designed to be open so that any person can visit the Musicoin website and see the artist that has been tipped. The artist is paid through the $MUSIC.

This method is a departure from the centralized streaming services that often take the tips and rarely remit to the artists. Even when the tips are related, a big percentage is slashed to meet the cost of the streaming service.

• Complete decentralization

The Musicoin platform is run as a completely decentralized network. This implies that it is not run by a centralized management. Rather, it is run by a network of nodes spread in the system to help confirm transactions when they are initiated.

Whether you want to stream a song for pay, send value, or tip an artist using MUSIC, the platform uses the nodes spread in the system follow back the public address to ensure that it has ample coins. The miners also add new blocks to the Musicoin public ledger.

Decentralization services imply that both musicians and listeners can operate on a peer2peer basis without involving music streaming companies or centralized financial services. The transactions are also instant and cheaper.

What makes Musicoin better than it’s competitors?

To win a bigger market share, the Musicoin founders appreciated that they had to work against giants such as YouTube and Spotify that have won millions of followers. Here are some of the things that make Musicoin a better option:

• The Musicoin system is completely decentralized. This means that artists can enjoy more profits from their work. As the blockchain technology grows, artists are assured of a bigger audience and more returns.
• The Musicoin system has diverse applications that make it more appealing. Musicians can upload and live stream their music to the clients while any user can use the network to send value. This design makes the Musicoin better than other conventional platforms that either stream music or send value.
• By operating as a completely decentralized network, sending value on a peer2peer basis is cheap and fast. Whether you want to send funds across the globe or in the neighboring county, the process is fast and efficient.
• Musicoin allows users to send value without worrying about third-party seizures. Using advanced encryption, users can now send value without worrying they will be discovered by third parties such as tax authorities or courts of law.
• The Musicoin network allows users to join and own the system. When you join the Musicoin as a node, you become part of its governance system. This means that you will be called to vote on governance issues when they arise.

How can Musicoin be categorized?

Musicoin is a completely decentralized platform designed to empower the musicians. It was created to help artists understand that they do not have to rely in the centralized companies that take the bulk of their profits. Instead, the blockchain system allows the artists to funnel all the revenue to their pockets.

Though the Musicoin might be less elaborate because the blockchain is still young, it is expected to grow exponentially in the coming years. Therefore, this could be a great opportunity to invest in its coins and hold them waiting for the price to go up as the demand increases.

What’s Musicoin’s vision on Security?

The security mission for Musicoin is to provide musicians and listeners with a secure and reliable platform for their music, personal info, and native tokens. Though still considered young after entering the market in 2017, the Musicoin system’s features have demonstrated it is reliable and secure. Here are the main features that help Musicoin to achieve its security mission.

• The Musicoin development team progressively evaluates the platform to identify gaps and fix them before attackers take advantage of them.
• The platform employs advanced encryption that helps to keep user details and coins encrypted. This is crucial in making it hard for unauthorized people or attackers to gain access to your account.
• The Musicoin system used smart contracts that define the rules of engagement between musicians and listeners. The contract makes it very difficult for people outside it to break and change the content or steal from musicians/ listener.

Examples of Musicoin’s use cases / applications

Musicoin was established at a time when the streaming services were approaching the peak. Therefore, it was considered a major disruption for the giant music streaming services that used to make millions from artists. Here are some of the things that make Musicoin better than competitors.

• The Musicoin system has helped to empower musicians and listeners. The musicians no longer have to worry that their profits will not reach them because listeners pay directly to them. Indeed, even tips that listeners pay when they like a specific music are also channeled to the musician.
• The Musicoin token can be used to pay for streaming services on the Musicoin platform. Listeners enjoy more using the blockchain platform because the cost is low since the profit-seeking streamlining companies have been removed.
• Musicoin token, like other coins, can be used to send value on a peer2peer basis across the globe. Instead of using centralized baking or credit card companies that very expensive, consider sending the funds in MUSIC. Note that the recipient will also be required to be in the Musicoin platform to receive the payment.
• If you are a resident in a jurisdiction that supports cryptocurrencies, it might be possible to pay for government services. A good example is Singapore. Early in 2018, the Singapore authorities indicated that people were allowed to make payments using digital coins because the primary goal was to relay value. Other jurisdictions that support crypto coins include Venezuela and Arizona.
• The native MUSOC coins can be used to pay for goods and services in the market. As more stores start accepting cryptocurrencies because of their efficiency especially in facilitating instant payments, you will find it easy to buy house or office items with MUSIC.

Note that even in the event that MUSIC is not supported in your store it is still possible to buy by changing to the supported coin. One common store that allows users to pay goods and services with cryptocurrencies is Overstock.

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What is Funfair?

Funfair uses the ethereum technology to provide blockchain solutions for the gaming industry. Their emphasis is on providing transparency, cost-effectiveness, and fairness in the gaming space.

These are virtues that broadly lack in the industry. The team behind this project comprises of individuals with a proven track record in the entertainment space and a combined 40 years solid experience in creating and selling gaming solutions.

Together they have placed the gaming industry on the ethereum blockchain. Funfair has created the first series of 3D games as proof of concept and as a model that other developers can emulate.

The games built on the Funfair platform run directly on the browser; this means that a user will not require downloading any app to game. Player onboarding usually arises when this is not taken into consideration.

Ultimately, the plan is not for Funfair to create all the games, but to inspire thousands of online casinos to be launched on its platform.

This platform has the options for creating fully customizable games as well as the traditional ones such as roulette, blackjack, baccarat and slots. Operators using this platform can set up and host their private label casinos with customized standard and VIP rooms.

Once created, it takes just two clicks to publish the full casino suite in a live environment. These are some of the unique features of Funfair:

1. Developer Friendly

This platform is created with game developers in mind. It uses a simple coding language and the platform has even gone ahead to develop model games from which other developers can emulate.

2. ENS-Ready

FunFair allows investors to create gaming-related .eth domains such as blackjack.eth.

3. Instant and frictionless Gaming

Frictionless gaming is an elusive feature in many blockchain based gaming solutions. It is quite frustrating to have to wait for transactions to confirm or for multiple blocks to be mined. Funfair platform allows for instant transactions to be made due to the technology behind it. We shall look at this in depth later. But this affords the user a frictionless gaming experience.

4. Signup and KYC

“Every 100ms of Latency Costs Amazon 1% of Profit.” It is with this in mind that Funfair has created a time-saving solution where the customer sign up process takes less than half a minute. Very little information is required from the customer.

5. Putting Social First

Gaming is a social experience and the FunFair platform has been designed with this in mind. They have created an interactive platform and an affiliate program where operators can grant affiliate revenue to social players to incentivize them to invite friends.

6. HTML Only

The browser-based gaming platform utilizes HTML5 on both mobile devices and desktop computers. This provides a rich 3D experience that is highly polished and has a great user experience.

7. Funfair Token – FUN

The FUN token is what drives the Funfair platform. It is used for: purchasing in-game credits for playing the casino games, paying game creators and paying licensing fees. FUN can also be staked for returns. All FUN token was created in the genesis block and no subsequent tokens will ever be created.

It is expected that the value of FUN will increase as the customer base for games running on the FunFair platform grows. However, this should not result in FunFair-licensed casino games becoming more expensive to play.

What Problem Does Funfair Solve?

By 2015, global gaming revenues were about $400 billion with Asia dominating the space.  About 10% of these revenues were generated in the online space.

As much as this is not huge, many would- be gamers have been deterred from online gaming due to the lack of transparency and fairness in the system. There have been recent cases of manipulation resulting in daylight defrauding of gamers.

This industry has been plagued with two key issues; lack of trust and unsustainable competition.

1. The Trust Issue

Online gaming has been predominantly dominated by monopolies which offer no transparency or fairness to the unsuspecting gambler. This has been a deterrent for many would be gamers. This has led to the large-scale preference of brick and mortar casinos which have some form of regulation. Inefficiency in the system further pushes the cost of gaming higher and higher.

Specifically, the Funfair blockchain based platform enables provably fair and streamlined currency deposit and withdrawals. It is not plagued by the declining speeds and increasing transaction costs that have affected other blockchain based casinos.

 Current Competition is Unsustainable

Current statistics indicate that transaction costs across ethereum based platforms range between $1 to play a single hand of blackjack and $.75 to place a bet on dice games.

Staking an individual bet ranges between $1-$10. At these rates, the transaction costs can overwhelm the value of the bet making it unfeasible to bet on small amounts.

This is further complicated by the volatility of ETH prices. With these increasing costs of transactions, more and more would be gamers are turned away from the industry.

An appropriate solution would address the cost of transacting on the ethereum blockchain and the fluctuating price of the transacting currency.

The blockchain is a trustless, transparent and decentralized system that can unlock the true potential of this industry.

Funfair is based on the ethereum blockchain and this is the basis for a trustless gaming system. Games built on this platform are provably fair, transparent and publicly auditable. With luck still a prerequisite of gaming, players start off with odds not oddly stacked against them.

How does Funfair Solve the problem?

Funfair is an ethereum based platform and carries in it all the intrinsic features of the ethereum network; a decentralized, transparent and trustless network.

Unfortunately, the ethereum network is prone to congestion leading to increased transaction times and consequent high fees charged to users.

This, in the long run, is not sustainable. Funfair has created different technologies to circumvent these problems which we shall be looking at below.

1. Fate channels

This is a state channel created on the ethereum blockchain that runs for the duration of a gaming session. It supports the communication between the client and the server. It operates separately from the main blockchain but still carries the properties of the main blockchain. How this works is this; during a gambling session all the transactions are recorded separately on an escrow. At the end of the game the funds are released through a smart contract and the chain connects back to the main chain. All the transactions happening during a game are doing so on a customized side chain. By having these transactions on a side chain, Funfair is able to speed up the process of verifying transactions and the cost consequently goes lower.

These improvements on the Funfair technology enable it to achieve its core objective which is to be a provably fair, decentralized, fast and flexible gaming platform. Gaming costs need to be cost effective to allow sustainable gaming experiences for users as a single gaming session can include hundred of bets.

2. Serverless Operations

FunFair is a serverless, employeeless and peer to peer platform that is resilient and cheap to maintain. This is attractive to gaming operators as this drives down the overhead costs significantly. As we all know, costs eventually are passed on to the player and the cost of making bets in this case is pushed further up.

What makes Funfair better than its competitors?

1. Decentralization

Fun Fair is an open source platform that is completely decentralized. In addition to this, Funfair incorporates Fate channels technology to ensure that games are provably fair, transparent and cost-effective.

2. Great User Experience

Speed has been a great deterrent for many would be online gamers. Having to wait for block confirmations makes the experience frustrating for players in the least. High costs of transactions per bet further worsen the user experience.

With the Funfair serveless system and use of fate channels all these concerns are a thing of the past.

3.   FunFair License

With the Funfair licence, casino operators can set up their own customizable casino suites. Players can have a wide variety of games to choose from with the full benefits afforded by the Funfair platform. Operators can also launch traditional games such as blackjack, slots, and roulette on the platform. Other superior features of this platform include:

• High quality 3D games built in HTML5
• Ability to publish online casinos for operators in just two clicks
• 10 times cheaper per bet than other platforms (gas costs)
• Completely server less and decentralized platform
• Uses an open architecture that can be shared by other developers

How can Funfair be categorized?

Funfair is a gambling platform, it is also an exchange platform that allows for the development and execution of smart contracts. It is also a cryptocurrency- FUN

Funfair and Security?

Funfair shows a clear cut commitment to enhancing security and transparency in its architecture. Being based on the ethereum blockchain, it carries all the cryptographically sound security features inherent in the ethereum blockchain.

Funfair is a transparent and auditable network. More than this, they employ the use of State channels to further ensure the security of transactions. With state channels, the bulk of transactions during a game are completely off- chain.

Only the opening and closing transactions on the fate channel are broadcast on-chain. The side chains use strong cryptography to validate transactions which cannot be refuted. Funfair combines state channels and reverse hash chains to ensure the fairness of games. These methods make cheating almost impossible. Should one party detect cheating, the transaction is run on- chain for verification, with the main-chain acting as a mediator of sorts. This system ensures the validity of transactions prevents double spending and creates security.

Examples of Funfair use cases / applications.

Funfair has many potential applications in the gaming industry. These are a few examples of how some companies are already using the Funfair platform.

1. Online gaming

Many would be gamers have been deterred from online gaming because of the lack of fairness and transparency in the system. Others have also been to self conscious to openly visit brick and mortar casinos. Abigail is an example of a gamer who tried out online gaming on the Funfair platform and is now hooked because of how fair and transparent the network is. Very little personal information is required and players do not even have to download the app. It is easy to play directly from any smart phone also and the transaction costs are negligible.

2. Publisher with a Big Readership

Bionic Publishing is another customer of Funfair. They have been able to create a fully-customized casino designed to appeal to Bionic

readers specifically. They also plan on rolling out annual gaming events, celebrity and sports endorsements, and co-marketing tie-ins in the future.

3. The Nonprofit

Courageous Critters is a nonprofit organization that finds homes for unwanted cats and dogs. Recently, they decided to try out an online fundraiser centered on licensing a casino experience through the FunFair blockchain platform. Their model is a pet-themed online casino based on ethereum smart contracts. This has not only created a stable revenue stream for the non- profit but it has also brought together seasoned players and new supporters for the program.

Placing the gaming industry on the blockchain was definitely a step in the right direction for this high-value industry. This tackles the issue of transparency and decentralization spot on! What Funfair has done is to come in and seal the remaining loopholes in this system using state of the art Fate channels. With this, the issue of prolonged block confirmation times and unpredictable transactions costs are addressed, making the system fairly foolproof. It’s no guarantee whether Funfair will have large-scale adoption in the casino market, time will tell. But should the market warm up to them considerably, gamers will be the ultimate beneficiaries; with transaction costs at the bare minimum and the games being provably fair, the odds will not be stacked against them.