Meeting minutes
Introduction
Karl: Thanks everyone for coming today. We are talking today about the intersection of monetization, culture, and diversity. We want to use this as an opportunity to engage with the W3C community. We'll start with an intro about Snake Nation.
Karl: I happen to be in Ghana today where I delivered a keynote on Web Monetization. Very excited about blockchain and the creative economy.
[Dre Ngare shows video about Snake Nation]
[Theme of the Snake Nation is to enable monetization of content by more creators, including lowering barriers to monetization]
Pathway to the Creative Economy
Karl: We'd like to look at the interaction of web monetization, our platform, and the creative economy
… diverse millennials are driving much of the social-related economy
… it's important to build community and places for people to connect.
… we have focused on Africa and more broadly the diaspora to build community.
… we have college networks, for example.
… what are key barriers to entry to young people who want to have access to the economy? In Africa, there are issues of cost, bandwidth, etc.
… we have a social studio in Capetown to provide a place for young creators to gather.
… we also have college societies.
… content is licensed to media partners or to our own wholly-owned chan news.
… the creative economy is 2.2 trillion dollars and we think is important as a means to eradicate poverty
Dre: When we approached the problem of the creative economy, one thing we noticed is that payments are an obstacle to growth
… a large portion of the relevant population is unbanked.
… blockchain systems can help address some of these barriers.
… fintech solutions come out of Africa are trying to ensure that the Internet can continue to propel commerce and enable participation
… the internet works well in the global north, but not as well in the global south, in terms of fees (for payments) and distribution channels
… we want to provide options to help the creative economy move forward.
Karl: I'm at the Youth Connect conference; 2000 youth leaders, gov officials and NGOs.
… in Ghana.
… they are looking at the African continental free trade agreement
… that would make Africa the largest trade zone by area in the world.
… we are advocating on behalf of creatives to ensure that policies support them
… we seek to enable people to monetize their assets without the gatekeepers that are part of other distribution platforms.
Tawanda: Snake Nation app bridges the gap between creation and monetization
… our platform is a social media platform with a fintech backend.
… new users get a blockchain-based wallet.
… we launched a token called "Venom" which is essentially the currency of the platform.
… the Interledger protocol enables connectivity between the wallet and other payment systems (including fiat currency)
[For more on Web Monetization, see https://
[Tawanda does a demo of the platform]
Tawanda: You can use a Stellar public address to connect to other wallets.
… Interledger also supports connectivity with other payment systems
… so creatives can participate not just on the SN economy but also in the global platform
Tawanda: You can also make P2P payments in the network.
Karl: Thank you for the demo. When we think about the potential of Web Monetization, everyday we post on social media and those companies monetize the content via advertisers and creatives are not compensated.
… we'd like to change that so that people have both creative and economic freedom
… we want our work with W3C and Grant for the Web to help drive adoption of new monetization approaches
[On technology]
Dre: We seek to create future proof technology.
… understanding the Internet is constantly evolving.
… exchanging value (money) is still challenging.
… existing distribution platforms based on ads and payment systems that assume, e.g., bank accounts.
… since $4 can feed people, we need to eliminate, for example, the minimum revenue generation required (e.g., $100) before payout.
… Web Monetization + ILP allow us to stream value as people engage with content.
… we've tried to simplify the experience of creating an account. We can trade internationally with a focus on Africa.
… we can service and uplift and smooth out a creative economy that is starving for investment.
[Tawanda on speed of getting payments to creatives]
Tawanda: We are familiar with the complexities of global payments
… the time that it takes for payments to settle, fees and expenses, and so on
… payment times reduced to the time required for blockchain processing
… we use Stellar to allow us to exchange our token for other popular tokens.
Ralph: Thanks all for the interesting presentation; I appreciate the motivation. Do you have comments on Web Monetization and how it works for your particular platform?
Tawanda: For us, we started out on the Web. We have native apps on iOS and Android, but for our Web app there are a lot of opportunities.
… we've looked at streaming payments as an alternative for advertising and subscriptions
… we think that Web monetization will open new business models
<Ian> s/for advertising and subscriptions/
Tawanda: Our token lives on the Stellar blockchain. We want now to make the Venom wallet ILP-enabled (through the Grant for the Web).
[More on integration]