Wemark - blockchain-based marketplace for digital content
Wemark is the blockchain-based marketplace for digital content, starting with photos. Wemark enables photographers to keep all the rights to their content and license it directly to customers, removing the need of stock photo agency (Shutterstock, Getty) that take up to 85% of their revenue.
Starting with photos, Wemark is changing the way content marketplaces are built.
Creators license their content directly to customers while keeping all the rights to their content and maintaining control over its price.
Mutually agreed terms are registered on the blockchain and become immutable.
The blockchain becomes the new middleman automatically managing and distributing payments with full transparency.
Getting others familiarized with Wemark and promoting content on the platform will be automatically rewarded by the protocol.
All licenses are issued directly through the Wemark protocol. Wemark is eligible to distribute the content, but cannot sell or license it without the protocol. The times when creators had to trust marketplace to license their content and report back their earnings are over.
Wemark will introduce different pricing options and tiers. Content cannot be licensed without the photographer’s approval on price and tier.
Wemark sets a new standard with 85% royalty payment to photographers - 5 times higher than the industry average of 15-20%. If we decide to decrease Our royalty-rate in the future, it will never affect existing photographers without their consent – their distribution terms are immutable as part of the Wemark protocol.
Wemark’s distributed marketplace approach guarantees, by design, full transparency regarding all payments, licenses and revenue distribution. The protocol will ensure the privacy of customers, while providing a way for photographers to identify copyright infringe- ment, license overuse, use of their photos that should be restricted and other license violations.
The blockchain-based protocol is immutable and autonomous. No one can manipulate the system – the code that operates it will be public and open-sourced. This creates a new level of trust in digital content distribution - everyone trusts everyone else because the system does not require trust to operate.
Wemark is introducing a dedicated token to power a direct economy for digital content.Wemark Tokens (WMK), are intended to serve as a native payment system for the network, and reward all the relevant parties for creating, distributing and promoting digital content.
Token: WMK
Platform: Ethereum
Type: ERC20
Price in ICO: 1 WMK = 0.2 USD
Tokens for sale: 51,000,000
Accepting: ETH
Distributed in ICO: 38%
Soft cap: $1,500,000
Hard cap: $8,000,000
MAY 2017 - RAISING A PRE-SEED ROUND AND JOINING SILICON VALLEY ACCELERATOR "NFX"
- Completing pre-seed fundraising of $1M from leading seed-stage VC's in the US and Israel. The team joins NFX accelerator program - a $150M fund that specializes in marketplaces and network effects.
SEPTEMBER 2017 – LAUNCHING THE CREATOR WAITING LIST
- Launching a waiting list for early contributors. More than 1,500 professional photographers signed up in the first few weeks.
JANUARY 2018 – LAUNCHING "WEMARK FOR CREATORS" ALPHA VERSION
- Wemark launches its very first product - enabling photographers to create a profile, verify their identity and submit images for review. Thousands of photographers signed up with over 20,000 submitted images.
FEBRUARY 2018 – ANNOUNCING WEMARK'S ADVISORY BOARD
- Announcing the first advisors to join the company's advisory board, including Lars Perkins (founder of Picasa - now Google Photos), Keren Sachs (former content director at Shutterstock) and Lee Torrens (marketplace lead at Canva).
MARCH 2018 - ANNOUNCING FIRST CONTENT PARTNERS
- Announcing exclusive strategic partnerships with the world's largest content providers in stock photography, including Getty Images top provider - "Caia", with over 20,000 premium images submitted to Wemark.
APRIL 2018 - RELEASING WEMARK'S WHITEPAPER
- Wemark launches a new TGE website, releases the Whitepaper and announces final details for the TGE.
MAY-AUGUST 2018 - TOKEN GENERATION EVENT (TGE)
- The whitelisting for Wemark Tokens sale will start on May 7th at 12pm PDT. The sale will last two weeks, starting from July 24th.
JULY 2018 - LAUNCHING WEMARK.COM ALPHA VERSION
- Wemark.com will be launched in alpha as a fully-working marketplace, including transactions, licensing and payment distribution.
Q3 2018 - LAUNCHING WEMARK PIONEERS - WEMARK'S EARLY CUSTOMER PROGRAM
- Launching an early customers program - "Wemark Pioneers". The program is aimed at designers and journalists from leading advertising/design firms, top brand in-house design studios and renouned publications. Participants will receive special platform perks, fully-guided onboarding process and of course, lots of Wemark swag as gratitude for their support.
Q4 2018 - SUPPORTING NEW PAYMENT METHODS
- Introducing one or more payment methods for customers other than Wemark Tokens, including credit cards, wire transfer, BTC, ETH and others. All new payment methods will be aimed at assisting customers with purchasing WMK - the only compatible token on the Wemark Protocol.
Q4 2018 - LAUNCHING WEMARK.COM BETA VERSION
- Wemark.com will be launched in beta improving search and UX and presenting a convincing and wide collection of curated photos, all ready for licensing directly from their creators.
Q1 2019 - SUPPORTING NEW TYPES OF CONTENT
- Supporting new types of digital content such as Illustrations, vectors, video, stock music and 3D models.
Having a relevant selection of well-curated photos is an essential part of making it easy for customers to quickly find the best photo for their needs. Wemark will continuously update cura- tion standards in a transparent way and use the platform’s usage data to assist photographers in producing and submitting the right content to match the needs of today’s photo customers.
Wemark will develop technology to help customers find photos based on their exact needs (for example, by searching similar photos to a photo they already like, or describing the photo they need in natural language, like: “Russian family in vacation with 3 or 4 children”). As we develop and implement this technology, we will be able to accept more photos, while still improving the search experience of customers.
All additional information about the Wemark project can be obtained from official sources:
: http://wemark.com/
: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3347524.0
: https://www.wemark.com/whitepaper
: https://t.me/wemark
: https://medium.com/wemark-stories
: https://twitter.com/_wemark
: https://www.facebook.com/WemarkOfficial
: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wemark
: https://www.reddit.com/r/wemark/
: Wir shtrez22
: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1975700
: https://www.facebook.com/mbohrarohsu
: https://twitter.com/wirrgps
: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wirr22
: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCETglvEsB9uqq8jEzYtFDfw