Manifesto
The GLASS manifesto bravely asserts its vision for a decentralized video platform:
"Join us in building a new video platform. One that is financially sustainable, accessible to anyone, and owned by everyone. One that is transparent to how the people benefit in the economy we create together... ... as transparent as GLASS."
This vision is important for two reasons: (i) video has emerged as the most accessible and popular medium for expression and communication; and (ii) the videos created are records of knowledge for future generations and so should be preserved with care and respect for its content and creators.
GLASS: A decentralized video platform 'owned by you'
To put the importance of video into perspective, half of the internet's bandwidth is used to stream video. As such, the videos created and published on the internet should be considered a public good. It is GLASS's mission to give the creators of those videos a real stake in their own content, instead of having third parties exert disproportionate control over the creator's visibility, earnings and permanence.
In this way, GLASS is best thought of not just as a platform on which creators can share their videos, but as a protocol for sustainable profit-sharing with creators. This is hugely beneficial to artists who no longer need to "sell their soul" or be satisfied with the pittance of royalties received from traditional Web 2.0 platforms. In the Web 3.0 world it is becoming easier for creators to unlock different levels of demand as the concept of digital ownership develops and spreads.
Currently GLASS is onboarding creators in a very bespoke manner though word of mouth and in-person meetings. The platform currently supports 4k video and entire films up to 3 hours long.
Moving forward, GLASS expects to offer a homepage, creator profiles, multi-chain support, and self-serve live-streaming and video for artists and DAOs who have contacted them.
Arweave's data storage solution was a game-changer for GLASS. Until it discovered Arweave, GLASS had been using IPFS but had encountered issues with the playback of mp4s. Arweave solved these issues and more: GLASS no longer has to worry about pinning, nor the financial responsibility of maintaining the lifecycle of content.
If you'd like to find out more about GLASS:
Website: https://glass.xyz/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/intent/follow?screen_name=GlassProtocol
Discord: https://discord.gg/BpPXhHAh
