BananaClips on AERGO

On July 22, 2021, an article about Aergo and BananaClips collaboration appeared on Aergo’s official Medium page.

You can familiarize yourself with the content of this article on our website below:

As all of you who are reading this article already know, a blockchain has a very difficult system architecture to manipulate or to discard data once recorded in the network. In addition, due to this feature, assets of users created and stored in the blockchain network are guaranteed more securely than any other system. BananaClips is an online marketplace that utilizes these features and gets the leverage through them. The AERGO blockchain is mainly used as a platform to create value/assets for customer uploaded videos and to improve trust in transactions. Today, I would like to explain to you how BananaClips uses AERGO and why it makes AERGO and BananaClips more valuable systems and services.

Uploading Videos on BananaClips

BananaClips is also a platform where anyone could upload their created and valuable videos in public. When users upload a video to BananaClips, the following process is performed internally.

  1. Saving the original video file to a secure archiving location
  2. Automatic video analysis
  3. Extracting copyright information
  4. Extracting search information
  5. Detecting unsafe contents
  6. Monetizing contents

During this process, the blockchain is utilized in steps 2, 3, and 6.

Video Analysis and Extracting Copyright Information

When a video file is analyzed, various pieces of information called metadata are extracted such as the size of the video screen (i.e. resolution), geographic location information, whether the video is horizontal or vertical, and so on. It is very important to keep this information safe as it can be easily edited or deleted. It can be said that this is the first step to secure copyright.

BananaClips keeps this extracted metadata on the AERGO blockchain network to prevent modification or deletion of customers’ video contents. In addition, by providing metadata for free through the AERGO network, we are step by step in preparation for standardization for copyright protection and revitalization of the community.

Digital Watermark

Even simply extracting metadata and storing it on the blockchain network would be useless if it could not be utilized. For this reason, Banana Clips uses its own digital watermark technology to store invisible encrypted information, i.e. steganography, in the video content itself. This steganography data becomes a compass from which you can check the metadata extracted from above and stored securely on the AERGO network. In other words, no matter how the video content is altered or misused, if users/systems can check the metadata and related licenses, users/systems can further protect the copyright.

Smart Contract

The extracted metadata would be added through a smart contract deployed on the AERGO network created by BananaClips, and anyone could view and check the metadata via the AERGO network. However, if anonymous users/systems want to add or modify metadata, it can cause confusion due to incorrect data and misguided behaviors. Therefore, only BananaClips can save and edit the metadata in the smart contract for the present. In the future, we plan to establish a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) so that various members and partners can participate in this smart contract, and we will develop to standardize it.

Monetizing contents

BananaClips issues NFT with new value on the AERGO network for an uploaded video content that has been prepared through the above processes. However, in order to improve the user experience, new tokens would be issued and provided to users in a different way from other NFT services.

It is not an easy task for customers who want to upload and monetize contents to understand and prepare their personal wallets and coins for issuing. If you, who are reading this article, think about when you tried to understand about a blockchain and coins at first, I assure you will fully understand that this process is not easy. Making this process simple and easy is also one of the biggest challenges and differentiation factors BananaClips has prepared for you.

Fewer steps and simplifications do not compromise security at all. Rather, a roll called “confirmer”, which is not present in the existing ARC2, is added to prevent incorrect transactions that may occur by attacking a smart contract by any change. This role and step to guarantee by our system has been included to achieve a higher level of security.

Additionally, BananaClips users can withdraw their NFT assets at any time through AERGO or Ethereum (we plan to support more blockchain networks) and can obtain video contents again at any time after withdrawal via our service. Since our marketplace can be used again through re-deposit their NFT assets, it will provide usability at a more advanced level than other services in terms of scalability to support various platforms.

The NFT smart contract was developed according to the ARC2 standard. Here, the additional APIs provided after research and development by our engineering team will not lack in providing a higher level of service to BananaClips customers. Soon, the AERGO community will be able to meet the advanced NFT open marketplace.