Author: LeftOfCenter

Just when everyone was carnival for the Arbitrum airdrop, Stealcam, an Arbitrum ecological photo sharing application, was quietly accumulating strength. In just two weeks, without relying on airdrop expectations or issuing tokens, the accumulated transaction volume only relied on natural growth. More than 313 ETH (about 500,000 U.S. dollars), Jesse Pollak, the development director of Base, the core development team of OP Stack, commented that it is"A unique new product on the chain that I love the most."

This Web3 product that has been a little popular recently is called Stealcam. It is said that it is a little popular because the hot spots and attention in the encryption industry are often related to TVL. From this indicator, it is indeed just a little popular or even not worth mentioning. .

However, during the product beta period with no airdrop expectations and no token distribution, this image application still achieved a certain amount of organic growth. The total transaction volume generated by the beta version was only two weeks after its launch reached 500,000 US dollars, relying only on the original image application Based on the addition of a new distribution model (intelligently combining human voyeurism + celebrity effect + owner economic model), it has attracted a large number of artists, KOLs, and VC partners to settle in, and has gained a good reputation.

What are Stealcams?

simply put,Stealcam is a photo social sharing application, users can upload pictures or video files to the platform, which is no different from ordinary Internet camera applications.

The difference is that the pictures published on this platform are not free to access, but need to steal (pay a certain fee, currently only supports ETH payment) to obtain the reveal (open picture) right, and then view the specific content of the picture.

The "right to open a picture" is not enjoyed indefinitely, and you can only view the content of the picture when you are the latest creator of the picture.

Each picture can be stolen unlimited times, and each steal will increase by 10% on the previous steal price plus 0.001 ETH. If a picture is very popular and there are many people involved in the steal, it is possible that it has already been stolen by others when you want to reveal after the steal (steal and reveal are two operations and require two signatures), in order to view content, you have to steal it back again.

The income generated by each steal will fully return the purchase cost of the previous stealer, and the price difference between the two steals will be distributed between the creator, the previous steal participant and the agreement, where the creator and the previous stealer respectively get 45%, 10% allocated to the agreement.

The income generated by each steal will be returned to the previous stealer, that is, the person who was stolen will get a full refund and get a share of the difference

To sum up, Stealcam adds a layer of pixelated coding on the basis of traditional photo social applications, allowing others to pay to browse the content. buyers) are included in the profit-sharing model, which facilitates price discovery of works.

data and team

Although it has only been two weeks since it was launched, it is still in the beta testing stage, and the user interface looks a bit rough, but as a Web3 application, Stealcam has delivered a good result in terms of word-of-mouth and natural user growth. All remarkable.

According to the data, the number of pictures generated by the platform has exceeded 1,1000, which can be obtained from the official websiteLatest Discovery PageIt can be seen from the newly released picture ID in the website that the picture numbers released on the platform are displayed on the latest discovery page in order.

Posted by nazih.ethStealcam dune panelIt shows that pictures published on Stealcam have accumulatively stolen 20,000 times, the daily mint times are up to 1499 times, the daily steal times are up to 4175 times, and the cumulative transaction volume exceeds 313 ETH (about 500,000 USD). The cumulative income reached 40 ETH (about 68,000 US dollars).

According to the TOP 10 revenue list on the official website, the top ranking isNFT Artist Sh l0 msWill

WillStealcam Revenue RankingContinue to scroll down, and we found that this application, which is still in the beta testing period, has attracted entries from encrypted ogs, artists, and even Web3 applications. Among them, USV (United Square Fund) ranked 14thCo-FounderFred Wilson, he earned 0.53 ETH by posting 10 works on Stealcam, the 17th place is the wallet application rainbow, which earned 0.4 ETH by posting pictures on Stealcam, and the 25th place is the encryption fund Variant Fund United Founder Li Jin and another Variant co-founder Jess ranked 79th.

The team founder is anonymousOG Racer(Twitter @0x RacerAlt) andshrimp（@shrimppepe）。

Use Cases and How to Play

As a picture app, posting pictures and sharing pictures is of course the most basic way to play. Users post pictures/videos on Stealcam, and then share them with others for a fee to steal to view. In addition, you can also pay to steal to view friends, colleagues, family members, etc. Pictures of other people.

As an encrypted application, of course, there are some ways to play that are different from ordinary photo sharing applications. For Stealcam, this is mint and steal, and under the blessing of the underlying encryption protocol, the ownership economic mechanism is incorporated, so that all auction participants of a picture can get a part of the income generated by the picture.

Publishing Work: Especially for Artists

Let me talk about mint first.

Mint is to upload works (including pictures/videos) on Stealcam, publish them after pixelation and coding, and wait for others to pay to steal (open pictures) and earn income.

Under Stealcam’s default distribution mechanism, except for the first steal player who can open a map for free, every subsequent steal will generate income. The starting price is 0.001 ETH, and then it will increase at a fixed rate every time a steal is generated. In addition to returning the bid of the bidder who was stolen, the bid-ask price difference between the two steals will be distributed between the creator, the bidder who was stolen (equivalent to the seller) and the agreement. Among them, the creator and The bidder who was stolen gets a similar amount of income - 45% of the difference between the two buying and selling prices.

It can be said that this method of including the auctioneer (stealer) into the income distribution mechanism is very suitable for artists to release their works. Similarly, this is also linking the ownership economy with community contributions, and income distribution under the blessing of the underlying encryption protocol an effective practice.

In the current crypto bear market (the NFT market is even more bearish), most NFT works have almost no trading volume after the end of the mint. The so-called reserve price is just a psychologically expected selling price that Holders deceive themselves. It can be said that there is no trading volume. Lack of liquidity is the dilemma most NFTs are currently facing.

In this case, if the bidder (stealer) is included in the revenue sharing system from the beginning, that is, as long as the work that he takes over can be sold, 45% of the price difference income generated will be sent to the bidder immediately, then, for NFT Liquidity will generate positive feedback and promote the price discovery of NFT works.

Since we acknowledge that liquidity is important and price discovery is so difficult in today's NFT market, those who contribute to the final price discovery of a work are important contributors and deserve a share of the work's revenue soup. And this is also the core of the ownership economy, that is, participants in a community should get a part of the value generated by the community, and the proportion is positively related to their contribution value.

In Stealcam, this fairness is reflected in:

The creator of the work will get a permanent share of the royalties of the work, that is, 45% of the price difference between each steal and the previous steal will be automatically distributed to the author. This means that as long as the picture is still sold in the market, its creator/publisher can always get a share of the sales revenue, which is equivalent to a permanent copyright share.

In addition to getting the full refund of the steal cost, the Stealer can also get 45% of the premium generated by a single steal (that is, the price difference between two steals).

Steal contributors can get 45% of the revenue generated by a single steal, which is a very reasonable distribution considering their contribution to the price discovery of the current transaction of the work, while for publishers, they get Each auction earns another 45% of the price difference, which is allocated throughout each auction and thus amounts to a perpetual copyright.

When we are still arguing about "should the creator's royalties be optional or mandatory" and "should the NFT market be dominated by the buyer or the seller's market", such a "no more, no less" compromise distribution mechanism may It's a solution worth considering.

Of course, if the fan economy is also taken into account, such as the publisher itself is the community or person (whether it is a writer, musician, director or artist) that the bidder participates in, then participating in the auction in this way is no longer a thing. It is a purely money-making move, but a matter of community participation and making money by the way.

Stealcam also provides publishers with a very friendly "fan management" interface. On the "top fans" tab of the personal account page, Stealcam ranks each user's fans according to the number of steals, and checks the interaction data of their fans.

It is worth noting that although the user interface of Stealcam is still a bit rough, it shows full sincerity in the "revenue withdrawal" function, that is, the income generated by each auction will be withdrawn to the user's wallet immediately, without delay, without delay. You need to withdraw manually, and you can see the income you are currently earning in your wallet.

Buying and investment strategy: how to earn the difference through steal

In addition to enjoying 45% of the permanent royalties of the price difference for publishing and sharing works, users can also earn income by stealing other people's works.

The safest way to participate is to steal the right to flip the picture for the first time, 0 cost + very little gas fee, as long as the next stealer appears, you can earn 0.001 ETH, but that’s all. Even if the latter work is photographed for 100 ETH, it has nothing to do with you. This is the most stable and risk-free way to participate.

Another way is to choose to join the auction in the middle and later stages of a popular work. According to the rules of the platform, the price of each steal will increase by 10% on the basis of the previous steal. Therefore, the later the participation time, the greater the profit share. The higher the risk, the higher the corresponding risk factor. Of course, this method has certain costs and high risks. If the work cannot be stolen by the next person after taking over, then you are the last person to take over the work. Therefore, you need to consider market expectations when choosing, such as works released by celebrities/well-known artists/or popular communities, etc. This is the so-called celebrity effect.

How else can I play? Anticipation management, gimmicks, spy photos

In addition to conventional gameplay, what other potential usage scenarios and gameplays does Stealcam have?

Publishers can release a series of "early know" previews through Stealcam, allowing fans to reveal peeps, and fans can obtain the right to turn pictures through steal, and create momentum for future works by stimulating fans/users' curiosity and word of mouth. These works should not be restricted by format, and besides pictures, they should also support auditions of music works, movie trailers, etc. And creators are not limited to artists, but should include creators in a broader sense, including musicians, directors, writers, photographers, e-sports anchors, actresses, AI virtual characters, communities and corporate brands, etc.

In fact, corporate brands are already starting to operate on the Stealcam. For example, showtime, an NFT social platform, publishes future functions of products by casting NFT on Stealcam.spy photos, showtime is not the only product that uses Stealcam to announce new features, and Rainbow Wallet also attracts users' attention by releasing spy photos of future features of the product.

Rainbow Wallet on StealcamSpy photos of "future product features" released

For the encryption industry, which is closely related to financial investment, spy photos mean alpha, a preview of a new function of a project party, or the announcement of a roadmap, all of which are absolutely attractive to encryption users/coin holders, but this This special kind of spy photos is for information arbitrage, so the later the information is revealed, the less attractive it is, which requires an auction pricing model with custom functions.

It should be noted that there are currently many fake names pretending to be celebrities on Stealcam. It is recommended to confirm carefully when stealing. Since Stealcam currently only supports Twitter authorization authentication and also supports anonymity, the only way to verify it is to view the tied account on the publisher's personal page. Whether the specified Twitter account is my own.