Asia Innovations Group (“AIG”) is a leading mobile entertainment company in Asia. It has demonstrated that virtual gifting system is a highly efective monetization method for content creators on its fagship live video platform, Uplive. Virtual gifts on Uplive not only drive signifcant revenue for global content creators, but also enhance interactions and relationships between creators and their fans. Since its launch in June 2016, the Uplive community has rapidly expanded to 20 million global users, and the platform will generate more than USD $100 million in revenue for 2017. In September alone, over 25 million virtual gifts were purchased and sent on Uplive.
The Universal Gifting Protocol draws from the positive Uplive experience, and seeks to enable content producers across any content platform to receive gifts from their fans. These virtual gifts will exist independently from any platform and retain their properties without any centralized controlling mechanism.
Each virtual gift will be implemented as a smart contract on Ethereum blockchain, enabling the virtual gifts to exist, be owned, and be transacted independently from any particular content platform or system. This will serve to reduce the dependency of content producers on their publishing platforms to secure revenue for their work, and, by extension, reliance on advertisers. The proposed currency for transacting in the virtual gifts is Gifto Tokens, which will be deployed as an ERC20-standard token on the Ethereum blockchain. Gifto Tokens will also be used to incentivize and motivate an ecosystem of participants to help create, curate, and redeem virtual gifts.
The Alpha version of Gifto Protocol will be tested by end of 2017, and the Beta version is targeted for testing in Q1 2018, with full commercial launch in Q2 2018. Gifto Protocol will leverage on Uplive’s existing 20 mln user base and 60,000 content creators test, iterate, and jump-start mass adoption, towards the vision of empowering millions of content creators worldwide.