GARI WHITEPAPER
Introduction
The explosion of short video apps has propelled the size of the creator economy to more than $100 billion. Creating short videos is no longer an exclusivity of the producers and professional camerapersons; anyone in the remotest corner of the globe can start just with a smartphone and internet connection. Technology has acted as an enabler to decentralize the video creation process and empower the creators. However, one of the biggest issues that need to be addressed is the concentration of wealth in the hands of global technology players, leaving the creators at the mercy of brand collaboration and promotion.
While the tech companies are generating billions of dollars, creators are earning peanuts due to the flawed revenue models. These platforms are not only disregarding the content creators but also not acknowledging and incentivising them.
The current market size of the creator economy is roughly around $104.2 billion but the revenue distribution has been abysmally low. A global short video app created its own ‘Creators fund’ but the corpus set aside for the fund was a mere $ 200 million; for information, the company made $ 4.6 billion in 2021. For the comparison, the players of some of the world’s famous sports leagues including the NFL and NBA are getting 47 % to 51% in revenue.
Problem Statement
As per the industry estimates, there are 4 million - 38 million influencers/content creators. Most of these creators are willing to monetize their content. But given the multiple pitfalls, creators are not able to make content creation as their full time profession. Although the latest influencer marketing spend increased to $14 billion, just one third of brands pay actual cash which means only 1.5% micro-influencers (up to 50K followers) can live on their social media income alone.
Technology giants hold all the power over users by single-handedly controlling content formats and platform mechanics:
The biggest internet platforms' economic interests are concentrated and often misaligned with their most valued contributors — their users. Platforms have all of the resources and a closed infrastructure to make critical decisions behind closed doors, thereby influencing how millions of users' lives will be shaped on their platforms. As a result, creators are always at the mercy of the next improvement.
Media hegemons see all users as cash cows, stripping their full collaborative potential:
Traditional Web-2.0 content platforms do not value content creators as collaborators and, in a sense, co-owners of the space, nor do they recognise their value as collaborators and, in a sense, co-owners of the space.
Creators may only generate money on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok by putting random adverts in their video and selling collaborations or products to purchasers directly. And while Instagram and Youtube make billions by optimizing ad revenue through targeted content placements, content creators get almost nothing!
1 13 Million creators miss $5 Billion yearly
2 22 Million creators annually lose $0.3 Billion in potential revenue
3 30.5 Million active creators worldwide amass $6 Billion of missed revenue each year
Chingari : At the vanguard of empowering content creators through its GARI Token
Chinagri is the world's largest on-chain Web3 social app with a combined community of 130 million downloads, 50 million monthly active users and growing. After its launch, Chingari became a hit, with 1 million downloads in 15 days after rebranding in July 2020, 25 million in July 2020, and 50 million in February 2021. Chingari is one of the top 20 most downloaded apps worldwide on Google Play. The app has over 5 million daily active users (DAU) and over 40 million monthly average users (MAU). It has also received over 130 million downloads since its release. About 200 million videos are watched on the app every day.
The future of a platform is its Creators.
At Chingari, we know that creators are the core value drivers of the platform, as
1 They know their topics and audiences better than anyone.
2 They know what features they need from the platform
3 They deserve to earn more for their sincere work
Since July 2020, Chingari has made content production a full-time career by directly sharing 30% of our revenue with artists via our centralized Chingari coin*, an asset that teaches our users about larger market mechanisms. We do so to encourage them to be who they are: the people that make the platform a vibrant and appealing place for our users to study and entertain themselves.
We believe that creators should have control over how the platform on which their creations is hosted develops, in addition to money. This is why we introduced GARI as a potential in-app money as well as a governance token — in other words, we're giving users back control of the decision-making process.
This way, we’re making being a creator a real career path — our users will be able to make a living by creating engaging, educational content and maintaining presence in our app.
Why Chingari is the next big thing
1 World’s first Web 3.0 Social App
Chingari is the first Web 3.0 social app in the world to be directly empowering the content creators by handing over the ownership of their content creators to them. It is a truly Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) where the decision is being taken by the community not any corporatised entity.
2 Most inclusive platform
Chingari is THE most inclusive short video platform, globally. The existing social apps transformed itself into an exclusive platform where the money is concentrated with big brands and a handful of influencers. At Chingari we are empowering small time influencers, sitting in the remotest corner of the world.
3 Global brand
Within a short span of 4 years, Chingari has transcended geographical boundaries and become a truly global brand. A global user community is testament to the huge popularity of this short video app. We have plans to launch Chingari in a lot more countries in the near future.
Why Gari ?
1 Social tokens are the future of community platforms for creator monetization
Social tokens have become a big fad in recent years, profiting on the mitigated idea of community funds. Their rise correlates with a desire for social networks to relinquish complete control over public conversation and platform monetization as intermediaries. Some corporations and fan clubs have already blazed the way with social token monetization, but it also works for solo producers. The most valuable social tokens are worth around $200 million* and are used in hundreds of communities with over 8,000 people.
Social tokens are digital assets backed by the reputation of an individual, brand or community that allow creators to receive more equitable pay and forge deeper relationships within audiences.Their purposes vary a lot, but as long as there is a community behind them, they can provide a lot of value.
Users and developers are aligned in long-term vested interests and incentives thanks to social tokens. Token value is determined by supply and demand, giving all holders a stake in the game and encouraging them to become evangelists in order to enhance their own wealth. Ownership serves as a significant inducement for users to contribute more deeply to goods, resulting in a more cooperative economic model that ensures better alignment with users over time, allowing for the creation of larger, more resilient, more innovative platforms.
Emerging Web3 markets, with India as a strategic center, leads to a growing base to the biggest number of crypto enthusiasts that keeps overseas funding flowing into the crypto startups. Over 100M crypto owners (10% of the adult population*) holding $6.6B in crypto assets express strong growth in interest and adoption of alternative assets which is significantly fuelled by the youth between 18-35 y.o., most of whom happen to be first-time investors.
2 Creating an ecosystem for creator economy:
With GARI, we grasp an amazing market opportunity: we seamlessly bring crypto to the interested audience through a step-by-step introduction of GARI via simple and easy granular in-app mechanics. Gradual sophistication of token usage ensures long-term adoption with a smooth learning curve for existing Chingari users. At the same time, GARI will provide a familiar short-form tool for newcomers to onboard crypto space in an understandable fashion.
Chingari Platform is an extension of the Chingari ecosystem into the blockchain space. The goal is to empower both creators and viewers with technological and financial instruments to interact directly with each other and have control over the long-term direction of the social economy impacting the platform and the product. The platform interconnects through the Chingari App and GARI token, giving the chingari app users access to a wider blockchain world. In the blockchain world, they directly control their assets and can use their tokens both in and out of the app to connect and transact with their counterparties, place governance votes, and catalyze platform engagement and user base growth.
3 Battle against the big tech:
Media hegemony of big tech see all users as cash cows, stripping their full collaborative potential with creators. Traditional Web 2.0 content platforms disregard content creators as a vital part of a platform’s appeal for the users they monetize on. Nor do these platforms consider creators as collaborators or co-owners in the platform. On platform giants like Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok, creators can earn only by including random ads in their content and selling collaborations or merch to the buyers directly. While Instagram and Youtube earn billions through targeted content placements maximizing ad revenue, content creators receive none of that!
Opportunities lost in Numbers!
A total of 55.4M creators from India on these media behemoths could have earned $635M just over the last year alone**
* Globally, factoring in cross-platform overlap
** PA., assuming 30 % ad revenue share to the creators
1 13M creators miss $5B yearly
2 22M creators annually lose $0.3B in potential revenue
3 30.5M active creators worldwide amass $6B of missed revenue each year
The Web3 Social graph:
Chingari is now powered by the most powerful blockchain technology in the Web3 ecosystem.
Offering provided by the Chingari Blockchain platform:
From the users’ perspective the platform consists of the following parts:
Chingari Skills
Direct buying of goods and services from a video or creator profiles
Essential Feeds
All users of Chingari can access the app content regardless of GARI ownership, which makes token introduction non-restrictive.
Chingari Multiplex
The entertainment section lists movies to be bought through GARI and fiat. This provides a new revenue channel for producers through the pay-per-view model. ownership, which makes token introduction non-restrictive.
Audio Rooms
A space for influencers to interact with their audience in private/public audio chats. Users can purchase various UI options and send virtual gifts, which transfer a certain amount of in-app currency to room hosts
Video Commerce
Content creators can profit from product placements by endorsing products in sponsored videos while interested viewers can shop right in the app with GARI. The advertisers can pay the creators in GARI or fiat directly on the platform.
Chingari Widgets
An integration for website owners that allows them to add short-form videos to their website directly from their Chingari profile or trending content matching different criterias.
$GARI powering the Web3 Social graph
Collaborative Mechanics
1 Governance
A platform is only as good as its community. Chingari doubles down on that principle by introducing directly incentivized feedback loops within the community and between the community and platform developers. The centerpiece of the design is the mechanism of platform governance.
On the Chingari platform, governance participation starts with staking GARI tokens in the Chingari Community Reserve* and receiving Community Reserve shares. The Community Reserve, through its share-weighted voting system, passes protocol- governing decisions and directs usage of the Community Reserve Treasury.
Active Community Reserve voters receive an APY on their staked tokens.
Proposals on the Community Reserve go through off-chain and on-chain states:
A. Off-chain (in-app) there is a proposal board for feature requests and suggestions, with upvoting and downvoting mechanics. This gives the board the best exposure among creators and viewers and allows good ideas to gain maximal traction, if they are understood by the community.
B. If the proposal reaches a supporters threshold and is sponsored by two users to be sent on-chain, it is uploaded to a smart contract and put to vote at the Community Reserve.
A long-term vision is that most of the platform’s future development will be governed by its Community Reserve , aligning interests of all voters (i.e. the community as a whole). The first step towards this vision is organizing regular hackathons for platform development, which will be driven by Chingari and supported by the prizes from the Treasury.
2 Creator pools
Creator pools are a way for the viewers to support creators by providing them with GARI through a special mechanism
-A creator initializes a special pool, that is used for social endorsement and is tied to the creator's popularity. By giving GARI to the creator users obtain shares of that pool. The more shares of the pool are sold, the more expensive they become. Shares can also be redeemed by shareholders by withdrawing the pro-rata part of the remaining pool.
-The creator proceeds to draw tokens from the pool, getting an advance on their future revenues as a way to fund their career early. Correspondingly, later on their revenues on the platform will be automatically split with the pool shareholders along with their respective shares and the percentage the creator set initially
3 Token gated content
If users participate in a Creator Pool they will be able to access the locked content types: private chats, contests, videos, etc. We expect this to be a major utility point behind the GARI asset. The creator can also decide to reward her supporters by giving premium access to some of her content, depending, for instance, on the amount of GARI that individual stakers put into the pool.
Creator Shares unlock
Access to
Premium content
Creator chat rooms
Special requests
Community video calls
Access to
Premium content
Creator chat rooms
Special requests
Community video calls
Transactional Mechanics
This group of mechanics captures forms of the traditional exchange of goods and services for currency, or goodwill currency donations.
1 Tipping
Users can tip content creators with GARI. Because a blockchain keeps the record of all transactions, creators always have a list of all supporters in case they decide to do a retroactive airdrop of premium content or unlock some exclusive interactions
2 Influencer marketplace
Commercial companies can place advertisements on the platform by paying content creators with GARI for endorsements or other promoting content. Via a personalized ML-fed a user is provided engaging, targeted content so interested customers can purchase advertised products (Physical or Digital) with tokens directly on the platform.
3 Sales
Chingari will allow content creators to sell courses in Chingari Skills as well as some goods (including digital, such as NFTs) inside their content. Such transactions involve a fair exchange of an item for its set price, paid in GARI.
Technical Overview
The main interaction point between Chingari and its user base is the mobile app, fuelled by the backend. The integrated platform also connects to the Solana blockchain which hosts its token and smart contract components.
This way, we’re making being a creator a real career path — our users will be able to make a living by creating engaging, educational content and maintaining presence in our app.
Blockchain solution
Why Solana?
The current Chingari platform has 31.26M MAU and serves 3.5M users per day. This is only the beginning. In the past year, over 4M users were acquired each month, and the potential audience is much bigger..
It is the vision of Chingari that each user (creator and viewer alike) should have their own tokens and direct blockchain interactions, making the platform more resilient and providing the users a gateway into the blockchain world without crippling its natural strong characteristics
SOLANA:
For that reason, for its blockchain integration, Chingari needs a platform that is affordable, has high throughput now, and is future-proof for the growth of the user base. The platform also has to be very stable, with a proven track record, and sufficiently decentralized.
Solana is the natural fit for these requirements. It is very fast, showing in practice the ability to sustain a higher peak throughput than Visa, even without sharding. It is also continuously working on growing these numbers. It is cheap, offering a reference price $10 per 1M transactions — as compared to $300,000 per 1M transactions on Ethereum (for instance). To top it off, Solana is built for stability and sustainable growth. Its mainnet has been live since March 2020, and it raised a $314M token round recently, led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Token tech specifics:
The blockchain deployment of Chingari supports two types of tokens:
1 Creator pools
GARI is the fungible blockchain token of the platform, built to SPL standard.*
2 Creator pool shares
Creator pool shares are tied directly to Creator Pools and are represented as fungible non-transferrable tokens. The shares are minted to support creators and connected to the revenues generated by them
Creator pool shares are implemented as a combination of staking, automated market makers (AMM), and bonding curves. Each Creator Coin has its own liquidity pool of GARI and a dynamic price based on the relative amount of staked GARI and the monetary mass of the coin. This mechanism provides free entry and exit for supporters and dynamic pricing for the coin with high capital efficiency
Blockchain solution
* SPL is the main Solana standard for fungible tokens, supported by every application and protocol that has fungible token interactions
Tokenomics:
GARI token is capped to 1B in total supply and has an unlock structure to support 200 to 300M in circulating supply at the end of year 1.
Funds from the Community Reserve will be distributed to the proposals that win the Community Reserve voting
- Chingari will receive a percentage of the Community Reserve in tokens for selling IP from Chingari to the Community Reserve.</li
Upcoming GARI Roadmap
Blockchain solution
A tribe of 9,999 cute Pandas which will unlock tremendous value for Panda holders inside the Chingari-Verse. The future advertisers will need to own a panda NFt to run ads in the Chingari app.
An updated roadmap awaits all Panda NFT holders!
Video NFT marketplaces:
A one-stop platform for video nfts where content creators can create, buy and sell nfts. The NFTs would be bought and sold using Gari tokens on the marketplace. The nfts minted by chingari creators, gives value to the holders by accruing a part of rewards that creator is earning from chingari app along with several other use cases.
Social events and digital engagement through experiential innovations
Social events form the heart of our promise to the community, especially the experience of events that will be powered by innovative web3 use-cases and experiential elevation for ardent community holders in the space.
Emergence of GARI AI
1 Open-sourcing of GARI IP to the community:
Open-source economy has been the bedrock of innovation in the crypto space. Whilst this is largely absent with the big tech world where the power of AI is largely centralized with no incentives shared to the users and AI developers at large. The mission of Chingari would be to power the GARI AI DAO with vast resources in terms of open-sourced infrastructure that can be enhanced by community participation.
2 Community based curations of the Chingari AI feed
The most immediate use-case that the community can expect to see in the immediate future would be the open-sourcing of algorithms that contribute to the AI powered short video feed. The GARI
3 Data commons governing the recommendation systems and algorithms:
Community of data commons will form the core governance of recommendation systems and algorithms that power the social feed of Chingari App. Chingari app will be the first live use-case that is powered by a decentralized AI model that emerges from our AI DAO.
4 Privacy based AI & ML stack for Web3 use-cases:
Data privacy is something that we strongly value despite the open source economy approach. We will ensure that the user-data is never misused by anyone, especially the Big tech. We will soon be announcing strong partnerships with protocols that embody our philosophy.
Upcoming Roadmap
The Chingari leadership team will soon announce a power-house team that will be officially known as the GARI Labs.
Mission statement of GARI AI DAO - Seize the means of production
Our mission is to serve the community of AI researchers who have been deprived of the benefits which have been largely exploited from the control of Big tech and making it open for the masses. Making AI research truly and openly accessible for the masses has been largely in the growth of AI businesses. This has led to the dearth of AI innovation that was anticipated in the past decade.
The eventual goal of our AI DAO would be to gather 1000+ AI-ML engineers/researchers and give them commercial AI-ML researchers with creative common rights that would empower them with shared incentives from the DAO.
GARI AI DAO, a product of the Gari network, will be the largest distributed AI network with community contributed models that contribute to the advancement of applications that impact human lives.
