📄 Creative Platform WhitePaper
Last Update: March 10, 2021, *
Success in the music industry is not something you wait or hope for, but something you create, day after day.
― Simon S. Tam, Music Business Hacks (Tam)
Abstract
The music industry alone generated over $21.5 billion in revenue, with only 10% going to independent creators. Additionally, independent creators have minimal control of how their projects are created, distributed, and or bundled when signed to major labels with little visibility into how their content is purchased. To address these and other pain points experienced by independent creators, we introduce THE CREATIVE Platform, a fully decentralized reward & payment mechanism built with public infrastructure and other decentralized technologies. The CRTV Token allows independent creatives to distribute to and get paid directly from Brands, streaming companies, and corporations.
Introduction
Content creation and distribution have dramatically changed since technology came into play. Making music no longer requires a team of producers and audio engineers to all be in a recording studio; anyone can record music in their bedroom nowadays by setting up inexpensive recording hardware and software. Additionally, distributing music no longer requires factories that produce physical records and retail relationships for getting those records into stores; music streaming platforms have enabled independent creators to distribute their music.
Though redundant in the digital distribution age, intermediaries still control how the entertainment industry behaves and curates (Singleton).
In 2019, the global music industry generated $21.5 billion, and only 10% of that went to independent creators (Watson). In comparison, NBA players develop 53% of the $7.4 billion entire profit (Jope), and the NFL players made 48% of the $16 billion NFL revenue (USA Today).
Current Pain Points
There are several challenges faced by independent creatives:
- Being successful or profitable takes hard work and reliable infrastructure. Usually, rookies don't have the time or money to dedicate towards starting.
- There is little to no transparency for how an independent creator is being paid out (i.e., gross, play count, geographic numbers, etc.).
- Licensing issues prevent Decentralized Storage Protocol (DSP) and content from being accessible worldwide.
- Significant time delays involving payouts to creatives.
- Publishing rights are difficult to comprehend and generally mismanaged.
- There are no direct revenue options for new independent creatives to generate income.
- Today's social media outlets are flooded with noise by creatives with large budgets.
THE CREATIVE Platform
THE CREATIVE Project is the solution to all of the above pain points. The mission the Profit Sharing Community created around THE CREATIVE, is to bring imagination and originality to independent creators by offering services and innovative technology solutions to catapult their careers." As a whole, we will build a foundational belief that:
- Creatives should directly engage with other creatives and transact with Brands.
- Token holders should earn lender status by creating value in THE CREATIVE Token and shared consistently between user groups contributing to the protocol.
- Prices and earnings for participants should be consistent, predictable, and transparent.
- THE CREATIVE Platform will democratize users' access to the protocol; anyone can contribute if they follow the protocol rules.
- Intermediaries should be detached whenever possible; if intermediaries are necessary, they should be algorithmic, transparent, and verifiably accurate.
THE CREATIVE Protocol brings independent creatives, node operators, and Brands together in an incentivized way, allowing multiple roles to integrate and provide high-quality end-user projects to distribution channels and large Brands. These projects stand out within markets full of noise without centralized infrastructure. THE CREATIVE Protocol encompasses the following:
- THE CREATIVE token, and stable coins: A platform token and shared token economy that aligns all participants' incentives with four primary prongs of functionality: access, security, staking, and governance.
- Content nodes: A network of nodes that is user-operated to host content and grant permission access to content on behalf of Brands.
- Content ledger: A source for all data accessible within The Creative's protocol, anchoring references to content hosted by content nodes.
- Discovery nodes: A network of nodes that is operated by users to index THE CREATIVE content ledger and provide an easy to query interface for retrieving content
- Lender nodes: A mechanism for granting advances to independent creators, which in return THE CREATIVE token holders (hodlers) gain interest.
- Governance: A system for modifications and improvements to THE CREATIVE Project; these shares control those who have created and create value on an ongoing basis.
THE CREATIVES Platform creates a protocol where the platform's shared success focuses directly on the independent creators and the Brands responsible for its success. The protocol will also require end-user facing clients; this enables creatives to upload content, Brands to discover and stream content, and collaborate with other creatives within the network. The project team has produced a reference client implementation at g2entgroup.com.
Figure 1: The Creative Content Lifecycle
Token Model
Stakeholders with multiple goals will use THE CREATIVE Protocol. For numerous stakeholders to effectively work together towards a common network goal, a unified incentive structure aligns an individual's interests with that of the protocol's interest. THE CRTV powers the Creative protocol; we will likely take advantage of 3rd-party stable coins to unlock additional functions in the future.
THE CREATIVE (CRTV) Token
THE CRTV Token has four prongs of functionality with the protocol unlocked by staking:
- Security
- Accessibility
- Creditor/Lendor
- Governance
Holders of THE CREATIVE Token can stake as collateral for value-added services. In exchange, stakers (hodlers) earn ongoing issuance, governance weight, and access to exclusive features. Node operators stake THE CRTV Token to run THE CREATIVE Protocol, that creatives and Brands to unlock exclusive features and services. THE CRTV Tokens staked within the protocol are assigned governance weight and used to shape new features. THE CRTV Token will also serve as collateral for independent creators-based tools and services. Early examples incubated by the community include Brand tokens, badges, rewards, and earnings multipliers. In the future, Brands may delegate tokens to specific creators to sponsor their growth on the platform and future tokens' issuance. Node operators must stake THE CRTV Tokens to operate discovery or content nodes, with a larger stake translating to a higher probability of being chosen by Brand clients. Node operators receive direct benefits from staking CRTV and, in the future, receive portions of protocol fees for actively seeding the protocol. We can achieve a community goal through governance to ensure that THE CRTV Tokens are funneled to the most value-added users using on-chain metrics instead of staking the most tokens but not actively participating in the ecosystem.
THE CREATIVE Token Distribution
THE CRETV Token will be distributed with fixed genesis allocation and by ongoing issuance modifiable by governance. The choice to launch with continuous distribution is grounded in the desire to continually align the network growth with new roles and contributions, rather than focusing governance power in early adopters' hands. Should the community decide, a portion of the ongoing token distribution be given to the most active users within the protocol, dictated based on platform metrics and varying contributions in the form of discoverability, uploads, and platform engagement, upon the main net release of THE CRTV Token. Note: Any additional details about this initial supply and issuance schedule will be provided within a separate specification document.
Stable Coin Payments
Moving into the future, The Creative community may choose to leverage 3rd party stable coins to unlock paid content. These tokens are price stable, providing a stable unit of account to ensure that creators, Brands, and node operators can participate in The Creative economy without concern for price volatility. Stable coins are divisible and freely transferable, allowing it easy for divisible micropayments and making it easy for Brands to set custom rates and issue fractional payments with little friction or rounding. A protocol fee gets captured as a percent of stable coin transactions, including Brand payments to creatives. Holders of THE CRTV Token would aggregate these fees into a governed pool.
Why Create a New Token?
For value transfer in The Creative ecosystem, 3rd party stable coins allow micropayments to occur in real-time, without oversight from a trusted third party to facilitate the distribution, accounting, or collection of royalties and network fees. Stable coins are 1:1 to the US Dollar, providing a trusted unit of account with the inherited benefits of smart contract composability. THE CRTV Tokens exist to align governance, as a node operator, creator, or Brand to earn a claim on future coin distribution and interest when staking to incentivize value-added roles and increase protocol usage demand into THE CRTV Tokens. The inclusion of assets like THE CRTV Token allows The Creative Platform to play an active role in the wider Ethereum and DeFi ecosystem.
Content Node
The content nodes maintain the available content and metadata to The Creative Platform via Interplanetary File System (IPFS). These nodes can be run by node operators alongside an active network stake while allowing them to earn part of THE CRTV Token distribution. The independent creator can run aggregated fee pools or, a Brand can host their product content pools. By default, an independent creator elects a set of these nodes to automatically maintain the availability of content on the independent creator's behalf (most of these creatives do not need knowledge of this process). When relying on the 3rd-party network of The Creative content nodes, after electing an initial set of nodes, this set evolves automatically, with new nodes replacing old ones taken offline or become unavailable. If the independent creator chooses, they could select the self-hosted node(s) to host their content instead. Running their content node(s) gives creatives a higher degree of control over their content distribution by keeping possession and allowing for custom permission extensions that are not native to the protocol. If the independent creative fails to satisfy the election process or the self-hosting process, its content will not be retrievable by the network participants.
CreativeSP Protocol: Decentralized Storage Protocol
Files distributed through the Creative protocol must be available, verifiable, and decentralized. These key points ensure democratic participation and accessibility for users of the Creative Protocol. Creatives sharing their tracks and metadata, brands retrieving content, and node operators will share longer-form information via this protocol. In contrast, references to files in this protocol will reside in The Creative content ledger. The storage protocol must also provide an equivalent user experience to existing centralized solutions and scale effectively as network demands increase. Lastly, we believe in a CreativeSP solution for the Creative network built on Interplanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS enables modular object-level encryption, global distribution capability, secure content addressing, and object immutability (Benet). To ensure high availability for files stored through the Creative protocol, a CreativeSP solution provides a staking-based incentive structure for users to host network content. File references and associated metadata stored in the Creative content ledger will be IPLD links (Protocol Labs). As the CreativeSP market matures, THE CREATIVE protocol most likely will be extended to include other storage solutions such as FileCoin (Protocol Labs), Sia (Vorick), or Swarm (Ethersphere).
Figure 2: Content Node Interactions with Protocol Participants
Uploads
Creatives must agree to the open license (information will be detailed later) before distributing a track on The Creative Platform, making the content available throughout The Creative network. The Creative client will then (1) slice music or video into fixed-length segments, (2) encrypt them locally (if the content is permission) with segmented specific keys, and (3) upload these encrypted segments, the encryption keys, and required metadata to their content and metadata to their content node(s). Content and metadata are published by the Content node(s) placed on a CreativeSP protocol and produce an IPLD link. The creative client adds to the Creative content ledger via a new transaction, which then prompts the discovery nodes on the network to index the more recent content and make it more universally discoverable and available.
Content Permission
In addition to maintaining content availability, content nodes also take responsibility for permission access to content.
The content permissions system in The Creative Platform aims to be:
- Cost and time-efficient for all transactions
- Transparent for all parties involved
- Granular, with users paying each other directly and immediately for services rendered when possible.
- Flexible, accounting for multiple streaming models and any monetization opportunities the creative sees fit.
As described in the upload section, if the content is permitted, The Creative client at upload time generates encryption keys for the content shared with or managed by the content node(s) or elected content nodes. Proxy re-encryption allows a content node to issue a key to a given user upon request selectively.
Proxy Re-encryption
When beginning to stream a track or video, a Brand's client will request one of a creative's elected content nodes, including payment or other proof if required, for a proxy re-encryption key specific to the segment of the track presented for listening.
The content node derives a proxy re-encryption key to service this request using the Brand's public wallet key and the private key used to encrypt the requested content and returns it to the Brand. Because the re-encryption key is specific to the creative, Brand, and segment. The re-encryption key can be transmitted insecurely or published without revealing it to the "greater" network's song/video content node. The cryptosystem encrypts songs/video and will allow the distribution of brand-specific proxy re-encryption keys derived from the song/video encryption key and the Brand's public key.
The independent creator content node(s) will handle requests involving the access key and issues a new access key when specified conditions are not met.
After fetching encrypted content and the re-encryption key, the brand client would locally decrypt the content using their wallet private key as follows:
Proxied = reencrypt (encrypted_content, rencryption_key)
Plaintext = decrypt(proxied, wallet_privkey)
This decrypts a given piece of content by locally re-encrypting it using the aforementioned key and subsequently decrypting it with the user's private access key. There is no 3rd-party proxy, but proxy re-encryption applied in this way allows everyone to share the same encrypted content while users can only decrypt the content on a case-by-case basis. Potential cryptosystems, including AFGH (Gisuseppe Ateniese), are still being evaluated by the community at this time.
Unlock Conditions
Brands can have the ability to unlock short-term content request pools where creatives can submit content directly to Brands during a specified time. Some may unlock conditions native to the protocol if the community chooses; this may include:
- Payment is submitted or will be.
- Past request pools behavior attested by a discovery node, including but not limited to:
- Following the brands
- Previous creative winners
- Number of entries
The content node would look for the specified condition before issuing a proxy re-encryption key at the independent creator's request. By running its content node, a brand could request permission to content in any way they see fit. Brands will modify node software by adding new unlocking permission modules that serve as a test tube for modules to make their way into the core protocol.
Content Ledger
The Creative content ledger, referred to as such throughout the paper, is the culmination of smart contracts on Ethereum (Ethereum Foundation), the POA network (POA Network), and other future L1 or L2 blockchain networks that host pieces of The Creative ecosystem. Different parts of The Creative protocol will continue to run on different blockchain-based platforms or utilize off-chain scalability solutions. The scalability trilemma tradeoffs (Ethereum) can be made on a module sub-protocol-specific basis. Today, the content ledger for The Creative Platform includes:
- A consistent audio/video content and metadata format specification to ensure accessibility (similar to the OMI metadata spec [ (Specifications Documentation)])
- A decentralized process for creatives to control:
- Audio/video content
- Revenue Splits
- Content ownership structure
- A registry of all nodes reachable in The Creative Platform
- The social graph of all users interacting with The Creative Platform
- Implementations of the token and governance systems described in the paper
After generating upload artifacts from their content nodes, a creative can add their content to the content ledger via a new transaction:
Content {
Owner_address
map(creativeId => ownership)
metadataIPLD
… other metadata …
}
Where the linked metadata could be a JSON file structured along these lines:
{
“ContentTitle”: “…”,
“segmentIpldLinks”: [“…”, “…”, …],
… other metadata …
}
The creative can then modify audio/video content and metadata by sharing the modified content to the CreativeSP protocol and updating the metadata IPLD link in the content ledger.
Once the content is in the content ledger, it is indexed by the discovery nodes and makes it easy to query and discover through clients accessing The Creative Platform.
Node Registry
The Creative content ledger maintains a single source of truth for:
- All the valid versions of node software usable within The Creative Platform, controlled by governance
- All the discovery and content nodes reachable within The Creative Platform
- Locating nodes via an IP address or fully qualified domain name.
When a client connects to The Creative for the first time, it can use this on-chain registry to bootstrap its local state (i.e., looking up which account maps to the active wallet, what is the current user's social graph/feed, etc.), via a chosen discovery node.
Figure 3: Discovery API Interface Registration and Usage
Social Features and Brand Feed
The content ledger also serves as a central source of truth for brand/creative interactions happening within The Creative Platform. Users take the following actions within The Creative Platform:
- Stream content
- Like content, adding it to the brands own library
- Follow other brands and creatives, receive notifications when they create new original content, reposts, playlists, or comments
- Create a public or private playlist
- Repost tracks to followers
With more action types added in the future via community governance, the user actions get organized into user-specific feeds that reflect the time sorted actions of the other users they follow; enabled by the indexing functionality described in the next section. All social activities within The Creative project are represented in the content ledger, meaning users can use any client to connect to The Creative Platform and see the same social graph. Brands can also view what other brands have been streaming, as can developers building third-party clients. This opens up many possibilities around content recommendation systems and alternative client experiences constructed by members of The Creative developer community.
Tokens and Governance
THE CREATIVE content ledger is also the home of THE CRTV Token economy and The Creative Platform governance system, described in detail in their respective sections.
Discovery Node
For a brand to discover content, The Creative needs a mechanism for indexing metadata that users query. Based on the philosophies of The Creative project, this index must be:
- Decentralized
- Efficient and straightforward for user clients to consume (promoting accessibility)
- Provably correct and transparent, eliminating profit incentives to manipulate the results returned to users
- Extensible, so that The Creative community can explore different ranking and searching methods.
These requirements rule out the most decentralized options due to usability and efficiency issues, e.g., users replicating The Creative ledger locally and querying their local dataset. This section outlines a protocol for a class of discovery nodes to form operated by The Creative community, serving this function in a way that meets the requirements according to figure 3. Discovery node operators earn revenue, letting them achieve part of the ongoing THE CRTV Token distribution and aggregated fee pools. Brand clients select discovery nodes to query from via the content ledger's node registry. Discovery nodes are read-only; clients can use them to fetch a Brand's feed, a playlist, song or video creative metadata, search the corpus of The Creative entities, and execute other queries about the network. Anyone can register a discovery node if they meet the requirements outlined in this section.
Discovery API Interfaces
The Creative will produce a first-party discovery API interface, but other community members are encouraged to author their interfaces that extend or modify the core API. The protocol allows Brands to select any discovery API interface registered in The Creative content ledger. An API interface must index new blocks from The Creative ledger automatically, and all the API methods must be deterministic. Because of these requirements, all discovery nodes running a given API interface will produce identical results for the same query for a given block hash. This consistency guarantee is essential for the penalty mechanism.
Future Work
We foresee the community creating an incentive economy around discovery node interfaces, which would consist of the creators, maintainers, or node operators using the said interface. Node rewards can tie to several requests to incentivize nodes to operate with higher-quality infrastructure and locations near large population centers.
Governance
Integral to achieving this mission is a decentralized governance protocol, whereby independent creators, node operators, and brands are individually / collectively enfranchised in decision making about protocol changes and upgrades. In the spirit of creating a community-owned and operating protocol. Moreover, the key actors are empowered to shape, mend, and modify underlying parameters of The Creative Protocol, including but not limited to:
- Feature Integrations
- Royalty Rates
- Token Distribution
- Fee Pool Allocation
- Staking Rewards
Everything in The Creative Platform is governable, and all THE CRTV Tokens staked in the protocol automatically receive governance weight on one token, one vote basis.
The creative platform(s) politicians differ as node operators are unique from creatives and brands; both align in their protocol growth. Governance will present technical and non-technical proposals, giving all users the ability to properly voice their beliefs without running a node or having a deep technical understanding of The Creative tech stack.
For node operators, Creative governance acts as a key tool to empower decentralized content storage, providing a direct mechanism for rewards to be earned and amended in line with the costs, value, and consensus of other providers on the network. By creating a framework for users to adjust the protocol's direction in line with their shared beliefs, The Creative Platform will curate governance to the most value-added contributors, tying in incentives to those most active. In doing so, The creative platform(s) politicians will play an active role in both future token distribution, node operator incentives, and innovative mechanisms for creatives and brands to better engage their communities.
Short-circuiting
There is a short-circuit process that allows both 1) proposals to be passed without a broader vote if urgency requires (e.g., during active exploitation of a vulnerability in the protocol), and 2) proposals to be vetoed if they are not consistent with the philosophies outlined in this paper. A community MultiSig will control this short-circuit capability with an initial set of signers. Additional signers are voted into place via the open community governance process. At any time, the community can vote to remove the ability to short-circuit governance if they choose. The controllers of the short-circuit MultiSig have committed not to veto said proposal when the time comes to relinquish control. The project team added this functionality to the governance process to be removed as required. It is up to the community to decide when it makes sense to take off the training wheels or whether it makes sense to have this functionality.
Enforcing Node Response Accuracy
Every response shared in a community-operated node in The Creative Platform is signed with the private key used to stake the original tokens or a designated delegate. The hash of the block they have incorporated up to that point (for discovery nodes), a timestamp (for content nodes), inputs provided to query, and the node software version from the public version registry to generate results. Blocks are indexed automatically in discovery nodes, and API methods are deterministic, meaning that every discovery node should produce identical results for the same query, block hash, and API interface. By nature, the content node cannot provide as strong of guarantees by timestamp as the discovery node can by block numbers and deterministic indexing.
Still, sequences of requests with responses (ordered by timestamp) signed by the operator key can provide a similar function for provably demonstrating the behavior. If either node type produces invalid or inaccurate results, the signed result document returned by the node is a self-contained proof that the given node created the given set of products. Using these proofs as evidence, a claimant could open a governance proposal to slash a given node operator for this alleged misbehavior. The governance process can decide whether inaccuracy, whether said inaccuracy is/was caused by negligence or maliciousness vs. a system error, and slash the node operator's stake accordingly. Slashed tokens are burned rather than redistributed to stakers to avoid incentivizing slashes.
The Creative ICO
The initial issue of CRTV tokens will be limited to 980,000,000. 70% (695,800,000) of that will be made available during the Pre-ICO and ICO period. Any tokens that are not allocated during the Pre-ICO and ICO period that are not sold will be destroyed and burned. Creative Tokens will be issued directly to the wallet associated with the user.
Coins will be allocated in the following way:
| Pool | Allocation | Frozen Until |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-ICO | 20% | TBD |
| ICO | 40% | TBD |
| Bounty & Lottery | 2% | TBD |
| Team | 18% | TBD |
| Treasury | 8% | TBD |
| Partnerships | 12% | TBD |
THE CRTV Tokens will get issued through an Ethereum Smart Contract upon payment. Any other forms of cryptocurrency payment will take place within three weeks after the close of the ICO. These three weeks are allotted to allow us to undertake all necessary "Get to Know Your Client" and "Audit Checks" to ensure that there has been no breach of protocol by those who have bought during the ICO period.
ICO Distribution of Funds
Advisors, Staff, Information Technology (IT) (estimated 35% of proceeds):
THE CREATIVE Profit Sharing Community aims to grow while anticipating it will need to attract and assign engineers with various skillsets to staff our different dev teams. Employing dedicated teams working on tools, upgrades to the distributed systems, infrastructure and network stability, smart contracts, platforms, and general research.
Marketing and Business Development (an estimated 30% of proceeds):
THE CREATIVE will undertake various marketing-related projects and initiatives, including in-person events, press outreach, advertisements, promotional content, analytics, and customer management tools. Employ and engage a dedicated sales team that manages the sales process for brands and creatives and undertake the project management role to coordinate with engineering teams. THE CREATIVE will also build a dedicated marketing team, which will drive awareness and adoption of the network, plan and execute the marketing initiatives, and develop documentation and tutorials to encourage adoption. Lastly, THE CREATIVE will have a dedicated support and customer success team that is community-led and will also contribute to the development of documentation and tutorials relating to the Creative Protocol.
Operations, Legal, and Customer Support (estimated 15% of proceeds):
THE CREATIVE anticipated infrastructure expenses to establish and maintain geographically redundant bridge servers, co-locate critical 39 infrastructure, and acquire and maintain physical hardware (as necessary). THE CREATIVE other operating expenses are currently anticipated to include:
- rent for any physical premises in international locations,
- outside legal and advisory fees, including a reserve for potential future professional services
- office furniture and computers.
Finally, a back-office team will be built, with a generalist staff that handles human resources, bookkeeping, logistics, and an office manager for each physical location.
Other Operating and Working Capital for Exchanges (an estimated 12% of proceeds):
The envisioned expenditures and areas of development described above are provided
for illustrative purposes only, and THE CREATIVE reserves the right to allocate its resources, including proceeds from the sale of Tokens toward such areas of development at its
sole discretion.
Business Founder
ICO CrowdSale Bonus Schedule
The crowd sale trajectory lasts at least 35 days and below the time bonus for token purchases. If purchased during the Pre-ICO, you can get a bigger reward for your purchased amount. For example, a person buys $1000 worth of tokens during the 27% bonus period; the purchase will be calculated as $3700.
History and Roadmap
Detailed below is a breakdown of the progress The Creative has made to date, culminating in a transition to protocol owned and operated decentralized governance.
Prototyping (02/10/2021)
The project founders gather together to define a strategy to implement the protocol with a startup model approach.
Concept (12/21/2020)
The project team worked on brainstorming, design wireframes, and prototypes for THE CREATIVE platform.
Genesis (12/21/2020)
The project team released an initial version of THE CRTV Token whitepaper detailing the plans for the architecture.
Glossary of Terms
Blockchain - A decentralized, distributed ledger technology that records the provenance of a digital asset.
Coin staking - Gives currency holders some decision power on the network. By staking coins, you gain the ability to vote and generate an income. It is quite similar to how someone would receive interest for holding money in a bank account or giving it to the bank to invest.
Creative (CRTV) – A fully decentralized reward and payment
Decentralized – Move departments of (a large organization) away from a single administrative center to other locations.
DeFi – Decentralized finance (commonly), referred to as DeFi, is an experimental form of finance that does not rely on central financial intermediaries such as brokerage exchanges or banks. Instead, it utilizes smart contracts on blockchains, the common being Ethereum.
DSP – Decentralized Storage Protocol
Decentralized reward – Token for the result of the action
Democratize users – Making accessible to everyone
Distributed ledger - A consensus of replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data geographically spread across multiple sites, countries, or institutions. Unlike with a distributed database, there is no central administrator.
Divisible - Capable of being divided
Genesis - The origin or mode of formation of something.
Governed pool – Created and managed by the token holder(s).
Hodlers – Slang in the cryptocurrency community for holding the cryptocurrency rather than selling it
Intermediaries - One who acts as a link between people to bring about an agreement or reconciliation, also referred to as a mediator.
IPFS - Interplanetary file system.
Metadata - A set of data that describes and gives information about other data.
Micropayment - A financial transaction; involving a tiny sum of money and usually occurs online.
Node operators - A node operator runs software that keeps a full copy of the blockchain and broadcasts transactions across the network. Nodes make the blockchains work. An operator ensures that nodes run with enough resources to keep nodes stable and performant.
Protocol – A set of rules governing the exchange or transmission of data between devices.
Public Infrastructure - Public infrastructure is infrastructure owned or available for use by the public. It is distinguishable from generic or private infrastructure in terms of policy, financing, purpose, etc.
Schema - A diagrammatic presentation broadly: a structured framework or plan: outline.
Smart contracts – Are lines of code stored on a blockchain and automatically execute when predetermined terms and conditions are met. At the most basic level, they are programs that run as set up to run by the people who developed them.
Stable coins - Cryptocurrencies are designed to minimize the stable coin price volatility relative to some "stable" asset or basket of assets. A stable coin can be pegged to a cryptocurrency, fiat money, or exchange-traded commodities.
Transaction – Input message into a computer system that must be dealt with as a single unit of work
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Legal Considerations, Risks, and Disclaimer
IMPORTANT NOTICE: PLEASE READ THE ENTIRETY OF THIS SECTION CAREFULLY. WE RECOMMEND YOU CONSULT A LEGAL, FINANCIAL, TAX OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ADVISOR(S) OR EXPERTS FOR FURTHER GUIDANCE PRIOR TO USING THE CREATIVE SERVICES OR PURCHASING CRTV TOKEN. The contents of the "Legal Considerations, Risks, and Disclaimer" section outlines the terms and conditions applicable to you in connection with (i) your use of this White Paper and all information available on the Website; and (ii) your participation in the Token Sale and/or purchase of CRTV tokens, in each case in addition to any other terms and conditions that we may publish from time to time relating to this White Paper, the Website and the CRTV Token (such terms hereinafter referred to as the "Terms"). The information outlined in the "Legal Considerations, Risks, and Disclaimer" section may not be exhaustive and does not imply any elements of a contractual relationship. While we make every reasonable e‑ort to ensure that all information: (i) in this White Paper; and (ii) available on the Website (all the information in the White Paper and all information available on the Website hereinafter referred to as the "Available Information") is accurate and up to date, such material in no way constitutes professional advice. The Company does not recommend purchasing CRTV Tokens for speculative investment purposes. Tokens do not entitle you to any equity, governance, voting, or similar right or entitlement in the Company or any of its affiliated companies. The Company does not recommend that you purchase Tokens unless you have prior experience with cryptographic tokens, blockchain-based software, and distributed ledger technology and unless you have taken independent professional advice. Services described in this Whitepaper are not available to citizens, nationals, residents (tax or otherwise), and green card holders of the United States of America or any other jurisdiction that prohibits the possession, dissemination, or communication of the Available Information or prohibits the purchase of CRTV Tokens or any such similar activity. In no event shall the Company or any current or former Company Representatives be liable for the Excluded Liability Matters. The Company does not make or purport to make. It hereby disclaims any representation, warranty, or undertaking in any form whatsoever to any entity or person, including any representation, warranty, or undertaking concerning the truth, accuracy, and completeness of any of the information set out in the Available Information.