by all2 | 2026-01-01 21:17:18+00:00
I spent an afternoon or two whipping this up to scratch an itch. I'll admit, it isn't my itch, but one I keep seeing pop up: demonetization, blurry or non-existent appeals processes, high bars for earnings, etc. What I've come up with is probably not revolutionary, probably has been tried before. I figured it was at least worth sharing.

Naming things is hard, and this particular name is probably not the final name.

What lives behind the link is a vibe-coded example of the end application. It has all the basics, but pulls caching (CDN) and moderation into the main app. In the end product, these too will be services.

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A quick overview of my idea:

# Agents

An agent is a discrete actor in the economic system that has roles/responsibilities that are generally orthogonal to any other agent.

## Producer

The producer agent is the primary source of content in the system. Producers spend cash and time to create content.

## Consumer

The consumer agent is the primary beneficiary of a producer's efforts. Consumers spend time (and attention) watching content made by producers.

## Service Provider

Every other part of this micro-economy is some kind of service-provider; whether it be a cache for content delivery, transcription, moderation, legal compliance, etc., all are in service of supplying the consumer with the creator's content.

# Economics

This application is designed to be a cash-for-services engine rather than a store-of-value like its forebears (speaking of crypto schemes as stores of value). This means that the health of the system can be directly measured by the flow of cash instead of by the amount of liquidity held.

Cash enters the network one of two ways: advertisement dollars paid to a producer in exchange for consumer view time, or consumer dollars paid to the producer for ad-free content.

## Producer -> Consumer Axis

The primary axis of this micro economy is the exchange of goods and money between producers and consumers. Generally this is a one way relationship. Consumers may 'subscribe' at the network level (covered later), at the producer level (a channel subscription), buy content one-at-a-time, OR suffer advertisements and recieve content free.

## Producer/Consumer <-> Advertiser Axis

The last option expands the producer-consumer economic axis into a producer/consumer-advertiser relationship, where the producer sells their viewer's time/attention to an advertiser in exchange for the advertiser injecting ads into the producer's content.

## Producer <-> Service Providers

In the course of supplying content to consumers, producers require additional services; among these are UI, discovery (curation), moderation and legal compliance (where necessary), hosting (caches), payment processing -- getting cash into and out of the network, etc. All of these draw on the producer's income and only the producer's income.

## Position Value Tax, or PVT

As service providers become more central, they are taxed for the privelege of benefiting from the network in a major way. The more central/used a service provider is in a network, the higher their taxes are.

These taxes are held in a central treasury and split amongst all actively contributing agents on the network (producers and service providers) for the previous period of time. The distribution of this "Universal Participation Dividend" (UPD) happens every set period of time (TBD) and may be pro-rated for a given period of time.

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Demo User Accounts (password: password123)

- Producer – producer@test.com – Upload videos, view revenue & transactions
- Advertiser – advertiser@test.com – Create campaigns, upload ads, track performance
- Curator – curator@test.com – Feature content in playlists, earn curation fees
- Consumer – consumer@test.com – Watch videos, browse, track history

This is far from complete, but I figured I would throw it out there. Ship fast and all that.