# Towards a New Business Model for Streaming Platforms Using Blockchain Technology
## 4 Proposed Solution
### Overview and Software Architecture  
This article presents a new business model, StreamingChain, explicitly designed for video streaming platforms. The proposed solution aims to maintain the essential functionalities of streaming services provided by platforms available in the market, such as content creation, visualization, and advertising. Additionally, it introduces an intermediate layer that ensures transparency in audience control and payments between all involved parties. The article explains how blockchain technology is integrated into the StreamingChain proposal and visually represents its integration with the current video streaming platform business model in Figure 1. As shown in the figure, the proposed solution does not suggest using blockchain technology across the entire ecosystem of streaming services. Instead, it aims to create a viable alternative from a financial and governance point of view for the blockchain network, in which the core functionalities of audience control and monetization can be integrated with StreamingChain. In the current business model, the rules for measuring media audiences, such as audio and video, are unclear to stakeholders, leading to insecurity and dissatisfaction among the parties involved. The StreamingChain software architecture uses a modeling notation called the C4 model, which enables the business rules to access the data persistence layer without being aware of the storage technology used. The C4 model is an architectural modeling approach known for its ability to represent the architecture of software systems clearly and concisely. It consists of high-level diagrams that enable a hierarchical representation of system components, ranging from an overview to implementation details. These characteristics are particularly relevant for software development projects, as they often involve multiple interconnected components, each with a specific role to play. Moreover, the C4 model is highly flexible and can be customized to meet the particular needs of a problem domain. This approach prevents the software application from being dependent on a specific data storage technology. The data persistence service is not oriented towards a particular database management system (DBMS). StreamingChain uses two DBMS models to manage data write and read operations. First, a relational DBMS stores the metadata received from the video streaming platforms. One of the main features of our proposal is to manage the business rules involving streaming services through smart contracts. Considering that each video needs a smart contract to address the audience and the payments resulting from the media, a service was created that automatically performs the following tasks: (i) generating the smart contract with the business rules of the application domain, (ii) publishing the smart contract on the blockchain network and (iii) associating the address of the smart contract with its respective content in the relational database. The StreamingChain middleware in Figure 1 groups a set of components and performs this activity. In practical terms, the interaction between a streaming platform and the middleware proposed in our solution happens in the following way. StreamingChain intercepts data requests from a video streaming platform and sends them to the blockchain service component. This component, in turn, invokes content management functions on the blockchain network. When a content creator makes digital content available, the middleware component automatically generates smart contracts based on previously defined business rules. These rules include information about the content's audience. At the same time,  
Figure 1: Conceptual view of software architecture using C4 model notation. the middleware uses a service to store the data, ensuring the integrity between the smart contract and the content on the video streaming platform.