How blockchain will change webcam business: security and anonymity
By: Live Stars
Tags: Weeklyupdate, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

Live Stars offers a fresh perspective at the problems of webcam industry — combine porn and blockchain technology

Blockchain will soon change many aspects of our lives. Usually, we hear about introducing blockchain into financial sphere, but it can be used in many other fields. For example, Live Stars company has found, one might think, an unexpected application for blockchain — webcam business.

Webcam is the most technologically advanced branch of online porn industry. Models (usually, women) converse with video chat users and, for additional payments, pose, strip and perform certain actions of sexual nature. It’s often done with own funds and resources — all you need is a web camera, Internet access and a room. However, there are specialized studios, where several models can work at the same time. Webcams monumentally differ from offline part of sex industry and porn videos. The key differences are the absence of physical contact between the model and the client and all the payments are non-cash.

How does it work?

Behind every model, there is a crowd of other personnel: agency owners, studio managers, staffed internal transaction platforms.

Each link in this chain deducts their share of the model’s earning. A model working at the agency usually receives 20–25% of what her client paid. Even self-employed models get about 40%, with the rest taken by the webcam hosting platforms.

The client never pays directly to the model, they usually use some form of conditional currency, valid on one particular website. The funds do not go directly to the model and at the each stage the paid sum suffers transfer and conversion fees. When the “tokens” are purchased, a percentage goes to the online wallet or banking service, when the client pays with this token, webcam platform gets its share and there is another intermediate party at the cash withdrawal stage.

Besides, to receive their payment in the first place, the model must first earn the minimal required sum, specified in the contract, usually about $50. Incidentally, 99% of male models usually do not get paid even this much. Besides, these payments do not reach their recipient right away. The platform can hold the payment for any period of time between a week and a month or even more. And you can add 3–5 days spent for bank transfer process.

These are just symptoms of the core problem of this sphere — lack of transparency. Nobody feel confident in anyone — clients are afraid of identity theft and models are afraid of deanonymization, blackmail and threats of exposing their work to their friends and loved ones. Studio management might use threats and fear to force the models to continue working and the streaming services might illegally use personal information of both, models and clients.

Such platforms always use some form of ID to verify the identity of their models for internal purposes, it is a vital part of how they work. And each platform makes their own client database, collecting the payment information about when, what for and how much each client pays, geolocation data and sometimes demands ID as well.

Security and anonymity of provided data completely depends on the integrity of the intermediaries. The web is full of interviews with webcam models who fell prey to blackmail.

— It’s not safe to work at the studio if you want to keep your identity secret. I can tell you a story of a model, whose work was recorded and the videos were sent to her boyfriend. There were threats to send these videos to her parents as well. The same can happen when the contract runs out or when the model just wants to quit. What to do with that, nobody knows.

Lena, a webcam model

Blockchain the Savior

According to Live Stars, how can blockchain improve this semi-legal and often dangerous field of work?

The main difference is complete anonymity guaranteed by the system and replacement of internal payment system with tokens.

This solves almost all problems we mentioned thus far.

Tokenization removes the need for intermediaries and completely removes them from the chain. Security of data storage and transfer in blockchain technology is above and beyond anything else we have today. Identity verification will still take place, since all models must be of the full legal age to work in this field, but the model can remove any of their personal information from the system at any point in time, which is supported by the open source code. The uploaded data, after having been approved by management, will always be encrypted.

Blockchain transactions fully solve the issue of the client’s anonymity.

The very transaction process will be significantly quicker, as the intermediary banks and the need to convert money into the platform’s internal payment means are completely removed from the picture. The latter is replaced by LIVE tokens, which can be used to pay for the service or be sold at a token exchange platform. At the moment, if the client happens to have some internal platform currency they bought but did not spent yet, they cannot get their money back in any way, if they wish to do so, since no platform offers refunds or resale opportunities.

The payment process itself becomes simpler and includes possibility of attaching additional modules and ways of payment.

The models do not have to wait for months to get what they earned. The transaction comes at the moment of the payment and not a moment later.

Possibility of transaction errors is removed as well — blockchain technology does not allow for mistakes and transaction errors, when the customer’s funds are blocked by the bank.

What will Live Stars change?

What does such platform looks like? What will change for its participants: clients and models?

Some data:

On average, 250 new models register on the top-tier websites daily.

80% are newcomers, who never worked at this platform

10% of them will continue working on the same platform

60% are forced to quit, due to not reaching the minimal required earning.

The low percentage of webcam newcomers is easily explained: emotionally taxing job, danger of deanonymization, psychological pressure from the platform’s admins, huge transaction fees and low payments that never come on time. It results in a situation of many young models completely leaving the field after their first experience.

A platform built on open source code, transparency and blockchain infrastructure will radically differ from current semi-legal and closed platforms.

Low entry barrier will attract more models and lack of negative financial experience will increase the percentage of those who will chose to stay.

If the clients are 100% certain of their own security and anonymity, the number of people willing to pay for the model’s service will increase. Currently, majority of webcam audience is content with free live streams and doesn’t pay anything, afraid of dealing with unclear and potentially dangerous payment system. If some of them will move to the category of paying clients, it will completely change webcam industry landscape. It is quite possible, that the general direction of such platform will become less porn-orientated and move towards just personal communication, which is what attracts the clients in the first place.

Another important aspect: private video chats and text chats will use webRTC based on one-to-one principle, independently of servers. Nobody, including the website administration, will have access to a private chat.

Every website has its diva. They are usually promoted by the website itself, put at the top of the ratings and viewed by the largest audience. It is always a closed mechanism, which harms the customer who’d like to see the actual information about the model’s rating and it harms other models who lose the income due to unfairly low ratings. Besides, unfair rating is just an extra source of psychological stress for the model. The open source code will allows anyone to make sure, that the rating is distributed in a fair and objective manner.

The future of webcam industry

In the end, blockchain will lead to creation of a unique unprecedented online platform, with independent financially backed webcam models who finally left behind the discomfort of constant stress and the customers completely certain in their security and anonymity.

The content is bound to change as well: currently models feel pressured to have “mainstream” shows, something, that majority of clients are ready to pay for, just to have some income. In the conditions of a secure and open platform, they can produce income from providing services for a smaller audience. It can be just a friendly conversation or specific sexual interests.