The way we publish content has changed as much in the past two decades as it did since between cuneiform and the introduction of the Gutenberg press.
It's easier to reach an audience on the other side of the planet than ever. But it's introduced enough issues to make users lament the simpler times: censorship, privacy concerns, and debt-collecting behaviour from centralised platforms that prioritise profits over user experience.
After the web2 social bubble burst, solutions that allow users to regain control over their data and express themselves without limitations are on trend. Built on-chain with no "rent" to pay, Permacast offers users personal control and freedom Web2 cannot.
Call it our response to the growing user dissatisfaction with centralised content platforms. Our weapon of choice: an open-source, customisable, and censorship-resistant environment.
Drawing inspiration from the decentralised and uncompromising nature of blockchain, while retaining the familiarity and simplicity of Web2 platforms such as Spotify and Twitter, Permacast aims to strike a balance to accommodate Web2 entrants and crypto natives alike.
For many Web2 podcast and video hosting users, Permacast may be significantly lighter on the budget:
We’ll explain the key features of Permacast, contrast them with real-world examples for context, and show the advantages they offer over traditional, centralised platforms that suffer from censorship and act as landlord-gatekeeper hybrids between your content and its audience. Let’s dive deep into what Permacast has to offer!
Built on the the instantaneous and gasless Arweave Layer 2 solution called EXM (akin to Optimisim), Permacast is what a decentralized Spotify / TikTok hybrid on steroids would look like.
Permacast enables free streaming of content for all users. In the industry of content hosting and serving, it is notorious for getting problematically expensive for the small players.
Thanks to Arweave’s powerful gateways, not only they let developers and businesses avoid the many pitfalls and scaling problems small players usually have to deal with, they take on the costs of serving data. All thanks to the innovative endowment model Arweave offers.
Permacast boasts a sleek, user-friendly UI reminiscent of Spotify, enabling seamless browsing and watching of audio and video content. This design offers a familiar experience for long-time Spotify users, which includes the features you would normally expect, like the playback controls, personalized feeds, and a few extra surprises.
Permacast breaks free from the constraints of centralized control by taking a different approach:
Leveraging Arweave’s promise to permanent storage
EXM maintaining intermittent contract backups
Permacast’s codebase being fully open-sourced
By having these three properties, permacast becomes impossible to censor. Power users and developers seeking to improve upon the existing foundation can deploy their instances of Permacast, which in turn only decreases the attack vectors tremendously.
A while ago, we’ve teamed up with the team at decent.land to integrate their open source social contract called PASoM (you can read more about it in this thread). Aside from providing a neat way to stand out from the crowd with neat banners, you also get to have followership tied to a user’s identity.
We all know it’s a pain to migrate to a new platform. Why even consider migrating when it would take ages to re-upload all your content to yet another platform, and moreover, pay for it?
We have an answer. If you have an RSS feed, it will completely download everything and upload it permanently to Arweave, in one fell swoop. In the future, the function could be extended to YouTube and other streaming services alike.
As for the cost of upload, keep on reading this article: the upcoming upgrades will not only address this concern, but reward you for being a Permacast pioneer!
The efforts towards creating the new de facto alternative for content streaming are accelerating! It would only be fair to share the major features that will be released in the coming months.
Video streaming will be enhanced via the integration of Livepeer, a decentralized video streaming infrastructure platform. Behind the scenes, Livepeer would let you watch videos and automatically adjust streaming quality based on your device.
Alongside this improvement, Livepeer will also enable us to build real-time streaming into Permacast! Imagine, hosting Twitter Spaces, or doing streams, all natively on the blockchain.
By far, the biggest improvement incoming to Permacast. It will help distinguish itself from existing solutions by enabling creators to monetize their content in even more ways!
In simple terms, token gating enables creators to supercharge their content by making it available only to the most loyal of fans. Think of it as Patreon tiers, but powered entirely by crypto. Instant, gasless, 0 fees for creators or users.
You will be able to mint NFTs the moment you upload the content to Permacast. Each file could be minted as many times as you wish, but remember: scarcity = value!
The NFT will be minted on Polygon and transferred to your EVM wallet. Minting is gasless, but any subsequent actions with the NFT will require some $MATIC to transfer or sell it on OpenSea.
Currently, Permacast supports a well-established Arweave wallet called ArConnect. By enabling support for EVM chains, we’ll be able to simplify onboarding to newer users, and reduce the number of wallets newer users have to use.
However, that will not be an issue if you’re an Arweave maxi or an Ethereum maxi: the tech allows for interoperable interactions between both ecosystems to happen. The only feature that will require you to use an EVM-based wallet, is NFT minting.
At the end of our roadmap, we intend to launch two cornerstone features that would give Permacast the official seal of approval: $PWT, and user incentives.
$PWT will become a built-in economic unit of its own in Permacast’s ecosystem. It will enable users and creators to transfer value in a single, native token. Going cross-chain would require users to manage their various token holdings with the expectation that they work as asset managers right off Wall Street. Not with $PWT, as it will give you peace of mind to focus on what really matters: creating.
Alongside $PWT’s launch, we intend to perform a test run for an upcoming protocol that rewards regular users for discovering new creators. Instead of old-fashioned, annoying ads, users would seek out creators they want to see.
Permacast is poised to provide one of the strongest off-ramps to the dissatisfied communities, wronged by mismanagement of overfunded, careless streaming services. The team behind Permacast is committed to building the best possible decentralized alternative to the existing streaming services. By addressing the limitations and drawbacks of traditional centralized platforms, Permacast empowers users to take control of their online presence, connect with global audiences permissionlessly, and explore new monetization opportunities.
Interested? Join the community today and start exploring the app.