1.Overview

Lumin is a decentralized economic system for creators.

In physics, Lumin is the unit that measures the flux of light. For human society, the exchange of information is as common and important as the flow of light, and is the cornerstone of our development to date.In this process, some people integrate information and practices to create, disseminate their works and reap the impact; others acquire these works, consume the value of the information in them, and thus derive economic behavior.

With the development of Internet technology, the model of creator economy continues to change. The more efficient exchange of content also brings some problems that are hard to ignore: the creators do not get the equivalent of what they pay for; the audience is surrounded by a huge amount of information and needs to invest a lot of energy to filter valuable content; the traffic baton leads to a monotonous content ecology...

To this day, blockchain technology has opened new doors to improve these issues. The biggest change is that decentralized storage ensures that creators can truly own content and audience relationships, and that this data will no longer be monopolized within centralized service providers. At the same time, the asset properties possessed by content are becoming clearer, Tokens and NFTs make it easy for creators to generate and trade interests, which will revolutionize the ecological chain of the creator economy.

Lumin's participants hope to create a reasonable paradigm in the Web3.0 environment that can, on the one hand, establish a decentralized content system, connect production, distribution and consumption, effectively measure the contribution of each participant to the system, and more fairly participate in the distribution; on the other hand, practice the model of creators' rights and content assets, and provide good tools for creators and their supporters to trade rights and assets.

Lumin labs is the earliest researcher and organizer of the Lumin system, but the whole system needs more ecological participants to put in their work as production nodes, distribution nodes and consumer nodes to promote the sound operation of the system. For this reason, Lumin labs will organize nodes with outstanding work to participate in governance together, and introduce Lumin tokens for incentivizing production and governance behaviors.

Join Lumin to light up the value of creator economy and embrace an open and equal content ecology.

2.The decentralized creator economy

2.1The dilemma of creator economy in Web 2.0

In the Web 2.0 era, the essence of the creators' economic model is a traffic transaction with a centralized platform at its core. Centralized platforms buy content and in some cases take on part of the content production work themselves, such as news media and video sites, and need to invest costs for content generation; sometimes they pay individual creators and creative organizations using forms such as advertising profit sharing and creator subsidies. The audience gets the content and pays the platform. Sometimes this payment is actual, such as the purchase of specialized content: paid news, e-books, movies and music, where the content itself is a commodity. Another type of "payment" is potential, where the user invests not money, but time and attention, which is the basis for the platform's advertising revenue. 

In the above model, the core element of business competition is the monopoly of the centralized platform on content data and user behavior data, which is also the key que that makes it difficult to improve the overall efficiency of its system. specifically, there are several development limitations as follows:

-Centralized platform holds the absolute right to speak in economic distribution, and the value of creators is excessively appropriated by the platforms.

-Closed content data shafts are not conducive to establishing an extensive content source system.

-User behavior data silos cause the lack of user portrait dimension of a single application, and the accuracy of content distribution is limited.

-The overall business logic of traffic-oriented operation cannot accurately assess the quality of content, and creators' traffic-oriented creation affects content richness.

2.2Changes in the decentralized creator economy

For the creator economy, the breakthroughs brought by Web 3.0-related technologies and business models are significant, and the most prominent change is decentralized storage. Any content, behavior and relationships produced by creators are stored in an open distributed database. Creators keep the production materials and assets of their output in their own hands; distributors build profiles, assess interests, and make recommendations based on all the user's on-chain behaviors; a token economy effectively motivates the behavior of each actor; and a more reasonable assessment of the value of content and recommendations (not just traffic performance)... By analogy with the traditional model, we can summarize the biggest changes as The following points:

-Decentralized ownership of the means of production breaks the inequality in the Web2.0 economic model, and content and influence assets are no longer monopolized by centralized platforms.

-Token economy can effectively incentivize individual nodes to perform their work and make them reasonably remunerated, enhancing overall production capacity.

-Open on-chain data helps break down data silos and improve the accuracy of content distribution.

-Establishes a way to evaluate content quality in addition to traffic, stimulating quality and diversified content output.

2.3Key Consensus

-Content is an asset created by creators.

As the output of creators, content is decentralized and stored in the form of data, which can be traded and transferred, and can bring continuous income to its owners, Lumin believes that it should be regarded as an asset, and creators should be regarded as business subjects with the ability to generate assets.

-Accurate content distribution is an act of value.

The act of content distribution establishes a matching relationship between content products and consumers. Under the premise that consumers' attention resources are scarce, accurate content distribution enables consumers to get effective content with low time cost, which is a valuable work.

-Content consumption and feedback are the basis for value realization and evaluation.

Only after content is consumed (whether purchased for a fee or free to read/watch) is the overall economic chain considered complete.Consumer choice and feedback is the fundamental basis for assessing the "monetary value" of content as an asset and the accuracy of the distributor's distribution.

2.4"Three Node Paradigm"

We believe that there is no need for a centralized platform to dictate everything anymore, but rather a set of governance mechanisms that can form a consensus to evaluate the value and distribute the revenue to the production, distribution and consumer nodes participating in the system. As shown in the figure below, these participants receive the protection of the governance mechanism and can participate fairly in economic activities as independent players. 

The production nodes are the supply side of the content, and these nodes create and distribute content so that it can be discovered in a set of content discovery networks. This content will be distributed and consumed by subsequent nodes and is treated as an asset produced by the creators that can sustainably earn income.

The distribution node finds the content published by the production node, organizes the content, and then recommends it to the content consumer node. This sorting and recommendation work may be done by humans or algorithms. People can generate content collections based on their expert experience and content tastes, just like editors of newspapers and magazines do, for consumer nodes to subscribe to, or they can recommend content to friends or colleagues and become influential in their social circles.

Publishers and maintainers of different algorithms are equally able to distribute the available content sources, and they may only serve certain consumer ends. More ideally, some algorithm engineers publish public algorithms for certain scenarios for the display end to choose from, and different display ends work together to optimize the recommendation algorithm for that scenario based on the actual results.

The consumer nodes finish content consumption, read, browse, listen to content and advertisements, and give feedback (some are explicit feedback, such as likes and payments; some come from behavioral analysis such as clicking links and browsing time and frequency), which will become a key basis for evaluating the work effectiveness of production and distribution nodes.

2.5Content assetization and creators' equitization

Content assetization: the act of creation is undoubtedly the starting point of the entire value chain. However, it is not the act itself that can bring income, but the output of this act: the work. In the Lumin system, we expect to treat works like financial assets. Works are decentralized and kept under the address of their owners, and may continue to generate revenue for the owner, while also generating value. Lumin will incentivize some generators of quality assets to encourage rich, quality content sources.

Creators' equitization: Creators are asset generators, contributing the most basic value to the whole system, while having the autonomy to have fan relationships or choose other distribution channels, then a creator will be able to be treated as a business entity. The problem we see in the traditional model is that creators are deprived of the means of production and ownership of value and can only depend on centralized platforms or publishers for value, one of the keys is that they cannot independently finance or organize the industrial production of content. In the Lumin system, these will be made into contracts that facilitate the conclusion of financing and co-production agreements between creators and those who appreciate them, and are traded through Tokens/NFTs. The creator's "market value" will be returned to his assets, his ability to generate them, and his influence. 

3.Implementation of Lumin products

Lumin will continue to improve the system of tools and contracts that can support the efficient operation of the above three nodes, help the governance system operate effectively, and help creators generate and trade interests in accordance with the above paradigm. In the current development phase, Lumin will soon go live with some of the most critical features:

3.1Decentralized value generation

Content: You can use Lumin to create or post your creative output (including text, images, audio, video) on the blockchain, or Mint to become NFT.

Relationship: Record and save the addresses of people you follow and people who follow you on the chain.

Behavior: Record key feedback behaviors such as content collection and rewarding.

3.2Manageable user identity

Using ProfileNFT to structure the related data, the distributor can evaluate the consumer node interest by the Content/FollowNFTs mounted under the ProfileNFT.

For users, they can manage related NFTs in groups, while their other mounted NFTs can be transferred synchronously after trading a certain high node NFT. For example, a user who has traded his ProfileNFT to another address can transfer the content assets under this Profile as a whole.

Later, we will open up the access to manage the accessibility of these on-chain asset index directories to users to decide for themselves which side of themselves they wish to display, in order to balance the openness and privacy needs of decentralization.

3.3Content Trading

Generation: Provides creators with the ability to set content product generation, pricing and other transactional attributes.

Distribution: Provides functions such as direct distribution by production nodes, generation of identifiable distribution copies by distributors and recommended display.

Consumption: Provides functions such as collection, reward, subscription, and basic feedback.

3.4Long-term iterative direction

-Creator rights generation and trading.

-Rich creation licensing contract.

-Optimization of API access for external DAPP nodes.

-Feedback consensus degree mechanism.

-Community governance tools.

4.Tokenomic

4.1Overall Economic Distribution

Lumin will issue a total of 1,000,000,000 tokens to incentivize content ecosystem contributors, participants in governance, investors and other contributors, while providing tools for introducing external participants into the economy. The specific allocation is shown below： 

-Team, Investors, Advisors: Release a total of 250,000,000 tokens in phases, with 220,000,000 reserved for founders, team and external investors and 30,000,000 reserved for key external advisors.

-Community Governance and Vault: 40,000,000 tokens for effective proposers and consensus decision makers involved in community governance, and a community vault with an initial total of 80,000,000 tokens for overall liquidity management, which will serve as a collection account for the entire economy on the one hand, and release tokens to other pools after community decisions on the other.

-Market liquidity: 90,000,000 tokens are set aside for market liquidity management.

-Three participating nodes: 120,000,000 (360,000,000 total) tokens are allocated to each category of participating nodes for behavioral incentives. In the early stage, Lumin labs does not differentiate the value of the three different types of nodes within the system, and if in practice a governed participant believes that the total number of tokens for the three nodes needs to be adjusted, the adjustment will be made by proposal and community vote. In order to effectively balance the enthusiasm of the three types of nodes' participation and motivate early participants, when the total release of a certain type of nodes reaches a certain standard, the token release will be decayed by a factor.

-Technical contributors: 80,000,000 tokens will be reserved and allocated to technical service providers such as storage and bug bounty.

-Brand and Growth: 100,000,000 tokens are reserved to cover marketing and PR costs and to incentivize important growth contributors.

4.2 Influence

Influence is used to evaluate the level of competence of the participants in the economic system in content production, distribution and consumption, and is a key indicator within the system.

4.2.1The effect of influence

-Having a certain level of influence is the basis for nodes to receive token incentives.

-Influence level is used as a parameter in node revenue calculation and is positively correlated with revenue.

-Nodes with high influence will have priority in receiving paid tasks.

-Content created and distributed by high-impact nodes will be more easily discovered by downstream nodes.

-Feedback on content from high-impact consumer nodes will have greater weight in the consensus degree calculation.

-High-influence nodes will be able to make governance proposals, and votes will have more weight.

4.2.2How to gain influence

-Be followed by other users.

-Create and publish quality content.

-Make accurate content recommendations.

-Complete effective content reviews.

-Pledge and donate tokens.

-Pay for content, rights or rewards.

-Other actions that make outstanding contributions to the ecology.

4.2.3What behaviors reduce impact

-Using bots to maliciously populate data.

-Performing a large number of actions that are deemed to be meaningless.

-Produce content that is considered poor quality or distribution behaviors that are considered imprecise.

-Discounts that are affected by timeliness.

-Other behaviors identified by the community.

4.2.4Timeliness of Influence

Timeliness is an indispensable factor in assessing the impact of a node. A person who has generated a lot of influence a few years ago because he has published quality content does not prove that he has high influence at this moment. Within the Lumin system, influence generated not in the current month decays in a fixed proportion of the total amount. Influence generated due to accounts being subscribed, holding of interests, and pledging of tokens is not affected by the decay of timeliness.

4.3Incentives for three types of nodes

4.3.1Production nodes

For production nodes, Lumin believes that the subject that should be incentivized is not the act of production, but the valuable works (i.e. content assets). If a work is widely consumed and is also considered quality content, it will bring long-term token cash flow and higher influence to the owner.

Token rewards occur in real time every time their published content is consumed. The number of tokens received is determined by a combination of base value, storage factor, influence factor, and deflation factor.

The base value of the production node is related to the behavior of the content being visited (valid views), positively rated, favorited, paid, etc.

4.3.2Distribution Nodes

For distribution nodes, Lumin is oriented to incentivize precise distribution behavior, each distribution is considered valid after being consumed, and the specific value is also influenced by the feedback from the consuming node. The number of tokens obtained is determined by a combination of base value, storage factor, influence factor, and deflation factor.

The base value of the distribution node is related to the behavior of the content being visited (validly viewed), positively rated, favorited, paid, etc.

4.3.3Consumer nodes

The consumer node is the final link of the whole economic chain, and it is also the basis for evaluating the effectiveness of the work of other nodes. Therefore, Lumin will provide incentives for consumer nodes that continue to consume content and effectively provide feedback on content quality. The number of tokens obtained is determined by the base value, influence factor, and deflation factor together.

The base value of consumer nodes is related to the behaviors of effective feedback, holding assets and equity vouchers.

4.3.4The storage factor

The storage factor is used to incentivize the decentralized storage behavior of content. The storage factor is 1 if the content is published within the Lumin product or stored in the Amos protocol; for content production nodes stored outside the Amos protocol, the storage factor is set at 0.1 early on. 

4.4Paid bounty mechanism

4.4.1Paid bounties

Lumin will support bounties using Lumin tokens to seek quality nodes to participate in creation, distribution and consumption with greater motivation. 10% of creation and distribution bounties will flow back to the community vault, and 20% of consumption bounties will flow back to the community vault for continuous operation. Publishers can choose public bounties for all users, or set certain conditions for scoped/targeted bounties. More precise bounty conditions require additional service fees to be paid to the Community Vault.

Creation bounties: Paid creative solicitations for a particular topic.

Distribution bounties: Distribution offers with additional rewards for a certain content, based on the number of successful distributions.

Consumption bounty: An offer to read a piece of content directly to a Consumer node for an additional token reward.

4.4.2The role of influence on paid bounties

If a user has a high influence score, he will be more likely to receive paid bounties. Also, during the recruitment period, if the publisher limits the total number of participants and the number of registered users exceeds the limit, then participants with higher influence scores will have priority to participate.

4.5Token Pledging and Donation

Participants can pledge and donate additional tokens they have earned to increase their influence.

Token Pledge: During the pledge period, tokens will be converted into influence by a certain percentage, which is not affected by the decay of timeliness.

Token Donation: Token donation will directly increase the donor's influence. Donating 1 token will gain 1 influence point, and the gaining time will be treated as the donation time. Donated tokens will flow back to the community vault and replenish the liquidity of other token pools after a vote by the governance committee.

4.6Token Liquidity Expectation

According to the above token release rules and the current scale of active users in Web3.0, the total circulation of Lumin tokens is expected to be as follows：

If the amount of tokens in circulation exceeds expectations, Lumin labs will submit liquidity management proposals to the community such as buybacks and increased pledge returns.

5.Generation and trading of creators' equity

5.1Equity generation

Lumin will support users to issue equity NFTs to give out part of their income rights to share with fans or investors. The total amount of equity NFTs generated and the corresponding weight of equity will be determined at the time of generation, and the subsequent issuance of additional equity will be decided by the vote of equity holders.

5.2Equity Trading

Equity NFT will support the flow within Lumin or other external markets, and holding equity NFT will enhance the influence in addition to gaining the share of profits and other rights in the contract.

5.3Co-creation and secondary creation

Equity NFT can set the license for co-creation and secondary creation of content created by production nodes, and whether the license is open or not depends on the production nodes. The revenue of co-creation and secondary creation will be shared by the original creator and co-creator.

6.Governance

6.1Governance Model

Lumin, as a decentralized creator economic system, takes community-based governance as the basic governance model, with Lumin labs, partners, and high-impact participants jointly proposing and voting.

6.2Organization

-Currently to 2023Q1 (before the introduction of token economy), Lumin labs and partner nodes are the main participants in governance.

-2023Q2 and beyond, addresses with Top1000 influence index will participate in the governance voting together, and 80% of the voting weight will be allocated according to different influences, and the maximum voting weight of each address will not exceed 20%; Lumin labs will retain 20% of the voting power. Participants with 1% or more weight have the right to make proposals.

6.3Decision-making matters

-Adjustment of economic distribution.

-Use of community vault.

-New product function launch.

-The identification of partner nodes/partners.

-Other important matters.

6.4Governance Incentives

-If a proposal passes in a vote, it will be considered a valid proposal and the proposer will be incentivized.

-Voters who become the majority consensus in a vote on a proposal will be incentivized.

7.About Lumin

7.1Lumin labs members 

SeanGuo: 10 years of experience in the content field, has created China's first creator rights operation platform.

MarkLee: Responsible for architecture design and product development, former CTO of famous public chain, graduated from Tsinghua University.

7.2Roadmap

Time Point

Main progress

2022Q2

Business logic combing and product planning

2022Q3

Product MVP version development and economic model design

2022Q4

White paper released, product MVP version released on beta network, early node recruitment and trial operation

2023Q1

Product version 1.0 released

2023Q2

Community governance switched to version 2.0, creator entitlement feature online

2023Q3

Support external node access in the form of API and SDK

7.3Important partners

Amos Protocol: Provides decentralized storage and query services for content, relationships, and behaviors.