ICO Review: Utopi

Utopi is a live streaming platform that lets you create content and make a social impact using blockchain. Their goal is to introduce a blockchain-based live-event, peer-to-peer video streaming service to encourage transparent charitable donations.

Utopi believes their blockchain solution has the power to change a few existing problems they view in philanthropy, including:

1. Excessive costs to raise funds from donors.
2. Slow turnaround time for disbursement of funds.
3. Inefficiencies in leadership cause a lot of funds to be distributed poorly
4. Too many causes means attention is spread too thin

In return, Utopi’s primary goals include the ability to:

1. Reduce the cost of fundraising.
2. Speed up turnaround times.
3. Create transparency and accountability for the donation and disbursement.
4. Make fundraising more engaging and convenient.
5. Create interactive experiences for live events.
6. Enable users and influencers to generate a sustainable living while helping others.

With a token sale coming up soon, Utopi is looking to change the nonprofit fundraising world forever. Here’s what we think about their solution:

Big Picture Goals

Utopi seems to become the first live streaming platform that utilizes blockchain for charitable giving.

Nonprofit Commitment

Pledging to have their work adhere to the UN Sustainable Development goals, Utopi is working with Global Goals Olympics who actively engage with different cities to make sure their goals are met.

Transparency

Utilizing smart contracts, Utopi aims to be a completely transparent system in illustrating where money is spent. Furthermore, they plan to also distribute 40 to 100 percent of raised funds in charitable events to the target charities (more on pricing later).

Key Partnerships And Types Of Content

Utopi will create strategic alliances with content producers, charities, foundations, operators, social impact strategists, humanitarians, celebrities, influencers, technology organizations, and blockchain entities.

A big focus of Utopi’s goal is to bring on a global audience with their User Generated Content (UGC) model, however, will have a strict vetting process and regulations to ensure no bad actors are trying to exploit the platform.

In regards of what type of influencer marketing partners Utopi looks to bring on, specific examples of live streaming fundraisers include musicians via a concert, gamers via live streaming gaming, and athletes showcasing skills challenges.

Utopi also notes that disaster relief events will be a significant nonprofit fundraiser stream, as well as original content (for example, Netflix’s recent Hilarity for Charity). Their hope is also that corporate partners and documentaries will also play a role as well.

Gamification

Utopi plans to reward those that participate in live events, orchestrate their events, purchase content, or contribute to production with points/tokens.

AR and VR

A significant segment Utopi is aiming to be at the forefront of is enabling fundraising via AR/VR content. AR will be location-based experiences for adventures and interactive content to help with specific charitable goals. VR will deliver live content.

Pricing and Revenue

Content producers set the price they deem fit. On top of just streaming fees, tipping mechanisms are also added as well. Here’s how Utopi currently breaks down their expenses:

• 40 percent goes to charity
• 40 percent goes to the creator; however, they can donate whatever portion they want
• 20 percent goes to Utopi for platform fees

Additionally, benefit events will donate 100 percent of proceeds to the charity.

Aside from fees, other revenue streams include producing advertising, sponsorship, product placement, and merchandise.

How This Thing Will Work

Utopi’s structure will be based around its data center for transcoding live stream into deliverable streams at various bandwidths configured for P2P delivery or a traditional Content Delivery Network (CDN), believing this structure will reduce the cost of streaming. However, they hope that P2P services can catch up to the speed of modern day streaming, so their system doesn’t have to rely solely on a central server moving forward.

The Utopi Go-Live (UGL) Protocol

The UGL Protocol facilitates the decision regarding where and how data is delivered to clients based on the live stream. It will make these decisions on factors such as bandwidth capacity, speed, and cost of a network path.

Utilizing The Dispatch Blockchain

Utopi is built off the Dispatch blockchain, which is an ETH-compatible blockchain built by Dispatch Labs, hoping to reduce development costs, risks, and time-to-market. The platform will also be integrated into Dispatch’s virtual machine (DVM), which will process Utopi’s contracts.

User Experience

The overarching goal for the UX is that people can browse, search, access content, manage their wallets, and view their metrics/achievements. The app will initially be focused on web, iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac Desktops, with the mission to be on other major streaming platforms as well.

As a viewer, you’re presented with a dashboard of curated content, campaigns, and events. Can browse, search, tip, etc. Creators are given certain tools such as campaign/media management, and scheduling/stream tools.

What We Think

Utopi aims to introduce a product that has serious potential. By cutting out the intermediaries of having to contact a third party from a stream and instead of being able to donate directly in the app, this might be the app philanthropists are after. Even with considerations such as onboarding your average donor to using crypto, the foundation and team behind this are incredibly strong. Expect Utopi to do great things in both the fundraising world as much as they do with their token sale as this is an A+ project.