End platform kidnapping! How to upgrade e-books with NFT?

Let me share a cute little story first. The picture below is a recent conversation that took place on Blockchain Discord. A member asked if Blockchain also has the function of collecting articles as NFT? Because he is already a lifelong member and cannot pay anymore, but he still wants to support Blockchain.

Article NFT currently seems to be just an alternative channel for tuition fees, but its ultimate goal is to end platform kidnapping and allow readers to truly own the content, not your key, not your content. The story starts in 2021.

Platform kidnapping

Blockchain will launch a new attempt of article NFT in 2021. There was a lot of news about NFT at that time, but there were very few people holding it.

NFTs are touted and disparaged, and the way to bust the myths is to get your hands dirty. Blockchain regards the article NFT as a kind of digital peripheral, and also provides readers with first-hand purchasing and collection experience. Just in time to catch up with the Metaverse craze when Facebook changed its name to Meta, issuing article NFTs is like selling newspapers in the Metaverse.

Later, the topic of the Metaverse subsided, and people began to "wake up" one after another. The image of NFT began to decline, from a technology keyword to a dirty word. In fact, NFT is a file format, and it must ultimately respond to actual needs.

What problem does NFT solve? Recently, the blockchain industry has discussed the application of automobile and website domain names, and the publishing industry wants to use NFT to end the platform hijacking of e-books.

Friends in the publishing industry told me that more and more people are reading e-books, but independent bookstores can only sell paper books. This is because e-books are controlled by several major platforms such as Amazon Kindle, Rakuten Kobo, Bloglai and Readmoo. Independent bookstores cannot follow the paper model and purchase directly from publishers. This got them thinking, why can’t e-books be more free?

Blockchain once discussed where e-books are not free. Paper books can be resold after reading, but e-books cannot. Even borrowing requires both parties to be on the same platform. What's more, the platform also has the risk of closing the stalls. Recently, the e-book leader Amazon announced that it will withdraw from the Chinese market and no longer support services. Microsoft announced in 2019 that it would shut down its e-book service. Readers were forced to refund the books they bought, and the notes in the books could only be buried with them.

Why are the e-books I bought with money not my own? People should have new choices.

web3 online bookstore

The web3 startup that is currently the most focused on digital publishing in the world is the Liker Land online bookstore currently being used by Blockchain. Liker Land is like a “blogger” with not many book choices. Although its registration and book purchasing process is not as fast as that of the blog, at least readers can already check out with a credit card. After paying, you can read books on the Liker Land website.

If you just want to read, the NFT and wallet behind the e-book are not important. But the biggest feature of Liker Land is that e-books can be resold and loaned to friends. If the platform closes in the future, there will be no refund issues. Because e-books are not stored in the platform’s account, but in each user’s personal wallet. Just like putting BTC in a cold wallet, you don't have to worry about the exchange going bankrupt.

Liker Land opened my eyes to new possibilities for e-books. When e-books are no longer bound to the platform and return to personal possession, people can change jobs at any time. This will subvert the entire e-book market and move from centralization to decentralization.

Liker Land lets readers actually own e-books. What I’m talking about here is not PDF or ePub files, but the purchase receipt for the e-book. Content can be unlocked on any platform by simply showing the purchase voucher, and that purchase voucher is an NFT.

When e-books become as autonomous as paper books, people can also choose their preferred e-reader. The platform promotes its own readers simply in the hope that readers will buy books from them in the future. But why can’t the books purchased from the blog be opened on Kobo’s e-reader?

This is exactly the same as the "leek cycle" mentioned in the book "Read Write Own". Good for booksellers, but extremely bad for readers.

Although the Liker Land online bookstore is still small, there are only a few selections of books on the shelves. But articles and books are all publishable content. If the book works, the article on block potential can be dealt with accordingly. In the future, articles on block potential do not have to be read on the Substack platform. This is a decentralized revolution in publishing.

My imagination about blockchain article NFT is that in the future, the "e-book" of each article can be airdropped into everyone's wallet based on membership. Readers can not only read articles on the website, open online bookstores, connect to wallets, but also read through third-party platforms.

Nowadays, readers are actively buying article NFTs, maybe because they want to collect them or to express their support for the blockchain trend. But in the future, NFT is likely to become part of membership benefits. Even if the blockchain website is closed, readers can still find all past articles by opening the NFT in their wallets, and they can even put them in the NFT trading platform clearance auction!

At this point you may ask, since it’s so great, why not start doing it now? Because there is a "technical upgrade" of e-books being brewed - transferring e-books from LikeCoin to Ethereum.

e-book moving

Currently, all e-books in Liker Land bookstore are built on the LikeCoin blockchain. However, the founder of LikeCoin, Gao Gao, recently proposed to transfer the assets on the LikeCoin chain to Ethereum and gradually shut down the operation of LikeCoin.

Strictly speaking, this is a back-end system upgrade or migration, and it should not affect front-end user operations. Just like Netflix, no matter which cloud service is used, as long as it is not offline and does not affect the user experience. However, according to the current technological maturity of blockchain, there is currently no way to make users insensitive.

Why do e-books need to be moved? Because the reason to operate the LikeCoin chain independently has disappeared. Blockchain is like a city, which requires huge infrastructure to support it. Shortly after LikeCoin was established in 2017, it discovered that Ethereum’s gas fees were rising steadily, and instead built a dedicated blockchain. However, the cost of operating a blockchain independently is not low. The cost of infrastructure alone will be too much for new startups to bear.

Today, Ethereum's handling fees have dropped significantly, and there are still many tools and infrastructure available. For example, the Magic embedded wallet used by Polymarket, the protagonist of last week's article, is an Ethereum tool and does not support LikeCoin. If Liker Land bookstore wants to adopt the same registration process, it will have to develop its own wallet. This is equivalent to asking a bookstore owner to build bridges and pave roads. No matter how you calculate it, you will lose money.

Therefore, I think Gao Reconstruction’s proposal to move the residents and properties in the city of LikeCoin back to Ethereum is a rational choice that is in line with reality. Ethereum has the largest blockchain development community in the world, and people have built roads and markets. Developers also have the opportunity to receive public funding from the Ethereum Foundation. Businesses like Liker Land only need to focus on digital publishing.

Back to the beginning of the article. One of the reasons why Blockchain stopped issuing NFT is also the lack of infrastructure. These NFTs are currently on the LikeCoin chain and do not have much use other than allowing everyone to buy them for collection. No wonder members only think of it when they want to continue paying for classes😂 When merchants, assets and users all migrate to Ethereum, there will be a better chance of unlocking the specific uses of article NFT - ending platform kidnapping - promoting the decentralization of e-books Upgrading.

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