- Despite being written off by many in the Blockchain industry, KODAKone one has thrived in the year following its beta launch, making over a million dollars in licensing fees
- The Blockchain helps detect unlawfully copied images and sends a license fee request to the users
Last year, when the KODAKone Blockchain was announced, it was met with a lot of skepticism and was even the butt of many jokes in the blockchain community. The project was designed to use blockchain to manage image copyright. When this was announced, however, many saw it as Kodak hopping on the blockchain bandwagon and the project was compared to others like Long Blockchain and Riot Blockchain which were considered shady. However, a year into operations, KODAKone seems to have come out on top as it has been announced that over a million dollars in licensing claims for visual content since the launch of its beta.
AI and Blockchain
When the name KODAKone is heard, one might immediately think it has some affiliation to the Kodak company that used to make cameras.
However, the name is actually licensed from the East Kodak company by RYDE Holdings and KODAKone was created in collaboration with ICOx Innovations.
The Blockchain was founded in an attempt to aid commercial photographers whose work had taken a hit since the emergence of the Internet. Image copying is quite rampant online and photographers often do not get credited or compensated for the copied images and that’s where KODAKone comes in.
KODAKOne’s Post Licensing Portal combines a web crawler as well as Artificial Intelligence to search the web for photographers’ images being used without permission. When a copied photograph is detected, the blockchain sends an automated message to the users asking for licenses payments.
Payments can be made through the KODAKone system, either by fiat currency or KODAKcoin, a Cryptocurrency being designed for the platform.
Considerable room for growth
The platform is still in its early stages but Cam Chell, their co-founder, says that more growth is expected in the next year.
“The reason that more licensing revenue isn’t captured is because it’s just heavy lifting. Even in that professional market, you’re really collecting licensing fees from 20 percent of the market at best. The other 80 percent of that market is still not monetized . . . because of the cost of human intervention, as opposed to being able to have this on the blockchain and use smart contracts.”
