Crypto OG's are playing Arbitrum app Stealcam: The perfect blend of voyeurism and owner economy

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When everyone was enjoying the air drop for Arbitrum, Stealcam, an image sharing app for Arbitrum Ecology, was quietly gathering strength. In just two weeks, without the expectation of air drop and without issuing the token, Natural growth alone has resulted in more than 313ETH ($500,000) of cumulative transactions, according to Jesse Pollak, head of development at Base, OP Stack's core development team"One of my favorite unique new products on the chain."

This new Web3 product called Stealcam is getting a little bit of a buzz, and it's getting a little bit of a buzz because the buzz in the crypto industry tends to be about TVL, and by that metric, it's really just a little bit of a buzz.

However, during the product beta period with no airdrop expectation and no token issue, the photo app still achieved some organic growth, generating a total transaction volume of $500,000 in the beta only two weeks after launch. Just by adding a new distribution model on the basis of the original picture application (cleverly combining human voyeurism + celebrity effect + owner economic model), it attracted a large number of artists, KOLs, VC partners to enter, and won a good reputation.

What is Stealcam?

In short,Stealcam is a picture-sharing app, users can upload pictures or video files to the platform, just like regular Internet photo apps.

The difference is that instead of being free to access images posted on the platform, you need to steal (for a fee, currently only ETH Payment is available) to gain the reveal right and then see exactly what the image is.

You can only view the content of an image if you are the most recent user of the image.

Each image can be stolen an unlimited number of times, with each steal adding 10% to the price of the previous steal plus 0.001ETH. If an image is very popular and has a large number of participants to steal, it is likely that someone else will have already stolen it when you want to reveal it after you have stolen it (steal and reveal are two operations and require two signatures), in order to view the content, You have to steal it back again.

The revenue generated by each steal gives back the full cost of the purchase of the previous stealer, while the difference between the two steals is divided between the creator, the previous steal participant, and the protocol, with 45% for the creator and 10% for the previous stealer.

The revenue generated by each steal is refunded to the previous stealer, meaning the stealer gets a full refund and a cut of the difference

To sum it up, Stealcam adds a layer of pixelated coding to traditional picture social apps, allowing others to pay to view content. By introducing an auction incentive model, Stealcam facilitates price discovery by including all participants in a work (the creator and the last buyer) in a profit-sharing model.

Data and team

It's only been live for two weeks now, it's still in beta, and the user interface looks a little rough, but for a Web3 app, Stealcam is doing a pretty good job, both in terms of word-of-mouth and natural user growth.

Statistically, the number of images generated by the platform has exceeded 11,000, which can be found on the official websiteLatest discovery pageAs you can see from the newly published image ID, the numbers of the images published on the platform are displayed in the Latest Discovery page in order of priority.

Published by nazih.ethThe Stealcam dune PanelStealcam has a cumulative steal of 20,000 times, a daily mint of up to 1,499 times, and a daily steal of up to 4,175 times, with a cumulative transaction value of more than 313ETH ($500,000). Users earn 40ETH (about 68,000 US dollars) in total.

No. 1, according to the website's TOP 10 earners listNFT artist Shl0ms, with a income of 4.2ETH (approx. 7,600 USD), the second and third highest earners earn 3.6ETH (approx. 6,551 USD) and 1.87 ETH (approx. 3,331 USD) respectively.

willStealcam Top Grossing listScrolling down, we can see that the app, which is still in beta, has attracted entries from crypto og, artists, and even Web3 apps, with USV (Union Square Foundation) at number 14.Co-founder Fred WilsonHe earns 0.53 ETH by Posting 10 pieces on Stealcam. In 17th place is wallet app rainbow, which earns 0.4 ETH by Posting pictures on Stealcam. Li Jin, co-founder of Variant Fund, is ranked 25th, while Jess, another co-founder of Variant Fund, is ranked 79th.

  The team founder is anonymousOG Racer(Twitter @0xRacerAlt) andshrimp(@shrimppepe).

Use cases and gameplay

As a picture app, Posting pictures and sharing pictures is of course the most basic gameplay, users post pictures/videos on Stealcam and then share them with others to steal for a fee, plus you can steal pictures of other people for a fee, friends, colleagues, family, etc.

As an encrypted app, of course, there are some different ways to play from ordinary photo sharing apps. In the case of Stealcam, that is mint and steal, incorporating an economic mechanism of ownership, underpinning the underlying encryption protocol, so that all the bidders for an image get a share of the money it generates.

Publishing: This is especially true for artists

Start with mint.

mint uploads a work (including a picture/video) with Stealcam, prints it pixelated, and then releases it, waiting for someone else to steal for a fee and make money.

With Stealcam's default allocation mechanism, every steal generates revenue except for the first one, which starts at 0.001ETH and then increases at a fixed rate with each steal. The proceeds from each steal are divided between the creator, the bidder (equivalent to the seller) and the agreement, in addition to the return of the bid from the next bidder to be stolen. The creator and the bidder steal the same amount -- 45% of the difference between the two bids and offers.

It's fair to say that incorporating stealers into the revenue distribution mechanism from the start is a great way for artists to distribute their work, but it's also a good practice of tying ownership to community contributions and distributing revenue with the help of underlying encryption protocols.

In the current crypto bear market (NFT market bear), most of the NFT works after the completion of the mint almost no trading volume, the so-called floor price is just Holder deceiving themselves to hang a psychological expected selling price, it can be said that no trading volume, no liquidity is currently facing the dilemma of most of the NFT.

In this case, if the stealer is incorporated into the revenue-sharing system from the beginning, 45% of the spread immediately goes to the stealer as soon as the acquired title is sold, there will be a positive feedback on NFT liquidity, driving price discovery of NFT titles.

Since we acknowledge the importance of liquidity and the difficulty of price discovery in today's NFT market, those who contribute to the final price discovery of a work are significant contributors and deserve a share of the revenue generated from that work. This is at the heart of the ownership economy, where participants in a community should receive a share of the value generated by the community, in proportion to their own contribution.

In Stealcam, this fairness is manifested in:

The creator of the work receives a perpetual share of the royalties of the work, i.e., 45% of the difference between each steal and the previous one is automatically distributed to the author. This means that as long as the image is still selling in the market, the creator/publisher will always receive a share of the sales, equivalent to a perpetual copyright share.

Stealer, on the other hand, gets 45% of the premium (the difference between two steals) generated by a single steal, in addition to the full cost of the returned steal.

Each contributor of Steal gets 45% of the proceeds from a single steal, a very reasonable allocation considering that they have contributed to the price discovery of the work in the current sale, while the publisher gets the other 45% of the difference earned from each auction, which runs through each auction. So it's a perpetual copyright.

While we are debating whether creator royalties should be optional or mandatory, and whether the NFT market should be predominantly a buyer's or seller's market, such a "no more, no less" compromise distribution mechanism might be a solution worth considering.

Of course, if the fan economy is also taken into account, for example, the publisher itself is a community or person (whether it is a writer, musician, director or artist) in which the bidder participates, then participating in an auction in this way is no longer a pure money-making activity, but rather a money-making activity based on community participation.

Stealcam also provides publishers with a very friendly "fan management" interface. On the "top fans" tab of a personal account page, Stealcam ranks each user's followers according to the number of times he steals, and looks at the interaction data of his followers.

It's worth noting that while Stealcam is a little rough on the user interface, there's a lot of sincerity in the "cash out" feature, where the money generated from each auction is immediately pulled back into the wallet, with no delay, no manual extraction required, and a display of what you're currently earning in your wallet.

Buying and Investing Strategies: How to steal the Difference

As well as a permanent 45% royalty on the difference between publishing and sharing works, users can also steal someone else's work to earn money.

The safest way to steal is to steal a first turn of a picture, for zero cost plus a very small gas charge, and for 0.001ETH as soon as the next stealer comes along, but that's it. Even if the next one is captured for 100ETH, it's nothing to you. This is the most stable and risk-free way to participate.

The other is to bid in the middle and late stages of a popular work. According to the rules of the platform, the price of each steal increases by 10% from the previous one, so the later you buy, the higher the share of profits and the higher the risk factor. There is, of course, a cost and a risk that if the work cannot be stolen by the next person, you are the last person to steal it. Therefore, it is important to consider market expectations when choosing works, such as those published by celebrities/well-known artists/or hot communities. This is called celebrity effect.

How else can you play it? Expectation management, gimmicks, spy photos

What are some potential uses and gameplay scenarios for Stealcam outside of regular gameplay?

Stealcam allows publishers to publish a series of 'know it' teasers, allowing fans to reveal sneak peeks, fans to steal the right to steal, and fans to steal the curiosity and word of mouth for a future release. These works should not be limited by format. Besides pictures, they should also support music demos, movie trailers, etc. Creators are not limited to artists, but should include creators in a broader sense, including musicians, directors, writers, photographers, e-sports anchors, female actresses, AI virtual characters, communities and corporate brands.

In fact, there are already corporate brands running Stealcam. showtime, for example, reveals future features by casting NFT in StealcamSpy pictureshowtime isn't the only product using Stealcam to sneak up on new features. Rainbow Wallet is also using Stealcam to catch users' attention.

Rainbow Wallet is on StealcamRelease "future product features" photos

For the crypto industry, which is closely related to financial investment, a picture means alpha, the announcement of a new feature or the roadmap of a project, all of which are absolutely attractive to crypto users/coin holders. However, this particular picture is about information arbitrage. The further this information is revealed, the less attractive it is. This requires a custom bidding model.

It's important to note that there are a lot of celebrity impersonators on Stealcam right nowFalse numbersteal is advised to check carefully. Since Stealcam currently only supports Twitter authorization and anonymity, the only way to check is to check if the Twitter account is the person on the publisher's personal page.

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