The Mogul development team is assembling the newest features for Mogul’s NFT Marketplace and ecosystem. Ten major features have been or are about to be onboarded. A new feature will be reviewed each week over the course of ten weeks.
Mogul Development Update #10
For this exciting update, Jake Fraser, Head of Business Development joined us to discuss.
“The whole premise of Mogul is to enable filmmakers to get their stories turned into a cinematic release. For filmmakers that were struggling to get financing or launch their story into the market, we see a gap here.”
One of Jake’s favorite references is the Deadpool story. Deadpool had rested in development purgatory for years. Animated test footage for a Deadpool movie leaked online and was met with critical acclaim, resulting in 20th Century Fox finally giving the greenlight to the project.
It got made into a film because it was the power of the crowd demanding that it should be made into a movie.
“That’s the premise of Mogul. Bringing power back to the crowd”
To dive into the voting more specifically; how the process works when we had done voting in the past is we had a submission process called Showcase. With the Showcase portal on Mogul, people submitted their stories and screenplays.
Once they were submitted, our team of award winning producers in Hollywood and the entertainment industry reviewed them. Mogul would then come to a shortlist of three films based on the producer’s recommendations and expertise.
We’d present those three films to the community. Then the community votes on what film they want to see turned into a cinematic release.
Once greenlit, the production team then commences with the production or pre production process from where they are. It’s a hybrid financial model. There are voters staking STARS, combined with NFT funding, private funding and Mogul’s Film Fund.
We have had some great success in the past, an example of this was the first film we helped fund, Bonded.
It was the first film that Mogul helped finance from the script to screen process. It’s super exciting that the premiere was this year. And now it’s about to commence its tour on the film festival circuit.
Inspired by a true story, BONDED follows the journey of a teenager from Mexico whose dreams of becoming a soccer star are shattered when he’s smuggled across the border and sold to a sweatshop making party dresses in downtown Los Angeles.
It highlights the power of Mogul and how we can get cool stories to the big screen.
The voting community is really a collaborative way for film lovers to have a voice and be a part of the whole process. Not only are they part of the process from a voting standpoint and get a say in what gets to be turned into a film. But they can also be part of the process for buying the NFTs that we offer the community that are attached to the film.
Utility based NFTs are designed to bring the fans closer to the action via different forms of experiential utility and behind-the-scenes access. A couple of examples of those could be attending red carpet premieres, It could be getting producer credits on a film, It could be getting access to behind-the-scenes content from the production or It could be meeting a lead actor for face time.
This is how voting works moving forward. People will vote with their STARS utility token. That gets kept in a smart contract. When the fans help vote for a film, they get access to certain perks.
Voters are able to get rewards from the film’s net proceeds. For example, up to 50% of the film’s net proceeds can possibly be distributed back to the voting community, via a smart contract. If you don’t vote, you don’t get rewards. By voting you are participating in the project and staking tokens. The last winning film from showcase, Terminal Station, had over 30,000 votes.
This collaborative process is always what resonates with people I talk to.
Jake speaks to a lot of external people be it partners, users, people in film. They all love the idea of crowdfunding and community empowerment in the film industry. That’s why he feels we need to lean into this more.
“There are a million NFT marketing places, but no one else is doing this with film.”
How that fits into the overall strategy is we are trying to help creators and fans have more power in the script to screen process.
We have built a voting system called quadratic voting. It’s a product we built that prevents double voting, fraudulent activity and people trying to game the process.
A quadratic voting system is an alternative to a plurality voting system.
A plurality voting system is one that we are all familiar with. Every voter gets one vote, all votes are equally weighted, and the candidate that ends up with the most votes wins. That’s it!
Quadratic voting uses an equation to weigh votes differently.
With this system, STARS token holders are assigned a certain number of votes per token they own. For every token that a holder has, they get fewer voting credits, so large token holders with millions of coins are unable to skew the vote.
This promotes active participation in voting from all of the STARS token holders, regardless of their size, because each holder has a voice in the process. Small holders have a proportionally large voice; which in turn allows Mogul to gauge the sentiment across our entire community, and not just a few large holders!
Why Quadratic Voting Keeps Things Fair
The number of voting credits you get at Mogul depends on how many STARS tokens you own. This is one reason for the implementation of a quadratic voting system. Mogul doesn’t have a “one person, one vote” system. STARS tokens can be earned through on-platform activities, contests, or purchased, so the number of tokens an individual person owns varies a lot!
An early adopter or large purchaser of STARS tokens has many more tokens to vote with than somebody who owns just a few tokens, but quadratic voting makes it less likely for a user with more tokens to skew the voting, because purchasing enough voting credits to do so would be VERY VERY expensive.
There is also a secondary (and equally important) benefit to the quadratic voting system. It prevents voters from buying votes or registering fake Mogul accounts to try and skew the voting of a particular showcase round to unfairly pump up the odds of certain movies going into production.
We are trying to help really good creators and fans have more power in the script to screen process for the film and entertainment industry.
We had to build a proprietary quadratic voting system. It positions us as innovators in the crypto entertainment space. With the technology, it prevents double voting and fraudulent activity. It prevents bad actors, pardon the pun.
It’s a hybrid financial model with voter staking, NFT film memorabilia funding, private funding and a Mogul film fund. It’s a big push to greenlight a project and move this into the community. Once a film is greenlit and depending on what stage the film is in, the production team will commence with the pre-production and production process.
Getting the buy-in from the people that are actually going to watch the film it sets up a better chance of succeeding, because we already have the market’s approval with what they want to watch.
We are pooling together different stakeholders to make this as successful as possible. We are getting the fans involved, financiers involved, and an amazing production team involved. The role Mogul plays is that it acts as the bridge between the traditional entertainment industry and the new innovative way of film financing and blockchain. We’ve nailed that innovation and technology on our platform and are excited to help scale this to the masses..
For more information on the voting process: Gitbook
For more information on Quadratic Voting: What Is Quadratic Voting?
For other developmental articles:
The Future of Unlockable Content in Your NFTs
Performance Upgrades in Mogul’s Marketplace V3
ERC721 The Super Soldier of NFTs
Automated NFT Minting Comes to Mogul
Marketplace and Email Notifications, Enhancing Fan Exposure
Guide to Acquiring NFTs on Mogul Marketplace
Navigating The Mogul NFT Interface
Utilizing Your Mogul User Account
Mogul is where movies meet blockchain. Mogul partners with some of the biggest names in entertainment, helping artists of all sorts connect with their most loyal fans on different levels, while giving them innovative ways to engage with their favorite performers.
Navigating New Frontiers
Mogul Productions is capable of leveraging these advanced technological innovations to give artists and buyers alike a more robust user experience.
Toward The Future
The Mogul NFT Marketplace is the marketplace where film & entertainment meet blockchain. The development and marketing team keeps up and is often ahead of technological advancements within the blockchain community.
Mogul’s community-oriented system is specifically built for the entertainment industry, making its partnerships with moviemakers, music makers, content creators, and intellectual property owners winners .
Stay tuned next week when we discuss another of the newest features to the Mogul marketplace.
Are you ready to unlock the potential of NFTs in film entertainment?
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