Long post but wanted to give everyone as much info as possible up front.
Hello all. We (GT Systems, an Australian “technology group”) have been building a legal, peer to peer movie distribution and file sharing system since about 2012. It is right now unconditionally approved by one of the biggest studios in Hollywood, including 4K. We’re in tech evaluation with all the other Hollywood studios and getting positive responses. We think IPFS, libp2p and Filecoin look like they may be an almost perfect fit with what we are doing and where we planned to go. In fact, we had planned to develop pretty much exactly this technology stack ourselves, to fit our architecture. We’re looking for anyone interested in helping us get to grips with IPFS, libp2p and Filecoin, and to help us integrate and build it.
Our store app is called Blust and our network tech is called Secure Peer Assist (SPA). SPA combines the best of peer to peer with CDN and makes it secure. They are based on 10 years of work with retailers, Hollywood and CSIRO, Australia’s leading R&D organisation. We also worked very closely with Intel and Microsoft, developing our security model and initial consumer platform. We are partnered with Comcast (was thePlatform) for media asset management and Verizon (EdgeCast) for CDN. We are also working with PC and gaming OEMs such as Gigabyte, Dell, HP etc.
It embarrasses me to say we have just learned of the work of Juan Benet, Protocol Labs and you guys, the community, on IPFS, libp2p, Filecoin, etc. (You know, working on the other side of the world, busy focussed on what you are doing, etc…) but, having just found it, we are cautiously optimistic about the fit (understatement of the century; it got a little loud ‘down under’ a few weeks ago lol). Our SPA, UX, crypto tech and strategy guys and girls have taken a first look and think it might be “the business”, although it seems to be fairly early days yet. We’re hoping the Filecoin ICO result will help fix that pretty quickly. In fact, it seems our timing may have worked out just about perfectly. We have some initial high level questions which I’ll post separately. DONE
We’re a “10-year-old startup”, but we have limited resources right now. We think that’s about to change. We’ve got a demo Blust UX UWP app that is currently side loaded on demo machines. We just spec’d version 2.0, complete with crypto UI, funded by an Aussie state government (JobsforNSW) innovation grant (yep, government funded crypto UI). We’d love to work with the IPFS community to build a beta of SPA, based on a merged SPA/IPFS/Filecoin architecture, “philosophy” and the IPFS/libp2p toolset. We are pursuing private and further government funding for the beta and commercialisation. We think that, between all of us, we have the pieces needed to do this very quickly and have a hell of a lot of fun along the way! And just maybe change the way movies are distributed and sold and the Internet is built.
So, we thought we would say hello and put out a request for anyone interested in helping us get to grips with IPFS, libp2p and Filecoin, and help us integrate and build it. It looks like we have all been working on almost perfectly complementary aspects of the same problem, with very little overlap that we can see on a first look. I’ve posted some info links below and a linking comment on why we like IPFS in this thread What motivates people to use IPFS for large volumes of data? there’s a registration of interest form here http://blust.tv/ or just post a reply!
Really, really looking forward to working with you. Oh, and thanks for building exactly what we needed! Love your work.
Rhett Sampson
GT Systems
26 January 2018, Australia Day
LINKS
http://www.blust.tv/ (apologies for quality of vimeo video hosting our servers aren’t up yet)
http://www.blust.tv/blog/
SPA white paper
https://blusttvblog.blob.core.windows.net/website-media/2018/02/GT-Systems-and-Secure-Peer-Assist-v1.2-RELEASED-07022018.pdf
GT Systems deck
https://blusttvblog.blob.core.windows.net/website-media/2018/02/GT-Systems-Blust-entertainmen-09022018.pdf
Some history
Some press