Stock Photo Marketplace Connects Photographers With Customers Directly Via Blockchain

Wemark believes the current, centrally controlled nature of the industry disadvantages photographers.

Shutterstock now has over 200 million images in their collection, and it became extremely difficult for photographers to stand out and earn a substantial income from their work.

The blockchain-based marketplace developed by Wemark aims to help photographers capitalize on the ever-growing levels of demand seen from the digital content industry - giving them a chance to establish new relationships, license photos to businesses directly and experience a much higher level of control and transparency.

Tai Kaish, Wemark's CEO, told Cointelegraph: "More often than not, creators are left with only a small part of the revenue and very little transparency and control. Blockchain changes this. Digital content licensing is a perfect use case for smart contracts, which facilitate payments and licensing directly between creators and customers."

More than a million curated images to choose from Wemark launched the alpha version of its marketplace earlier this month, with over 130,000 images from the start.

Keren Sachs, a former director of content development at Shutterstock who is now an advisor at Wemark, added: "This is a tremendous milestone for Wemark. The world's leading content providers have entrusted us with their photos before we have even licensed an image. They believe in what we are building and the future of the content licensing on the blockchain."

Wemark's licensing protocol is able to accept the payment directly from the customer, issue the license and automatically compensate the photographer.

Blockchain as a new middleman The protocol developed by Wemark is set to replace the major responsibilities of the agencies today.

On the platform, images can be licensed and downloaded through Wemark tokens - and unlike existing stock photo platforms which operate using subscriptions and credits that expire, customers can choose to sell the tokens that they will not use.

Wemark tokens are going to become available once the company concludes its token generation event, which is due to commence on July 24.