Ted O'Neill on Narrative: Our Exclusive Interview with CEO and Founder

Narrative, a company that wants to create a blockchain-powered content economy is about to raise funds through an Initial Coin Offering. What is interesting about is that they will be building their token on top of the NEO blockchain.

They have done this because they think that NEO, the Chinese Ethereum, would be a better long term fit for the platform. For example, there are lower transaction fees and a more flexible development environment with a quantum computing resistant protocol.

Completing the sale of the Narrative tokens (NRV) means that the team will be following two recent successful ICOs that have done the same. These were Red Pulse and Deepbrain China.

We took a great interest in the announcement by the Narrative team and decided to interview the founder, Ted O'Neill. Before we get onto the questions, let's just give a quick overview of Narrative.

What is Narrative?

Narrative has labelled itself as a "Content Economy" where rewards are generated for content creators, moderators and reviewers on the network. They use a system of reputation scores and ratings to make sure that bad content is effectively routed out.

Advertisers will pay to get access to the network, 85% of all of the revenue will flow to those who have contributed. All of the revenue that is generated on the network is effectively logged and stored using blockchain technology which makes it immutable.

The native token that will be used on the Narrative Network is the NRV token. This will make use of NEO's NEP-5 token standard as opposed to the current ERC-20 standard that is being used on most Ethereum ICOs.

The Narrative network will also make use of interesting participants such as Narrators, Content Creators and a Tribunal. Narrators are those people who are a user on the network. You then have the content creators who will generate the content for the network. Lastly, the tribunal will act as a sort of "supreme court" in the case of any disputes.

They are also allowing those people who contribute more than 60 NEO tokens to the platform a "founder" status. These founders will receive a number of benefits from the token sale including exclusive access to material as well as a 10% "activity points" bonus.

The ICO Specifics

There will be 100 million NRV tokens that will be distributed on the genesis block that is created through the token sale. Of these tokens, the distribution will be 30% to the company in the form of reserves, 20% to the team and 50% to the crowd sale participants.

The token sale will begin on the 13th of February and will continue to the 22nd of March. In the below ICO schedule, you can see the token sale breakdown. The private pre-sale has completed and sold out.

There will be a minimum amount that will be required in order for the crowd sale to have gone through. That will be 30,000 NEO tokens. If less than these are sold, then the Narrative team will refund the tokens. There is also a hard cap of 166,667 NEO tokens.

In order to ensure accountability, the owners have set a vesting period of 3 years for the members of the team. This will be 2 years for the funds that are in the company reserves.

Our Interview with Narrative CEO

The Narrative team were really helpful in the sense that the founder, Ted O'Neill, actually took the time to answer specific questions that we had about the capital raise and the Narrative company itself.

Coin Bureau: What motivated you to embark on an ICO?
Ted O'Neill: We love the token sale model of crowdfunding. We knew we could launch an MVP (minimum viable product) without funding, but to execute on a project of this scope required significant capital outlays over time.

We believe that a token sale perfectly aligns the interests of the contributors/customers with ours. We did not need funds to launch our early alpha, but the funds we raise will certainly help fuel development and marketing of the project beyond that alpha stage.

CB: Why do you think the content economy is ripe for disruption?
TO'N: The fact is that there is no content economy currently. It’s a kind of feudal system where giant corporations reap all of the rewards generated by the content created by its users.

Even worse, while they take nearly all of the revenue generated on their content networks, Big Social gives its users absolutely no say in the management of the content. They make decisions from on high, with no member input.

It’s clearly time to put the users in charge, providing them with autonomy, transparency, and nearly all of the revenue generated by the network. And we’re confident that our model can truly flip the script.

CB: How to you differentiate Narrative from other like-minded content sharing ICOs (Tron for example)?
TO'N: The beauty of Narrative is the scope of its economy. Every aspect of content is considered in the Narrative model. It’s not just about content creators, but also about human moderation and curation, user-to-user feedback and tipping, and most importantly user reputation.

While every action in the network may have an economic value, that value is influenced by the reputation earned in the community. Narrative also has a truly democratic approach, allowing its users to elect their own moderators and their leaders… as well as vote them out if necessary.

In addition, Narrative is not just for people who are comfortable with crypto. Members can receive reward payments in fiat currency, if they prefer. The same goes for advertisers… most will want to pay in fiat currency, so that is supported.

CB: Why did you decide to raise on the NEO network and not ETH?
TO'N: We saw many advantages in NEO- faster transaction processing, much lower transaction costs, a more stable consensus model, more flexible programming options, and a very welcoming community.

CB: With the customized versions in China / India, when are you planning on rolling these out?
TO'N: No timetable is set for that. We are focused solely on our initial release currently, and even with our current network, we plan to support many other languages over time- including Spanish, French, and German. And each language will have its own content and niches.

CB: We like the advertising angle. Are you in any discussions with advertisers or do you have a strategy to attract advertisers once launched?
TO'N: Not yet. We will be more focused on attracting content creators first. Advertising will not even be supported in the first release. That will be added within a few months of the initial rollout, however.

Conclusion

Narrative is no doubt an interesting concept that wants to completely change the way we think about rewarding content generators. Creating an entire economic system around content generation that is immutable and decentralised is a great way to achieve those ends.

Use of the NEO platform is also an interesting angle that differentiates it from a number of other blockchain companies. Although the Ethereum platform is evolving, its reliance on its own programming language is a hindrance to development teams fluent in other programming languages.

There are also other benefits that one can get apart from merely owning a NRV token. People can actively partake in the Narrative ecosystem if they have something to offer. As a decentralised community, it will gain its power from those who form part of it.

So, should you Invest?

We cannot give investment advice at the Coin Bureau. However, we can say that Narrative does indeed have an interesting business model that could create a mini content economy. Moreover, given the relative low levels of NEO at the moment, it is quite affordable to partake in a NEO based ICO at the moment.

We look forward to monitoring the progression of Narrative through its crowd sale and on wards.