Spankchain Review: How This Coin Will Change Adult Entertainment

Cryptocurrencies, and more specifically Bitcoin, have been associated with some of the more marginal areas of the internet for some time now.

Soon after its emergence, Bitcoin became popular partly due to its ability to help the public engage more actively in gambling, the purchasing of various medicinal products, and in paying for sexual products and services.

As a result, the sex industry appears to be a sector ready to benefit from new blockchain technologies. Spankchain is ready to tackle some of the industries key issues and offers a number of blockchain based solutions for the online adult entertainment industry.

Read on to as complete a comprehensive Spankchain review.

What is Spankchain?

Spankchain is a blockchain based platform for the adult entertainment industry. The team behind the project aim to utilize blockchain technology in order to provide a decentralized foundation that does away with the industry’s numerous middlemen and redistributes finances and power fairly throughout its community of creators, performers, and fans.

The project was founded by Ameen Soleimani and William de Vogelaere, and the duo aim to create a technological and economic infrastructure on top of the Ethereum network. By using smart contracts, the pair hopes to do away with the need for third party intermediaries and provide a fair payment system that also incorporates high levels of security and privacy.

The Spankchain ecosystem is made up of a number of key elements, such as the payment hub, which includes the Vynos micropayment processing wallet that allows users to process peer to peer payments at a fraction of the cost of traditional payment processors. In addition, a series of payments can be grouped into a single blockchain transaction to help minimize the total amount of fees paid.

The platform also incorporates a high-quality live video streaming infrastructure that can be accessed across a range of mobile devices. The internal cam site connects performers directly with viewers and the Spankchain video player interoperates with the Vynos wallet, which allows performers and viewers to pay with cryptocurrencies and interact in real time.

At first glance, Spankchain appears to be using blockchain technology to provide a service that is already readily available, and if so the project should be expected to struggle. However, the team behind the project stress that are tackling some of the current key issues plaguing the industry.

What Problem does it Solve?

The U.S. adult entertainment industry generates enormous revenues, while exact figures are difficult to obtain, Forbes magazine estimated the industry to be worth approximately $3B a year in 2001.

Since then, research undertaken by Covenant Eyes shows the industry to be pulling in around $13B per year, while NBC News claim the global industry is worth somewhere in the region of $97B.

Despite generating these impressive figures, models and performers are often left short-changed as the majority of funds are eaten up by middlemen and intermediaries.

The industry is currently dominated by centralised platforms such as Chaterbate and Livejasmin, and while they are hugely popular, these sites charge models that use their platforms anywhere from 50 to 70% of their profits.

It is currently difficult for performers to generate traffic or gain users without signing up to these kinds of centralized marketplaces.

On top of this, the industry suffers from having a poor reputation among major payment processors such as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal as payments made via these channels are often hit with chargebacks. As a result, sex related businesses often have to utilise substandard alternatives and/or incur high fees and commission payments.

How Viable is the Project?

Spankchain aims to abolish the middleman and put the power back in the hands of models and performers. Through their cam site, viewers will be able to tip models via their browser, with the being charged a 5% fee, which represents a massive discount compared to current fee rates.

The Vynos wallet can also be easily integrated with almost any adult site, and as it makes payments based on Ethereum Identities, it does away with the need of having separate accounts for every adult site, and also makes email addresses, passwords, and credit cards redundant.

By focusing on using cryptocurrencies as the central payment method, Spankchain also solves the chargeback issue as blockchain currencies generally do not allow for the chargeback techniques that are employed and abused by bad actors in the space.

On top of this, the Spankchain platform also makes the business of creating and delivering content much easier and enables further sites and content delivery networks to be hosted on its blockchain protocol.

However, this isn’t the first time cryptocurrencies have tried to merge with the adult entertainment industry and most previous attempts have come up short and been outright scams like Eros Vision (ERS) or been left languishing like Sexcoin (SXC).

The main mistake made by these projects was to try and rival Bitcoin as a new payment mechanism for the adult sector or to try and provide an alternative to the native token systems employed by the major centralised sites without focusing on creating a content hosting platform.

Spankchain can thrive if it sticks to its mission of providing a comprehensive, decentralised blockchain based platform that provides live content creation services alongside a cheap, secure and private payment solution. This will give the team time to scale and grow as the industry develops and adapts to the integration of blockchain technology.

Overview of the SPANK Token

The SPANK token has held up quite well since its Dutch Auction in November which raised over $7m. After spiking in value during the Christmas bull run, SPANK has dropped back to a price of around $0.31, and with a current circulating supply of just over 300 million tokens, the coin currently retains a market cap of approximately $94m.

The token currently ranks inside the top 200 on Coinmarketcap and generates approximately $500m worth of trading volume every 24 hours.

The SPANK token also appeals to holders and long term investors as it can also be used for staking in the SpankBank which leads to the emission of another token called "Booty."

The Booty token can be used to tip performers, and is the only token that can be used to pay service fees accrued by using the Spankchain camsite. Despite all this, the SPANK token is not too well known amongst the greater cryptocurrency community and is often relegated to the margins of crypto discussions.

The project is still in its infancy and has around 7,500 followers on Twitter, and just 151 likes on Facebook. As a result, it’s key that the Spankchain team step up their promotional activities in order to generate more interest in the project.

The Road Ahead

The Spankchain whitepaper outlines a quite extensive roadmap, which includes incorporating a revenue generating Ad Network, which is comprised of display, video, and native ads with any revenues generated through this network being shared with models and performers.

There is also a plan to develop “Porn Bounties”, which involves using crowdfunding to help create new content or scenes, with the community voting for and funding the content they would like to see. The first performer or team to fulfil the most popular request receives the bounty money.

There are also plans to integrate with District 0x and Aragon, in order to create a fully decentralised marketplace that also allows for governance to be handled by the Spankchain community, this is scheduled to take place in Q1 of 2019 and in the meanwhile, the Spankchain team will be promoting themselves at events such as the Adult Video News awards, which is one of the biggest award events in the adult industry.

The Spankchain project is comprehensive enough to be able to disrupt the somewhat stagnant adult industry, and sex and cryptocurrencies go together surprisingly well. However, as with any start-up or new blockchain enterprise, it’s of paramount importance that the team delivers on their promises and continues to innovate and stay ahead of the market.

If the team behind Spankchain do just that, then the future of SPANK looks bright.